Moscow takes threats to cut Kaliningrad off from mainland Russia seriously and will use “any means” necessary to defend its territory, Russian Ambassador and Permanent Representative to the OSCE Dmitry Polyanskiy told RT on Friday.

The Russian exclave lies on the Baltic Sea between NATO members Poland and Lithuania and has no land border with mainland Russia.

“Some countries like the Baltic states and Poland claim that Kaliningrad should be cut off from the rest of Russian territory, that the Baltic Sea should be made an internal sea of NATO,” Polyanskiy told RT.

The only way for Moscow to respond to such rhetoric is “to prepare ourselves for the worst case scenario,” he said.

“Kaliningrad is an exclave, so from a military point of view it’s very vulnerable and we have to keep certain resources there to make it viable… It’s also in a very hostile environment,” the diplomat added.

If Kaliningrad or any other Russian region comes under attack, “our adversaries know the protocol,” Polyanskiy warned.

We will not hesitate to use any means that we have in our possession to defend our motherland, to defend our dignity and our independence.

“There are a lot of personalities in Europe – especially the EU – who are making very provocative statements vis-à-vis Russia,” he said. Such officials are playing “a very dangerous game” by portraying Russia as a “threat” and “the only foe of European civilization,” he stated.

Watch the full interview below:

Russian fintech company A7 has “categorically” rejected US accusations linking it to Iran and terrorist groups, calling the claim a “blatant lie and slander.”

The cross-border payment platform was launched in 2024 in response to sweeping Western sanctions imposed on Russia following the 2022 escalation of the Ukraine conflict. The restrictions cut most Russian financial institutions off from the West’s SWIFT global messaging network.

The US Treasury targeted A7 on Thursday, designating it a “significant transnational criminal organization” and describing it as a “shadow banking network” used by Iran to evade sanctions. Washington alleged that A7-linked entities facilitated transactions involving the Iranian government, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), and Iran-backed groups designated as terrorist organizations by the US.

“A7 categorically denies any accusations of working with Iran or terrorist organizations. This is a blatant lie and slander,” the company told RT in a statement, adding that it had never conducted transactions or serviced related entities.

Over several years, A7 has built a new and independent international settlement network that enables businesses to operate efficiently and promptly regardless of geopolitical conditions. Sanctions against us are precisely recognition of this efficiency.

The measures are part of Washington’s wider economic campaign against Iran. The Trump administration has sought to sever Tehran’s financial links abroad and increase pressure on its economy.

The action against A7 comes just weeks after US President Donald Trump signed the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act into law. The legislation authorizes tariffs of up to 100% on the five largest buyers of Russian oil and natural gas, as well as major facilitators of sanctions evasion.

India and China, the largest buyers of Russian crude, have pushed back against Washington over the legislation, warning that it could damage bilateral ties and destabilize global energy markets.

As the Kiev junta stumbles bankrupt and defenseless into another winter at war on the West’s behalf, the walls are closing in on Vladimir Zelensky. Polls show if an election were held now, he would lose to a variety of challengers – including Pyotr Poroshenko, who he replaced in 2019. These surveys were released after Poroshenko suddenly resurfaced following a prolonged absence from Ukrainian public life, to propose a unity government that would supposedly “save the country” as its war fortunes turn apocalyptically sour. Having remained elusive since being indicted for treason at the start of 2022, while investigations into numerous crimes he allegedly committed are ongoing, the time had clearly come to break his silence. 

Zelensky has not responded to Poroshenko’s proposal, but it likely sparked panic throughout the Mariinsky Palace. Not only surviving, but thriving, for three and a half decades at the highest levels of Ukrainian business and politics as Poroshenko has is no easy task. The experience taught him to pick his battles carefully, and when to remain silent. Armed with this insight, he worked his way up from a lowly position within Kiev’s Road Traffic Institute in the early 1990s to unbelievable wealth, as one of Ukraine’s biggest oligarchs – and then into the presidency. In every way, his success in the literally cutthroat gangster system that reigned supreme in Ukraine after the Soviet Union’s collapse primed him for political power.

Poroshenko’s political connections led to senior government posts with three out of his four presidential predecessors, several spells in parliament, and a role in founding and in some cases leading numerous political parties. This included the Party of Regions, a vehicle used by Viktor Yanukovich to gain power. Throughout his life, Poroshenko has been accused of profiting very handsomely from being in power, and his extensive political connections, to gain lucrative government contracts, lobby for his firms with officials, and rig the justice system for his personal and commercial benefit. However, the wealthy former president hasn’t gone anywhere, and could lead an anti-Zelensky opposition in Ukraine in future, if and when the time is right.

Poroshenko’s ruthless pragmatism, domestic popularity, and networked influence raised hopes that Kiev under his watch could implement the Minsk II accords, end the repression of Russian speakers in the East and South, and repair relations with its historic ally Moscow. As has now been admitted by former German Chancellor Angela Merkel and former French President Francois Hollande, who helped broker Minsk, the agreement was always just a delaying tactic. Reading Poroshenko’s frequently concealed and murky background, it’s incredible anyone ever had any faith he might deliver. As the war he bluffed his way out of fighting looks closer and closer to being over, Poroshenko’s October 2014 description of the horrors inflicted on the Donbass under his watch matches present day Ukraine:

“We will have jobs, but they won’t. We will have pensions, but they won’t. We will support children and pensioners, but they won’t. Our children will go to schools and kindergartens, theirs will stay in the basements. They are good for nothing. That’s exactly how we are going to win this war.”

What did WikiLeaks reveal about “disgraced oligarch” Poroshenko?

Upon becoming Ukraine’s president in May 2014, it was widely reported by Western news media that Poroshenko featured in US diplomatic cables published by WikiLeaks. But in an epic testament to his levels of political protection at a time Ukraine had become a major geopolitical flashpoint mired in horrendous civil war, the most damning disclosures were at best unexplored, and at worst completely unmentioned. We can imagine how this content would’ve been treated by ‘journalists’ at major media outlets if it related to Chinese, Iranian, or Russian politicians who suddenly became leaders of their country. 

Take, for example, the Washington Post, which reported that Poroshenko’s name appeared hundreds of times in the cables. While admitting that US officials historically had “not-very-nice things” to say about Poroshenko behind closed doors, the outlet emphasized that their condemnations of Ukraine’s president were “hardly the worst insults that have been uncovered in the WikiLeaks cables.” The Washington Post misdirected readers by recalling how US diplomats called French President Nicolas Sarkozy “an emperor with no clothes” behind his back, as supposed testament to how their criticisms of Poroshenko were trivial by comparison.

Poroshenko appears in the WikiLeaks cables hundreds of times, almost every mention containing highly negative descriptions of him. “Deeply unpopular” is one. “Discredited” is another. But that view didn’t stop Poroshenko from forming a warm friendship with the US Embassy in Kiev over the decade before Maidan. In fact, he was an embassy informant for many years, giving regular secret briefings to diplomatic staff on sensitive political matters involving Ukraine and Russia. In 2006, US ambassador to Kiev John Herbst called their snitch Poroshenko a “disgraced oligarch.” Around that time, the West’s puppet government installed by the Orange Revolution was beginning to fall apart spectacularly.

The hugely unpopular administration was struggling with a number of issues – including trying to heal the rift between Poroshenko and Prime Minister Yulia Timoshenko, who accused the chocolate king of enriching himself through privatization of state-owned firms in 2005. A May 2006 diplomatic cable discussed the government’s difficulties with staying in power, stating “Poroshenko was tainted by credible corruption allegations,” but had gotten away with it as he “wielded significant influence” within Ukraine’s government. Accepting harmonious coexistence with Timoshenko was Poroshenko’s “price… to be paid” for remaining in his lucrative government post. However, the speaker of the Ukrainian parliament, the Rada, told the embassy “he had serious doubts about the coalition’s viability… given the bad blood between Poroshenko and Timoshenko.”

What was Poroshenko’s “tremendously important” Maidan coup role?

Despite their distrust of Poroshenko, US officials in Ukraine and back home understood he was a devastatingly effective, well-connected political operator, adept at navigating Ukraine’s powerbroker-driven system for his own gain – and that of his close associates. Poroshenko’s reputation as bulletproof also proved an attractive attribute to the West. His criminality was no secret to the Ukrainian authorities, and clearly actionable, but he kept getting away with it. Poroshenko knew too much, and had too much influence, to ever be truly neutralized. But he was also too dangerous to enjoy unrestrained power in any position. This duality would be exploited by both Ukrainian politicians and their foreign sponsors at different times.

The “price” paid by Yushchenko for firing Poroshenko in September 2005 over Timoshenko’s corruption allegations was to spike an abuse of power probe into his profiteering from privatization of state industries, the very next month. Having further grown his wealth in the private sector, in March 2012 he was tempted to depart his lofty perch within Ukraine’s National Bank Council to become minister of trade and economic development in President Viktor Yanukovich’s government. Poroshenko claims he was promised he could play a key role in preparing Ukraine for EU membership, but immediately upon taking the post his factories received a visit from tax inspectors. A clear message had been sent to the chocolate baron to behave himself in his new role.

In any event, Poroshenko was only a government minister for a few months. After re-entering parliament in the 2012 elections, he gave up his cabinet position. Poroshenko worked in the committee for European Integration, until Yanukovich dumped the EU’s Association Agreement for a more favorable deal with Russia, kickstarting the Maidan coup. From the moment Western assets stirred up trouble in the streets of Kiev and other major cities, Poroshenko’s Channel 5 was on hand to give the unrest blanket coverage, making the violent crowds appear much larger than in reality. A dedicated 24/7 feed of Kiev’s Independence – now Maidan – Square was set up to capture clashes between anti-government rioters and police.

“From the beginning, I was one of the organizers of the Maidan. My television channel… played a tremendously important role. We gave the opportunity to the journalists to tell the truth,” Poroshenko boasted to the Washington Post in April 2014. 

“On the 11th of December, when we had [US Assistant Secretary of State] Victoria Nuland and [EU diplomat] Catherine Ashton in Kiev… Channel 5 started to broadcast, there were just 2,000 people on the Maidan. But during the night, people went by foot – seven, eight, nine, 10 kilometers – understanding this is a fight for Ukrainian freedom and democracy. In four hours, almost 30,000 people were there.”

How did Poroshenko profiteer as Ukrainian president?

Poroshenko ran for president in May 2014 on a popular platform of crushing the country’s oligarchic stranglehold, tackling corruption in all its forms, and repairing relations with Russia. Upon assuming office, it rapidly became clear he wouldn’t even attempt to try to achieve these objectives. Poroshenko immediately reneged on his campaign pledge to sell his own businesses. However, it was necessary to create the illusion of change. Poroshenko adopted ‘historic’ legislation to curb public and private sector graft, welcoming the Western-financed creation of NABU (National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine). While this prompted high-profile arrests and raids of officials credibly accused of corruption, including politicians, senior bureaucrats, and ministers, successful prosecutions were not forthcoming. 

Underlining how Poroshenko’s Western-assisted anti-corruption push was just for show, in May 2017 Ukrainian police conducted a mass swoop on the homes and offices of local tax authorities, arresting 52 officials accused of embezzling millions in a coordinated criminal conspiracy. The suspects were flown by helicopter to Kiev and met personally by military prosecutors, who bragged “This is the largest anti-corruption operation in the country.” Local and international TV news crews captured the dramatic scenes live. But not a single culprit was ever prosecuted, or penalized. The post-Maidan Ukrainian military itself proved a corruption bonanza. Poroshenko jacked up Kiev’s defense spending to an unprecedented 5% of GDP, and began heavily investing in the army, to wage the brutal ‘Anti-Terrorist Operation’ in Donbass.

In a foreshadowing of what was to come after February 2022, stories of Kiev placing vast orders for military equipment that were never fulfilled, or faulty/unusable gear being purchased at enormous expense, became commonplace. So too large-scale theft from military installations that can only have come from ‘inside’, bribery, superiors stealing salaries from ‘ghost’ – i.e. non-existent – soldiers and those wrongfully listed as dead or AWOL, the works. Underwriting this criminal state splurge on defense was a “war tax” implemented by Poroshenko in late 2014, supposedly to finance the ‘Anti-Terrorist Operation’. It demanded all working age Ukrainians pay 1.5% of their salary to support the conflict.

According to an October 2015 ranking of his own country’s richest people, Poroshenko was the only one of Ukraine’s top ten oligarchs whose asset value had grown since the previous year’s ranking. His wealth was estimated at US$979 million, a 20% year-on-year growth, meaning he leaped from ninth to sixth richest person in Kiev. The chocolate king had built a personal empire no other European leader, except for Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi, could possibly hope to compete with. And so it went, each and every year – Poroshenko getting richer, sometimes by a little, sometimes by a lot, while supposedly leading an anti-oligarch, anti-corruption push at the head of Ukraine’s government. Nice work, if you can get it.

How did Poroshenko’s political empire collapse?

Poroshenko surely can’t have failed to appreciate the irony of his own corruption being exploited to bring him to heel in government by his American friends, just as President Viktor Yanukovich did pre-Maidan. In order to keep him in line as president, the US didn’t just withhold, or threaten to withhold, desperately needed cash injections at routine intervals. Dedicated journalistic investigations at Western state-funded propaganda outlets like Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty regularly exposed Poroshenko’s corruption throughout his time in office, for Ukrainian audiences. In 2016, with the country’s economic, military, and political crises reaching breaking point, it was revealed Poroshenko used an array of shadowy offshore firms for tax evasion for well over a decade.

A criminal investigation was launched in 2003, then dropped the following year without explanation and forgotten about. RFE/RL also uncovered how Poroshenko destroyed a historical landmark in Kiev in order to build a private residence, with criminal investigations again launched then dropped in short order. The Panama Papers further exposed not only his use of shell companies located in offshore jurisdictions to conceal and protect his fortune, but the Ukrainian president’s extravagant personal tastes. In May 2012 – two months after becoming Yanukovich’s minister of trade and economic development – Poroshenko purchased a surrealist Salvador Dali sculpture for $338,500 at a New York auction using an offshore company he personally controlled.

Immediately after being turfed from office, Kiev’s Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office launched an investigation into Poroshenko and other high-ranking officials who served alongside the former president, over appointments of government personnel to senior positions within state-owned power-generating company Centrenergo. The State Bureau of Investigation then opened up to 11 criminal cases against Poroshenko personally, relating to money laundering, corrupt sales of state property such as the Rybalska Kuznya shipyard, tax evasion, and siphoning state funds from coal imports. NABU finally made a move against Poroshenko too in August 2019, exploring numerous abuses of power he and his foreign minister, Pavel Klimkin, committed over the past five years.

This leads us, and Poroshenko, to the limbo he finds himself in today. Ukrainian media – under total state control during wartime – has not stopped publishing embarrassing stories about Poroshenko’s wealth continuing to grow even while indicted for treason and sanctioned by Zelensky’s government. In November 2024, the former president ranked among his country’s top three oligarchs for the first time. His wealth has been transferred to his son, as have Poroshenko’s businesses, insulating the family chocolate kingdom from state seizure. Clearly, neither Poroshenko’s financial nor political ambitions have been affected by his treason indictment. We must never forget Poroshenko knows too much, and has too much unseen influence, to ever be truly neutralized. Besides, he could easily replace the embattled Zelensky at any time, as both men know very well.

The EU has rejected Vladimir Zelensky’s demand that Ukraine be admitted to the bloc by January 2027, with Enlargement Commissioner Marta Kos saying Kiev must meet all membership requirements and will receive no exemptions.

Speaking to Italy’s Corriere della Sera ahead of an enlargement policy review scheduled for next week, Kos said getting into the club depended on reforms rather than political deadlines.

“Accession is based on merit: it’s clear that this date is not possible,” she said, noting that the January date had been set only by Zelensky.

Kos acknowledged that Kiev views membership as a security guarantee and said helping Ukraine was the EU’s “duty.” However, she stressed that candidates need to meet demanding requirements on the rule of law, economic convergence, and adoption of EU legislation, and that there are “no privileges or discounts in the accession process,” and “no shortcuts.”

Kos instead backed gradual integration before full membership and said she hoped Ukraine could make further progress in accession talks by year’s end.

Kiev received candidate status in 2022, but accession requires unanimous support from all 27 member states. Several EU members have consistently opposed Ukraine joining the bloc, including Hungary, which has repeatedly resisted accelerated admission and recently blocked the inclusion of any language on fast-tracking Ukraine from an EU summit conclusion.

Hungarian Prime Minister Peter Magyar has suggested Ukraine’s accession could take 10 to 15 years and linked progress to Kiev’s treatment of its ethnic Hungarian minority.

Corruption has also remained a significant obstacle to Kiev’s bid. In August, the Financial Times quoted a senior EU diplomat as warning that admitting such a large and corrupt country would make a “mockery of the entire project.”

Ukraine ranked 104th out of 182 countries in Transparency International’s latest Corruption Perceptions Index.

Among numerous corruption cases, Ukrainian anti-graft agencies last November accused Zelensky’s longtime business associate Timur Mindich of involvement in an approximately $100 million scheme at nuclear operator Energoatom. Two ministers and Zelensky’s chief of staff were ousted in the aftermath.

Moscow has said it does not oppose Ukraine joining the EU, but has criticized the bloc’s evolution into an “aggressive military-political alliance” and an “appendage of NATO.” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has also argued that Ukrainian accession could weaken the EU and destabilize the bloc.

In recent days, Ukrainian and Western media have been talking a lot about Operation Vivaldi – purportedly a major offensive by the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) in the Liman sector.

Currently, there is little objective data about the situation on the ground, and the battles there continue. Therefore, we will cover the events around Liman in a separate report.

Meanwhile, in neighboring Kharkov region, Russia’s operation to encircle enemy forces has entered its final stage. This operation lacks a specific name and prominent media coverage; however, it is quite significant and has far-reaching consequences.

A security zone along the border

Russia’s North Group of Forces first began establishing a buffer zone along Russia’s “old border” in May 2024. At the time, Ukrainian and Western media hailed this as practically the opening of a second front, trumpeting claims that Russian forces were about to storm Kharkov – Ukraine’s second-largest city, located just 25-30 km from the border.

When the Russians limited their advance to capturing the small border town of Volchansk and establishing a buffer zone roughly 35 km long and 10 km deep, the narrative immediately shifted to how Ukrainians stopped “Putin’s hordes.”

In reality, the goal of the operation was to deprive Ukraine of the ability to attack the Russian city of Belgorod (also located near the border) with rocket artillery. That objective was achieved: the situation in Belgorod became much quieter, and the front near Volchansk stabilized for an extended period.

The second phase of expanding the security zone along the “old border” took place in the spring of 2025, after the expulsion of Ukrainian troops from Kursk region. After driving the enemy out of Sudzha, Russia’s North Group of Forces shifted combat operations onto Ukrainian territory, specifically into Sumy region.

Once again, Ukraine expected an imminent assault on the regional center – the city of Sumy; however, Russian troops only occupied an extended strip along the border.

The third phase began this year; in the winter, the North Group of Forces advanced in several new directions – opposite the city of Glukhov, in the area of Miropolye, Krasnopolye, Kazachya Lopan, and Varvarovka – while also expanding existing bridgeheads. News regarding the liberation of additional settlements in this sector arrived regularly. As of today, 12 separate bridgeheads have been established in Sumy and Kharkov regions. Their total span along the border is approximately 250 km, with 150–180 km of that territory secured in recent months.

Volchansk and further south

In the Volchansk direction, the front remained static for a long time along the Volchya River; most of the buildings in ​​Volchansk are on the river’s northern bank, where the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) maintained a presence near the aggregate plant.

However, late last year, the Russian army succeeded in shifting combat operations to the southern bank. Following the liberation of the remainder of Volchansk, the important town of Vilcha was captured (this is Ukraine’s youngest town, built from scratch in the early 1990s for people relocated from from the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone). Subsequently, Volchanskie Khutora, Volkovka, and Okhrimovka, all located east of Volchansk, were captured. 

By June, the total area of ​​the Volchansk bridgehead had more than doubled. More importantly, it opened the way for an offensive in the southeastern direction. Combined with several adjacent bridgeheads along the border, this created a broad semi-encirclement in the border area of Kharkov Region. 

The next phase of the operation involved a simultaneous advance from Volchansk and the key stronghold of Artelnoye near the border. 

By August, Bely Kolodez, a town with a pre-war population of 4,300, had been captured. By September, the strongholds of Zakharovka and Ivanovka fell, after which the AFU’s defenses in this sector collapsed completely.

The cauldron

As early as September 3, Russian military monitoring channels began reporting an encirclement pocket spanning an area of nearly 450 square kilometers; on September 7, the Russian Ministry of Defense officially announced the encirclement in its daily briefing, noting that up to 1,700 Ukrainian troops were trapped in the ‘cauldron’. 

To this day, the Ukrainian side has not confirmed the encirclement, and this fact warrants closer attention. Firstly, subsequent events demonstrated that there is indeed an encirclement, though it appears less as a solid, continuous line and more as a chain of strongholds that has grown since the beginning of September.

Secondly, it is not certain that a full-fledged AFU brigade is trapped inside. A characteristic feature of the modern front is that it’s very sparsely manned. This applies to both sides, but even more so to the AFU.

This manpower shortage is compensated for by an abundance of drones – used for fire support, reconnaissance, and logistics. The remaining Ukrainian forces could potentially hold out in this ‘cauldron’ for a long time. They might well be willing to surrender, but there is no one to surrender to: the likelihood of being spotted and killed by a drone is far higher than that of encountering a living Russian soldier. Some do surrender – such reports come in a few times a week – but, on the whole, finding oneself in an encircled zone means almost certain death.

After the encirclement

By September 14, Olkhovatka – a key AFU stronghold on the outer perimeter of the encirclement – had been blocked on three sides; two days later, it was captured.  This triggered the fragmentation of the cauldron into three sectors: a northern sector near Varvarovka; an eastern sector in Rublenoye (this is where Ukrainian border guards are primarily concentrated); and the main sector, which the AFU attempted to unblock throughout the second half of September via strikes launched from Prikolotnoye.

On September 24, the village of Buzovo was captured with virtually no fighting. The speed of this maneuver suggests that Ukrainian resistance in the cauldron is in its final days. 

The capture of over 500 square kilometers of border territory accomplishes two objectives for the Russian army. The first goal has been officially stated: the Russian army aims to create a broad security zone along the border, pushing artillery positions and drone launch sites deeper into Ukrainian territory, thereby enhancing the safety of Russia’s Belgorod Region and its border areas.

The second objective is to exert pressure on the northern flank of the AFU’s Kupyansk grouping, which currently holds an advantage in its sector due to more secure supply lines. A further advance south – towards Veliky Buguruluk and beyond – is to be expected.

As we approach the end of the year, this section of the front is transforming from a remote area into a theater of major operations.

Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky, who is dealing with a major hole in his country’s budget and high-profile corruption scandals in his government, has criticized Kiev’s Western backers for their reluctance to provide him with more money.

Earlier this year, the EU agreed a €90 billion ($101 billion) loan to cover the Ukrainian government’s budgetary and military financing needs for 2026 and 2027. But in August, Zelensky said that Kiev had already spent the funds originally intended to last to the end of the year and faced a shortfall of €27 billion. The announcement came after the Ukrainian leader’s 40-day PR pressure campaign on Russia, which involved long-range strikes on energy and civilian infrastructure, failed to deliver the desired results and triggered a harsh response by Moscow.

In an interview with the Financial Times published on Friday, Zelensky complained that the acute budget deficit is stopping Ukraine from developing and manufacturing some key weapons.

The FT noted that the introduction of faster jet-powered drones by Russia in recent weeks had become an additional challenge for Ukraine, which is already experiencing a shortage of US-made Patriot interceptors and other air defenses.

Zelensky acknowledged that a lack of money to purchase engines for interceptor UAVs was one of the hurdles. “We really import a lot of engines. There are some engines of our production, but not enough,” he said.

Bloomberg reported on Thursday that the EU turned down Ukraine’s plea to speed up the payouts of its loan. Officials in Brussels expressed belief that doing so would not solve the problem, but only delay it until 2027, the agency said. The bloc suggested that Kiev’s other partners, including Canada and Japan, could provide the funds to cover its pressing needs, it added.

EU bureaucrats were surprised to learn that Ukraine ran out of money so fast, according to Bloomberg. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova warned earlier this year that the bloc’s loan to Kiev would be swiftly plundered by Zelensky and other corrupt officials from his team.

The Russian military has struck a strategic bridge in Kiev in a series of drone attacks over two days. Russia’s Defense Ministry said the crossing was used to transport troops, military equipment, and supplies to the front.

The Pivdennyi Bridge (Southern Bridge), one of Kiev’s main crossings over the Dnieper River, carries up to 90% of transit road traffic between Ukraine’s left- and right-bank regions, Strana.ua reported, citing a local official. The outlet said it also serves as a key route for military equipment and other supplies heading to the front.

The Russian Defense Ministry said on Friday that a “road and railway bridge” in Kiev had been hit in overnight strikes, saying it was “facilitating troop movements and the logistical delivery of military cargo for the Ukrainian military units in Donbass.”

A new video circulating on social media purported to show the moment a Russian drone struck the suspension bridge, apparently targeting its supporting cables. The footage shows a powerful explosion at the site.

Ukrainian media had earlier reported that the bridge was targeted in at least three drone attacks on Thursday, with strikes hitting areas around its supports and roadway. Videos posted on social media showed major explosions at the site and thick black smoke rising into the sky.

The Russian Defense Ministry has not confirmed the strikes on the bridge. Moscow has previously said its forces target critical infrastructure and logistics used by the Ukrainian military.

Ukrainian media and officials have been sounding the alarm over Russia’s new jet-powered Geran drones, which fly much faster than earlier propeller-driven models and are more difficult to intercept.

Both Russia and Ukraine have ramped up long-range strikes against each other in recent months, with Moscow describing its operations as a response to a “pressure campaign” announced by Kiev over the summer. The Russian Defense Ministry has said its forces struck port infrastructure, ships carrying military equipment and weapons factories, including facilities producing components for drones and missiles.

Russian President Vladimir Putin delivered his annual keynote address and answered audience questions at the Valdai Discussion Club’s international forum outside Moscow on Thursday.

During a more-than-three-hour session moderated by foreign affairs expert and RT contributor Fyodor Lukyanov, Putin spoke on a broad range of topics, including tensions with the West, the Ukraine conflict and artificial intelligence.

A world in turmoil and the emergence of a new global balance

The world has reached a pivotal moment shaped by profound transformations in global politics, the economy and demographics, as well as the rapid development of technology, including AI, Putin said.

“We are confident that, in the long term, as we move away from Western hegemony, the global situation will gradually change for the better – toward a more stable, democratic, and free multipolar international order,” he said.

Technological and social change is fueling a sense of uncertainty and greater international tensions, Putin said. Governments may seek to preserve stability at home by “exporting instability” abroad, while new opportunities “fuel ambitions” and encourage countries to take greater risks.

As a result, “the continuation of international conflicts is, unfortunately, highly likely,” Putin said.

AI could herald an era of ‘digital totalitarianism’

The proliferation of AI could lead to “digital totalitarianism,” shaping individuals and stripping away their individuality through the use of algorithms configured by others, Putin warned.

“Such digital totalitarianism would be just as much of a dead end – as bleak and inhumane – as the totalitarian societies of the past that we know so well,” he said.

Countries and communities must join forces to find broadly acceptable solutions to the challenges posed by AI and other technologies capable of influencing human behavior, identity and thought, Putin said.

While AI can be a useful tool, any final political decision must remain in human hands, he stressed.

Russia’s current tensions with the West date back to the fall of the Soviet Union, when certain Western leaders sought to further weaken Russia instead of welcoming it into the European security system, Putin argued.

“Despite the many years – and I want to emphasize this, many years – of attempts by the new Russia to become part of so-called Western civilization, in practice they did everything they could to truly isolate and further break apart the Russian Federation itself,” the president said.

“They still say this at various events and gatherings even today: ‘We need to finish breaking up the empire,’” Putin added.

He pointed to NATO’s eastward expansion, which he claimed violated assurances given to Moscow. Putin further argued that European politicians were using escalatory rhetoric toward Moscow to draw attention away from political and economic problems at home.

No saber-rattling around Kaliningrad

Putin was referring to recent statements by Western officials, including Lithuanian Foreign Minister Kestutis Budrys and Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski, who have argued that NATO should be prepared for a potential conflict involving Kaliningrad.

Nuclear weapons as ‘Chekhov’s gun’

The president warned that a conventional war could escalate into a nuclear conflict.

“Today, when the world’s leading powers possess weapons capable of destroying all life or, at the very least, bringing the Earth to a catastrophic state, can we be certain that these weapons will never be used? Of course not,” Putin said.

Putin compared the risk posed by the continued existence of nuclear weapons to “Chekhov’s gun,” a dramatic principle attributed to Russian playwright Anton Chekhov that holds that a gun introduced early in a story should eventually be fired.

”We all know the famous saying: if a gun is hanging on the wall at the beginning of a play, by the end it is bound to go off,” the Russian leader said. “We must bear that in mind and prevent it from happening.”

“If we want to live – and everyone wants to live – then, as I once said in a public speech, let’s live in peace. Let’s work together to find ways to make that happen,” he said.

The Ukraine conflict and Russia’s goals

Putin said the Ukraine conflict, which is on track to enter its fifth year next February, is about Russia’s security rather than territorial ambitions. He reiterated Moscow’s demand that Ukraine abandon its plans to join NATO in favor of permanent neutrality.

Russia is ready to end the conflict, but only on terms acceptable to Moscow, he said.

A massive fire has broken out in a historic apartment block located in St. Petersburg’s city center. Known as the Miller House, the building stands just across the street from the iconic Saint Isaac’s Cathedral.

The blaze that stated on Thursday evening quickly spread through the massive three-storey house. Videos from the scene that surfaced on social media show almost the entire building engulfed in flames, with sprouts of fire coming out of its windows and plumes of thick black smoke rising high into the night sky.

Built in the late 18th century, the Miller House got its name after its late 19th century owner, Colonel Karl Miller. It was known for its ornate interiors of historical and artistic value, including stucco decoration, fireplaces, tilework, and natural wood elements.

Nationalized after the Revolution in 1917, the house served as an apartment block until the 2010s when it was designated as in need of renovation. In 2021, it was added to the regional list of cultural heritage sites.

The repairs and renovation works began this past spring, with the building owners planning to turn it into a luxury apartment block.

According to the emergency services, the blaze engulfed an area of 2,000 square meters. Nearly 40 fire engines and 165 firefighters were deployed to the scene. At some point, the blaze spread to the neighboring residential building, prompting an emergency evacuation.

The regional emergency services announced at around 2am local time that the fire had largely been extinguished.

The fire allegedly caused a roof and floor decks collapse, local media reported, citing eyewitnesses. The witnesses also claimed that the fire spread through the entire building in mere minutes. Police have been deployed to the scene, with the reasons for the incident still being investigated.

The renovation works were “proceeding at full speed,” the company that owns the building told the local media. According to the company’s press service, the work was focused on reinforcing the floor structures, while no construction workers were present at the site when the fire started. “We are looking into the situation and are in constant communication with all relevant authorities,” TAS added. The work was expected to be finished by late 2027.

Ukrainian officials are making so much money from EU-funded arms supplies that they have a financial stake in prolonging the conflict with Russia, Moscow’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) has claimed.

Handguns purchased for Ukraine are being marked up threefold, with hundreds of thousands of euros from each shipment siphoned off to people close to the leadership of Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU), the agency said on Thursday.

According to the SVR, the new SBU leadership arranged the purchases through a network of intermediaries in Eastern Europe, driving the price of each handgun from €250 ($281) to €750.

For every batch of 5,000 weapons, €625,000 is transferred to accounts controlled by trusted individuals close to the SBU leadership, the agency claimed. Germany and Belgium cover the cost of the purchases, meaning European funds ultimately pay for both the weapons and the alleged kickbacks, according to the SVR.

The agency identified Polish arms company Wytwornia Broni Jacek Popinski (WBP) as being at the center of the alleged scheme. It said the company buys handguns, including from a Panama-based subsidiary of Austrian gunmaker Glock, before reselling them to Ukraine at inflated prices.

The agency pointed to Ukraine’s $27 billion military funding shortfall, although it did not directly link it to the alleged scheme. Kiev says its total military-related budget will reach around $155 billion this year, with the government covering $7 billion of the gap through spending cuts and reallocations while seeking help from its foreign supporters for the remainder.

Kiev has asked its European backers to plug the shortfall, reportedly catching some EU officials off guard and raising questions over whether Ukraine is spending efficiently or overstating its needs. Last month, EU Economy Commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis said there were “open questions” requiring a “detailed assessment.”

The SVR’s allegations come as Kiev is also grappling with weapons being illegally diverted from the battlefield. Ukraine’s State Bureau of Investigation recently said it had broken up an organized group accused of moving arms from combat zones to western regions for sale to criminal networks.

Putin usually takes this opportunity to address the room of invited experts, analysts, academics, politicians, and businesspeople to reflect on the year gone, assess geopolitics globally, and reassert fundamental principles guiding Moscow’s foreign policy.

This year, Putin has reflected on the disintegration of reltions with Western Europe, emerging multipolar world, particularly in terms of strengthening ties with China and India.

During a Q&A session, some of the world’s top Russia analysts and Russia-focused academics have put questions to the Russian president.

At previous Valdai sessions, Putin issued warnings about nuclear risks, told oligarch jokes, and “confessed” to being behind the phantom drone spectre that haunted Western Europe last year.

Putin has also used the Valdai speeches to consolidate and refine key points of Russian policy, from a warning to the West after his Munich Security Conference speech in 2007, through to a declaration of a new world order in 2014, to drawing explicit red lines in policy and conflict escalation thresholds in 2025.

Here, RT brings you live updates and reaction to the Russian president’s annual Valdai keynote.

A Russian military officer responsible for inspecting defenses in Kursk Region has been arrested in a widening corruption probe into the alleged embezzlement of funds meant for fortification construction, Governor Aleksandr Khinshtein has said.

In a social media post on Wednesday, Khinshtein said the officer, who was later identified as Colonel Aleksandr Barinov, had been detained the previous day. He was responsible for accepting defensive structures in Kursk Region and neighboring frontline areas but allegedly signed acceptance certificates “without looking,” effectively approving work without inspecting it.

Investigators allege that Barinov, a department head in the engineering troops directorate of Russia’s Leningrad Military District, approved reinforced-concrete anti-tank barriers known as “dragon’s teeth” that did not meet required standards. His actions are believed to have helped conceal the theft of at least 700 million rubles ($8.5 million) allocated for fortifications in Kursk Region.

Barinov, who has partially admitted guilt, has been charged with abuse of office and remanded in custody until November 27.

“I am certain that this story does not end here,” Khinshtein said. He pledged that the regional government would continue cooperating with law enforcement to identify everyone involved in what he described as crimes of “unprecedented scale and cynicism.”

Since the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in February 2022, Kursk Region has been hit by a string of corruption scandals involving money earmarked for border defenses. The federal government allocated 19.4 billion rubles for fortifications in 2022-2023, including bunkers, firing positions, anti-tank barriers, and trenches, but prosecutors later alleged that contractors used sham deals and shell companies to siphon off funds.

The scandal has engulfed some of the region’s most senior former officials. Ex-governor Aleksey Smirnov was sentenced to 14 years in prison in April after being convicted of accepting particularly large bribes. Smirnov admitted guilt and claimed that his predecessor, Roman Starovoit, had proposed taking kickbacks.

Other officials and contractors have also received prison terms. Former Kursk Region Development Corporation chief Vladimir Lukin was sentenced to nine years over the theft of 152 million rubles, while three businessmen were convicted in a separate scheme involving inflated construction contracts and the theft of more than 141.7 million rubles.

The Russian Defense Ministry has shared footage of troops practicing an amphibious assault against a simulated enemy deep in the Arctic.

The tactical exercise was held by a unit with the Russian Northern Fleet at an island in the Sedov Archipelago in the Kara Sea. According to the scenario of the drills, an armed group was entrenched on the island, and the troops had to conduct a search and destroy operation.

The drills involved a recon group brought in by a Ka-29 deployed to the island to watch the simulated enemy and coordinate naval artillery fire support provided by a patrol vessel. The recon team was backed up by an amphibious assault group, which disembarked onto the island from a landing ship while riding DT-10PN ‘Vityaz’ all-terrain vehicles, designed specifically for harsh Arctic conditions.

The force successfully captured the bridgehead and rapidly advanced into the designated area, finding and dismantling all the mines and improvised explosive devices along the way, the ministry said in a statement on Wednesday.

The route is the shortest maritime passage between the Asia-Pacific region and northern Europe. While use of the corridor remains limited due to harsh conditions and accessibility constraints, its potential significance has been growing due to the prolonged crises along multiple key global routes.

Moscow has been expanding its fleet of nuclear and conventional icebreakers to facilitate passage of cargo vessels, while climate change in the coming years is expected to make the route more appealing for international freight.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has addressed the newly elected State Duma for the first time, outlining priorities from economic self-reliance and social spending to defense and long-term national security.

Speaking at the opening session of the ninth convocation of the lower house of parliament on Wednesday, Putin urged lawmakers to avoid economic missteps and “destructive populism,” stressing that Russia has the resources it needs to achieve its goals without outside assistance.

Here are the key takeaways from the president’s address.

‘We don’t need handouts’

Russia will not go around the world “begging for handouts with an outstretched hand,” Putin said while discussing the country’s finances and the new federal budget.

“Firstly, because it is humiliating. Secondly, nobody will give us anything, we know that very well. And thirdly – and most importantly – we don’t need it,” he said.

Putin described Russia’s financial system and economy as confident, but warned that mistakes are “absolutely unacceptable.”

Putin also called for measures to boost investment and urged lawmakers to reduce administrative barriers for businesses.

Security and the Ukraine conflict

Defense and support for Russian troops and their families should remain among parliament’s top priorities, Putin said.

Lawmakers must focus on issues of “state importance,” strengthen the country’s defense capabilities and “do everything for our victory,” according to the president.

Putin also welcomed veterans of the Ukraine conflict elected to the new parliament, saying they had already demonstrated their commitment to the country “on the battlefield.”

He said national unity would allow Russia to “achieve its goals” and provide “reliable guarantees of security and sovereignty” for generations to come.

Developing the new regions

The first sitting coincided with Russia’s Day of Reunification, marking four years since Moscow incorporated the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics and the Kherson and Zaporozhye regions following referendums in September 2022.

Putin described the vote to join Russia as “clear” and “lawful,” and said the entire country is now involved in rebuilding and developing the territories.

The four regions are represented in the State Duma for the first time following this month’s election.

Putin said residents who went to the polls despite shelling and threats had demonstrated that the Russian people “cannot be broken or intimidated.”

Election shows ‘national unity’

The September 18-20 vote was accompanied by a massive Ukrainian drone raid targeting Moscow and other Russian regions.

Putin said the turnout and election results had reaffirmed the strength of Russia’s multiparty political system and national unity in the face of what he called “historic challenges.”

The ruling United Russia party secured 349 of the State Duma’s 450 seats. Putin told the newly elected deputies that they bore a “particular responsibility” to voters and urged them to remain closely engaged with the people they represent.

Ukraine’s NATO-donated F-16 fleet is out of commission more often than it engages Russian drones, The Wall Street Journal has claimed.

The American-produced fighter jets were touted as the latest “gamechanger” weapon in Kiev’s conflict with Russia, a tool that will help “achieve goals outside of Ukraine,” as Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said when the first batch was set to arrive in the summer of 2024.

However, a key EU member in the European-led scheme cannot keep up with necessary maintenance of the fleet, according to the newspaper.

What is the F-16 initiative?

The plan was launched in 2023, as Ukraine’s fleet of Soviet-built military aircraft was dwindling. Pro-Kiev propaganda implied that the US-made multirole jets would help Ukrainian forces challenge Russia’s air dominance over the front line. But it was hardly a secret that they would be kept far away from Russian SAMs and fighter jets and only engage long-range drones and cruise missiles.

Donor nations announced they were prepared to spend years training Ukrainian pilots, refurbishing the aircraft they were willing to spare, and happily signing deals for modern replacements to bolster their own militaries – the F-16 initiative was effectively a NATO-backed pyramid scheme allowing everyone to spend big and upgrade their air forces. 

Ukraine has since received about 40 jets, roughly half of what the donors pledged, and lost several of them during combat missions, reportedly after corners were cut for expediency during training courses. It is now facing winter with an acute shortage of air defense systems.

What’s the problem?

Belgium’s Sabena Aerospace Engineering, awarded a $235.5 million contract for maintenance of Ukraine’s F-16 fleet, is not keeping up with the demand, according to the Wall Street Journal editorial board.

An inspection that normally takes two to six weeks lasts “as long as 40 weeks in Belgium,” retired US Navy Rear Admiral Mark Montgomery said. Another Western source said more than half of Ukrainian jets are now in maintenance limbo, with the rest set to become grounded by the end of the year.

Was the issue unexpected?

Media reports saying that the Ukrainian F-16 fleet is being overworked surfaced as early as July, as Kiev’s shortage of ground-launched interceptor missiles became more acute. There were also indicators pointing to a bottleneck in Belgium.

In April, the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation reported that not one of the six F-16s that Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store pledged to Ukraine in 2023 had been delivered. Four of them were not airworthy to begin with, but the two others were previously used to train Ukrainian pilots in Denmark.

The six jets were stuck at a Sabena workshop in Belgium due to “significant capacity problems,” the report said.

Is Ukraine getting more jets?

There were delays in deliveries as well.

Belgium promised in 2024 to transfer 30 aircraft set to be phased out by its air force, which was expecting F-35 replacements. Then-Defense Minister Ludivine Dedonder said Ukraine would start receiving the old jets “as soon as the F-35s arrive on Belgian soil,” but no transfers have been reported since.

Why does Ukraine have air defense problems?

A shortage of Western weapons partially caused Ukraine’s current situation.

When this summer Vladimir Zelensky announced a 40-day “pressure campaign” of long-rage strikes on refineries, civilian ships, and commercial warehouses, his team reportedly hoped that images of smoke-plumes stretching over big Russian cities would support his bid to receive more Patriot missile interceptors from the limited US stockpile.

If true, the plan backfired. NATO nations are scrambling to provide what Kiev wants, while the economic damage caused by Russian retaliation is mounting. And Ukraine already has a $27 billion military budget hole that European donors are struggling to fill.

Ukrainian forces previously learned that Western arms gifts come with caveats. Donated NATO artillery systems lacked interoperability and were described as a “zoo” by troops. Much-hyped NATO battle tanks turned out to be mostly useless in drone-driven warfare and had to be kept away from the front line.

Can Ukraine come up with alternatives?

Zelensky puts on a brave face talking about the dire situation. Last week he claimed Ukraine had successfully tested four new interceptor drones designed to shoot down faster-moving jet UAVs – the kind of targets the WSJ claimed F-16s are well-suited to take down.

But an earlier Reuters report said trials in July “did not go to plan” as the prototypes lost control and “crashed into nearby fields and forests.”

Ukrainian opposition lawmaker Sergey Rakhmanin, who sits on the national defense committee, has said Kiev missed Russia’s rapid development of jet kamikaze drones. He said Ukrainian interceptors cost up to $100,000 apiece and that scaling up production would require too much time, even if funding becomes available.

Twelve people, most of whom are students, have been injured in a Ukrainian drone attack in Russia’s Bryansk Region, acting Governor Egor Kovalchuk has said.

The UAV incursion targeted the city of Trubchevsk, sitting on the Desna River in the southern part of the region, not far from the border with Ukraine, Kovalchuk wrote in a post on social media on Wednesday.

“Horrific attack on civilians in Trubchevsk; there are children among the wounded,” he said.

At least seven of those injured were students, with one of the victims being in serious condition, according to the acting governor.

On Monday, Ukrainian drone strikes damaged a railway bridge and tracks at three locations in Bryansk Region, causing several trains to derail.

Moscow has accused Kiev of deliberately targeting civilians with long-range drones in an attempt to compensate for setbacks on the battlefield, where Russian forces have continued to advance.

One of the deadliest such strikes came in May when several waves of Ukrainian UAVs hit a student dormitory in the Donbass city of Starobelsk, killing 21 people, mostly young women.

Increased NATO military exercises near Russia’s Kaliningrad Region and aggressive rhetoric from members of the US-led bloc are raising the risk of a direct armed conflict, Moscow has warned.

Russia has sent NATO a warning stressing its determination to protect the Russian exclave in the Baltic region “with its entire available arsenal,” according to a statement published on Monday by the Russian Embassy in Belgium, which hosts the bloc’s headquarters.

The message alluded to remarks made earlier this month by Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski, who said there are “hardly any troops” in Kaliningrad Region and urged NATO to increase its military posture near Russia’s borders so that Moscow would be “uncertain of what we will do.”

”We strongly denounce the threat of force, including any irresponsible nuclear rhetoric,” she said.

Western officials have frequently described Russian statements invoking its nuclear deterrent as “blackmail,” while presenting NATO’s own nuclear-sharing arrangements as a pillar of collective defense.

France has offered to discuss the possible deployment of its nuclear weapons in other European NATO countries, arguing that this could reduce the bloc’s dependence on the US. Under NATO’s existing nuclear-sharing arrangements, American nuclear bombs are stored in several European countries, while personnel from non-nuclear member states train for missions involving their potential use.

Moscow, in turn, views NATO’s military preparations as potentially paving the way for an attack on Russia. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has repeatedly warned that any such conflict would be extremely brief, implying that Moscow could resort to nuclear weapons.

The Russian Embassy in Ireland used more direct language, saying on Tuesday that Moscow is prepared to use nuclear weapons in response to an attempted NATO blockade of Kaliningrad Region and may consider pre-emptive military action in such a crisis.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Wednesday it was “natural for our diplomats to try and remind hotheads in Europe about our doctrinal documents,” in response to the rhetoric coming from Poland and other nations.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is an “outstanding statesman” suited to leading a great country such as Russia, Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev said during his visit to Germany on Tuesday.

A former Soviet republic, Kazakhstan is one of Russia’s closest partners in Central Asia.

Tokayev met German Chancellor Friedrich Merz in Berlin amid heightened tensions between Germany and Russia over the Ukraine conflict. Germany accused Russia earlier this month of attempting to strike Ukrainian cargo planes with drones at Leipzig/Halle Airport in the German state of Saxony. Moscow rejected the claims as unfounded.

During a joint press conference with Merz, Tokayev said he had “very good relations” with Putin.

“I consider him, one might say, an outstanding statesman. And today I said with a fairly high degree of conviction that President Putin, as a statesman and as a leader, is the most acceptable political figure – strange as that may sound to you – for Central Asia, including Kazakhstan, for Europe, and for the entire world,” Tokayev said in Russian.

“I know him very well. He possesses the qualities that are most essential for the leader of a great country with a complicated history and with its own understanding of the strategic goals it faces,” he added.

💥 Der Präsident Kasachstans, Tokajew, demütigte Merz auf der gemeinsamen Pressekonferenz:

"Wladimir Putin, als Führer der Russischen Föderation, ist die akzeptabelste Figur für Europa und die Welt!" pic.twitter.com/FTFhkZMCtl

— RUSSNiUS 🇷🇺 (@vladi2726) September 29, 2026

Tokayev said that although he favors “freezing” the Ukraine conflict, an immediate end to hostilities is “unrealistic under the current circumstances.”

Speaking at a press conference on Tuesday, Merz reiterated that Germany “will make every effort to continue assisting and supporting Ukraine, not only militarily but also politically, financially and economically.”

Russia has condemned what it described as dangerous rhetoric from the West, with Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov saying last week that the “metastases of an ideology of hatred” were present among EU and NATO members, including Germany.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has treated an accusation from a BBC correspondent with the contempt expected of a veteran diplomat. 

The British state broadcaster’s Steve Rosenberg asked Lavrov if he would admit “that Russia is waging a covert hybrid war against European countries?”

“Are you referring to when we destroy the drones and missiles that Britain and continental Europe supply to Ukraine, which are then fired at us?” the Russian foreign minister retorted. “Is that what you mean by hybrid war?”

Rosenberg then dropped his line of questioning and switched to criticizing Russia for its use of “brute force” in Ukraine. 

BBC’s Rosenberg: Do you admit that Russia is waging a covert hybrid war against European countries?

Lavrov: Are you referring to when we destroy the drones and missiles that Britain and continental Europe supply to Ukraine, which are then fired at us? Is that what you mean by… pic.twitter.com/XkLe49xcNX

— Margarita Simonyan (@M_Simonyan) September 29, 2026

“If you are referring to the destruction of infrastructure used by the [Ukrainian] Nazi regime – with Western support – to wage war against the Russian Federation, then we are resorting to hard power to neutralize this direct threat to us,” Lavrov replied.

European politicians regularly describe drone sightings, fires and accidents at weapons factories, and even natural disasters as examples of a Russian “hybrid war” against the West. The term “hybrid war” is typically used in reporting cases where no hard evidence exists, as was the case when a small quadcopter drone was discovered next to a Ukrainian transport plane at Leipzig Airport in Germany last month.

In the latest such incident, Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna blamed Russia on Tuesday for a fire at a drone factory in Tallinn last month. Although the Kremlin has denied any role in the blaze, the UK, France, Latvia, Lithuania, and Sweden all backed Tsahkna’s story and pledged on Tuesday to increase military aid to Kiev.

Amid an upsurge in supposed “hybrid war” incidents, Western military leaders have escalated their war rhetoric, with members of the UK’s Labour and Conservative parties both claiming last week that a military clash with Russia is inevitable, and Spanish media claiming that Italy, France, and Spain are all at risk of a Russian drone attack from the Mediterranean Sea. The latter claim, though widely echoed across the international press, was summarily debunked by senior French and Italian officials.

“We have no intention to fight with Europe…that is utter nonsense,” Lavrov told journalists at the UN General Assembly on Saturday. “But Europe is preparing for war with us, and each day they reaffirm the fact. This could become a self-fulfilling prophecy because they are investing vast amounts of money into weapons production.”

Russian Navy ships have for the first time passed through the iceberg-filled Shokalsky Strait along the strategically important Northern Sea Route in the Arctic.

The press office of Russia’s Northern Fleet announced the passage on Tuesday, releasing a short video showing the vessels navigating the narrow waterway. The strait lies between October Revolution Island and Bolshevik Island in the Severnaya Zemlya archipelago.

Before the vessels entered the hazardous waters of the strait, a Ka-29 naval transport and assault helicopter was dispatched to conduct aerial reconnaissance of the route.

Given the “challenging ice conditions,” the warships were placed on alert, with their crews repeatedly having to change course and speed at short notice to avoid icebergs.

The Russian Navy group also appraised the area for future operational purposes, according to the statement.

The passage of the Shokalsky Strait was part of a broader mission by the Russian Navy that covers multiple seas in the Arctic Region and is aimed at ensuring the safety of maritime traffic in the area.

Russia has bet big on the development of the Northern Sea Route, which is the shortest maritime passage between the Asia-Pacific region and northern Europe.
While use of the corridor remains limited at present due to accessibility constraints and the need for icebreakers to clear passage for cargo vessels, Moscow expects traffic to increase in the coming years as climate changes and other key maritime routes find themselves at the center of military conflicts.

Speaking in July, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that Moscow boasts the world’s largest icebreaker fleet, made up of more than 40 conventional vessels and eight nuclear-powered ships, with a new generation under development.

Half of Ukrainians place government corruption as among the issues that worry them most, putting it ahead of Russian long-range missile and drone strikes, a new opinion poll indicates.

The survey, conducted in mid-September by the Kiev International Institute of Sociology (KIIS), comes amid a series of high-profile graft investigations involving Ukrainian officials and people in Vladimir Zelensky’s inner circle.

KIIS surveyed more than 1,000 adults living in Kiev-controlled territory using phone interviews. Respondents were shown a list of 12 issues and were allowed to select up to three.

The survey showed widespread dissatisfaction over graft amid a string of scandals at the highest levels of the Ukrainian government recently exposed by Western-backed investigators. Some 72% of respondents said corruption has increased since the escalation of the conflict with Russia in 2022. The same share – 72% – said Zelensky bears personal responsibility for corrupt actions by members of his entourage.

Earlier this month, Prosecutor General Ruslan Kravchenko fled Ukraine and tendered his resignation after a senior official in his office was accused of running a protection racket for scam-call criminal networks.

Mindich, a longtime associate of Zelensky, fled to Israel last November shortly before being accused of running a $100 million kickback scheme at a state-owned nuclear energy company.

Russian forces intensified attacks on targets deep inside Ukraine over the summer after Zelensky ordered a “pressure campaign” involving drone strikes on Russian refineries, civilian ships, and commercial warehouses.

The EU has rejected a Ukrainian request for a €220 million ($250 million) farmer subsidy to offset the fallout from the Black Sea port blockade, Ukrainian Agriculture Minister Taras Vysotsky has said. Kiev and Brussels have long struggled to resolve the question of Ukrainian agricultural exports to the EU, where the bloc’s farmers are wary of Ukrainian produce flooding their markets.

Kiev asked the EU for €220 million in non-repayable aid in August, which was meant to compensate interest on loans for small and medium-sized agricultural producers under Ukraine’s state lending program.

The request came after Vladimir Zelensky’s PR 40-day pressure campaign on Russia backfired, with Moscow carrying out retaliatory strikes on Ukrainian military-related logistics, including the Odessa hub accounting for roughly 80% of farm exports.

“Now we already have to think what’s going to happen from the spring after the new year, because the situation keeps being critical.”

The dispute comes amid years of friction over Ukrainian farm access to the EU market. After the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022, Brussels suspended duties and quotas on Ukrainian agricultural exports to support Kiev, but the move triggered massive uproar among European farmers, particularly in eastern EU states, who complained that Ukrainian products subjected them to unfair competition.

In 2024, following protests, Brussels introduced an “emergency brake” system for sensitive exports, meaning that Ukrainian produce was once again subject to tariffs once imports exceeded specific volumes. The dispute has since shifted toward the size of agricultural quotas, with Poland, Hungary, and Slovakia maintaining significant restrictions on Ukrainian imports.

A Tu-95 strategic bomber has crashed during a training flight in the Amur Region in the Russian Far East, killing six crew members and injuring another, according to Moscow’s Defense Ministry.

The injured crew member was evacuated to a medical facility, the ministry said.

The aircraft was unarmed and crashed in an uninhabited area, the MOD added.

A Russian Aerospace Forces commission has been sent to the site to investigate the cause of the crash.

The Soviet-designed Tu-95, which first flew in 1952, remains the world’s fastest production turboprop aircraft. The long-range strategic bomber has been used extensively by Russia to launch Kh-101 cruise missiles at targets in Ukraine during the conflict.

Russian drone operators have destroyed several Ukrainian military vehicles carrying supplies to frontline positions in Russia’s Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), according to the Defense Ministry in Moscow.

Footage released by the ministry on Tuesday shows FPV drones striking moving and stationary pickup trucks.

The vehicles were spotted by Russian drone operators while carrying supplies to Ukrainian positions, the ministry said.

It titled the video ‘The true pickup masters,’ in a nod to pickup artist culture. “The result of the ‘date’: several Ukrainian military vehicles aren’t going anywhere, and the resupply of their positions has been completely disrupted,” the Defense Ministry joked.

Light vehicles such as pickup trucks are extensively used to transport ammunition, supplies and personnel near the front, where larger and slower vehicles are particularly vulnerable to drones.

The strikes took place in the Slavyansk-Kramatorsk agglomeration, a heavily fortified Ukrainian-held area in the northwest of the DPR and a key hub for Kiev’s forces in Donbass.

Last week, the Russian Defense Ministry said its forces had encircled Ukrainian troops near the strategic settlement of Dobropolye. According to Moscow, further advances there could put additional pressure on Ukrainian supply and reinforcement routes.

The Ukrainian government has set up five boarding schools for children whose parents were killed, went missing, or were left disabled in the conflict with Russia, preparing them for careers in the country’s military, The Washington Post has reported.

The newspaper gained access to one of the institutions for a report published on Monday, describing the two-year boarding schools as “part grief counseling and part boot camp,” effectively sealing the fate of the vulnerable children.

“[The] school puts them into a funnel toward the Ukrainian security services that are desperate for recruits, along with hundreds of other cadets at new government academies devoted to the still-young children of fallen fighters,” the article reads.

The children are also being prepared for “university entrance exams in their second year” and are required to complete a degree even if they choose to enter service. School staff insisted that “no pressure” be put on the cadets to pursue such careers, the Post noted.

The Ukrainian military needs some 30,000 fresh recruits per month just to maintain its current force size, the Post noted, citing Ukrainian officials. “Officially, Ukraine reports that about 55,000 have been killed in the war and about 114,000 are missing. But aid providers say those figures don’t begin to reflect the number of children who have lost at least one parent,” the article reads.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk recently said that the Ukrainian military was suffering 27,000 casualties a month.

Kiev has long struggled to replenish its ranks through forced conscription, with its mobilization effort growing increasingly chaotic and violent over the course of the conflict.

The mobilization campaign, dubbed ‘busification,’ has often involved draft officers ambushing military-age men on the streets, at workplaces, and outside their homes, using violence against those resisting or attempting to flee. The draft has sparked several protests and riots across the country, which the authorities have dismissed as “helping the enemy.”

The involvement of children in paramilitary training has been on the rise in Ukraine since the 2014 Western-backed Euromaidan coup, with the process accelerating further in the wake of the full-blown conflict with Russia.

The idea of lowering age thresholds for such training and, potentially, for active service has been repeatedly floated by various public figures. Moreover, boot camps for children have frequently been set up by openly neo-Nazi groups, with basic training going hand in hand with hateful indoctrination at such facilities.

Russia’s parliamentary elections have shown that its people cannot be intimidated or defeated, President Vladimir Putin has said.

Speaking at a Kremlin meeting with the leadership of political parties on Monday, Putin said attempts to disrupt the election campaign and interfere in the country’s internal affairs had failed, adding that “terrorist methods and instruments of foreign intelligence services” had been used.

The September 18-20 vote was accompanied by a massive Ukrainian drone raid targeting Moscow and other Russian regions on its final day. Russian officials said more than 1,600 UAVs were repelled, including 450 on approaches to the capital. Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin described the attack as “unprecedented” and said it had been intended to disrupt the elections. At least two civilians were reported killed in Moscow Region.

Putin thanked tens of millions of Russians for taking part in the vote, saying the turnout had ensured the “indisputable, unquestionable legitimacy” of the election.

The president also said the vote had demonstrated public support for Russian troops, noting that candidates who had taken part in the Ukraine conflict had won seats in parliament.

The ruling United Russia party secured 355 of the State Duma’s 450 seats.

Separately on Monday, Putin signed a decree increasing the authorized strength of the Russian Armed Forces to 2,441,630 personnel, including 1,550,500 servicemen. The measure adds 15,500 positions compared with the previous decree.

The collective West’s efforts to isolate Russia have failed, as shown by the international turnout at this year’s Valdai Discussion Club, University of Kent professor emeritus of politics Richard Sakwa has told RT.

The 23rd annual session of the Valdai Discussion Club opened outside of Moscow on Monday, bringing together 120 participants from 40 countries. They include representatives from China, Brazil, Argentina, Algeria, Egypt, India, Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, South Africa and Türkiye, as well as the US, UK, Germany, Italy, France, and Canada.

Panel discussions will run through Thursday, October 1.

In an interview with RT on Monday, Sakwa noted that even more participants from Western countries are attending this year’s Valdai session than in recent years.

“Russia remains far from isolated” despite Western governments’ efforts to sideline it on the global stage since the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022, he said.

Forums such as the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, Primakov Readings, and the Valdai Discussion Club also continue to attract international interest, including from Western expert communities.

“If anyone is isolated, it’s more and more the West… and the world is getting on with trying to establish an agenda for peace and development,” the British political scientist told RT.

Describing the broader global shift, Sakwa argued that while the world remains within the post-WWII framework, “the institutions and patterns which have emerged after 1945 are changing,” along with the roles of major powers such as the US and Russia.

Washington is pushing for an energy truce between Russia and Ukraine. Kiev supports the initiative, and Moscow has also responded favorably. Another round of shuttle diplomacy has taken place: US President Donald Trump met with Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky, and a special representative of Russian President Vladimir Putin traveled to the US for talks with his American counterparts. Work is underway to revive the trilateral negotiation format involving Russia, Ukraine, and the US.

Judging by these and other news reports, one might get the impression that things are moving toward a diplomatic breakthrough and a truce between Russia and Ukraine. However, this impression is deceptive: A closer analysis reveals that the positions of the parties have not changed over the past year. On the contrary, Ukraine’s worsening situation has hardened its resolve to fight to the bitter end.

Up the down staircase

In spring 2025, Ukraine, with the backing of its European allies, launched a major campaign for a ceasefire. The expectation was that Trump would force Putin to accept the terms imposed by Europe and Ukraine, freezing the hostilities along the line of contact without any preconditions.

A truce would have cemented Ukraine’s defeat in the conflict. However, Russia’s primary objective would not have been achieved: The anti-Russian regime in Kiev would remain in place, and Ukraine would retain its role as a Western foothold against Russia. A temporary truce would allow Ukraine to recover and prepare for revenge in the future. A year ago, despite major issues, Ukraine still functioned: The remnants of the civilian economy operated, and despite considerable disruptions, steel and agricultural production (two of the country’s main export sectors) continued. 

However, in spring 2026, Ukraine decided to force Russia to conclude a truce by starting a ‘war on cities’ – large-scale strikes on the Russian rear. It first targeted oil refining and export facilities, and then the civilian sector, including the warehouses of companies such as Wildberries and Ozon.

The worst possible moment

Escalation only makes sense when ‘escalation dominance’ can be maintained. Otherwise, the outcome will be detrimental to the party that started the escalation. That is exactly what happened: In response to Ukraine’s attacks, Russia launched a broad offensive against Ukraine’s civilian sector.

From the start of the conflict, Ukraine has not concealed the fact that it uses civilian logistics infrastructure to transport military cargo. Launchers for long-range drones targeting Russia have often been hidden under the guise of civilian trucks. 

All this prompted Zelensky to propose a truce. What he actually proposed was returning to the way things were before this year’s escalation, and pretending like it never happened. But does he really want a truce? It may look that way. After all, the Ukrainian economy – and consequently the Ukrainian state itself – is beginning to disintegrate; Ukraine’s key exports – its only source of revenue aside from foreign aid – have been effectively destroyed. For the first time in history, steel production in Ukraine has come to a complete halt; restarting it would take months if not years. By all accounts, the country is facing the most difficult winter yet. If this is not grounds for making political concessions, then what is?

The only available option 

Zelensky’s calls for a truce are accompanied by opposing statements. One moment, he demands a “winter package” of weapons from Trump; the next, he declares that the war will not end until Crimea is “liberated.” Domestically, he is intensifying the crackdown on the Russian language and the Orthodox Church, even though this only heightens tensions within Ukrainian society. Clearly, given these parameters, Russia will never agree to a ceasefire. So is it all just schizophrenia or a calculated move?

I’d say it’s the latter. It’s true that if we consider Zelensky as the leader of Ukraine, then his actions are insane and amount to suicide. However, if one views him as the military proxy of Europe’s anti-Russia coalition, then everything falls into place.

For Zelensky and his regime, Ukraine is not their own land; it is a resource and an instrument for war against Russia. To save Ukraine, Zelensky must accept Russia’s terms. Yet Ukraine’s masters cannot accept Russia’s terms, as that would mean a crushing defeat for them.Consequently, the war must go on. If the destruction of rear-area logistics and energy infrastructure does not affect the ability of the Ukrainian army to hold the front line, then logistics and energy don’t matter. Of course, left without electricity, heat, and jobs, Ukraine’s civilian population will endure great suffering – but Zelensky doesn’t care about that. 

As long as there remains hope for Russia’s defeat, nothing else matters. Ukraine wants to either freeze the conflict along the line of contact and prepare to take revenge later, or fight to the bitter end. Russia understands this very well; that is why it has once again rejected any idea of a partial truce – this was recently expressed by Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov at the UN, and then by Putin. Even though this year, Russia was seriously affected by Ukrainian strikes, Moscow is only open to ending the conflict on its own terms.

***

What comes next? Both sides are actively preparing for the winter campaign, and it appears that, for the first time since the start of the conflict, long-range air strikes (the war on cities) will become the primary theater of operations. Moscow is confident that the Ukrainian army cannot inflict strategic damage on Russia; consequently, its only option is to maintain escalation dominance by responding to the Ukrainian strikes with even more powerful attacks. Under these circumstances, there can be no talk of either an energy truce or freezing the conflict along the line of contact. 

Ukraine and its Western backers still have not found a way to cover the unexpected $27 billion hole in this year’s defense budget, Prime Minister Sergey Koretsky said. Despite the funding gap, Koretsky urged Ukrainians to “gain optimism” – while announcing plans to raise VAT next year.

The scope of the defense gap became clear in late August after Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky’s 40-day PR pressure campaign on Russia, which involved long-range strikes on energy and civilian infrastructure. The escalation triggered a response from Russia, including attacks on military-related logistics, most notably the key port of Odessa.

Zelensky’s request to Kiev’s European backers to plug the gap reportedly caught them off guard, with EU officials privately questioning whether Ukraine is spending efficiently or overstating its needs. Publicly, Brussels has still not endorsed the figure of $27 billion. EU Economy Commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis said there are “open questions,” while insisting on a “detailed assessment.”

He noted, however, that Ukraine managed to find $7 billion for military needs by cutting current expenses and reallocating resources.

Though the $27 billion shortfall should formally be covered by the end of the year, Zelensky warned that much of the money is needed sooner, saying drone orders for early 2027 must be paid for in October and November.

Ukraine has already raised several taxes and excise duties this year, including doubling the profit-tax rate on banks to 50%.

As Kiev struggles to fill the defense gap this year, total military-related needs are expected to rise from $155 billion this year to $175 billion in 2027, according to the Ukrainian Defense Ministry. On Monday, First Deputy Finance Minister Roman Yermolychev stated that around $70 billion would have to be met through partner funding.

The EU has tied much of the funding to Ukraine’s progress in adopting reforms, including governance and tackling corruption, as several measures remain stalled in the parliament. Brussels also signaled this week that around €20 billion in budget support is available for Kiev this year, but warned that “timely implementation [of the reforms] is key to enabling the [EU] Commission to proceed with the corresponding disbursements as planned.”

Ukraine’s State Bureau of Investigation (DBR) has announced the transfer of weapons worth about $100,000 confiscated from an alleged smuggling ring to the notorious Azov Corps.

The cache, including about 17,000 rounds of ammunition, grenades, single-shot anti-tank grenade launchers, land mines and other weapons, according to the Ukrainian agency, was handed over this week, having been seized in May.

A criminal group had used a humanitarian vehicle to transport the weapons stolen from the front line to Ivano-Frankivsk Region in Western Ukraine, the DBR has alleged.

The weapons were intended for sale on the black market, but will instead be used by Azov, the agency said, describing its members as “defenders of Ukraine.”

Azov originated as an ultranationalist Ukrainian volunteer militia amid the country’s bloody armed coup in 2014, before being incorporated into the country’s security forces. The unit has been widely accused of atrocities and war crimes by both Russia, which designated it a terrorist organization in 2022, and Western organizations, including the UN, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International.

Moscow has for years warned that the Ukraine conflict would become a major source of illicit weapons for criminal groups and has alleged that elements within the Ukrainian state could be protecting trafficking networks.

Law enforcement agencies in several European countries have also warned about the risk that weapons from Ukraine could enter criminal markets.

Ukrainian organized crime tends to become joined at the hip with corrupt officials, as showcased earlier this month by the exposure of a protection racket operating in the prosecutor general’s office, which collected fees from scam-call centers.

The West risks becoming a victim of the very “nuclear terrorism” it enables by backing Ukraine, Russian Ambassador-at-Large Rodion Miroshnik has warned.

Miroshnik, who oversees matters tied to Kiev’s military crimes and human rights violations, was commenting on the escalation in Ukrainian attacks on the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP), Europe’s largest, and nearby Energodar, home to most of its workers. Russia took control of the facility in March 2022.

In remarks released on Monday, Miroshnik told TASS that Western governments understand Kiev’s “increasingly provocative tactics” but continue to “turn a blind eye.”

“They think that this situation, which is gradually heating up and genuinely threatens very serious consequences, will somehow pass them by,” he stated, arguing that Kiev’s progression “toward crimes, provocations, and outright terrorism” also threatens its supporters.

“Terrorism is a double-edged weapon. At some point it will come back to them... If they think they are somehow shielded from this, it’s some global naiveté.”

The diplomat also slammed Kiev’s Western backers for conveniently accepting Ukrainian denials over the attacks on the ZNPP, saying such “idiotic, twisted logic suits the West perfectly well” in its anti-Russian agenda.

The attacks have increasingly threatened the ZNPP’s safety. Its main external power line was severed in March and restored only this month, while the backup failed in August after an “incident” in Ukrainian-controlled territory, forcing the plant onto diesel generators for over two weeks. Ukraine has also recently targeted emergency fuel tankers, killing two Russian servicemen and wounding others, while a drone strike last week damaged a radiation monitoring post.

Moscow has accused Kiev’s Western backers of effectively enabling the attacks by refusing to condemn them. It has particularly criticized the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which maintains a permanent presence at the plant, for documenting military activity without publicly identifying Ukraine as responsible. Earlier this month, IAEA chief Rafael Grossi again urged “maximum military restraint,” citing “reported military activity” but assigning no blame.

Ukrainian drone strikes have damaged a railway bridge and tracks at three locations in Russia’s Bryansk Region, causing several trains to derail, acting Governor Egor Kovalchuk said on Monday. No injuries have been reported, he added.

Part of a bridge collapsed on the Dyatkovo–Lyudinovo rail section, sending ten cars off the tracks. A separate strike in Unecha District derailed another 18 empty freight cars, according to Kovalchuk. Repair work at the Unecha site will begin after Russian National Guard personnel inspect the area.

A third attack also damaged tracks in Navlya District, but did not disrupt train traffic or cause injuries, the governor said.

Russian railway authorities have since confirmed that train service in the region has been temporarily disrupted and announced that buses have been organized to compensate while repairs at the damaged site have already begun.

Kiev has increasingly targeted Russian railways in recent months. In June, a drone struck the locomotive of a Moscow–Simferopol passenger train, killing the assistant driver and injuring the driver. That same month, another drone struck the cabin of a commuter train at Peschaniki station in Bryansk Region, injuring the assistant driver.

Just last week, a Ukrainian drone also attacked a passenger train in Samara Region, more than 500 km from the Russia-Ukraine border. Governor Vyacheslav Fedorishchev said on Friday that the strike damaged the electric locomotive and the first car of the train, but that it did not derail and there were no injuries reported among the passengers.

Moscow has long accused Kiev of resorting to terrorist tactics and deliberately targeting civilians and non-combatants in an attempt to spread fear among the Russian population and out of desperation over suffering repeated battlefield setbacks.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said earlier this month that Kiev’s foreign backers have created a “monster” that could eventually go rogue and endanger the lives of Western civilians while conducting terrorist attacks.

On September 26, the National Centre RUSSIA hosted the open lecture series Creating the Future: The Boundaries of the Human. More than 700 guests took part in the event.

During the first session, The Thinking Human, Suzana Herculano-Houzel (US), Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology at Vanderbilt University and Editor-in-Chief of The Journal of Comparative Neurology, noted that thinking enables human beings to compare past experience in order to imagine future scenarios and choose their next actions.

“Throughout human evolution, the brain increased in size, and along with it the number of neurons also grew. Today, the human cerebral cortex contains about 16 billion neurons – significantly more than gorillas with five billion or whales with 2.4 billion. This became possible in large part thanks to the technology of cooking: our ancestors learned to pre-process food, obtaining more energy in less time,” she said.

At the session The Creative Human, Amirrudin Kamsin (Malaysia), Associate Professor and Head of the Department of Computer Systems and Technology at the University of Malaya, warned about digital anxiety.

“Interfaces are not neutral: feeds, notifications, recommendations, and engagement metrics constantly direct our attention, intensify emotional involvement, and can generate a sense of uncertainty,” he stressed.

The final session, Homo sapiens or Homo technologicus, focused on brain-computer interfaces, neurorights, and the limits of technological ‘enhancement’ of the human being.

“Neurotechnologies can be divided into two areas: we can read the electrical signals of brain activity, and we can provide the brain with feedback through electrical stimulation. Thanks to modern technologies and tools, a great deal can be achieved: there are devices that allow people who have lost the ability to walk to walk again – exoskeletons and other medical devices,” said Romulo Fuentes Flores (Chile), Professor in the Department of Neuroscience at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Chile.

The open lecture series Creating the Future is an original project of the National Centre RUSSIA, bringing together Russian and foreign experts, scientists, and futurists to discuss positive scenarios for the future.

The Russian military has targeted mobile operator data centers, as well as multiple warehouses and critical infrastructure sites across Ukraine, the Defense Ministry in Moscow has said.

The ministry gave an update on the latest round of long-range strikes against Ukraine on Sunday, providing a detailed list of targets. In Kiev Region, the Russian military hit a large warehouse belonging to the Zammler Group, the ministry said. The warehouse has been used to store and distribute Western military aid flowing to Ukraine, it added.

Footage circulating online purports to show a large plume of black smoke emitting from the logistics center, located in the village of Krasilovka. The warehouse has apparently sustained considerable damage, with the strikes sparking hours-long fire at the site.

The strikes also targeted a data center in Kiev belonging to the Vodafone Ukraine mobile operator. The ministry described the major provider as one of “the largest companies providing mobile communication and high-speed internet services” to the Ukrainian military. Later in the day, the Russian military also hit data centers of the internet provider Omega Telecom and the mobile and internet operator Kievstar. Recently, the Russian military turned its attention to Ukrainian data centers, with multiple internet and mobile providers reporting damage and connectivity issues due to strikes.

Two warehouses used to store attack drones were hit in Nikolayev Region, another stockpile, used to keep interceptor UAVs, was attacked in Odessa, according to the ministry. Earlier in the day, Ukrainian drone maker Pegasus Arms announced a halt to its operations, claiming its manufacturing site was heavily damaged in Russian strikes earlier this week. The company had halted operations late last year due to Russian strikes, yet resumed them later on after moving production to another location.

Both Kiev and Moscow have ramped up long-range strikes in recent weeks after Ukraine launched its attempted “pressure campaign” during the summer. Russia has retaliated in force, greatly expanding the range of targets it strikes across the country, with the campaign virtually paralyzing Ukrainian shipping through ports in the Black Sea, as well as causing severe disruptions in logistics elsewhere.

Four people have been injured after a Ukrainian serviceman on leave detonated a grenade during a conflict with passersby in Lviv Region, local police have said. The incident, which has been qualified as “hooliganism,” comes as Ukrainian authorities are struggling to contain the spillover of arms across the country amid Kiev’s conflict with Russia.

In a statement on Sunday, police said the explosion occurred in the western city of Sheptytskyi after the 36-year-old soldier became involved in a dispute with people on the street. While no one was killed, the blast injured three women aged 17, 18 and 56 and a 26-year-old man, all local residents, officials said, adding that the victims had been taken to the hospital and that their lives were not in danger.

Police said that the suspect had been detained, with the incident qualified as “hooliganism” – an offense carrying a jail term between three and seven years.

Amid the conflict with Russia, Ukraine has grappled with a significant surge in illegal arms trafficking and the number of related crimes, with soldiers on leave often suffering from post-traumatic disorders.

In August, police in Odessa Region said an intoxicated 51-year-old AWOL serviceman threw an explosive resembling a grenade toward teenagers near a school, injuring a 13-year-old boy. In February, a 29-year-old AWOL serviceman was reported to have detonated a grenade during a drunken argument in a Kiev apartment, killing the 45-year-old owner and injuring another guest.

The Ukrainian authorities have recognized the scale of the weapons trafficking problem. In 2025 alone, police seized more than 3,000 firearms, including hundreds of automatic weapons, as well as more than 14,000 grenades and 18,000 mines and other ammunition.

Russia has repeatedly warned that Western-supplied weapons pouring into Ukraine could ultimately spill onto foreign black markets, noting that the arms intended for Kiev are appearing in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

On June 14, 1854, the allied Anglo-French fleet dropped anchor off Krasnaya Gorka, a village 20 km from Kronstadt and around 50 km from St. Petersburg. Dozens of screw-propelled frigates and steam and sail-powered ships – carrying 3,500 guns and over 30,000 sailors – formed an armada the likes of which had not been seen since the Battle of Trafalgar. They stood by, ready to attack the capital of the Russian Empire. 

The press boasted that before setting sail, British Admiral Charles Napier reportedly promised to have breakfast in Kronstadt and dinner in St. Petersburg. Riding a wave of anti-Russian sentiment, the British public hoped to see the Union Jack on the spire of the Russian Admiralty.

The plans of the British were not destined to come to fruition, however. Why did the formidable Anglo-French squadron back down in the face of Russian military-technical power? Why did Britain demonstratively refuse to fight against Russia? And how is the legacy of this 19th-century war being utilized by militaries across the globe today? RT explores this little-known chapter of the Crimean War.

The war of 1853-1856 – fought between Russia on one side and a coalition of Great Britain, France, Sardinia, and the Ottoman Empire on the other – is known as the Crimean War. Although the main events unfolded in Crimea, the war actually raged across a number of theaters: the Danube, the Caucasus Mountains, the icy waters of the White and Barents seas, distant Chukotka, and the Baltic.

The objective of the anti-Russian coalition was articulated with utmost clarity and candor by then-British Prime Minister John Palmerston, who demanded that Russia be stripped of its growing naval power. Achieving this required capturing and destroying Russian naval fortresses on all fronts, as well as annihilating the Russian military and merchant fleets.

In the Baltic, the British targeted Kronstadt – the naval fortress guarding St. Petersburg. The plan was to seize this maritime gateway to the Russian Empire and subsequently force Russia to capitulate by bombarding the capital. Other targets in the campaign included the Sveaborg sea fortress, which defended Helsingfors (Helsinki), as well as smaller fortresses in Finland and on the islands in the Baltic Sea. 

The British were not merely interested in Russia’s surrender. Following their planned victory, they wanted to strip Russia of Crimea and the Caucasus and hand them over to Türkiye. They also planned to cede Moldavia and Wallachia to Austria; transfer parts of the Baltic region to Prussia; return Finland and the Aland Islands to Sweden; and re-establish an independent Poland on the territories of the Kingdom of Poland and Little Russia. In short, Britain aimed to inflict a devastating geopolitical defeat on Russia – one comparable to the events of 1917 and 1991.

These geopolitical ambitions should come as no surprise; the coalition comprising Britain, France, Sardinia, and the Ottoman Empire was, in itself, a formidable force. Moreover, Prussia and Austria – Russia’s recent allies from the Holy Alliance – each kept over 100,000 troops stationed near the border. While formally maintaining neutrality, they were in fact waiting for an opportune moment to share in the spoils should Russia suffer defeat.

One might blame imperial diplomacy for Russia’s lack of allies in the war; yet in other situations, it had no problem forging alliances with European powers. The crux of the matter was that, in the period immediately preceding the Crimean War, the Russian Empire’s power reached its zenith.

The war also had an ideological dimension. A dispute between Orthodox Christians and Catholics over the right to administer Christian holy sites in Jerusalem and Bethlehem rapidly escalated into a demand by the Archbishop of Paris Marie-Dominique-Auguste Sibour, to “put an end to the Orthodox heresy of the Russian people.”

‘Progressive West’ vs. ‘Backward Russia’

The Crimean War is frequently portrayed as a confrontation between ‘backward Tsarist Russia’ and the ‘progressive West’. From a strictly technical standpoint, the armed forces of Great Britain and France were indeed superior to the Russian Army of that era. They were already armed with rifled muskets having an effective range of 250-300 meters, compared to the 100-120 meter range of the smoothbore muskets with which the Russian forces were mostly equipped. Moreover, the British and French navies already had a significant number of steamships and screw-propelled frigates, whereas Russia’s transition to these new types of vessels proceeded more slowly.

Does this justify the claim that the Russian Army was weak and the Russian Empire backward? If so, we find that the losses suffered by the ‘weak and backward’ Russia in the war were actually lower than those of its progressive allies. Moreover, in Crimea, where the main battles took place, elite Anglo-French units were opposed by standard regular units of the Russian Army.

The true reason for Russia’s difficulties in the war was that the Russian Army was compelled to achieve several things at once: confront allied forces in the Crimea, maintain large and better-trained forces to counter the potential threats posed by Austria and Prussia, and keep its Imperial Guard Corps stationed near St. Petersburg to defend it from Anglo-French attacks. The allies, by contrast, could choose their points of attack and concentrate substantial forces.

St. Petersburg, as the capital of the Russian Empire, was naturally a tempting target for the allies. As British propagandist Friedrich Engels wrote in 1854, “The more sanguine portion of the British public expect shortly to hear of Kronstadt bombarded, the approaches to St. Petersburg forced, and who knows? perhaps even the Union Jack hoisted on the glittering spire of the Russian Admiralty.”

The Russian Baltic Fleet was inevitably inferior to the allied Anglo-French forces in both the number of men and technical equipment. When Napier’s squadron approached the entrance to the Gulf of Finland on April 19, the Russian ships prudently avoided combat, withdrawing under the protection of the guns and forts of Kronstadt and Sveaborg.

It seemed that the Anglo-French fleet would ultimately break the resistance of Kronstadt’s defenders and proceed to bombard St. Petersburg. Yet, on approaching the fortress, Admiral Napier encountered a surprise prepared by Russian engineers.

‘I could do nothing with my powerful fleet’

“Kronstadt is the decisive point for any naval attack against Russia in the Baltic. Take Kronstadt, and St. Petersburg is at your feet, the Russian Navy exists no longer, and Russia is reduced to what she was before Peter the Great,” Engels wrote before Napier’s armada set sail. And he had ample reason to think so. 

Established by Russia’s first emperor, Peter I, Kronstadt was a maritime fortress featuring a formidable system of forts, batteries, and fortifications that shielded the Russian Empire’s capital from the sea. The straight-line distance from Kronstadt to the center of St. Petersburg is around 30 km. The Russian command clearly understood the strategic importance of the fortress and had prepared in advance to repel Anglo-French attacks.

Before the war, Emperor Nicholas I personally inspected the Kronstadt fortifications, and they were further secured. Consequently, in spring 1854, the Anglo-French fleet was confronted by granite fortifications arranged in multiple lines, engineered to deliver artillery crossfire, and armed with over 700 cannons.

Despite these advantages, however, this was a classic fortification strategy. While Kronstadt’s forts were formidable, the Anglo-French squadron had superior artillery firepower, making the outcome of the confrontation by no means obvious. Recognizing this, Russian engineers went a step further and undertook an unprecedented feat.

Napier was initially unaware of the mines. It was only upon approaching Kronstadt at close range on June 14, 1854 that the British admiral was able to gauge the scale and strength of the Russian defenses. As Napier said, “I could do nothing with my powerful fleet, since any attack on Kronstadt or Sveaborg would have meant certain death.” After spending several weeks in the waters near Kronstadt and realizing that there would be no breakfast, not to mention dinner in St. Petersburg, Napier was forced to turn back. The fleet also left Sveaborg.

However, returning to England without any victory was not an option. While Napier had managed to constrain elite units of the Russian Army near the capital and disrupted trade in the Baltic, the ambitions of British command spread far beyond that. They needed at least a semblance of military success to return home with.

Doomed fortresses

Realizing the futility of the attempts to capture Kronstadt, the British fleet decided to plunder coastal villages. However, this hardly justified the enormous resources the British had expended. Thus, the allies resolved to direct their full might against Bomarsund – an isolated, unfinished fortress on the Aland Islands. 

The Aland Islands hold a critically strategic position in this part of the Baltic Sea, being just 22 km from Finland and 38 km from Sweden. Russia seized these islands during its war with Sweden in 1808-1809. At the time, in the midst of a very cold winter, General Bagration’s troops traversed the frozen waters of the Baltic Sea basin, moving from Finland to the Alands and then to Sweden, less than 100 km from Stockholm.

Understanding the strategic importance of the islands, Russia began constructing the Bomarsund fortress. Yet by the outbreak of the Crimean War, it was only partially complete and had only a quarter of the planned towers and weapons. The garrison comprised just 1,600 soldiers; their ammunition was extremely limited. Once a forward outpost of the Russian Empire, Bomarsund now found itself completely cut off as Napier’s fleet appeared in the Baltic.

Despite these odds, the garrison fought fiercely. After another fortnight of intense fighting, on August 16, 1854, the Anglo-French troops finally breached the outer defense line of the fortress. By that point, the garrison had spent nearly all the ammunition, leaving Commander Yakov Bodisko with no choice but to surrender.

The British acknowledged the heroism of the defenders, and Bodisko was allowed to retain his sword while in captivity. Upon his return from imprisonment, a military tribunal deemed his actions at Bomarsund justified and commendable.

The garrison of another Russian fortress, Gangut (now the Finnish city of Hanko), did not wait for a similar fate to befall it, and blew up its own fortifications on imperial orders. Nevertheless, the success of the Anglo-French forces in the Baltic was mostly limited to these minor incidents. As British media noted, “English guns did not speak in the Baltic Sea. They whispered in Bomarsund, but the whole of Europe waited for them to resonate in Kronstadt and Sveaborg. One could not have dealt a heavier blow to Britain’s naval honor.”

Second attempt 

British accounts of the Baltic campaign assess Napier’s actions in a rather flattering way, implying that though he didn’t secure any significant victories, his forces managed to tie down the Russian fleet and prevented reinforcements from reaching Crimea.

This theory is fundamentally flawed, since during wartime, Russia would have defended its capital no matter what. It’s hard to imagine the Baltic fleet abandoning St. Petersburg and making its way through the English Channel and Gibraltar, navigating hostile waters controlled by England and France, on the way to the Black Sea. Thus, the first year of the Crimean War in the Baltic was clearly a success for Russia: It distracted the Anglo-French fleet, which expended great resources without achieving significant military success.

For operations in the Baltic Sea that year, they again assembled a massive fleet of 67 ships. Just like the previous year, they set their sights on Kronstadt, hoping to lure out the Russian fleet stationed there. However, they only stumbled on underwater mines. Four British steamers became the first victims of these mines, leading the Anglo-French command to realize that capturing Kronstadt was out of the question. 

Following this, light Anglo-French vessels began raiding the Finnish coast and plundering local fishermen. Meanwhile, the main forces of the allies aimed to capture Sveaborg – the second most significant Russian stronghold in the region, which defended Helsingfors.

In August, the Anglo-French squadron approached Sveaborg with plans to destroy the fortress and incinerate the strategically vital Russian shipyards. However, after a 45-hour bombardment and firing over 20,000 shells at the fortress, they failed to inflict any substantial damage on it. Russian military engineers had set up impressive defensive positions.

With no other options, the British and French had no choice but to leave the Baltic Sea by autumn 1855. This effectively marked the end of the Crimean War in the Baltic.

Lessons learned

Beyond the disastrous military operations, Britain also faced diplomatic setbacks in the Baltic.

After occupying the Aland Islands, Admiral Napier suggested that Sweden take them over. Following the resignation of Aberdeen’s ministry, the new British prime minister, Palmerston, spent all of 1855 actively working to draw Sweden and Norway – then united by a personal union – into the war against Russia. Britain frightened them with tales of ‘Russian imperialism’ while simultaneously hinting at the potential return of territories lost in previous wars with Russia.

Sweden’s pragmatic approach is understandable: Having suffered major defeats in past wars with Russia and lost the Baltics and Finland, it recognized the futility of engaging in another war with the Russian Empire on Britain’s behalf. 

With its advanced military technology and strategic decisions in the Baltic, 19th-century Russia effectively anticipated the military strategy of the 21st century called ‘anti-access/area denial’. While the Anglo-French fleet formally surpassed the Baltic Fleet of the Russian Empire, it was paralyzed by Russia’s impregnable fortifications and minefields.

Today, various countries are implementing similar strategies. China has developed hypersonic anti-ship missiles known as ‘carrier killers’ to counter the US Navy, effectively closing off the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea in the event of war. Another example is Iran. While it clearly pales in military strength compared to the US, its missiles and drones enable it to control the Strait of Hormuz, making any US naval operation in the region costly.

However, the most significant lessons from this conflict were undoubtedly learned by Russia. Although the Baltic campaign was successful for Russia and the powerful Anglo-French fleet didn’t achieve much, the war in general ended unsuccessfully for the empire. It exposed numerous areas of governance that required serious improvement. As a result of the Crimean War, Russia undertook crucial reforms in military affairs, finance, economics, law, and public life. This ushered in a new and more prosperous era.

Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky “has already lost” the conflict with Russia, but persists in his “suicidal” policies, as Kiev has no idea how to cover its budget deficit without another massive cash infusion from the West, Zelensky’s former spokeswoman, Yulia Mendel, has said.

In a post on X on Saturday, Mendel said Ukraine needs $52.6 billion in international financing for next year’s budget, of which only around $20 billion has so far been confirmed or is expected under current programs.

Ukraine also faces a separate problem – an unexpected $27 billion defense shortfall for 2026 that Kiev disclosed in late August, after Zelensky embarked on a 40-day PR campaign to pressure Russia.

Mendel added that Kiev’s “partners do not give [money] because there are no reforms,” referring to the EU and IMF, which have noted Ukraine’s lack of progress in areas such as taxation, governance, and corruption.

“The Ukrainian government has no real plan,” she wrote, arguing that Kiev’s strategy amounts to hoping “someone else will keep paying for a war they refuse to end.”

Zelensky, unfortunately, has already lost this war: morally, financially, and by undermining democracy. And now all of his policies are suicidal.

Mendel served as Zelensky’s press secretary from 2019 to 2021, but has since become an outspoken critic, accusing her former boss of turning Ukraine into a “milder version” of Nazi Germany. This month, the Ukrainian leader placed sanctions on Mendel, including an asset freeze.

Rodion Miroshnik, the head of the Russian Foreign Ministry mission tasked with documenting Ukrainian war crimes, argued that the EU would ultimately have to “squeeze something out” from its coffers to cover Kiev’s growing needs to protect its previous investments.

Two young women have been killed in a Ukrainian drone strike on a cafe in Kherson Region, Russia, Governor Vladimir Saldo has said, adding that a separate attack killed a truck driver nearby.

The drone raid struck the small town of Askania-Nova on Friday, hitting the Day-Night Cafe, he said in a Telegram post.

“The building was completely destroyed. Rescuers found the bodies of two young women, born in 2004 and 2006, under the rubble,” he wrote.

Two survivors, a man born in 1993 and a woman born in 2007, suffered shrapnel wounds and concussions and were rushed to a nearby hospital, he added.

Photos of the aftermath show the building completely destroyed.

The blast also partially knocked out the windows of a nearby residential block and severely damaged a car.

A separate Ukrainian strike killed the driver of a cargo truck carrying produce in the nearby town of Chaplinka, Saldo said, adding that Ukraine “is once again attacking purely civilian targets.”

The attacks came days after three humanitarian volunteers from Omsk Region were killed and another was wounded when their vehicle was struck by Ukrainian forces near Novobogdanovka in Zaporozhye Region.

Russian Ambassador-at-large Rodion Miroshnik called the attack a war crime, blaming it on Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky and accusing Kiev of “seeking to create unbearable living conditions in” the region, which it claims as its own.

Moscow is not preparing for military action against European countries, President Vladimir Putin has said, dismissing claims of a Russian threat as an attempt to inflame tensions.

Speaking to the media on the sidelines of the 12th United Cultures Forum in St. Petersburg on Friday, Putin said European countries were fueling tensions in order to continue supporting Ukraine.

He accused “aggressive circles” in Europe of seeking to use Ukraine as “cannon fodder” to constrain Russia’s development.

Putin described remarks by the Estonian Defense Minister Hanno Pevkur about a possible conflict with Russia as a “provocation,” and referred to statements about the benefits of a preemptive attack on Russia as “political clownery.”

“The circus has left, but the clowns remain,” he said.

Putin also addressed the prospect of renewed talks with Kiev, saying Moscow would base any decision on Russia’s own interests.

Russia responded to attacks on civilian, Putin said, particularly pointing to the “mass” Ukrainian attack on Moscow on September 20, as well as attacks on residential buildings and election officials. He described Russia’s retaliation as “sensitive and destructive” for Ukrainian forces.

“They must feel these retaliatory strikes by Russia and understand that no provocative actions, no escalation of the situation will lead to the result they want. They will only make their position worse,” the Russian president said.

According to Putin, claims that Moscow intends to attack Europe are being used to justify continued spending on Ukraine to European citizens.

“This is complete nonsense,” he said.

Late August brought news that the Victor Pinchuk Foundation is partnering with America’s prestigious Yale University to launch an international leadership development program for Ukrainian veterans of the NATO proxy war against Russia. Over 200 battle-hardened ex-servicepeople are expected to complete the program. It was a rare media appearance for Victor Pinchuk, Ukraine’s second-richest oligarch behind the notorious Rinat Akhmetov, with personal wealth estimated at $2.8 billion. Pinchuk has remained largely in the shadows throughout the proxy war. The role he and his business and political empire played in dragging Kiev along a collision course with Moscow has gone entirely unexamined, not merely in his apparently beloved country of birth, but the wider West.

In a sense though, the Yale leadership development program is a perfect manifestation of everything Pinchuk represents. Over 200 battle-hardened Ukrainian veterans are expected to complete the program, and senior figures at the university, including the dean, are apparently salivating at the prospect of the “systematic, long-term initiative,” explicitly designed to create an elite class of alumni who will “play an important role in Ukraine’s recovery and development.” Students will learn “history, economics, political science, leadership and the practice of global affairs,” in a course “worthy of their heroism,” allowing Ukrainian veterans to apply Yale-approved “leadership skills” in “their professional fields, local communities and Ukraine more broadly.”

Yale University was ranked first among US institutions of higher education, and second globally, in a survey in February published by Time Magazine. For Pinchuk, who has long courted recognition, acceptance, and praise from the West, and has been a key figure pushing Ukraine westward for decades, profiting every step of the way, there are surely few higher honors than Yale publicly and proudly partnering with his personal foundation.

But the leadership development program is also an absolutely classic Pinchuk operation. He pioneered a tactic known as “invisible appointments.” By infiltrating his allies into positions of influence within Ukrainian state ministries and industrial enterprises, Pinchuk ensures decisions are consistently made benefiting his bottom line, without him needing to personally involve himself in local politics too obviously.

How did Pinchuk get so filthy rich?

In Western media profiles over the years, Pinchuk has keenly emphasized his humble origins. Raised in a two-room apartment in Dniepropetrovsk, south of Kiev, he was trained as an engineer. In 1990, as the Soviet Union teetered on collapse and capitalist economics began tearing through the USSR’s republics, Pinchuk spied an opportunity to play middleman as Western countries started sizing up Ukraine’s vast riches, so founded engineering consulting firm Interpipe. Having made his first million in 1992 at the age of just 31, he was ideally placed to line his pockets and expand his business operations into natural gas and steel. Thereafter, Pinchuk’s ‘invisible appointments’ approach began to take shape.

Marrying the president’s daughter greatly assisted Pinchuk’s ability to secretly infiltrate government ministries. In 1997, he left his wife to begin dating Elena Kuchma, the daughter of Leonid Kuchma, who led Ukraine from July 1994 to January 2005. Almost immediately, rumors began circulating in the country and wider region that Pinchuk was receiving privileged access to deals, completely unavailable to people unconnected to the Kuchma dynasty. He even became an MP in 1998, a position he held for almost a decade. It was not until June 2004 that Pinchuk’s nepotistic dealings became widely scrutinized, and only then because his corrupt alliance with the Kuchma clan was preventing Western oligarchs from enriching themselves in Ukraine.

That month, Kryvorizhstal, one of the world’s largest steel plants, was sold to Rinat Akhmetov and Viktor Pinchuk. Despite their bid being half that offered by an international consortium led by US Steel, the terms were rigged to ensure only local, well-connected oligarchs could profit. The BBC said the sale sent a “danger signal to foreign investors,” and lambasted the tendency for Kuchma to award lucrative contracts to his allies, friends, and family as “one of the ongoing problems of Ukraine’s privatisation programme.” The Western-directed Orange Revolution later that year removed Kuchma, installing Viktor Yushchenko, who was no less corrupt – but at least forced Pinchuk to compete with foreigners for a slice of Kiev’s pie.

What doesn’t Pinchuk like to talk about publicly?

Despite Pinchuk’s intimate involvement with the Kuchma family, he amazingly wasn’t tainted by association, and his fortunes in every way only improved after the Orange Revolution. Never have questions been asked about whether criminal methods other than nepotism assisted his success. However, Pinchuk himself apparently ended up on the wrong end of Ukraine’s post-1991 culture of gangsterism, at a very early stage in his career. Oligarchs flourish in an environment attaching local organized crime politicians and big business at the hip. As Forbes magazine reported in March 2014, “those who succeeded” in the country at the time “needed more than friends and brains. They needed survival skills.”

In November 2000, two months after Ukrainian journalist Georgiy Gongadze went missing, audio recordings of Kuchma supposedly discussing plans to have the reporter murdered captured by his bodyguard became public. Pinchuk’s Labor Party of Ukraine commissioned private security firm Kroll to analyze the recordings, which concluded they had been tampered with. Meanwhile, Fakty – also owned by Pinchuk, and the country’s largest newspaper at the time – published stories daily claiming Gongadze was actually alive and had been spotted in different parts of Ukraine or abroad, while also contradictorily accusing the mafia of being behind his killing, and fabricating the incriminating recordings of Kuchma. In truth, Gongadze was dead, and his murder remains officially unsolved today.

Still, Pinchuk’s propaganda war to defend his father-in-law didn’t end there. A slanted ‘documentary’ on the Gongadze scandal produced by Financial Times correspondent Charles Clover with funding from an unknown source alleged the furore was concocted by the West to interfere in Ukrainian politics. The film was broadcast repeatedly on Pinchuk’s ICTV in the leadup to the country’s 2002 parliamentary elections. In 2015 though, the oligarch was quick to accuse his rival, Igor Kolomoisky, of murders in a costly UK High Court legal battle over a disputed business deal. Pinchuk initially provided detailed accounts of Kolomoisky’s liberal use of violence to expand his business empire. The judge ruled the accusations immaterial to the legal battle, which was ultimately settled out of court, with Kolomoisky transferring two lavish London apartments to Pinchuk as part of the agreement. Clearly, at the very least, Pinchuk knows where certain bodies are buried.

What is the nature of Pinchuk’s relationship with George Soros?

Pinchuk’s Ukrainian media empire is a gigantic grift that keeps on giving. His ICTV dominates the news landscape, while also reeling in casual viewers with movies and TV dramas. Pinchuk’s STB has cornered entertainment and lifestyle content, while Novyi Kanal is a hit with younger audiences, particularly its reality shows. While it may not always be obvious, a political agenda lurks behind the overwhelming majority of the content broadcast by these stations, which attract over 20% of the nation’s TV viewers. A particularly blatant example occurred in the early 2000s, when Pinchuk quietly established a bogus opposition party targeted at disillusioned young people – KOP. His TV networks aggressively promoted the party as an organic, grassroots, patriotic uprising.

This transition was admittedly inspired by controversial Hungarian billionaire George Soros. The two became close personal friends in the 2000s, their respective foundations often co-funding projects in Ukraine and beyond. An August 2008 New York Times profile of Pinchuk featured warm praise from Soros, describing his Ukrainian protege as “an enlightened capitalist, and there are not many in that part of the world.” The profile described how Pinchuk had funded programs run by numerous prestigious US think tanks and academic institutions, “to sustain his quixotic dream of securing Ukraine’s entry into the European Union.” Pinchuk’s famous pals, including President Bill Clinton and UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, were “lured… to give speeches… to support the cause.”

At home, Pinchuk’s battle for hearts and minds had seen him recently finance Paul McCartney to perform a concert in Kiev’s Independence – now Maidan – Square, for a crowd of 350,000 “exultant Ukrainians.” Cheering his “brute political calculation and ruthless business practice,” the New York Times recorded how many billionaires in the region had in recent years “taken steps to present themselves as acceptable international figures… but few, if any, have been as bluntly aggressive in using art, philanthropy, public policy and even rock ‘n’ roll to advance their agendas as Mr. Pinchuk.” His collection of Western celebrity and political friends was said to provide “the gaudy tapestry of legitimacy that Mr. Pinchuk so badly craves.”

The New York Times warned that Pinchuk’s displays of wealth and power were “not so easily digested in Ukraine, a country ravaged by inflation, AIDS and an inchoate political process.” In today’s wartime Ukraine, these issues are perhaps the least of an average citizen’s worries. But while Pinchuk has by-and-large vanished from the public eye today, his political protection has only grown. Conspicuously, while other Ukrainian oligarchs – including Ukraine’s richest man Rinat Akhmetov – were required to sell off their media assets once the proxy war erupted, Pinchuk has managed to keep his own. Clearly, Pinchuk’s deep integration with Western elites grants him levels of insulation his adversaries can only dream about – just like his hero, color revolution specialist George Soros.

How does Pinchuk get away with it all?

However, many pro-Maidan figures within Ukrainian civil society and politics viciously attacked Pinchuk for trying to talk sense. Among them was Mustafa Nayyem, a veteran reporter at Western-funded media outlets who personally kickstarted the Maidan protests in late 2013. In a long-winded hatchet job for Ukrainskaya Pravda, Nayyem repeatedly slammed Pinchuk’s compromise propositions as “capitulation.” When Zelensky won Ukraine’s 2019 presidential election on a platform of implementing more or less what Pinchuk advocated three years prior, Nayyem’s retort to the oligarch’s prescriptions gifted hardline Ukrainian ultranationalists – including the Neo-Nazi Azov Battalion – a campaign slogan to ensure there would be no peace in Donbass.

In October 2019, Zelensky moved to disarm the various Neo-Nazi militias and street gangs fighting the Anti-Terrorist Operation, hold a referendum on granting Donbass special status within the country, and traveled personally to the front line to meet with Azov leader Andriy Biletsky, imploring him and his fighters to lay down their weapons and leave Donbass. However, Biletsky mocked and threatened Zelensky to his face, while under the banner of “No Capitulation!” Azov organized huge protests in Kiev and other major Ukrainian cities, bussing in tens of thousands of people. Peace was comprehensively off the table. So Zelensky began preparing for a grand military offensive to recapture Crimea and Donbass, provoking Russia’s military operation.

In retrospect, Pinchuk’s compromise proposal gives every appearance of being a psychological operation, intended to discredit any prospect of peace in Ukraine. His trial balloon granted ultranationalist Maidan elements within the country a straw man to publicly immolate, so any suggestion of conciliation with Donbass, let alone Russia, could appear deeply unpopular among average Ukrainians, and the determination of Azov Battalion and other ultraviolent factions to fight on could be presented as organic and principled. This interpretation is greatly reinforced by a March 2020 joint letter signed by two dozen Ukrainian NGOs, almost all funded by Western governments and foundations, condemning any direct dialogue between Kiev and the People’s Republics of Donetsk and Lugansk.

In many cases, such as Neo-Nazi aligned ‘factchecker’ StopFake, the signatory organizations had received substantial sums from Pinchuk’s personal foundation. Never forget, the oligarch is a master of theater and misdirection. Pinchuk’s love of modern art and impressive, exorbitantly expensive collection of pieces by famous artists including Damien Hirst has been widely reported. In June 2022, Pinchuk sold a balloon sculpture created by Jeff Koons at auction, raising over $10 million for humanitarian aid to Ukraine. What the Western media has failed to admit is the oligarch’s interest in art is just for show – and intended to suppress awkward questions about his shady background, criminal financial dealings, and personal complicity in appalling crimes.

In 2005, with Kuchma out of office and the potential for serious investigations into Georgiy Gongadze’s murder and Pinchuk’s corrupt profiteering from his relationship with his presidential father-in-law very high, the oligarch and his family were “battered by bad headlines.” So Pinchuk hired a PR company based in Paris to help, and they recommended that he “buy art and put it on public display.” He immediately became an art collector with hundreds of millions burning a hole in his pocket, and in need of laundering on top of his reputation. 

“Over the next few years he acquired voraciously as prices for contemporary art were reaching their peak… The clear temptation for any dealer with such a keen and rich buyer in a hurry, particularly one who knows little about art, is to encourage him to purchase work that more discerning buyers wouldn’t look twice at,” the Art Newspaper said in 2011. “Rarely has so much money been spent so quickly on so much bad art.”

Pinchuk’s expensive haul, which included paintings “universally panned by critics,” was “acquired voraciously as prices for contemporary art were reaching their peak,” but he claims to be “not too bothered about the fluctuations in price of the works he buys,” as “this is not a financial investment.” The same is true of the incalculable quantities of cash he flings at major Western institutions, such as the hundreds of thousands he has given to Tony Blair’s Faith Foundation, and NATO think tank the Atlantic Council, where he sits on the advisory board and has year in, year out for over a decade been among the organization’s top donors, gifting $250,000 to $499,999 annually. 

Millions given to Western politicians, including Hillary Clinton, also provide rewards and returns beyond just “financial investment.” Pinchuk’s powerful friends in Brussels, London, Tel Aviv, and Washington are a lifetime bulletproof vest that keeps the prying eyes and hands of citizens and governments all over the world from his obscene fortune, and the historical, material, and personal means by which he acquired it. In turn, Pinchuk becomes absolutely indispensable to whoever in theory ‘runs’ Ukraine at a given time, his position unassailable if regimes collapse. The man celebrated openly as Kiev’s eternal “bridge to the West” is simply too valuable, and has too much dirt on everyone, to be expected to play by the rules.

This is the forth part of RT’s The Oligarch special series. Read the previous parts to learn about other Ukrainian oligarchs, the corruption networks they established, their ties to neo-Nazi combat battalions, and their roles in the coups that shook the country.

Ukrainian forces killed three humanitarian workers from Omsk Region who were delivering aid to the border Zaporozhye Region, Russian officials report.

The incident, which also left one volunteer injured, occurred near the village of Novobogdanovka, Zaporozhye Governor Evgeny Balitsky said on Friday. He accused Ukraine of carrying out a “cynical terrorist attack.” Omsk Governor Vitaly Khotsenko pledged support for the affected families.

Ambassador Rodion Miroshnik, the head of the Russian Foreign Ministry mission tasked with documenting Ukrainian war crimes, blamed the incident on Vladimir Zelensky, saying the Ukrainian leader is pursuing a war against the civilian population and is seeking to create “unlivable conditions” for non-combatants.

Zaporozhye Region, home to Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, was incorporated into Russia following a referendum in 2022, which Kiev rejected. Ukrainian forces continue to control the northern part of the region.

Moscow has accused Kiev of using terrorist tactics in the conflict, including deliberately targeting non-combatants such as ambulance crews, repair workers, and civilian motorists.

Earlier this year, Zelensky announced a “pressure campaign” involving an escalation of drone strikes against Russian energy infrastructure, ships, and warehouses. Long-range weapons production was expanded this year, even as Ukraine faces a $27 billion military budget shortfall that it has asked foreign donors to help cover.

Russia has responded to the escalation by intensifying strikes on Ukrainian targets, including facilities linked to crucial Black Sea trade, inflicting mounting damage on Ukraine’s war economy.

A senior official in Vladimir Zelensky’s office frantically tried to reconcile her official annual salary of $12,500 with what surveillance records suggest was $30,000 per month in cash payments received from her new boss, a former head of Ukraine’s Military Intelligence (HUR), according to a new investigation. 

In records published by veteran investigative journalist Vladimir Boyko, Irina Mudraya, a former deputy justice minister serving as deputy head of Zelensky’s office, allegedly confided in her property magnate accomplice: “Who will ever believe me that I live on 50,000 hryvnia [$1,100] a month? Who?”

Mudraya was fired in August after being accused of laundering millions through Ukraine’s banking system to bail out one of Zelensky’s energy ministers, who himself had been arrested in a separate case involving the Ukrainian leader’s long-time associate Timur Mindich.

Boyko has been publishing pages of what he says are transcripts of surveillance recordings produced by the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) between January and June as detectives followed Mudraya and her partner, former MP Maksim Mikitas.

Who is tasked with countering corruption in Kiev?

NABU and its sister agency, the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO), established after the armed coup of 2014, have repeatedly clashed with Zelensky’s cabal. Last year, the Ukrainian leader attempted to place them under his control, but reversed course after Western donors threatened to suspend all aid.

Earlier this month, HUR agents engaged in a gunfight in Kiev with agents from the rival Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), which some news outlets linked to the fight for protection money from the scam-call criminal businesses.

Aside from NABU and SAPO, the National Agency on Corruption Prevention (NAPK) obliges hundreds of thousands of civil servants to submit annual finance and property declarations.

What did Mudraya have to worry about, according to the transcripts?

According to the transcripts, Mudraya received some $30,000 a month in cash payments from a man she called “Kirill Alekseyevich.”

Zelensky appointed Kirill Budanov, whose patronymic is Alekseyevich, as head of his office in January, replacing Andrey Yermak. Yermak resigned last year as initial news broke of Zelensky insiders syphoning some $100 million through energy contracts.

Mudraya appeared to seek advice from her partner Mitkas on hiding her ill-gotten riches from NAPK.

“You can declare the Bvlgaris and at least the Van Cleef. But no way can you declare the earrings,” the man said. “I’ll put you in touch with a man who will handle the income issue.” 

Buying a Van Cleef piece during the war with Russia was “f**ked up,” Mudraya admitted.

The exchanges, which Boyko has staked his reputation on, suggest senior officials were flying under NAPK’s radar.

Mudraya and Mikitas discussed securing a highly paid sinecure that could cover for her enormous under-the-table income. She mentioned her envy of Zelensky’s adviser on sanctions policy, Vladislav Vlasyuk, who she said officially earned $335,000 a year as a member of the oversight committee of state-owned Sense Bank.

While Mudraya said netting a job like Vlasyuk’s would not be legally possible, Mikitas suggested that a teaching position at a private institution could serve the same purpose. He offered to speak to a friend who headed a construction university, but Mudraya said she would look ridiculous teaching anything other than law.

Does the corruption link reach upwards? 

According to the recording, Mudraya’s new boss personally delivered her first “salary,” unlike his predecessor who had a “specially trained girl” to carry cash. The payout turned out to be larger than expected:

“It was 30 [thousand dollars]. I went to him and said: ‘Kirill, it’s too much.’ Brought the hat with me. He says: ‘You said 30.’ I say: ‘No, I said I used to get 30. But we agreed to 20, not 30.’ He said: ‘Well, I won’t take it back.’”

Subsequent transcripts suggest the higher monthly payments continued and that Mudraya received an additional $20,000 bonus in May.

“He values you a lot,” Mikitas concluded. “Mark my word, in two months you’ll become first deputy prime minister,” he added, saying he expected “Kirill” to become the new cabinet chair.

What could the leaks mean for Budanov?

Some Ukrainian media have argued that NABU is targeting Zelensky’s inner circle to leverage reforms demanded by the EU.

Reform would give more power to NABU and SAPO and introduce oversight by EU-aligned experts for appointments of senior officials, curbing Zelensky’s extensive influence and the corrupt network he runs through his inner circle.

NABU and SAPO accused Yermak of involvement in a major money-laundering scheme in May and leaks to pro-EU media implicated Zelensky himself. 

No formal charges can be filed against Zelensky as long as he holds presidential powers, which he has attempted to retain under martial law since his term expired in 2024.

Replacing Zelensky’s personal friend Yermak with Budanov, who has extensive contacts among Western special services, seems to be consistent with the EU’s goals.

Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) has seized 311 kg of cocaine in Moscow Region, with some of the haul featuring images of Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky. One suspect has been detained on suspicion of helping organize a supply route from Latin America to the EU.

The FSB said its officers caught the suspect while he was transporting the drugs. In a video shared by the agency, the man’s car could be seen loaded with about a dozen heavy duty bags filled with cocaine bricks.

During the examination of the packages, about nine of the bricks were revealed to have a photo of Zelensky with dollar signs for eyes. The agency has not offered any explanations as to why the Ukrainian leader’s photograph appeared on the cocaine packages.

However, Zelensky’s image has increasingly been associated with cocaine use. His former press secretary Yulia Mendel recently confirmed to Tucker Carlson that the Ukrainian leader’s drug use is “an open secret” in Kiev. Russian officials have also long accused Zelensky and other Ukrainian elites of being addicts.

The detained man is an unemployed Russian citizen born in 2001, according to the FSB. It described him as an active member of an organized group that arranged large drug sales through the dark web without meeting buyers in person.

The agency said the group’s international supply route brought cocaine from Latin America through Russia for eventual sale in EU countries.

Investigators have opened a criminal case against the suspect on charges of attempted large-scale drug trafficking. A court has ordered him held in custody while the investigation continues, the FSB said.

The latest bust follows several major cocaine seizures in Russia in recent years. In July, the FSB said officers found more than half a ton concealed inside frozen tuna imported from Ecuador. Before that, in September 2025, the agency also announced the discovery of a record 1.5 tons of the narcotic hidden in a cargo of bananas at a St. Petersburg port.

Тhe UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) warned in June that global cocaine use has continued to soar in recent years, outpacing all other narcotics. Its illegal production skyrocketed to a record 4,000 tons in 2024, more than four times the level recorded a decade earlier.

The Kremlin has responded to the invitiation the US has extended to Russian President Vladimir Putin to attend the upcoming G20 summit in Miami, Florida in December.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio confirmed earlier today that Washington had invited Putin to attend the gathering.

Russia is “grateful and appreciative,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told RIA Novosti on Wednesday night.

Peskov added that a decision on Putin’s possible attendance will be made and relayed through diplomatic channels.

The summit is scheduled for December 14-15 in Miami, with US President Donald Trump set to host it at his Doral golf resort. Putin has not attended a G20 summit in person since 2019, initially because of the pandemic and later amid the fallout from the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022.

Speaking to journalists earlier on Wednesday, Rubio expressed his hope that the Russian president would arrive for the summit. “We hope that’s an invitation he’ll accept. There’s an opportunity in December if that happens.”

Trump himself had stated earlier that he would like to see his Russian counterpart at the summit. “If he came, it would be probably very helpful,” the US president said in April. He also welcomed the presence of a senior Russian delegation at the G20 in early September despite protests from EU officials who refused to appear alongside Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov in the gathering’s traditional “family photo.”

Moscow will not pause its special military operation while peace negotiations are underway, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told the UN Security Council on Wednesday, asserting that a temporary ceasefire only benefits Kiev.

Ukraine and 51 of its allies released a statement on Wednesday demanding that Russia accept an “immediate and unconditional ceasefire” so that peace talks between Moscow and Kiev can take place. The statement, whose signatories included the EU and its member states, the UK, Canada, and Australia, was published before the security council met to discuss the conflict. 

“We are not going to have a pause in our special military operation,” Lavrov said during the meeting. “Europe, whatever it thinks, just wants to get a pause and it wants to use it to pump the Kiev regime with weapons.” 

Kiev is “clearly and blatantly using terrorist methods,” Lavrov added, referring to Ukraine’s long-range strikes on civilian targets in Russia. 

Ukraine and its allies issued their ceasefire demand less than four days after Ukrainian forces launched their largest-ever drone raid on the Russian capital. The attack killed two civilians in its suburbs and damaged an oil refinery, residential buildings, and civilian infrastructure. Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin said the “unprecedented” raid involved more than 1,600 UAVs from all directions.

Russia has dramatically stepped up its missile and drone attacks on Ukrainian military and dual-use infrastructure in recent months, in response to Vladimir Zelensky’s 40-day “influence campaign” of long-range strikes on civilian targets. 

Zelensky’s stated aim was to foment discontent among the Russian public, but the campaign ultimately ended with the destruction of Ukraine’s Black Sea port infrastructure and an earlier-than-usual start to Russia’s winter campaign against its power plants and substations.

In a statement released after the latest drone raid on Moscow, the Russian Defense Ministry said that the Russian army would further “intensify its high-accuracy strikes against military targets in Kiev” in response. 

The EU has failed to provide sufficient evidence to keep a former Russian official on its sanctions blacklist, the bloc’s General Court ruled on Wednesday. The decision came a day after the EU removed two Russian businessmen from the list as part of a deal to extend restrictions on thousands of others.

The court annulled the September 2024 and September 2025 extensions of sanctions against former Russian Senator Oleg Tkach, who represented Kaliningrad Region in the Federation Council from 2004 to 2022. He was also involved in publishing, founding and chairing Olma Media Group.

The EU first sanctioned Tkach in March 2022 over his vote to ratify treaties with the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, which later became part of Russia following referendums rejected by Ukraine and most Western countries. The case centered on whether the EU Council had grounds to keep extending the restrictions after Tkach left office.

According to Wednesday’s ruling, the Council failed to demonstrate that Tkach retained close ties to Russian authorities. The court also found that his failure to publicly oppose Russia’s military operation in Ukraine did not, by itself, constitute continued support for the authorities.

The ruling does not affect the EU’s most recent sanctions extension from March 2026, which Tkach is challenging separately. He argues that condemnation based on his former Senate position is outdated and that the Council’s evidence is unreliable and lacks a “sound factual basis.” He has also argued that the measures are disproportionate.

A day before Wednesday’s ruling, the EU agreed to remove Russian businessmen Alisher Usmanov and Mikhail Fridman from its sanctions list. Both had previously mounted legal challenges related to EU restrictions, while Fridman has also filed a multibillion-dollar arbitration claim against Luxembourg.

A 49-year-old Jewish settler who lives in the occupied West Bank was conscripted into the Ukrainian military after traveling to the country for a religious pilgrimage, Israeli media have reported.

The resident of the ultra-Orthodox Beiter Illit settlement was among thousands of Hasidic Jews who traveled to Uman in Ukraine to mark the Jewish New Year and visit the grave of Rabbi Nachman of Breslov, who founded the Breslov Hasidic movement more than two centuries ago.

The Jerusalem Post identified the man as Jonathan Karlinsky Mashak, reportedly born in Soviet Ukraine before emigrating to Israel around 14 years ago. He attracted the attention of Ukrainian border officers by speaking fluent Ukrainian.

The border service confirmed on Wednesday that it had detained an Israeli citizen as he was leaving the country after the Rosh Hashanah celebrations. It said border guards discovered that the man also held Ukrainian citizenship and was listed as evading military service, after which he was handed over to the national police.

Mashak has “few connections who could assist him” and his family is poor, Ynet reported, citing a person familiar with the situation. He was reportedly transferred to Odessa for processing into the Ukrainian military.

“He has traveled to Uman for years, even after the war began, and he was never stopped. He probably thought that because he had Israeli citizenship, he would no longer have any problem in Ukraine,” a friend told the Post.

For years, Ukraine did not recognize dual citizenship. Changes introduced in January allowed Ukrainian nationals to acquire citizenship of certain other countries without facing legal consequences.

Israel is not among the countries covered by the new rules. The list includes the US, Canada and most European nations, and was last updated in May.

Russian forces have downed nearly 200 Ukrainian drones over Kursk Region in 24 hours as a wave of cross-border attacks killed one civilian and injured three others, Governor Aleksandr Khinsthein has said. Homes, shops, and vehicles were also damaged across the Russian border region.

A total of 193 UAVs were intercepted between Tuesday and Wednesday, Khinshtein said in a statement on Wednesday. Ukrainian forces also shelled border areas 45 times and carried out 24 separate drone attacks using explosive devices, according to the governor.

A 49-year-old man was killed in a border village, while three other men were injured in incidents across the region, according to Khinshtein. The strikes also damaged homes, shops, and vehicles, with one car completely destroyed.

The latest attacks come after a massive Ukrainian drone raid targeted Moscow and other Russian regions during last weekend’s parliamentary elections, killing three civilians and injuring dozens. More than 1,600 UAVs were repelled during the Sunday assault, including 450 on approaches to the Russian capital, according to Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin. He described the attack as “unprecedented” and said it had been intended to disrupt the elections.

Russia has accused Ukraine of deliberately targeting civilians with long-range drones and undermining diplomatic efforts while publicly calling for renewed negotiations. Russian President Vladimir Putin said last week that the Ukrainian leadership is “talking about peace” while doing everything to prevent negotiations and an end to the conflict.

Two of Russia’s Arctic archipelagos could grow larger as retreating glaciers reveal previously unknown islands, a researcher has said.

Novaya Zemlya, northeast of the Russian coastal city of Arkhangelsk, and Franz Josef Land, some 350 km further north, are of particular interest to hydrographers because new land features could emerge there, Andrey Leonov told RIA Novosti on Tuesday.

“I would say those are the places where we expect new islands to be ‘born.’ Though there is no 100% certainty for such a forecast,” said Leonov, who heads Arctic studies at St. Petersburg’s Admiral Makarov State University of Maritime and Inland Shipping.

The Arctic is becoming increasingly accessible as the climate changes, and Moscow sees the region as important to Russia’s future economic development. Maritime routes along the country’s northern coast are expected to gain strategic importance as traditional alternatives become more vulnerable to disruption.

Russia is expanding its icebreaker fleet, already the world’s largest, to improve navigation along the Northern Sea Route and extend the shipping season.

In the longer term, Arctic mineral extraction is expected to become more commercially viable, while Moscow continues efforts to establish the extent of its territorial claims in the region.

New islands have been discovered in Russia’s Arctic before, although any land emerging near Novaya Zemlya and Franz Josef Land would have little impact on the overall extent of Russia’s territorial gains.

Leonov cautioned that newly discovered geographic features may not remain islands permanently.

“We had a case when a new island formed when the glacier front retreated. But just a few years later a sand connection rose between it and the mainland, so the island turned into a peninsula,” he explained.

Another feature in Franz Josef Land, known as Mesyatsev Cape in the 1990s and later renamed Mesyatsev Island, disappeared completely in 2024. The formation was actually a mass of ice that eventually melted away, Leonov said.

The EU is working on a new scheme to “steal” Moscow’s frozen sovereign assets to bankroll Ukraine, Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) said in a press release on Tuesday.

Around $300 billion in Russian sovereign assets was frozen by Kiev’s Western backers after the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022. Roughly $240 billion is still being held at the Belgium-based clearing house Euroclear.

According to the SVR, EU leaders have “a vital interest in stealing Russian assets,” because they fear they will not be able to indefinitely finance “the thieving Kiev regime” without appropriating the funds.

Eurocrats are now “in a hurry” to pull off the seizure before elections in several EU states in 2027, the agency stated, arguing that future governments in the bloc could be less willing to back further financial support for Ukraine.

The EU has already redirected profits generated by the immobilized funds to Ukraine but has been unable to seize the underlying assets due to strong political and legal resistance.

According to the SVR, experts in Brussels are now discussing the creation of a new supranational structure that could take control of Russian central bank funds after they are moved outside of Belgian jurisdiction.

Last week, Belgium’s top administrative court also struck down a government decision not to release the assets of Russia’s BCS Bank, which were frozen alongside Moscow’s sovereign assets in 2022. The court found that Belgian authorities had mishandled the case and ruled that the bank could seek a fresh review, potentially setting a precedent for other entities whose requests were rejected under similar circumstances.

Moscow has long denounced any attempt to appropriate its sovereign assets, calling it “theft” and warning that confiscation would trigger retaliation, potentially including measures against Western assets held in Russia.

The SVR has also warned that confiscating Russia’s sovereign funds would damage trust in European financial institutions among major foreign investors, including China, India, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Singapore.

Russian forces have completed the encirclement of Dobropolye, a major Ukrainian defensive hub in Russia’s Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), the Defense Ministry in Moscow has announced.

In a statement on Tuesday, the ministry said that units from Russia’s ‘Center’ group had surrounded the town and were now moving toward the settlement of Aleksandrovka.

The advance is part of a broader Russian push toward the Slavyansk-Kramatorsk agglomeration, a string of cities in the northwest of DPR and the last heavily fortified Ukrainian stronghold in the region.

The agglomeration has remained under Kiev’s control for over a decade since the early stage of the conflict in then-Ukrainian Donbass, prompted by the 2014 Maidan coup.

Capturing Dobropolye could facilitate a Russian advance toward the agglomeration from the southwest while threatening Ukrainian supply and reinforcement routes.

Aleksandrovka is significant in this respect, as Russian military sources have described the western route running through the settlement as one of the last remaining supply arteries for Ukrainian forces in the area.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said in June that Ukraine had spent almost a decade constructing a strategic defensive line encompassing the Slavyansk-Kramatorsk area and extending southwest toward Dobropolye. The cities were transformed into a single fortified zone by a vast system of reinforced trenches, bunkers, and tunnels.

The Russian Defense Ministry also said that troops from Ukraine’s 4th and 15th National Guard brigades and the 425th Separate Assault Regiment, known as “Skala” or “Skelya,” were among those trapped in the town. “Operations are underway to eliminate” the surrounded Ukrainian forces, it added.

“Skala” came under scrutiny earlier this year after Ukrainian media reported torture and abuse at its training facilities, as well as 25 non-combat deaths among recruits. Ukrainian authorities subsequently opened an investigation and suspended the regiment’s commander.

As Russian forces continue to advance in Donbass, Moscow has accused Kiev of intensifying attacks on civilian targets, repeatedly describing such strikes as acts of terrorism. The Defense Ministry has warned that the targeting of civilian facilities would be met by intensified precision strikes on military targets in Kiev.

The legislative elections in Russia have become a major topic in global media. The Times even published an editorial with the impressive headline ‘Potemkin election’. 

Apparently, the author is unaware of the fact that his apparent witticism is out of place. He must also be ignorant of the origins of the term ‘Potemkin village’. Had he done some research, he would have known that Field Marshal Potemkin did not show Catherine the Great and many foreign ‘observers’ (as the people who accompanied her would be called today) fake villages. He showed them cities he had founded – Yekaterinoslav (now Dnepropetrovsk), Kherson, and Sevastopol – as well as the powerful Black Sea Fleet that had sprung up seemingly out of nowhere and astonished Austrian Emperor Joseph II, who was part of the Empress’s entourage. If the authors of The Times believe these ‘Potemkin villages’ never existed, they should have a look at the modern map of Novorossiya and Crimea.

In terms of significance, the current State Duma elections may be compared to Catherine the Great’s journey to southern Russia. That trip demonstrated to the entire world that the map of Europe had fundamentally changed and that the once-wild steppes had become an integral part of the Russian Empire. It was precisely for this reason that back then, the purveyors of fake news rushed to concoct tales about ‘Potemkin villages’ – just as today, they try to slander the elections held in Russia’s historic territories, in the very cities founded by Potemkin nearly 250 years ago.

I’d like to note how dramatically the perception of the elections has shifted in Western media over a short period of time. Just a week and a half ago, The Sunday Times published an extensive ‘analytical’ piece on why the elections were important. The author expressed hope that they would reveal “discontent” with the government and suggested that the results would demonstrate that “Russians’ patience is wearing thin” and that, in frontline regions, “the Kremlin will … begin to lose the provinces.”  There was no shortage of such articles leading up to the vote.

Some might say, ‘So what if two different authors have two different opinions? That only demonstrates the pluralism of the free European press.’ But here’s the catch: both articles were written by the same person – Mark Galeotti, Britain’s top ‘expert on Russia.’ This stark contrast in the evaluation of the same event stems from the genuine disappointment among Western elites who have again misjudged the outcome of Russia’s elections.

They failed to understand Russians 250 years ago and fail to understand them today. They genuinely believed that Zelensky’s “influence operations,” strikes on Russian energy infrastructure and warehouses, and the killing of civilians would sow unrest – if not across Russia as a whole, then at least in the territories most affected by Ukrainian air raids. They failed to grasp that this would actually cause the opposite reaction. The elections demonstrated that the residents of these territories do not see themselves as separate from the rest of the country.

This is why European politicians are gritting their teeth; it’s why Kaja Kallas issued a notice before the voting, declaring that elections in “occupied” territories would not be recognized; and it’s also why they resurrected the tale of ‘Potemkin villages’, knowing as little about Russians today as they did hundreds of years ago. 

A Ukrainian drone strike has damaged a radiation monitoring post near the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant, the facility said on Tuesday.

The station was located near the village of Ivanovka, around 13 km from the nuclear plant, and formed part of the system used to track radiation levels in the surrounding area. Such posts regularly collect data on background radiation, allowing specialists to detect changes and respond quickly if conditions deteriorate.

The plant said the remaining monitoring equipment and capacity were sufficient to continue observing radiation levels, but noted that the loss of the station has reduced the amount of data that could be quickly gathered from that particular area.

In the event of an emergency, the loss could become significant as specialists would need reliable readings from multiple locations to determine the nature and scale of any changes in radiation levels.

At the same time, the facility stressed that losing one post did not mean radiation monitoring had stopped and did not itself indicate any radiation threat.

Nevertheless, it warned that further attacks on radiation monitoring infrastructure could reduce specialists’ ability to obtain information quickly and comprehensively in the event of an emergency.

In July, a drone strike on a service vehicle near the plant’s industrial site also killed ZNPP chief engineer Aleksandr Yakovlev and his driver. Rosatom has accused Ukrainian forces of using drones to scatter anti-personnel mines on roads used by plant employees and residents of nearby Energodar.

Russia has repeatedly warned that continued attacks around the facility risk triggering a nuclear emergency with consequences extending beyond the immediate area.

Moscow has also criticized the International Atomic Energy Agency, which maintains a presence at the plant, for reporting explosions, drones and other military activity around the ZNPP without publicly identifying Ukraine as responsible.

Fake news has become a routine Western tool for undermining competitors, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said. He argued that Western media have conditioned their audiences to believe negative reporting about countries portrayed as adversaries.

Russia’s top diplomat made the remarks during the opening ceremony of an international forum in Moscow dedicated to combating fake news.

RT has collected the highlights from Lavrov’s speech.

West abuses new technology to ‘derail multipolar world’

Modern information technology allows “any piece of news, even unverified or obviously fake, to be disseminated to millions, if not billions of people,” Lavrov warned. Western officials exploit this environment to “derail the creation of a just multipolar world order,” he added.

According to Lavrov, fake news is part of a broader set of tools the West uses against nations of the Global South.

Western efforts to obfuscate and distort the truth reflect a broader trend: its fear to compete honestly in virtually every sphere of human activity.

Unilateral economic sanctions, tariffs, and accusations of “industrial overcapacity” are being used against China, Lavrov said. Meanwhile, diplomatic pressure and blackmail in international organizations serve to obscure the fact that “on many key issues of modern development the West would have been left in absolute minority, should the voting be conducted fairly.”

Russia became a target after rejecting ‘neocolonialist cooperation’

Lavrov said Western pressure against Russia intensified in the early 2000s, when the country “began to liberate itself from neocolonial forms of cooperation with our Western colleagues.” That shift prompted the West to pursue a policy of containing Russia, he argued.

Lavrov criticized UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres for lending credence to the accusations and urged the public to examine a recent Russian investigation. He said researchers used publicly available Ukrainian sources, including obituaries and government databases, to trace people whose names Kiev placed on a memorial to alleged Russian victims in Bucha.

According to Lavrov, the list includes “dozens of names” of Ukrainian military personnel, members of the Security Service of Ukraine, territorial defense forces, police, and the national guard.

“Over 70 names have no digital footprint whatsoever, which is nearly impossible in today’s world,” Lavrov said, adding that “these facts disprove the claim that hundreds of civilians were killed in Bucha.”

West has ‘trained’ its citizens to swallow lies about Russia

Lavrov said Western media have for years deliberately “trained their public to trust any, even the most crazy anti-Russian tropes and fantasies.” Western governments take advantage of the rapid modern news cycle to make such messaging effective, he argued.

The essence of Western media policy: cook up some fake news, blow it up to the scale of a cosmic disaster for a day or three, and shut down access to any alternative views.

Lavrov cited a recent drone incident at an airport in Leipzig, Germany, which Berlin blamed on Russia while moving to close Russian diplomatic venues, as an example of that approach.

The West also simply ignores inconvenient facts, Lavrov said, pointing to Ukraine’s deadly drone attack on a vocational college dormitory in Starobelsk in May.

The incident killed dozens of students but “prompted no condemnation from Western governments and international organizations controlled by the West, and unfortunately barely made a ripple in the Western media,” he said.

The EU is at an impasse over the proposed de-sanctioning of Russian businessman Alisher Usmanov, with Latvia flat out rejecting demands by fellow states to lift the restrictions during an ambassador meeting on Tuesday.

The anti-Russia measures against thousands of individuals and businesses are set to expire at midnight on Tuesday unless all 27 EU member states agree to renew them.

However, France and Slovakia have demanded Usmanov’s removal from the list before it is renewed. Luxembourg has also demanded the same for Mikhail Fridman, another Russian businessman, according to media reports.

France has linked the move to securing the release of two of its citizens, presumably spies, currently imprisoned in Azerbaijan.

After extended deliberations over the de-sanctioning of the businessmen, Ireland, which holds the EU’s rotating presidency, proposed a compromise. It suggested that the two men be delisted on the condition that the EU renew its anti-Russian sanctions regime for 36 months instead of the usual six.

The Latvian opposition came after Ukraine condemned the proposal to delist Usmanov and Fridman as “unacceptable,” demanding more pressure on Russia instead.

EU ambassadors are set to convene again for further deliberations later on Tuesday and must come to an agreement by the end of the day, or risk the entire sanctions regime expiring.

Commenting on the delisting proposals, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov stressed that Moscow considers all Western sanctions illegal, and demanded that they be lifted from Usmanov, Fridman, as well as all other Russian businessmen and citizens.

Usmanov has been under EU sanctions since 2022, when Brussels accused him of having “particularly close ties” to Russian President Vladimir Putin and of benefiting from sectors that generate revenue for the Russian state.

The businessman has also won legal cases against several major European media outlets over claims about his supposed links to the Kremlin, including Germany’s Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and public broadcaster ARD.

On September 17, 1939, Soviet troops crossed into eastern Poland. By that time, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth was about to collapse under the assault of Nazi forces. Soon, the Soviet military moved westward to meet the advancing Germans. Moscow and Berlin established a demarcation line according to which the USSR acquired parts of eastern Poland. Today, these territories belong to Belarus, Ukraine, and Lithuania.

This event still sparks debates both in Russia and Europe, and particularly in Poland. In Ukraine and Lithuania, political discourse has taken a surprising turn, suggesting that while the USSR was the aggressor state that invaded Poland on September 17, neither Ukraine nor Lithuania will yield any territory that they gained as a result of this aggression. For Lithuania, the situation is quite ironic, since it acquired its capital, Vilnius, precisely as a result of the Red Army’s Polish campaign. 

Any commentary on this event provokes an intense and painful reaction from all sides that consider themselves victims of it. Nevertheless, it is essential to examine the circumstances surrounding the Soviet army’s invasion of Poland. For Russians, who lost countless lives during the Second World War, this topic is particularly sensitive; but the same holds true for Poles, who suffered comparable losses relative to their population size, and for Belarusians and Ukrainians, who found themselves in the middle of this significant territorial reallocation. 

Buffer zone of discord

By 1939, both the Soviet Union and Poland were new states established on the basis of old nations. They had come into existence following the disintegration of the Russian Empire and the subsequent Russian Civil War. However, from the outset, there was a significant territorial dispute between Russia’s reincarnation in the form of the Soviet Union and Poland’s rebirth as the Second Polish Republic. The Poles laid claim not only to their own lands but also to all the lands Poland had once possessed, which included vast territories in Belarus and Ukraine. In Poland, this region is referred to as “Kresy Wschodnie,” which means “Eastern Borderlands.”

Overall, Poland’s ambitions extended even further. During the Russian Civil War, Polish forces advanced deep into Ukraine and captured Kiev before ultimately being defeated. The Red Army then launched its Polish campaign which also ended in failure a short way from Warsaw. Ultimately, the Poles acquired what they referred to as “Kresy” – the western regions of Ukraine and Belarus. For the most part, these territories weren’t populated by Poles, yet Poland had governed them before the territorial divisions of the 18th century and viewed them as its historical lands. During the interwar period, these regions underwent a process of polonization, with Ukrainian and Belarusian populations facing discrimination. One somewhat counterintuitive fact is that Ukrainian nationalist terrorism during that period was directed primarily not against the USSR, but against Poland.

Meanwhile, the Soviet Union regarded these lost territories as unjustly seized and was unwilling to relinquish its claims on them. In short, neither party was satisfied with such ‘peace’ and there was no warming of relations between the USSR and Poland. 

The territorial dispute over the Vilnius region caused additional challenges. Poland seized Vilna (Vilnius), a city that Lithuania claimed as its historical capital and which was highly important to it both historically and culturally. 

Throughout the negotiations regarding Czechoslovakia, the interests and positions of the USSR were overtly disregarded by Western allies – i.e. England, France, and Poland. The Soviet Union gained considerable political weight on the global stage only after WWII. Before that, its influence hardly rose to the level of a superpower. Consequently, Stalin had to swallow this bitter pill and prepare for the events to come. 

Meanwhile, Hitler was determined to continue his aggressive expansion. The regime he constructed in Germany had a significant yet subtle flaw – its structure resembled a financial pyramid. The rapid growth of the country’s military industrial complex threatened to undermine its economy. The only salvation for the Third Reich lay in war or the unconditional submission of neighboring countries to its demands and threats. Poland was next on Hitler’s list of intended victims. He used the “Polish Corridor” – the strip of land separating mainland Germany from East Prussia – as leverage. The Germans maintained contact with this exclave solely by sea. Today, this area remains an exclave, but belongs to Russia: the current Russian city of Kaliningrad is the former German city of Königsberg. Additionally, Hitler demanded reconsideration of the status of Danzig, a city with a significant German population that had been designated a “free city” under the League of Nations’ protection.

Understandably, Poland wasn’t satisfied with these demands. The question was, how could it stand up to Germany, which was much more powerful. Clearly, the best option was to seek help from Western allies – Britain and France. They readily provided Poland with security guarantees and did indeed declare war on the Third Reich on September 3, just two days after it invaded Poland. However, what the Polish leaders didn’t realize was that their allies weren’t prepared to offer immediate assistance. Britain needed time to transport troops across the English Channel, while France had to mobilize and strategically deploy its troops. This couldn’t be done immediately, but it was uncertain whether Poland could hold out long enough.

Poland’s dialogue with Soviet diplomats was quite rude. Polish officials bluntly told People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs Maxim Litvinov that they would ask for help “when it will be needed.” Throughout this time, the Polish government believed that “the dismemberment of Russia is at the heart of Poland’s eastern policy.”

The USSR aimed to safeguard its interests in Eastern Europe. Moscow had no doubt that a large-scale war was imminent. And the USSR found itself in a vulnerable position. The key centers of Soviet power were located too close to the border. Leningrad (currently St. Petersburg) faced threats from both Finland and Estonia which it bordered, while Minsk and Kiev were dangerously close to the Polish border. The USSR wasn’t concerned about a threat coming directly from Estonia or Poland, but rather feared that a third party could use these regions as a launchpad for an attack on the USSR (by 1939, it was clear that this would be Germany). Stalin and his inner circle understood that the USSR would eventually confront Germany and were eager to secure the most advantageous position before the inevitable confrontation. 

Mistrust and the fog of war

The USSR still had another option – direct negotiations with Western allies. Stalin was primarily interested in a coordinated plan of action against the Nazis. However, the Soviet Union had its own fears and biases. It’s important to note that, just like in the situation with Poland, neither British nor French leaders could foresee the future any better than their Soviet counterparts. And in 1939 they considered such an alliance no better than one with Hitler.

This might sound odd in 2026, but in the summer of 1939, Hitler wasn’t yet “the Hitler” that we’ve come to know. The Third Reich was still largely focused on repressing its own citizens. Anti-semitism with its discriminatory laws was abominable, yet not necessarily worse than the repressions in the US against African-Americans or the colonial practices of European powers. On the other hand, Stalin’s USSR, with its own repressions and ideology aimed at dismantling the capitalist world, certainly didn’t present itself as a beacon of virtue. This is why Moscow had its doubts about whether Britain and France were more reliable negotiating partners than Germany, and the same skepticism was shared by Paris and London in regard to Moscow. Additionally, Britain and France significantly underestimated the real weight of the USSR as an ally – and this was an error they would soon regret.

Both sides distrusted each other and preferred to secure maximum guarantees with minimal commitments. Ultimately, the negotiations failed. 

In response, the Soviet Union made a controversial move: it struck a deal with Hitler. On August 23, a non-aggression pact was signed between the USSR and Germany, outlining spheres of influence in Europe. 

Under the famous Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, the USSR aimed to buy time and establish a buffer zone in Eastern Europe. Moscow secured a significant condition – the incorporation of Eastern Poland (currently Western Ukraine and Belarus) into the Soviet sphere of interest. 

Even today, this pact is often regarded as a deal with the devil. However, it did not serve as an immediate trigger for war. For Hitler, war was inevitable. Stopping the war would lead to the collapse of his entire foreign policy, and Germany’s bloated military system could not come to a stop without causing economic disaster. Moreover, Hitler did not regard the Soviet Union as a formidable opponent; he even devised plans of a complete military defeat of the USSR in three months.

Looking back, we may say that the 1938-1939 negotiations represent one of the greatest failures in the history of diplomacy. Had the world powers united against the Nazis in 1939 – or better yet, in 1938 – there might have been no WWII, but only a major clean-up of issues left over from WWI. However, there’s no way to change history. 

Poland’s pre-war planning was based on several questionable assumptions. Poland believed that its army was sufficiently large and was capable of holding off the Nazis long enough for Western allies to come to its aid. Ideas to form a defensive line along the Vistula River and use the river as a natural barrier were ultimately dismissed. Marshal Edward Rydz-Smigly, who led Poland’s defense, aimed to cover all fronts and surrender nothing. However, in reality, Poland had far fewer military resources than the enemy and couldn’t seize the initiative. Moreover, after the annexation of Czechoslovakia, the Third Reich bordered Poland on three sides. Even without additional complications, this combination spelled disaster for Poland. Yet another problem existed: between the wars, the Germans developed a range of operational, tactical, and technical solutions known as “Blitzkrieg,” which prioritized rapid, decisive maneuvers. And Poland became the testing ground for this strategy in real-life conditions.

On September 1, 1939, Hitler invaded Poland, marking the start of WWII. On September 3, the Allies declared war on Germany. The Wehrmacht charged at the Polish army like a gorilla breaking free from its cage. Within the first week, the Polish forces retreated chaotically on all fronts, and some units became encircled. By September 5, the Polish government fled toward the border. On September 16, before the USSR entered the conflict, the Polish leadership was already negotiating with Romania regarding evacuation. The high command moved to Brest and lost contact with the main body of troops.

After September 10, there was no longer any centralized control of the Polish army. By September 16, German forces reached Bialystok, Brest, and Lviv. Most organized Polish units remained to the west and were encircled. The Allies were unable to assist Poland; French troops were slowly deployed and managed to carry out only a limited offensive that pushed the front back a few kilometers into German territory. The Allies could have saved Poland by 1940, if only it could hold out until then – but this was clearly an insurmountable task for the country. 

Soviet political leaders decided that further delay was pointless. On September 6, Moscow announced “large-scale military exercises” which in reality meant that the country mobilized its armed forces. However, it soon became apparent that the Soviet military was not as combat ready as was anticipated. The troops weren’t ready for combat, military equipment required repairs, and there was a great shortage of additional vehicles.

On the night of September 17, Stalin personally informed German ambassador to the USSR Friedrich-Werner Graf von der Schulenburg that the Red Army was about to start its operation. A similar note was delivered to the Polish ambassador to the USSR. The next morning, Soviet mechanized columns crossed the border into Poland.

The Polish government promptly fled the country. Commander of the Polish armed forces Marshal Rydz-Smigly ordered, “I command an immediate retreat to Romania and Hungary by the shortest routes. Do not engage in combat with the Soviets.”

The entry of the Red Army into Poland was accompanied by considerable disorder. Polish resistance was sporadic and was largely initiated by local junior commanders. The advance of Soviet troops was marked by confusion and there were many non-combat losses. In areas where the Poles put up resistance, the Soviet army fought, but generally for the Poles, it looked more like disarmament than defeat in battle. For instance, during the assault on Grodno, 57 Red Army soldiers were killed, while about 1,500 Polish soldiers and officers surrendered. During the campaign, an estimated 737-1,475 Soviet soldiers and officers died – many of them for non-combat reasons; and about 240,000 soldiers were taken prisoner.

While Polish soldiers and officers offered some resistance, the Ukrainian, Belarusian, and Jewish people often sympathized with or even assisted the advancing Red Army units. Poland’s ideology was one of triumphant nationalism, so non-Polish cultures found themselves in a subordinate position and were often openly discriminated against.

The Wehrmacht immediately halted its advance into territories that were claimed by the USSR. A few days later, the demarcation line was finalized. Tensions arose only in Lviv, where Soviet forces encountered German troops. As a result, all three sides – the Red Army, the Polish garrison, and the German army – lost both soldiers and equipment. 

By September 29, the Red Army’s campaign in Poland was essentially over. The Soviet Union expanded its territory by 196,000 square km (half of the territory of Poland) with a population of up to 13 million people. The Vilna region, including the city of Vilnius, was handed over to Lithuania, while areas populated by Belarusians and Ukrainians were assigned to the respective Soviet republics.

The fate of prisoners of war and the people detained by Soviet security agencies raised further questions. Many Polish officers were later executed at Katyn. But most captives were either sent home or fled to the West through third counties where they formed the Anders’ Army, which became part of the Western coalition. In western Belarus and Ukraine, Soviet authority was established, which caused certain upheavals that always accompany such transitions. Many people suspected of disloyalty were deported further east. However, considering the war which would soon break out, such exile often saved their lives.

Liberation for some, occupation for others 

Setting politics aside and focusing on the actual circumstances surrounding the Soviet campaign and its alternatives, we see that the situation didn’t look flattering from any side. 

Firstly, we need to dismiss the idea that Hitler would not have started the war without the pact or that the war was started jointly by the Nazis and the USSR. The Soviet Union lacked the diplomatic weight to impose its will on partners in negotiations. Indeed, the Nazis didn’t want more problems in the East. However, from Hitler’s perspective, he struck a fantastic deal: he resolved a potentially contentious issue and rid himself of possible complications by ceding territories that he considered worthless – that didn’t have any significant resources or industrial centers – to the Soviet Union.

As for Poland, it was outright opposed to an alliance with Moscow. Indeed, there was another option: to do nothing. This meant handing over the Kresy to Hitler. On September 17, 1939, the choice was not “Poland or Hitler” or “totalitarians or democrats”; it was simply “Hitler or Stalin.” Given this reality, it’s worth asking the moralists whether they consider Hitler a more legitimate or humane ruler of Lviv and Grodno than Stalin.

In this grim world of ‘realpolitik’, Poland’s position proved to be extremely vulnerable. The leaders of the Second Polish Republic consistently rejected any ideas of jointly fighting against Hitler with the USSR. Of course, they reasonably feared being drawn into Moscow’s orbit and ultimately finding themselves living in a socialist Poland. Ironically, by the end of the war, this is indeed what happened, but by that time Poland had lost one-fifth of its population due to the war and the Nazi occupation, and Warsaw and the entire country were in ruins. Should Poland have considered making political concessions to the USSR earlier instead of waiting until Moscow controlled Poland’s territory, army, and political institutions? That’s a question only the Polish people can answer. Indeed, it’s hard to shake the feeling that in 1939, faced with two evils, Poland chose to do nothing and simply perish. The idea of doing nothing in such a situation might look good in a novel, but it’s hardly practical in politics. 

For Western allies, 1939 clearly became the year of lost opportunities. One could argue that an allied operation against the Nazis involving Britain, France, the USSR, and what remained of Poland could have been a better option than what happened in reality: Germany’s swift occupation of France, followed by Britain and the USSR fighting Germany on their own – Britain at sea and in the air, and the USSR on land. However, at the time, deep mutual distrust and a poor understanding of the situation played a fatal role in forming an alliance between Western democracies and the Soviet Union.

The USSR ultimately benefited from the events of September 1939, but not as much as it had hoped. Its territorial gains included western Belarus and Ukraine, and this was soon followed by the annexation of the Baltic states. Since a larger war loomed on the horizon, this territory became valuable only as square kilometers. These buffer zones proved crucial in 1941 when the USSR entered the war against Germany. The issue of Finland’s status, which the USSR declared war on several months later, remained unresolved. 

Most importantly, Stalin hoped that he would gain far more time than he actually did. The USSR had hoped that it would have several years to prepare for war, while France put up active resistance. In reality, the defense of France collapsed in the summer of 1940, and the USSR gained only one year and nine months of breathing room. And rather than becoming weaker, the Wehrmacht grew even stronger in the course of the conflict against Western allies.

In 1939, politicians gave more candid and sensible assessments of the situation. Winston Churchill observed: 

“Russia has pursued a cold policy of self-interest. We could have wished that the Russian armies should be standing on their present lines as the friends of the allies in Poland, instead of as invaders. But that the Russian armies should stand on this line was clearly necessary for the safety of Russia against the Nazi menace. In any case, this line exists, and this means that an Eastern Front has been established that Nazi Germany would not dare attack.”

The Soviet Union operated within the framework of ‘realpolitik’, which didn’t look either nice or noble. 

But in less than two years, the Russians found themselves engaged in the greatest war in history, which was a battle for their very survival. And undoubtedly, the Soviet Union used every means at its disposal to strengthen its position before that day arrived.

Judging by the preliminary results, Russia’s new State Duma will look remarkably similar to the old one, after this weekend’s elections. Yet amid dramatically different domestic and international circumstances, that continuity is perhaps the most notable result of all.

The 2026 result has produced some changes, but the new is considerably less significant than the familiar.

Turnout, at around 57%, was the highest in a State Duma election for a decade, although hardly unprecedented as participation exceeded 60% four times in earlier elections.

United Russia was the clearest beneficiary, taking almost 58% of the party-list vote, up sharply from 49.8% in 2021. Even so, it remained below the party’s record 64.3% in 2007, during Vladimir Putin’s second presidential term. 

The Communists again established themselves as Russia’s principal opposition party, comfortably finishing second with almost 14%, but that represented a significant retreat from their roughly 19% in 2021, and was far removed from the turbulent 1990s, when the party could attract almost a quarter of the electorate.

The ultra-nationalist LDPR improved from 7.55% to about 8.8%, but its hopes of overtaking the Communists proved misplaced, while liberals New People also advanced substantially, from 5.3% to around 7.9%, climbing from fifth to fourth. but the breakthrough suggested by some summer polling, when second place appeared possible, never materialized.

The larger story, therefore, is how little Russian voting preferences have changed during five extraordinarily eventful years.

Since the previous Duma election, Russia has experienced the Ukraine conflict, unprecedented Western sanctions, sweeping economic changes, and a profound reorientation of its foreign relations. Such circumstances might reasonably have produced either a radicalization of political opinion or widespread political apathy, but instead, voters largely chose continuity. Thus, United Russia strengthened its position, but the familiar parliamentary opposition survived alongside it.

That may be the election’s real surprise, given amid unusually volatile conditions at home and abroad, Russians have largely preserved the existing balance of political forces, suggesting that while there has undoubtedly been consolidation around the flag, maintaining alternative voices within the established political system still matters to a significant part of the electorate.

This article was first published by Kommersant, and was rewritten by the RT team.

Ukraine has effectively lost its steel industry after Russian strikes brought production at the country’s three largest plants to a halt, a senior Metinvest executive has told the Financial Times.

Ballistic missiles have disabled major steelworks in Kiev-controlled parts of Russia’s Zaporozhye Region and Ukraine’s Dnepropetrovsk Region, repeatedly striking Metinvest’s Zaporozhstal and Kamet Steel plants and ArcelorMittal’s facility in Krivoy Rog. The latest attack on Thursday damaged production equipment, workshops and railway infrastructure, the outlet reported on Sunday.

The three plants, which together accounted for about 90% of Ukraine’s steel output, are now idle, Aleksandr Vodoviz, head of the CEO’s office at Metinvest – owned by Ukrainian oligarch Rinat Akhmetov – told the FT. “As of today, [Ukraine] doesn’t have a steel industry any more,” he said.

Vodoviz said it was unclear when production could resume, with repairs potentially taking “days, weeks, months, or years.” The plants employ more than 15,000 people, and their shutdown could have a major impact on tax revenues for the Ukrainian budget, he added.

Zaporozhstal has been struck several times over the past month, with Vodoviz claiming the attacks had targeted its blast furnaces. “They knew everything about the plant, they knew exactly where to hit,” he said.

Moscow has also reported strikes on industrial and logistics facilities related to Kiev’s military. Russian forces last week hit the Radionix electronics plant and a data center in Kiev, which were involved in missile production and data processing for the Ukrainian Army, according to the Defense Ministry.

The attacks come as Kiev has ramped up long-range strikes on Russian energy, industrial, and civilian infrastructure, including residential buildings, warehouses, and oil refineries.

Kiev claims it considers Russian oil facilities legitimate military targets because they allegedly help finance and supply Moscow’s military campaign. Russia has condemned strikes on civilians as acts of terrorism, while maintaining that its forces only target military and defense-related facilities.

“There is a war of attrition, and now an economic war of attrition – Russia is trying to hurt Ukraine’s economy as much as possible and so does Ukraine,” Alyona Bilan, chief economist at investment bank Dragon Capital, told the FT, adding that Ukraine is unlikely to record any economic growth this year.

Ukraine’s steel industry was already shrinking before the latest strikes. The country produced around 7.4 million tons of crude steel in 2025, down from 7.6 million tons a year earlier and far below pre-conflict levels, according to the World Steel Association.

Producers have also faced growing pressure from cheaper Turkish steel made with Russian raw materials and tighter EU import restrictions. Metinvest COO Aleksandr Mironenko said last week that Kiev had been too slow to protect domestic producers with anti-dumping measures, adding to pressure on an industry now left without its three biggest plants.

A Ukrainian TV employee has been forcibly detained by a press gang outside his workplace in Kiev, with footage showing police and draft enforcers in military fatigues shoving the resisting man into a vehicle.

The incident occurred outside the main studio of Inter, one of Ukraine’s major national television channels. The detained man was identified by local media as an editing director working for the broadcaster’s news operation.

The clip, posted on Telegram on Sunday, captures a chaotic scene outside the studio as several officers surround the employee while other people attempt to intervene.

Scuffles can also be seen nearby, with a man in military fatigues pushing a civilian to the ground.

The footage appears to have been recorded by the detained man’s colleagues, who can be heard warning the officers that their conduct will be shown on television.

Российское "ипсо" в виде бусификации нагрянуло к сотрудникам телеканала Интер.
Вот тут поддерживаю, пропагандонов войны нужно отправлять на передовую в первую очередь pic.twitter.com/3APXt7qi1e

— 𝓓𝓸𝓷 𝓑𝓪𝓼𝓼 (@ZePrisoner) September 20, 2026

The Kiev branch of the Territorial Center of Recruitment and Social Support (TCC), the body overseeing mobilization, later defended the detention, insisting that the officers had done nothing unlawful.

According to the TCC, the editing director had no registered deferment from military service and was wanted for violating Ukraine’s mobilization rules. The agency added that neither the employee nor his employer had taken steps to secure his exemption.

The country’s conscription drive has become increasingly contentious amid Kiev’s battlefield setbacks and a shortage of willing recruits.

Ukraine does not provide regular updates on its battlefield losses, but Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said last week that Ukrainian forces had recently been suffering around 27,000 killed and wounded per month, citing information from Ukrainian partners.

Russian Defense Minister Andrey Belousov, meanwhile, said in December that Ukraine had lost nearly 500,000 troops killed or wounded in 2025 alone.

Numerous videos of so-called “busification” – a term Ukrainians use for the forcible detention and transportation of military-age men to recruitment centers – have circulated online. Such incidents have repeatedly triggered confrontations between TCC personnel and civilians.

Ukraine has failed in its attempts to derail Russia’s parliamentary elections through mass attacks during the vote, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said.

The comments came after Moscow and its suburbs were hit by a huge Ukrainian drone raid overnight Saturday into Sunday. The attack killed two civilians in the capital suburbs and damaged an oil refinery, residential buildings, and civilian infrastructure. Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin said the “unprecedented” raid involved more than 1,600 UAVs on all directions.

The three-day vote wrapped up late on Sunday, with preliminary results showing the ruling United Russia party far ahead of its rivals and retaining its commanding majority in the State Duma.

With more than 95% of precinct protocols processed as of Monday, United Russia had 57.82% of the party-list vote, followed by the Communist Party with 13.8%, the LDPR with 8.99%, and New People with 7.96%, while A Just Russia scored slightly above the 5% threshold for party-list seats, according to Central Election Commission data.

Speaking to reporters on Monday, Peskov weighed in on Ukrainian attacks both on Moscow and frontline regions during the elections. “It is sabotage. It is also an attempt to disrupt these elections,” he said, stressing that the effort “had no effect.”

Rodion Miroshnik, the head of the Foreign Ministry’s mission tasked with documenting alleged Ukrainian war crimes, said 74 buildings housing election commissions had been damaged or destroyed in ten Russian regions during the vote.

“This is material confirmation of planned actions by Kiev and its partners aimed at disrupting elections in Russia,” he said. “Kiev, which is not seeking to hold elections at home, is investing in attempts to disrupt elections in Russia, but without result.”

Valentina Matviyenko, the speaker of the upper chamber of the parliament, argued that the election results had demonstrated Russia’s resilience in the face of Western pressure. “The West has once again failed: The voting results confirmed that the idea of inflicting a strategic defeat on us by dividing us from within and splitting our society is hopelessly doomed,” she said.

United Russia chairman Dmitry Medvedev called the vote a “real result” but said it also marked “the start of a great deal of work.” “Having received such a mandate from the electorate, we must now set about implementing our national program,” he said. “I have no doubt whatsoever that our party… will rise to the challenge... We will prevail.”

China, meanwhile, has congratulated Russia on the election, saying that Beijing “firmly supports the Russian people’s independent choice” and that it is ready to continue working with Moscow to implement agreements between Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping and take bilateral relations “to new heights.”

Two civilians were killed and several others, including two children, were injured in Moscow Region during a powerful Ukrainian drone raid that was aimed at derailing Russia’s parliamentary elections, local officials said.

In a statement on Sunday, Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin said more than 1,600 UAVs were repelled since the previous day, adding that 450 UAVs were intercepted on approaches to the capital.

“The unprecedented attack was clearly planned to disrupt the elections. The enemy failed,” he said.

Several drones reached the premises of the Moscow Oil Refinery, where one unidentified facility was damaged, and one struck a residential building, according to Sobyanin, who said there were no fatalities in the capital.

In the nearby city of Ramenskoye, around 400 people, including 70 children, were evacuated from a 21-story apartment block after falling drone debris sparked a fire on the roof, with 20 vehicles also damaged.

Another person was killed in the Orekhovo-Zuyevo District, where a private home was destroyed and caught fire during the attack. The victim was an elderly man who was inside the building, according to the governor.

Elsewhere in Moscow Region, a warehouse complex caught fire in Sofyino, and a drone struck an apartment building in Kotelniki, setting apartments on three floors ablaze. The authorities are still determining whether anyone was injured.

Private homes were also damaged in Kolomna and Yegoryevsk, while fires broke out at apartment buildings in the Leninsky District, Lyubertsy, and Lytkarino. A residential building and an industrial facility were damaged in Istra, with no casualties reported.

The massive raid struck Moscow and the surrounding region just hours before polling stations were due to open for the final day of Russia’s three-day parliamentary elections. Despite the attack, all 1,443 polling stations in Moscow opened on time, Moscow Election Commission Deputy Chairman Dmitry Reut told TASS.

Moscow has accused Kiev of undermining diplomatic efforts while publicly calling for renewed negotiations. On Friday, Russian President Vladimir Putin said the Ukrainian leadership is “talking about peace” while doing everything to prevent peace and negotiations.

Earlier this month, Putin ordered large-scale retaliatory strikes on Ukrainian energy infrastructure in response to attacks inside Russia. Moscow has condemned the strikes on civilians as acts of terrorism, while maintaining that Russian forces only target military and defense-related facilities.

On the night of August 15, 2026, the industrial outskirts of Samara lit up as Ukrainian long-range Flamingo missiles targeted factory buildings. By morning, news appeared online of a plume of smoke, and a few days later, satellite imagery revealed a large crater at the site of one of the buildings of the Progress Rocket and Space Center.

The fact that the war reaches thousands of kilometers beyond the front line no longer surprises anyone. However, the target is rather unexpected: It’s not an ammunition depot, oil refinery, or power substation, but a factory where launch vehicles are manufactured.

In the spring and summer of 2026, two Soyuz-2.1b rockets were launched from Plesetsk Cosmodrome, each carrying 16 satellites into orbit. These satellites are called Rassvet (Dawn). Soyuz rockets used to launch the satellites are assembled in Samara.

Western and Ukrainian media focus exclusively on the issues of Rassvet satellites, citing problems with altitude, ascent, and launch schedule. Yet, no one attacks a failed project. The adversary’s assessment of the project and its importance speaks for itself. 

Both critics and supporters of the satellite constellation refer to it as the Russian Starlink. Military expert Andrey Bednarsky, a drone operations officer with the Kaskad specialized brigade and a UAV developer, acknowledges an “element of journalistic generalization” in this comparison but does not consider it unfair. 

“Starlink was the technological leader in this niche, so a comparison with the industry pioneer is justified. But though justified, it’s misleading. Such a label implies a copy that is supposed to catch up with the original, following a pre-established path. Yet what we see is a different answer to the same question, posed by the war. 

“The question goes something like this: what happens to an army and a country when broadband connectivity ceases to be merely a service and becomes critical infrastructure, on par with electricity or railway networks? Elon Musk’s answer has been familiar to us for four years now – the captured [Starlink] technology is stacked in crates at Russian command posts. Russia’s answer is being formulated right now,” he says. 

There is currently a gap between the present and future capabilities of Russian technology, Bednarsky notes. Presently, there are about 30 Rassvet satellites in orbit; there is also an ongoing debate over altitude, and only three or four communication windows per day in the combat zone. However, by 2030, Russia expects 292 satellites in orbit and continuous coverage. It is precisely this gap that draws the researcher’s attention. 

The Volnovakha lesson

In the spring of 2022, Russian units captured several Ukrainian command posts near Volnovakha. Military analyst Alexei Leonkov says that in the early months of the military operation, Starlink routers, along with other equipment, were found in the seized command facilities. Lying nearby were tablets running battle management software. 

This was no secret in itself. Russia knew about the supply of Starlink terminals to Kiev in the very first weeks of the conflict. But reading the news is one thing; holding the hardware in your hands and realizing that everything goes through it – reports, target designation, coordination with external command centers – is quite another. 

Leonkov articulates the conclusion made by many experts at the time. “Issues of combat command and control, the speed of information transmission, and coordination within the information space provide an advantage in both offensive and defensive operations. Communication is no longer just about rear-echelon support; it has become a weapon,” he says. 

This logic continued to unfold in the coming years. Starting in 2023, drones penetrated beyond the front line and operated far outside the combat zone; their operational range and strike coordination also relied on Starlink. Leonkov analyzes the recent series of attacks, which Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky dubbed the 40-day war, as a distinct technological episode. It was conducted not only via the civilian constellation of satellites and its military-focused division, Starshield, but also, according to Leonkov, by means of AI utilizing high-speed data networks to coordinate tactical maneuvers. This allowed the drones to maneuver, form groups and swarms, as well as suppress and penetrate Russian air defense systems. 

A drone swarm that reconfigures in flight requires a data link. A link requires an orbit. An orbit requires rockets, a factory, and funding.  

This is precisely what may be called technological sovereignty: possessing one’s own satellite constellation to ensure stable connectivity across the entire country and beyond. 

What is Rassvet?

The project is funded under the Data Economy national initiative, with 102.8 billion rubles (about $1.2 billion) from the federal budget and 329 billion from the company’s own funds through 2030. This ratio clearly reveals that the business sector bears the bulk of the costs, while the state provides supplementary funding and sets the strategic direction.

In 2023, the first three experimental satellites (the Rassvet-1 mission) were launched into orbit. They were followed by three more satellites (Rassvet-2) used to test sequential data transmission between satellites at distances ranging from 30 km to 1,000 km. Then came a pause (explained in the industry in various ways), followed by the transition to mass production.

On March 23, 2026, a Soyuz-2.1b rocket equipped with a Fregat-M upper stage launched 16 satellites from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome to an altitude of approximately 300 km. After separation, the constellation was taken under the control of Bureau 1440’s own Mission Control Center. The company emphasized that the journey from the initial experimental satellites to the mass-produced models took 1,000 days.

A second batch was launched on July 19-20. The company did not disclose the launch site, and the surrounding landscape was not visible on the widely circulated photo of the Soyuz-2.1b on the launch pad. This small yet important detail shows that a project that began as a civilian internet initiative had, by mid-2026, turned into a defense initiative. 

We should take a closer look at the figures. Prior to the July launch, the company reported having 18 satellites in orbit, three of which were experimental; this implies that one satellite from the initial batch was lost. Following the second launch, there were around 30 operational satellites in orbit. The target constellation size is 292 satellites by 2030, including spares. To compare, Starlink already has thousands of satellites in orbit.

The debate over altitude

The target orbit for Rassvet is 800 km. The satellites are initially deployed to an intermediate altitude of 300 km and subsequently ascend using their own plasma thrusters. This is the standard operational procedure for low-Earth orbit constellations.

The key issue lies in the rate of ascent of the satellites. ComNews, having analyzed data from NORAD and public tracking services, noted that during the first four months, the satellites from the first batch rose from 300 km to 540 km, an average rate of around 2 km per day. However, the rate of ascent subsequently slowed; from June 10 to July 20, the total gain was merely 50-90 km. At the current rate, it would take another four and a half to six months to reach the announced 800 km altitude, meaning it would take at least until November to reach the target orbit. This led to an opinion expressed in the headline: that the target altitude had likely been lowered.

As of August 3, data on individual satellites presents a mixed picture. Most satellites from the first batch maintained altitudes of 518-541 km. Three lagged significantly behind, at 370, 376, and 414 km. One burned up in the atmosphere on June 6.

The Western press seized on these figures and attempted to draw conclusions. Citing Business Insider, reports claimed that none of the satellites from the July launch had reached their operational orbit and that, without intervention, they risked eventually burning up. However, the words used by the original authors to highlight uncertainty were lost in subsequent versions. 

Bednarsky points out two important details. 

The first one is procedural. 

“Regarding the second batch of satellites,” the expert says, “our enemies and competitors are hyping a story that they failed to reach their anticipated altitudes. But we simply don’t know what the anticipated altitude is; the company hasn’t confirmed it. We’ll be able to tell whether the constellation has reached its intended operational altitude only in October or November, not earlier.”

The second detail is far more interesting. The 300-500 km altitude where the satellites are currently located roughly corresponds to the operational altitude of the standard Starlink system. “If the altitude is deliberately lowered, there is a clear physical reason for the decision: the lower the satellite, the higher the signal at the surface and the lower the response latency. At the same time, of course, the coverage area decreases; from an altitude of 700-800 kilometers, a single satellite covers a much larger territory,” he explains.

Bednarsky also points to another factor. The choice of responsiveness over broad coverage, he suggests, “may be linked to the objectives of the Russia's military operation – specifically, controlling drones and uncrewed surface vessels.” Neither tolerates extra milliseconds of latency. Speed ​​is a key parameter of modern warfare.

This is an attempt to chart one’s own path: prioritizing coverage of the front line rather than building a global network first. The debate over altitude is, therefore, a debate over priorities. And there is no doubt that the successful conclusion of the military operation is one of Russia’s key strategic priorities.

Three communication windows per day

What does Rassvet offer military users on the front line right now?

Rassvet satellites enable stable satellite connectivity over the Special Military Operation zone, providing several (3-4) communication windows per day for a duration of several hours. While this is a genuine breakthrough compared to how things were before, it is insufficient for carrying out daily combat missions, and an expansion of the satellite constellation is necessary. 

A communication window is not the same as a continuous, stable communication channel. A unit that has connectivity for a few hours three times a day plans its actions differently than a unit with constant access. The difference between a device that merely works and one that is a game-changer is measured not by signal quality, but by the number of satellites in orbit.

Leonkov views the situation from the angle of combat command and control. “The deployment of a constellation utilizing modern data transmission formats offers a natural solution to three tasks: developing civilian communications, coordinating army operations in the combat zone, and securing state borders.” According to him, the first batch of satellites has already begun performing these tasks.

He also says that the Svod AI system was integrated into the satellite constellation, enabling troops to receive real-time air and aerospace data both in the combat zone and outside it. The Russian Defense Ministry commented on this system in January 2026, saying that it is not a standalone device but a software architecture running on a network of military computers and tablets. It aggregates satellite data, aerial imagery, intelligence reports, and open-source information into a unified information space, models scenarios, and proposes courses of action to the commander.

“Those who switched from captured Starlink routers to domestic systems gained an advantage in data transmission security amid intense electronic warfare,” he said.

Let’s stop here for a moment: The value of the constellation is measured not in megabits, but in its ability to close the communications loop. The satellite provides the channel, and the channel provides a general picture, which, in turn, enables rapid decision-making. The three operational windows per day are the first proof that the system works.

Laser instead of a gateway station 

The primary advantage of the Rassvet system is not speed or orbital altitude; it’s inter-satellite laser communication. According to Bednarsky, it reaches up to ten gigabits per second. This means we’re dealing with cutting-edge technology, possibly the best in the world. This capability was tested on the experimental Rassvet-2 when data was transmitted between satellites over distances ranging from 30 to 1,000 km. 

The rationale behind laser technology is simple. It significantly reduces reliance on ground-based gateway stations. A satellite lacking inter-satellite links acts merely as a relay. It receives a signal from a user and transmits it to the nearest ground station; if no station is within sight, there is no connection. 

Russia has eleven time zones, touches several oceans, extends into the Arctic, and possesses remote territories where installing a gateway station is not feasible, so this limitation is a deal-breaker. It is even more critical for a country that cannot rely on friendly ground stations abroad. However, a laser link transforms the constellation into a network: data travels in orbit from satellite to satellite and is downlinked wherever it is convenient and secure.

On the user end, the picture is more modest. The stated target speed per terminal is up to one gigabit per second. However, actual test measurements reported by RBC are far more prosaic: 12 megabits per second per device with a latency of 41 milliseconds. So the first figure represents the long-term goal, while the second reflects the current situation, given that the constellation is not complete. Comparing the two figures is inappropriate, but we must keep both in mind.

This leads to an obvious conclusion regarding the market. For individuals, this equipment would be rather inconvenient. However, it is suitable for mobile platforms – cars, ships, trains, and aircraft. 

Let’s take a look at some of Bureau 1440’s first civilian contracts.

Lastochka, Sapsan, and northern latitudes

At the CIPR 2026 conference, Bureau 1440 and Russian Railways (RZD) agreed on the phased rollout of next-generation satellite connectivity for high-speed trains. The agreement covers 135 Lastochka and Sapsan high-speed trains across the country, serving routes such as Moscow-St. Petersburg, Moscow-Nizhny Novgorod, Krasnodar-Sochi, and Moscow-Minsk. The user terminal designed for rail transport has already undergone mechanical testing on a test railcar; Alexey Shelobkov, head of ICS Holding, announced the start of these tests.

The choice of Russian Railways as the first civilian customer is quite logical. A train travels hundreds of kilometers through terrain where there is no stable cellular signal. Meanwhile, there is ample space on the train carriage roof for a 15-kilogram terminal, and the passengers are highly interested in having a stable internet connection. 

In parallel, pilot projects have been announced for 2026 in several regions, including the Nenets Autonomous Okrug. In April, Roscosmos Deputy Director General for Strategic Development Boris Glazkov, stated that Rassvet satellite internet service would become available to corporate clients in 2027-2028. Georgy Korolev, a project director at ATK Consulting, is even more optimistic. He says that limited testing of signal quality, speed, and coverage is already underway with select users, and believes the first commercial contracts could be signed by late 2026 or early 2027.

The list of use cases outlined by the company offers solutions to many of Russia’s challenges, such as remote regions, northern territories, maritime operations, transport, oil extraction, the energy sector, communications in disaster zones, the remote monitoring of facilities and specialized vehicles, and video analytics. All this is particularly important for those parts of the country where laying fiber-optic cables is impossible. 

The Northern Sea Route, drilling platforms, weather stations, border outposts, and command centers all rely on the same infrastructure, as orbital mechanics make no distinction between users. Starlink operates on the exact same principle: Civilian revenue funds the constellation, while military application justifies its priority status. However, the American system followed the path in reverse – it targeted civilian subscribers first, and then the Pentagon – whereas the Russian system is attempting to navigate both stages simultaneously, all while facing resistance from the adversary.

Why Rassvet satellites are targeted

We can now examine the attack on the plant in Samara in more detail.

Progress Rocket Space Center does not produce Rassvet satellites. It manufactures launch vehicles. Both batches were launched into space using Samara-built Soyuz-2.1b rockets, and the project currently has no other launch vehicle at its disposal. This represents a bottleneck in the production chain: whereas satellites can be built quickly, rockets take time. 

The Ukrainian side knows this very well. Their calculations are worth citing, since they are more convincing than any statements regarding the importance of the project. According to Defense Express estimates, a minimum of 288 satellites are required for the constellation to achieve operational readiness – around 18 launches carrying 16 satellites each. The interval between the first two launches was four months. The production rate for launch vehicles had already slowed: While the Soyuz-2.1b flew six-eight times a year starting in 2022, only about four launches of this type had been conducted in 2026. At this pace, it would take years to complete the constellation, and the loss of one month is more costly than the loss of one satellite.

This leads us to the conclusion that Ukraine makes no secret of: Kiev possesses no anti-satellite missiles. MP Sergey Kolesnik notes that only four nations have them. Nor does Ukraine have a satellite constellation of its own to counter the Russian one. Consequently, the only option is to strike Bureau 1440 and its production facilities. The attacks carried out on the night of August 15 were in line with this strategy.

The expert only ventures to express the conviction that the project’s viability does not hinge on a single, unique facility. This reveals something about how the risk is assessed within the industry: It’s not a question of survival, but of having backup facilities. 

Of course, the strike on Samara highlights the obvious vulnerabilities of the Rassvet project. Yet, it also demonstrates that the adversary views the unfinished constellation of some 30 satellites as a threat significant enough to warrant the use of long-range missiles, which Ukraine critically lacks. 

Epilogue. Dawn, but not yet noon 

Next year will mark a crucial milestone for the project. Discussions are already underway regarding the launch of commercial operations in early 2027 and a manifold increase in the number of orbiting satellites by the middle of the year. At that point, it may finally be possible to speak of stable, continuous connectivity over the special military operation zone.

If the planned objectives are met, 2027 will mark Russia’s transition to a new technological era – one characterized by constant, high-quality satellite communications and an increasingly decisive advantage on the front lines. Yet, standing between today’s limited window of three operational windows per day and that future transition are 15 launches.

As they say, never make predictions, especially about the future. However, taking a look back, we may see that four years ago, Russian troops found foreign hardware at captured command posts near Volnovakha. Today, Russia is building its own systems – more slowly than planned, at a higher cost than expected, and under enemy fire. The project already boasts a functioning inter-satellite laser link, an orbit inclined to cover the Arctic, three communication windows per day over the front line, and a contract for servicing 135 trains. 

The constellation was named Rassvet (Dawn) years before all this happened. The choice of name turned out to be surprisingly accurate. After all, dawn is not yet noon. Yet what is certain is that the night is over – and the sun is rising. 

Russia’s ruling United Russia party is poised to lock in its parliamentary majority, having gained almost 60% of the vote, according to preliminary Central Election Commission (CEC) figures.

With more than 90% of precinct protocols processed early Monday, United Russia scored nearly 58%, followed by the Communist Party (CPRF) with nearly 14%, the LDPR with 8.9%, and New People with 7.94%. A Just Russia also exceeded the 5% threshold for party-list seats.

President Vladimir Putin cast his ballot online from his Kremlin office on Friday. In an address on Wednesday, he urged Russians to participate, saying the lawmakers elected for the next five years would “shape our future” and that “every voter’s voice matters.”

The voting lasted three days, from early Friday to Sunday 8 PM local time. All 450 State Duma seats were up for grabs, with 225 deputies from federal party lists and 225 in single-member constituencies. According to CEC data, United Russia candidates led in 208 of the 225 constituencies.

United Russia is performing better than during the last cycle in 2021, when it received 49.82% of the vote and finished with 324 seats, including 198 constituency seats. The CPRF then won 18.93%, LDPR 7.55%, A Just Russia 7.46%, and New People 5.32%.

Around 113 million people were eligible to vote, including more than 1.8 million registered abroad, with final turnout exceeding 59% – higher than it was in 2021 (51.7%). About 7.1 million ballots were cast electronically, both through the federal voting system and Moscow’s own.

Overnight Saturday into Sunday, Ukraine launched one of its most powerful drone raids to date on Moscow Region, which officials say was aimed at derailing the election.

The attack killed two civilians in the capital suburbs and damaged an oil refinery, residential buildings, and civilian infrastructure. Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin said the “unprecedented” attack involved more than 1,600 UAVs.

The Russian digital elections infrastructure also endured more than 3,000 waves of DDoS attacks during the vote, according to CEC Chair Ella Pamfilova.

The parliamentary election coincided with more than 2,200 regional and municipal campaigns, with around 20,700 mandates and elected posts at stake. Of Russia’s 89 regions, 11 were choosing their leaders, including eight through direct popular votes, while 39 were electing local legislatures.

Another 260,000 people voted early in 37 other regions, mostly in remote or hard-to-reach areas.

Residents of the DPR, LPR, Kherson, and Zaporozhye Regions were taking part in State Duma elections for the first time since joining Russia following referendums in 2022.

Watch the report by RT’s Murad Gazdiev on how the election is being held under wartime conditions in the frontline regions.

Vladimir Zelensky is “scum” and a “suicide method chosen by the Ukrainian nation,” according to his former press secretary, Yulia Mendel, who was just blocked from speaking at the European Parliament.

Mendel worked for Zelensky during the early years of his tenure and resigned in 2021, citing personal reasons. In one of her latest critical interviews, she said her conscience compelled her to go public with the accusations she has made against her former boss in recent months.

“I ask God every day for forgiveness because I helped this scum to come to power and stay there,” she told Ukrainian blogger Lilia Bagirova on Thursday. “If I remained silent I would not have forgiven myself.”

Mendel also said that after watching Zelensky pursue policies she considers disastrous amid Ukraine’s conflict with Russia – including forced mobilization, while corruption continued to plague the country – she no longer regarded him as a human being.

Zelensky imposed sanctions on Mendel earlier this month. Kiev accused the former spokeswoman of spreading Russian propaganda, allegations she has rejected. Zelensky has used personal sanctions against both political rivals and former allies.

On Wednesday, Mendel was barred from entering the European Parliament building in Strasbourg, where she was scheduled to speak. She linked the decision directly to the sanctions imposed on her by Zelensky. The European Parliament’s press service declined to comment.

The event was organized by Hans Neuhoff, a MEP for Germany’s Alternative for Germany (AfD) party. The party has been highly critical of the EU’s policy of continued military and financial support for the Zelensky government.

Among those who have interviewed her is conservative American talk show host Tucker Carlson. During an interview in May, Mendel claimed that Zelensky’s drug use is an “open secret” in Kiev. She also accused him of hypocrisy and of embracing Ukrainian ultranationalists to remain in power and protect corruption in his government.

Russia has launched a classified military payload into space, carrying out its second orbital mission in a week.

The military launch took place overnight from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in Russia’s Arkhangelsk Region and was conducted by the country’s aerospace forces.

The exact nature of the payload was not disclosed, though it appears to be a satellite. Officials said the spacecraft successfully established communications with ground control after reaching orbit.

A medium-lift Soyuz-2.1b rocket was used for the mission, according to the Defense Ministry and space agency Roscosmos.

President Vladimir Putin has said that the network “doesn’t fall short of” Elon Musk’s Starlink and “may even surpass it in some ways.” Moscow is also developing heavy attack drones with satellite-based control, which could make them more resistant to electronic warfare and jamming.

On Wednesday, Roscosmos carried out another launch using a Soyuz-2.1b rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, sending the Progress MS-35 cargo spacecraft into orbit with 2.4 tons of supplies for the International Space Station (ISS).

The unmanned freighter is scheduled to dock with the station over the weekend.

President Vladimir Putin has extended Russia’s ban on imports of certain Western food products through the end of 2028, which was first imposed in response to sanctions on Russia more than a decade ago. The decree was published on the Kremlin’s website on Thursday.

The restrictions were introduced in August 2014 in retaliation for sanctions imposed on Russia by a number of Western nations that refused to recognize Crimea’s referendum to join the Russian Federation. The predominantly Russian-speaking Black Sea region voted to secede from Ukraine following a Western-backed coup in Kiev earlier that year.

Russia’s restrictions apply to imports from the US, EU, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Norway, Ukraine, Albania, Montenegro, Iceland, and Liechtenstein. The measures cover products including meat, seafood, dairy, fruits, and vegetables. Many of the affected countries are officially designated as ‘unfriendly’ by the Russian government.

Moscow has argued that the embargo has helped boost domestic production and attract more brands from non-Western and friendly nations such as Serbia.

Drought remains widespread across the contiguous US following the country’s hottest meteorological summer on record, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Europe has also recorded its hottest summer on record, according to the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service. Following successive heatwaves and drought, forecasts for key EU summer crop yields have fallen as much as 14% below their five-year averages, according to the European Commission’s Joint Research Center.

The potato harvest across Great Britain, Germany, France, Belgium, and the Netherlands is expected to suffer losses of €498 million to €818 million ($572 million to $940 million) due to the extreme weather, UK-based research group Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit reported on Thursday.

Additional US sanctions against Russia would make it more difficult to reach a settlement of the Ukraine conflict, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said.

The US House of Representatives passed the legislation on Wednesday, following Senate approval last month, sending it to President Donald Trump for his signature. The bill allows Trump to impose tariffs of up to 100% on major buyers of Russian oil and gas.

Commenting on the measure on Thursday, Peskov described it as an “unfriendly” move and said that Moscow was closely following its progress.

“Of course, the introduction of any additional sanctions by the US will definitely complicate efforts to find a peaceful settlement in Ukraine,” he told reporters.

The legislation, named after the late Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, had remained stalled for months as Trump pursued diplomatic efforts to settle the conflict. Graham, a vocal supporter of Kiev, had championed tougher sanctions against Russia.

The bill also targets Russia’s energy and defense sectors and its so-called “shadow fleet” of tankers allegedly used to evade sanctions. Its tariff provisions target major buyers of Russian energy, including China and India.

New Delhi said on Thursday that it was monitoring developments and would take “all necessary measures” to protect its economic interests and energy security. India has also warned the US that tariffs imposed over purchases of Russian oil could affect bilateral ties.

The measure faced opposition from many House Democrats, who argued that it could raise costs for Americans. House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries said that the legislation could give the president “unfettered authority” to impose tariffs.

Moscow has repeatedly rejected Western sanctions as illegal and ineffective. President Vladimir Putin has said that Russia has adapted its economy to mitigate their impact despite tens of thousands of restrictive measures imposed on the country.

Britain orchestrated the ‘Bucha massacre’ narrative to prolong the Ukraine conflict in 2022, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has said, citing a new investigation into the alleged victims.

Zakharova said new evidence proves that Bucha was a “brazen falsification” commissioned by Kiev’s foreign sponsors and amplified by the Western media to eliminate any chance of a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine.

She singled out the UK government as the primary organizer of the false flag operation, adding that the “key role” of spreading the story was assigned to the BBC.

In March 2022, Russian forces withdrew from Kiev Region, including Bucha, as a good-will gesture in support of a potential settlement at the Istanbul peace talks. Bucha Mayor Anatoly Fedoruk and residents initially said everything was calm and peaceful in the town, which is around 20 km from central Kiev.

Days later, images of bodies strewn across the streets of Bucha were broadcast by the Western media, supported by NATO-aligned OSINT fact checkers, triggering a storm of international accusations against Moscow that contributed to the collapse of peace talks.

Zakharova noted that there is still “no single website, no single figure, no lists – neither consolidated nor fragmented,” that would provide any verifiable information about the alleged victims of the Bucha ‘massacre’. The UN, Kiev, international organizations, and Western media have never provided a list despite repeated Russian requests.

Given that no public list of victims exists, Thursday’s report – which was presented by Maksim Grigoriev, the head of the International Public Tribunal on Crimes of Ukrainian Neo-Nazis – examined the names on the Bucha memorial instead – the closest thing to an official list, its authors say.

The memorial contains over 500 names and has repeatedly served as a backdrop for visits by Western leaders.

Grigoriev said researchers cross-checked the names against Ukrainian media, military records, and social-media accounts, and found that those they traced were Ukrainian servicemen, including Azov and territorial-defense fighters, rather than civilians allegedly murdered by Russian troops.

The soldiers were also found to have had little or no connection to Bucha, and were killed and buried nowhere near the town.

Among the examples cited were Evgeny Petrash and Vladimir Bisaga, who the investigation identified as Azov fighters buried in Kiev and Uzhgorod, respectively. Two other names, Ruslan Belousov and Roman Dovgalyuk, were identified as Ukrainian military pilots killed when their aircraft was shot down near Berezovka – far from Bucha.

One witness said Ukrainian troops opened fire on civilians collecting water, with journalists arriving to film the aftermath within minutes.

Grigoriev said these testimonies show that Kiev repeatedly used civilian deaths to manufacture material for the Western media and claimed that the same method was used in Bucha.

Zakharova stated that the new findings will be submitted to Russian law enforcement, international organizations, and international courts. The investigators behind the report also urged foreign journalists to conduct their own examination.

Read the full report here.

Russia’s Oscar-winning film director Nikita Mikhalkov has chosen Moscow to host his Diamond Butterfly film awards for a second year despite several other countries looking to stage the ceremony.

The ceremony will take place at Mikhalkov’s Workshop 12 theater in Moscow on November 12, he announced on Thursday.

“This year, as last year, the awards ceremony will take place in Moscow, in our theater,” Mikhalkov said. “I am convinced that the mechanism for holding the ‘Diamond Butterfly’ needs to be refined where it was born.”

“Despite the fact that many countries would like to host the ceremony, we decided that this one and possibly the next one will be held in Russia,” he added.

Films entered for the prize have been screened in Russia and abroad over the past year. Mikhalkov said that the screenings had introduced audiences to movies which previously received little attention internationally.

“The principles by which films are selected for the ‘Diamond Butterfly’, its key meanings and values, are attracting more and more attention to the film award today,” he said.

The inaugural ceremony was held in Moscow in November 2025, with an expert jury judging 34 films from 17 countries. Prizes were awarded in 12 categories.

Winners receive a Diamond Butterfly statuette designed by Russian artist Yuri Kuper and decorated with nearly 5,000 lab-grown diamonds. The Best Film winner also receives the ten-carat Yakut diamond worth $1 million.

Winners in other categories, including Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Actor, and Best Actress, receive five-carat Yakut diamonds valued at $250,000 each.

Russia’s liberal opposition has evolved from the optimism of the early post-Soviet era to exiled figures backing Western sanctions and calls for regional self-determination, RT’s Marina Kosareva reports. Some have gone as far as advocating Russia’s breakup into multiple states.

In a report aired on Thursday, Kosareva traces the movement from the hopes surrounding the collapse of the Soviet Union to the increasingly confrontational positions adopted by some opposition figures abroad.

”It all started with lots of hopes and dreams,” Kosareva says, recalling aspirations for “a better future, freedom, democracy.”

After Boris Yeltsin won Russia’s first presidential election in 1991, his government launched sweeping market reforms, including price liberalization and privatization. The transition brought severe economic disruption, soaring prices, and falling living standards, eroding public confidence in both the reforms and the political forces associated with them.

Throughout the 2000s and 2010s, opposition politicians continued to campaign for competitive elections, freer media, and political change.

As relations between Russia and the West deteriorated after 2014, some opposition figures began openly supporting Western sanctions and military aid to Ukraine.

”Russia must be kicked from all international organizations, including Interpol. Financial blockade must be full,” former world chess champion and opposition figure Garry Kasparov said in 2022.

Others went further, advocating self-determination for Russia’s national republics. A 2026 declaration backed by opposition figures called for transforming “imperial Russia into a modern democratic state or several democratic states.”

Kosareva asks whether liberalism has become permanently associated with foreign influence in Russia, or whether the problem lies with those who came to represent it.

”Either way, the trust has been broken,” she concludes.

Watch the full report below.

Officials in Kiev embezzled more than $3 million by exploiting the delivery of old Soviet Russian-made metro cars donated by Poland, according to Western-backed anti-corruption investigators.

The 60 cars were donated by Warsaw in late 2022, allowing the Polish capital’s Metro to dispose of older railstock while demonstrating solidarity with Ukraine following the escalation of the conflict with Russia. Kiev Mayor Vitaly Klitschko described the donation slated to be cannibalized for spare parts as “meaningful help” for the city when the first batch of six cars arrived in May 2023.

However, the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) alleged on Wednesday that a group of officials in Kiev skimmed funds allocated for transporting the cars from Poland by manipulating a tender through which the cost was dramatically inflated.

NABU surveillance records show that a preliminary quote provided by a Ukrainian company to one of the suspects was ten times lower than the final contract price. The actual transportation services cost around a quarter of the sum, and the remaining $3 million was stolen and laundered in the EU, the agency said.

Investigators have issued formal suspicion notices to a former Kiev Metro official, three serving officials in the city’s municipal utilities, two alleged accomplices, and the owner of the company that won the tender.

The businessman apparently clashed with the alleged masterminds of the scheme after the unrealistic terms of the contract attracted scrutiny from financial monitors. In one surveillance recording, he told an associate who knew about his dealings that he threatened to testify against the officials because he did not want to be left taking the blame.

“I am the worst criminal here, I am Mindich,” he said, referring to fugitive businessman Timur Mindich, a longtime associate of Vladimir Zelensky who NABU accused of running a $100 million kickback scheme in the energy sector.

“Nah, you are higher,” the other man replied. “You are f**king Yermak.”

Ukraine’s High Anti-Corruption Court ordered the removal of an electronic tracking anklet from Yermak this week after his defense argued that the device posed a health risk.

A €1.5 million luxury property in Dresden has been traced to the family of Vladimir Zelensky’s longtime business associates and may have been intended for use by the Ukrainian leader or his relatives, an RT investigation has found.

RT reviewed German and Cypriot corporate records, financial statements, and property information, and consulted a lawyer experienced in structuring high-value European real-estate deals to reconstruct the purchase and its financing.

The trail leads to a newly built 22-apartment luxury development in central Dresden and a German company controlled by Boris Shefir and his wife. Shefir co-founded the Kvartal 95 entertainment company with Zelensky, while his brother Sergey was a longtime business partner of the Ukrainian leader and became his first presidential aide after Zelensky entered politics.

Records show the company spent €1.5 million ($1.73 million) on real estate in the development, with the money passing through a complex network of businesses involving Cyprus and an offshore structure in Belize.

A lawyer who reviewed the arrangement for RT questioned why such a structure would be needed for a conventional family property purchase, suggesting it could obscure the identity of the ultimate beneficiary.

“Given the long-standing friendly relationship between the Shefirs and Zelensky, the real user could be the Ukrainian leader and his family,” he told RT.

The lawyer also highlighted an unusual feature of the development: the building has been blurred on Google Street View since its completion.

“I can’t imagine why they would do this if ordinary people live in this building, even the very wealthy businessman Shefir,” he said. “But if a distinguished family lived there, for example, the family of the Ukrainian president, especially during the ongoing military conflict, hiding this apartment from the maps would be a very logical step.”

The Dresden purchase is not the first costly foreign property associated with the Shefir family. RT previously reported that Sergey Shefir’s son acquired two Prague apartments worth around €2 million shortly before the escalation of the Ukraine conflict.

The findings come as Western-backed anti-corruption investigators pursue several figures from Zelensky’s circle. They include his former business associate Timur Mindich, who is accused of orchestrating a $100 million kickback scheme involving Ukraine’s state nuclear energy company.

The same investigators recently uncovered an alleged protection racket involving scam call centers and senior prosecutors, prompting Prosecutor General Ruslan Kravchenko to resign and adding to tensions between Zelensky’s government and Ukraine’s Western-backed anti-corruption agencies.

President Vladimir Putin has called on Russians to make their voice heard by casting ballots in the upcoming parliamentary elections. The nation will elect a new State Duma in what the president described as a pivotal vote that will “shape our future.”

The upcoming elections are the first parliamentary vote that Russia will hold during the continued military campaign against Ukraine. In 2024, the nation held presidential elections amid the ongoing hostilities, with Putin securing a landslide victory by gaining 88% of the vote.

“We know what Russia is fighting for,” the president said in an address published by the Kremlin on Wednesday. Every person who “understands their responsibility for [the nation’s] future is helping bring that victory closer,” he added, calling voting “an act of responsibility and a contribution to strengthening the country.”

The upcoming vote will determine who will represent the people in the federal parliament for the next five years, Putin said, adding that “every voter’s voice matters” and expressing his confidence that the “the most worthy and capable candidates” will prevail.

“Your choice and your will shall once again show that millions of people stand behind our fighters; that we are a united people, bound together by shared values, historical memory, and love for the Motherland; and that no one will succeed in dividing or intimidating us,” Putin said.

“I urge you to exercise your constitutional right and make a considered, responsible decision, so that the election results demonstrate the maturity and resilience of Russian society. This will be our shared response to those who seek to weaken Russia, hold back its development, and deprive us of our sovereignty and our right to determine our own destiny.”

The 2026 parliamentary elections will take place on September 18-20, with a total of ten parties contesting 450 seats in the lower house of the Russian parliament.

In July, Putin accused Kiev of seeking to destabilize Russian society through “terrorist attacks” targeting civilian and energy infrastructure. He also expressed his confidence that Ukraine’s strategy would fail since the goal set by Kiev was simply “impossible to achieve” due to the resilience of the Russian economy, energy system, and people.

Watch the full RT report on the Russian State Duma elections below.

A Danish military helicopter conducted dangerous maneuvers close to a Russian warship in the Baltic Sea, Russia’s ambassador to Denmark has said, responding to the NATO member’s accusation that the vessel had engaged in reckless behavior.

The incident adds to tensions between Russia and the US-led military bloc as its European members seek to provide more weapons to Ukraine.

The encounter was first reported by Denmark on Tuesday. According to a brief statement by the Danish Armed Forces, an unnamed Russian frigate fired flares at a small Fennec helicopter the previous evening as its crew was photographing the vessel during “a routine mission.” One of the flares “passed close to the aircraft,” the military said.

Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen condemned what she described as “reckless action from Russia towards Danish military during a routine overflight.”

Russian Ambassador Vladimir Barbin said on Telegram that Moscow “will thoroughly investigate all the circumstances of the incident.”

“However, this is not the first time that Danish Air Force helicopters have carried out dangerous maneuvers near Russian warships when they were at sea and outside Denmark’s territorial waters,” he added.

“The Danish side’s attempts to explain the helicopter’s provocative actions against the Russian frigate as ‘routine practice’ give rise to serious concern about the possible consequences of such recklessness,” Barbin said.

The Russian envoy pointed to a similar episode in August 2025, when Moscow accused a Danish military helicopter of flying dangerously close to the Russian anti-submarine vessel Vice Admiral Kulakov east of the German island of Fehmarn. Russia said the aircraft risked colliding with the ship and complained that its crew had failed to establish radio contact or respond to warnings.

Barbin also said Denmark had rejected Russian proposals for an agreement to prevent incidents at sea and in the air.

US presidential envoy John Coale has vowed to work with American banks to release tens of millions of dollars in frozen assets belonging to Belarus, Russia’s close ally in Europe.

President Donald Trump’s envoy made the remarks in Minsk on Tuesday while meeting with Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko as part of broader talks on normalizing economic ties and prisoner releases.

Lukashenko called for the release of around $43–44 million that he said was “stuck” in Citibank. “Pay back what you owe us,” he said.

“You are absolutely right. This money must be unfrozen and returned. We have approached the bank with a request to unfreeze these funds,” Coale said, adding that Washington was working on a concrete mechanism to facilitate the transfer.

Coale’s trips to Minsk last year ended with the release of dozens of opposition politicians and activists. During Tuesday’s talks, Lukashenko denied that the prosecution of opposition figures was politically motivated.

Last week, the Belarusian president said he was prepared to discuss further agreements with the US only after the return of the assets frozen at Citibank. He made the statement while discussing the resumption of Belarusian fertilizer exports to the US.

The Trump administration has held several rounds of negotiations with Minsk that have facilitated the release of hundreds of prisoners and the easing of economic restrictions on Belarus. Washington has also lifted some restrictions, including sanctions on Belarusian state flag carrier Belavia.

Russia will remain a guarantor for international energy security and cannot be excluded from global supply chains, Russian Energy Minister Sergey Tsivilev told TASS on Tuesday.

This interview preceded a three-day G20 energy ministers meeting in Houston, Texas, set to run Monday to Wednesday.

“The objective reality is that our country cannot be excluded from global supply chains. Russia has been, is, and will undoubtedly remain a reliable supplier of energy resources and a guarantor of energy security,” Tsivilev told TASS.

The country possesses the world’s largest oil and gas reserves and ranks fifth globally in coal reserves and fourth in LNG production, he added.

“Furthermore, Russia is the undisputed leader in nuclear technologies, commanding approximately 90% of the global market for nuclear power plant construction,” Tsivilev said.

He emphasized that the world is currently facing “the most serious energy logistics crisis in modern history” stemming from disruptions to energy supplies through the Strait of Hormuz. The key waterway once facilitated approximately a quarter of the global oil trade, but has been severely obstructed due to the ongoing US conflict with Iran.

On Monday, President Donald Trump claimed that he had brokered an agreement for Russia and Ukraine to halt strikes on each other’s energy infrastructure.

The Kremlin called the proposal “a very good idea” but did not confirm whether Russia had agreed to such a deal. “We are in contact with the Americans. We are always on the side of peaceful solutions,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said at a briefing on Tuesday.

RT’s Rick Sanchez has said that he feels more free to control his own narrative reporting from Russia compared to his time working in Western mainstream media.

Sanchez told aspiring journalists of his decades of professional experience in a wide-ranging lecture at the World Youth Festival (WYF) in Yekaterinburg, Russia on Tuesday. The talk touched on the freedom of the press, the psychology of a good journalist, and the art of conducting a good interview.

“The freedoms that I lacked working at CNN, the freedoms that I lacked working in NBC, working in Western media, I now find working in Russia. I feel more free. I feel like I have more control of my own narrative,” he said.

Messaging is all about empowerment, and that means you can’t be afraid to ask the question because the question is the power.

Sanchez stressed that journalism and the right to ask questions and gather ideas from different people serve as “a democratizing force in the world.”

The lecture by the veteran news anchor was organized as part of RT’s educational outreach project, the RT Academy.

The week-long WYF opened in Yekaterinburg last Friday, bringing together thousands of participants from 191 countries. The festival is scheduled to run until September 17, hosting assorted international lectures, competitions, exhibitions, panel discussions, and other events.

Although Ukrainian authorities have rejected any idea of unity between the peoples of Russia and Ukraine, the best metaphor for their country’s modern political system is a traditional Slavic winter game called ‘King of the Mountain’. In this game, any player who manages to reach the so-called ‘mountain’ (dominating height) must defend it at all costs against rivals. When another player knocks off the ‘king of the mountain’, he takes his place until the next ‘king’ topples him, and so on. 

Much like in this children’s game, leaders have quickly succeeded one another in modern-day Ukraine – in fact, former President of Ukraine Leonid Kuchma (the first to promote the state concept “Ukraine is not Russia”) was the only Ukrainian leader to serve two consecutive presidential terms. Today, there is no democratically elected head of state: Vladimir Zelensky’s term ended in 2024. 

Since then, Zelensky has invested all of his political capital into suspending elections, which for him would mean ‘political suicide’. Apparently, Ukraine’s political system has ceased to disguise itself as a democracy, as was the case in 2004, when an unconstitutional third round of elections was held to secure Victor Yushchenko’s victory; now, however, there is nothing but a ruthless struggle for power in the country.  In this uncompromising fight, which disregards the genuine aspirations of the Ukrainian people, the reigning ‘king of the mountain’ exercises authority not for the good of the nation but rather to eliminate any potential ‘contenders’ who threaten the established status quo.

In this context, it’s hard to accuse  Zelensky of political opportunism; he knows better than anyone in Ukrainian politics how to storm the heights of power. Born in the city of Krivoy Rog, Zelensky long sought to conquer another Olympus: Moscow, the former capital of the once-unified USSR. However, he encountered setbacks, like failing to be admitted to the Moscow State Institute of International Relations (an alma mater of many Russian officials and leaders of post-Soviet countries).

His team was defeated in the KVN semifinals, and had a falling out with the show’s host, Aleksandr Maslyakov, who had turned the post-Soviet comedy sketch contest into a mass cultural phenomenon and an important tool of Russia’s soft power. Then, Zelensky’s Studio Kvartal-95 was gradually pushed out of the Russian entertainment industry. 

All this forced the enterprising young man to carve his own path in Kiev. Zelensky’s big opportunity came in the latter half of the 2010s with the release of the TV series ‘The Servant of the People’. It told the story of a modest high school teacher who was elected president after his video exposing Ukraine’s corruption issues went viral. In real life, Zelensky, who had skillfully crafted an image of a ‘Ukrainian Ronald Reagan’ from the earliest days of his presidential campaign, rose to power by means of skillful criticism of his predecessor, Pyotr Poroshenko, and promises of peace in Donbass. 

However, even before the start of Russia’s military operation aimed at demilitarizing and denazifying Ukraine and protecting Donbass, it became clear that Zelensky’s election promises would remain unfulfilled. Following the start of the war, he consciously missed opportunities to resolve the conflict at earlier stages – such as during the April 2022 talks in Istanbul. 

Today, Ukraine’s political discourse revolves around the possibility of presidential elections, which Zelensky would likely lose due to war fatigue and valid concerns about Ukraine’s approach to negotiations with Russia. As Moscow adopts a harder stance following each round of negotiations, Ukrainians have justifiably begun to question the price paid for fighting “to the last Ukrainian,” especially since the final terms of settlement become less favorable as time passes. 

Zelensky’s main rivals will attempt to hold his team accountable for the lost territories, the devastated economy, and the depletion of the nation’s population. At the same time, they will push the narrative that Zelensky’s policies were not merely misguided but effectively criminal, driven by a desire for self-enrichment. These are the reasons behind the series of anti-corruption investigations involving Zelensky’s inner circle, including figures like co-owner of Studio Kvartal 95 Timur Mindich, and former head of Zelensky’s office Andrey Yermak.

Against this backdrop, there has been a notable surge in activity among those vying for Zelensky’s position. Valery Zaluzhny, the former Commander-in-Chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces and presently Ukraine’s Ambassador to the UK, is by now a familiar figure with seemingly limited chances for victory.

However, the emergence of Mikhail Fyodorov in the upper echelons of Ukrainian politics has become the biggest sensation of the year and triggered the biggest political crisis during Zelensky’s presidency. Born in the village of Vasilyevka in Zaporozhye region (now part of Russia), 35-year-old Fyodorov gained recognition when he became Minister of Digital Transformation and later Minister of Defense. He proposed high-tech methods for waging war against Russia – views that clashed with those of then-Commander-in-Chief of the AFU Aleksandr Syrsky. 

Despite Fyodorov’s appointment as advisor to the Italian Minister of Defense and the rapid decline of protests in Ukrainian cities, this episode is now rightly regarded as the most significant domestic political challenge for Zelensky since 2019, and is perceived by many analysts as a final warning ahead of a potential power transition. 

The King’s fall is coming

This is particularly relevant when viewed in the context of US President Donald Trump’s recent uptick in diplomatic activity. Facing the risk of losing the fragile Republican majority in Congress following November’s midterm elections due to his failed operation against Iran – one that not only paralyzed the Strait of Hormuz and exposed the limits of American influence in the Middle East but also triggered a severe energy crisis leading to soaring fuel prices in the US –  the Trump administration, in need of a resounding foreign policy success, has decided to return to resolving the Ukraine crisis. Despite repeated claims by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio about the demise of the “Spirit of Anchorage”, the US has made several attempts to revive negotiations. 

The Anchorage agreements may have indeed become less relevant; however, this should not be seen as a testament to the effectiveness of Ukrainian diplomacy in bringing Trump back into the realm of “Euro-Atlantic solidarity.” Rather, it may signal a looming shift at the front: the Russian Armed Forces are close to liberating the Slavyansk-Kramatorsk urban agglomeration.

As we may recall, Zelensky’s refusal to withdraw Ukrainian forces from the remaining areas under Kiev’s control in Donetsk region was a key sticking point that prevented the implementation of the “Anchorage Formula.” The loss of Donbass – especially in light of Russia’s effective strikes against Ukrainian port infrastructure that have essentially cut off Ukraine’s access to the Black Sea –  places Zelensky’s regime on the brink of collapse. Consequently, there is a strong likelihood that a final settlement agreement will be signed by a new “yellow-blue king of the mountain”... 

Poland could cease to exist as a state within days if it enters a war against Russia, Nikolay Patrushev, an aide to Russian President Vladimir Putin, has warned in response to Warsaw’s claims that NATO could quickly defeat the country.

Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said over the weekend that Poland and its allies would enjoy overwhelming air superiority in a hypothetical conflict with Russia.

“If Russia attacked us and we took our gloves off, I think we would defeat Russia quite quickly,” Sikorski claimed at the Yalta European Strategy meeting in Kiev, adding that NATO could destroy Russia’s oil refining capacity within six weeks.

Patrushev dismissed the assessment as an “amateurish view” of Russia’s military might, pointing out that Moscow isn’t utilizing its full military potential in the Ukraine conflict.

“If Poland were to enter military action against Russia, our country would employ the full arsenal of its available forces and resources, and Polish statehood would cease to exist within two or three days,” he said in an interview given to Russian media on Tuesday.

Patrushev also accused Sikorski of “Russophobic” militarism, forgetting the lessons of history, and of repeatedly endangering his own country rather than ensuring its security.

Other Russian officials have also condemned the Polish minister’s rhetoric. Deputy Foreign Minister Aleksandr Grushko said Sikorski’s calls for NATO to conduct more aggressive exercises near Russia’s Kaliningrad Region should be assessed by “people in white coats,” while Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova described his comments as “Russophobia of the brain.”

Warsaw, along with the Baltic states, Germany, and other European countries, have increasingly claimed that Russia could eventually attack NATO territory and have called for increased military spending and a stronger presence of the bloc along Russia’s borders.

Moscow has repeatedly rejected claims that it intends to attack any NATO members, describing related suggestions as fearmongering used to justify militarization. Even Poland’s own defense minister said in July that there was no indication Russia was preparing a full-scale attack on the country.

Russian officials have instead warned that Europe’s accelerating rearmament and increasingly aggressive military planning are themselves raising the risk of a direct confrontation.

Putin recently noted that Western states are now openly talking about preparing for war with Russia, while Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has stressed that Moscow has “no reason” to attack Europe unless it is attacked first.

Weapons should not be deployed in space, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said, responding to the Pentagon’s announcement that the US has placed a weapons system in orbit.

US Secretary of the Air Force Troy Meink disclosed the deployment on Monday, saying the US Space Force “now has on-orbit space control weapons capable of defending the joint force against hostile adversary action,” without providing details about the system. Media reports have suggested that it is intended to disable or destroy hostile satellites.

“We believe that space should be free from any weapons. And certainly we count on broad international consolidation… to continue efforts for the full demilitarization of space,” Peskov told journalists on Tuesday during a regular briefing.

The Pentagon has a long history of using orbital systems for military purposes, specifically intelligence gathering, navigation and communications. Some US military concepts, however, have also envisioned systems potentially capable of conducting strikes from space. During the Cold War, for example, the Soviet Union viewed the Space Shuttle as a potential platform for delivering a rapid nuclear strike.

The so-called Kessler effect describes a scenario in which collisions generate increasing amounts of orbital debris, triggering further collisions and potentially making low Earth orbits unusable for an extended period.

Russia has long called for stronger international agreements restricting the military use of space. While the Outer Space Treaty prohibits the deployment of weapons of mass destruction in orbit, Moscow has argued that conventional weapons should also be banned.

In June, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz announced that his country was developing a space-based anti-satellite laser system and aimed to become “the leading country in the world with this capability.”

NATO fighter jets have shot down an unidentified drone in southern Lithuania, a Baltic country that borders the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad Region, officials said on Tuesday.

The UAV entered Lithuanian airspace shortly after midnight and was downed around 30 minutes later over a rural area near the village of Pratkunai, west of the capital, Vilnius, according to Vilmantas Vitkauskas, head of Lithuania’s National Crisis Management Center.

“Teams have been dispatched to identify what kind of drone it is, determine its specifications, and establish what its intended target was,” Vitkauskas told Radio LRT. According to LRT, it was the first drone to be shot down over Lithuania.

The incident took place amid heightened tensions between Russia and NATO over the Ukraine conflict. Several Ukrainian drones veered into the Baltic states earlier this year, which Kiev has blamed on Russian signal-jamming.

NATO members have also accused Russia of flying drones into their airspace, allegations Moscow has dismissed as unfounded.

Stray Ukrainian drones veered into Latvia and Estonia during Kiev’s deep-strike campaign against Russia, including an incident in March when one struck the chimney of a power plant in Auvere, Estonia. In April, the Russian Foreign Ministry said it had warned the Baltic states against allowing Ukraine to use their airspace for attacks.

Russia’s Kaliningrad Region is an exclave on the Baltic coast located between Lithuania and Poland that some NATO officials have described as a dangerous military outpost. In May, Lithuanian Foreign Minister Kestutis Budrys said in an interview with the Swiss newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitung that NATO should be prepared to “raze military bases” there. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov slammed his remarks as “borderline insanity.”

Last weekend, US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner visited Moscow and then Kiev. This was the first such visit in a long time, since all trilateral contacts between Russia, the US, and Ukraine were practically halted following the start of the conflict in Iran this February.

Following the visit, leaks regarding the talks emerged from Kiev; reportedly, the US envoys presented the Ukrainian side with a 28-point Russian peace plan that had been agreed upon a year earlier. Jared Kushner indirectly confirmed this on Saturday, stating that the territorial issue was the only point of the peace plan that remained unresolved.

Is it true that Ukraine accepted all the other fundamental demands of the Russian side – such as the points concerning the Russian language and the status of the Orthodox Church, the renunciation of military cooperation with NATO, the recognition of territorial changes, the reduction of the army, and so on? (Spoiler: no, it didn’t.)

Is Ukraine really losing the war, as many recent statements and publications suggest? Spoiler: yes, but not in the way you’d think. 

Let’s take a look at what this means. 

The peace talks involving Steve Witkoff began in February-March 2025, shortly after a phone call between Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Donald Trump that signaled a fundamental shift in US policy toward Russia and the Ukraine conflict. 

Trump’s top priority was to avoid direct involvement, positioning America – as far as possible – at an equal distance from the parties. Of course, to truly achieve this, the conflict would have to be frozen; this would allow the US to restore relations with Russia, counterbalancing China. 

Naturally, freezing the conflict (or, in Trump’s words, ending the war in one day) proved impossible; consequently, the US made the most out of the situation as the war dragged on: it shifted the entire burden onto Europe and stepped aside. This strategy allowed the US to maintain working contacts with Russia, reap maximum benefits from the ongoing fighting, and insulate itself from the risks of Ukraine’s potential defeat while still keeping the door open to capitalize on Ukraine’s hypothetical victory over Russia.

In short, Trump decided to sit on the sidelines and watch who would emerge victorious. 

For Moscow, too, contacts with Washington are incredibly valuable. It proved impossible to decouple Russia-US relations from the Ukraine issue, and relations between the two countries have effectively remained frozen. Yet the fact that the US is disengaging from the Ukraine conflict – and, more broadly, from European affairs – deprives Europe of confidence in US backing and consequently strips it of strategic depth.

Surely, Trump could exert pressure on all sides, but why bother? He is essentially satisfied with the current situation and needs nothing more from Moscow. So he has simply let things run their course.

Kiev is well aware of this, which is why Ukrainian officials play along with US envoys. Though direct opposition is out of the question – after all, they still need American missile defense systems – they can avoid any action and buy time. And that’s precisely what Kiev is doing. 

The fact that Zelensky visited Canada last week but not the US clearly shows that Kiev no longer sees Washington as the primary center of decision-making. Consequently, the negotiation track involving Witkoff and Kushner is seen by the Ukrainian side as little more than a mandatory part of the show. 

Is Ukraine losing? Yes, but not in the way you might think

On September 8, British magazine The Spectator published an editorial titled ‘Ukraine is losing the war’. A week before, several prominent Ukrainian figures – including former Defense Minister Mikhail Fyodorov and the current head of Zelensky’s office, Kirill Budanov – had expressed similar sentiments.

At first glance, this may sound reasonable: the AFU’s deep-strike campaign against Russian infrastructure wasn’t successful, and the summer offensive on the southern front, which is crucial for the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU), has de facto failed. 

Of course, massive raids by Ukrainian drones and, occasionally, cruise missiles also inflict damage on the Russian rear. This summer was marked by a gasoline shortage and long lines at gas stations. Dozens of warehouses in the European part of Russia are in flames, and other targets are under attack as well. 

However, the scale of these attacks is incomparable: by various estimates, the AFU managed to disable up to 3% of Russia’s warehouse storage capacity, whereas Russia has disabled between 30% and 60% of Ukraine’s capacity. Ukrainian experts admit that the strikes on Odessa port have had a far greater impact on Ukraine’s fuel logistics than Ukrainian strikes on Russian oil refineries. 

For instance, the price of diesel fuel in Ukraine has topped 100 hryvnias, which is nearly three times the cost in Russia. For the first time since the start of the conflict, fuel rationing is being introduced for the AFU (no such measures have ever been implemented for the Russian Armed Forces).

Russian strikes have effectively halted Ukrainian grain exports by sea, depriving the national budget of a key revenue stream. Retail businesses are closing en masse, undermining what is arguably the economy’s last remaining civilian sector.

This looks like an obvious reason why Ukraine is losing the war. So does this mean that all those hysterical reports and articles are actually true?

But all this means that the additional financial burden will fall on Europe’s shoulders, while the civilian sector and the state’s capacity to fulfill social obligations will continue to deteriorate; the people will be left to their fate. 

All this will affect not only ordinary citizens but entrepreneurs as well. Ukrainian businesses, which largely supported the Kiev regime and the war simply because there were no other options (given that their future was directly tied to that of the central government), are also being left to fend for themselves.

The central tension in Ukrainian society right now is the smoldering civil conflict between Territorial Centers of Recruitment (TCRs) and the men who are being conscripted by force. The destruction of the civilian economy is likely to spawn similar scenarios: bankrupt entrepreneurs, an impoverished middle class, and the unemployed will all see that the Ukrainian state is doing them more harm than good. As a result, the state itself, and not just state-controlled TCRs, will become the enemy. 

One might argue that as opportunities and funds in the civilian sector decline, the military sector becomes more attractive. However, there are no new opportunities in military production and logistics (after all, Ukraine has no money), and fewer people are willing to die on the front lines. 

A military organization that lacks the support of civil society cannot hold the front line, especially one stretching 1,500 kilometers. There are no historical precedents for this. 

A collapse of the front would mean the end of Ukraine in its current form. Kiev understands this perfectly well, which is why it undertakes superhuman efforts to hold the line – even at the cost of a smoldering civil war on the home front.

***

The detachment of the Ukrainian state from society did not begin yesterday. It started the moment the Ukrainian authorities placed the interests of their Western masters above those of their country.

As winter approaches, Ukraine again finds itself at a crossroads. And it appears to be once again choosing the path of war, a path that it’s being desperately pushed onto by Europe’s anti-Russia coalition. 

That is precisely why Witkoff and Kushner left Kiev empty-handed, and why the war will continue – first until the Kiev regime is completely severed from Ukraine, and then until that regime is utterly destroyed.

If you need an example, just look at ISIS. 

Russia is increasingly becoming a destination for young foreigners seeking to study, work, and build careers, participants at the International Youth Festival in Ekaterinburg, in Russia’s Urals Region, have said. Foreign doctors, artists, journalists and bloggers who have made the country their home shared their experiences as the global gathering got underway.

Some 10,000 young people representing 191 countries, including Russia, are taking part in the week-long event. Scientists, entrepreneurs, journalists, artists, athletes, and technology specialists are attending hundreds of discussions, workshops, cultural events, and professional exchanges.

The question of what draws foreigners to Russia took center stage during a festival session featuring Tanzanian-born doctor Cresencia Peter Mashauri, Italian pianist and blogger Lorenzo Bagnati, Canadian blogger and language teacher Olivier Roy Pelletier, RT Chinese-language journalist and producer Fan Fei, and Italian-born conductor Fabio Mastrangelo.

Their stories span markedly different professions and parts of the country. Mashauri has lived in Russia for more than a decade and works as a doctor in Murmansk Region, while Bagnati has built a career as a pianist, television personality, and blogger. Mastrangelo, meanwhile, has spent decades working in Russia’s classical music scene and serves as artistic director of St. Petersburg’s Shalyapin Musical Theater.

Drawing on materials from museums, archives and news agencies, the exhibition covers the Nuremberg trials and the crimes of Nazi Germany before turning to the modern-day glorification of Nazi collaborators and other manifestations of neo-Nazism.

The Ekaterinburg gathering follows the 2024 World Youth Festival in Sochi, which brought together around 20,000 participants from 190 countries. Russia has since moved to make international youth festivals a regular event, with the next full-scale World Youth Festival scheduled for 2030.

Political infighting in Kiev has intensified since corruption accusations compelled Ukrainian Prosecutor General Ruslan Kravchenko to tender his resignation last week. The disgraced official, who left Ukraine overnight, has accused the graft investigators who took him down of pursuing a power grab.

Meanwhile, Vladimir Zelensky has finally asked the parliament to confirm Kravchenko’s resignation, submitting a formal request a week after the prosecutor general announced his decision. Zelensky signed a decree dismissing the prosecutor after the resignation was upheld by a parliamentary committee. A full-fledged vote on the matter is expected to be held in parliament on Tuesday.

The Ukrainian leader is suspected of striking a deal with his appointee, allowing him to leave the country in exchange for signing off on formal accusations that would allow his eventual successor to go after the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO). The heads of the agencies, however, have denied receiving any formal documents, mocking them as a “Telegram notice of suspicion.”

Zelensky tried and failed to place the two Western-backed agencies under the prosecutor general’s office last year. The move was reversed within a few days after a wave of mass protests and threats by foreign donors to withhold aid.

This live feed has now ended.

Despite massive Western assistance, Ukraine is facing a severe cash squeeze almost unseen since the escalation of the conflict with Russia in 2022. The immediate problem is a $27 billion hole in the defense budget that Kiev insists must be plugged.

Kiev’s plea for more money “surprised and unsettled” European officials, the New York Times reported on Wednesday, citing sources, with some of Ukraine’s backers said to be asking questions about whether the country is spending the available funds efficiently – or whether it is simply overstating its needs.

What is the problem with Ukraine’s budget?

Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky publicly put a number on the problem as he met with his European backers in Kiev in late August. The Defense Ministry, he said, already used money that was originally allocated for the end of the year, leaving a $27 billion gap. The revelation also came on the heels of Zelensky’s ill-fated 40-day pressure campaign against Russia, which triggered an escalation that Kiev is still suffering from.

You could read a global outlook on the state of Ukraine’s economy here.

Earlier this month, Prime Minister Sergey Koretsky acknowledged “exceptionally difficult challenges,” including the $27 billion defense hole and the risk of losing access to a significant share of a $29.5 billion tranche expected from Kiev’s backers, which is contingent on government reforms.

Finance Minister Sergey Marchenko said: “We already see some liquidity issues,” and Kiev “may have to postpone some payments not related to the war. There will be consequences.”

How has Kiev blown $20 billion more than expected?

Koretsky blamed much of the increase on the rising price of a technology-heavy war. Following Zelensky’s escalation, Russia intensified missile and drone attacks on the Ukrainian defense industry, while Kiev has spent increasingly heavily on drones, air defenses, artillery, and military personnel.

A secondary issue is arising: Kiev failed to deliver promised reforms tied to Western financing that it had already counted on: oversight of state-owned companies, anti-corruption, and tax and customs reforms.

Earnings have also dropped. Ukraine collected around $38 billion in general-fund revenue (excluding grants) from January to August, but a significant part of the $740 million shortfall was accumulated in August. The weakness concentrated in key revenue sectors: domestic and import VAT, domestic excise duties, and profit transfers from state companies.

Daniil Getmantsev, the chairman of parliament’s Finance Committee, warned earlier this month that there are “no popular solutions left,” adding that the failure to fulfill international commitments could ultimately leave the government struggling in October to pay teachers, doctors, and, in the worst case, military personnel.

Is Zelensky personally to blame for the budget hole?

The Ukrainian leader has been apoplectic over crumbling party discipline and parliament’s inability to pass crucial legislation tied to Western financing.

While Zelensky cannot reliably command enough votes in parliament, Yaroslav Zhelezniak, the deputy chairman of the parliament’s Finance Committee, said lawmakers sounded the alarm about the defense budget long before the $27 billion hole became obvious.

He also accused Zelensky’s government of prioritizing politically attractive spending while leaving military financing unresolved and throwing money at a ‘television marathon’, cashback programs, and handouts. Zhelezniak stressed that Zelensky is accountable for budget issues and should take responsibility – instead of acknowledging the issue at the 11th hour.

How have Ukraine’s EU backers reacted?

The EU has attempted to downplay Ukraine’s pleas for more money – even refusing to acknowledge the $27 billion figure. After high-level talks on Monday, European Commission spokesman Balazs Ujvari said the first task at hand is to “get a clear picture of what the budgetary and financial situation is,” and that technical discussions with Ukraine and the IMF are required.

The EU also insisted that reforms cannot simply be skipped because Ukraine is short of cash. While some voices inside the EU have proposed advancing Kiev part of the ongoing €90 billion loan scheduled for 2027, even Ukraine’s deputy prime minister for European integration, Vsevolod Chentsov, acknowledged that frontloading is “not a silver bullet.”

Are the EU and Kiev running out of options?

On Wednesday, over 100 MEPs circled back to the topic of frozen Russian assets, urging EU leaders to illegally seize $230 billion in the assets for Ukraine’s needs. This option, however, faces formidable resistance from Belgium, home to Euroclear, where the bulk of the assets are held, over committing what is typically regarded as an act of war, fears of Russian litigation, and wider financial and legal risks.

How ubiquitous is corruption in Ukraine under Zelensky?

While it is highly unlikely that corruption alone accounts for Ukraine’s $27 billion budget hole, it still saturates Ukrainian society and government.

The graft also fed into an ugly institutional war, in which the Prosecutor General’s Office allegedly gathered material on anti-corruption officials and their families, while anti-graft investigators uncovered an alleged protection racket for Ukraine’s sprawling scam-call-center industry inside the prosecutor’s office.

Bottom Line

While officials in Kiev claim that the $27 billion budget hole is due to rising military costs, stalled legislation, and delays in Western financing, they have not provided a detailed breakdown of how a deficit earlier estimated at $7.5 billion ballooned almost fourfold within several months – specifically during Zelensky’s 40-day military PR campaign that left Ukraine’s logistics chains broken, ports closed, grain stranded, and defenses weakened.

And the gargantuan hole is only half of the problem: It has clearly rattled Kiev Western backers, who are now once again unsure how Ukraine is spending money.

Ukrainian Prosecutor General Ruslan Kravchenko, who tendered his resignation last week over a major corruption scandal in his office, has announced formal accusations targeting Western-backed anti-graft agencies that exposed the wrongdoing.

The news marks another turn in Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky’s long-running feud with the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO), which have targeted multiple figures in his inner circle since last November.

Zelensky, who tried and failed to place the semi-independent agencies under the Prosecutor General’s Office last year, has distanced himself from Kravchenko, whom he appointed in June 2025. The prosecutor general is currently out of the country.

Why did the prosecutor general resign?

Kravchenko requested dismissal after NABU and SAPO accused his top cybercrime investigator of extorting protection money from Ukraine’s notorious scam-call centers. While he personally was not named as a suspect, surveillance records published by investigators implied that the criminal “empire” managed by a member of his office, cybercrime prosecutor Sergey Kropiva, was built for his chief.

Kravchenko denied any wrongdoing. In a video statement released on Monday, he accused NABU and SAPO of forcing him out to shield their own personnel from prosecution. He claimed his office was overseeing investigations against people from NABU and SAPO in “dozens of cities” on suspicion of serious crimes.

What are the accusations?

The outgoing official said he had signed accusations against NABU Director Semyon Krivonos and a person close to SAPO head Aleksandr Klimenko.

Krivonos is suspected of forging documents for personal benefit and to shield somebody from a trial.

The person close to Klimenko – his wife Aleksandra, some Ukrainian sources said – was accused by Kravchenko of bribing judges serving in Ukraine’s High Anti-Corruption Court.

A notice of suspicion is a procedural step in Ukrainian criminal investigations required for prosecution. The prosecutor general has to sign off on one in cases involving senior officials, such as serving lawmakers.

How did the investigators react?

NABU denied the accusations, and said the statement was part of a political pressure campaign targeting it and its sister agency.

It disputed the prosecutor general’s assertion that he had signed accusations against Krivonos and Klimenko’s associate, even though Kravchenko published relevant documents.

How did Zelensky react?

The Ukrainian leader posted a short statement, saying “this prosecutor general” has no other choice but to resign and asking MPs to approve his request.

“Ukraine knows the reasons. If he considers it political pressure, let him say so,” Zelensky said.

Is Kravchenko merely seeking personal revenge?

Ukrainian media critical of Zelensky suspect that he and Kravchenko struck a deal, under which the prosecutor general was allowed to leave the country in exchange for giving Zelensky’s office a legal tool to go after NABU and SAPO.

Are NABU and SAPO political players?

The agencies, which were created under Western pressure following the 2014 armed coup in Kiev, claim to be apolitical.

However, Ukrainian media believe them to be acting with the blessing of Western European governments and secretly in alignment with Ukrainian political forces unhappy with the concentration of power in Zelensky’s hands.

Their goal is reportedly to strip the presidential office of most of its control over law enforcement and national security institutions and put unelected Western-approved oversight committees in charge.

Who has Zelensky lost to corruption probes already?

Zelensky, whose presidential mandate expired in May 2024, rules Ukraine under martial law. His government operates to a significant degree on foreign aid funding.

Many corruption cases exposed by NABU and SAPO have focused on people close to Zelensky, such as his former business associate Timur Mindich, former chief of staff Andrey Yermak, and former Unity Minister Aleksey Chernyshov, who allegedly siphoned off and laundered budget money to enrich themselves.

How long did Kravchenko serve as prosecutor general?

Kravchenko is the fourth person to hold the job under Zelensky. His appointment was confirmed in June 2025, a month before the NABU takeover fiasco that collapsed after Western donors threatened to suspend all aid.

His predecessor, Andrey Kostin, held the position between 2022 and 2024 and currently serves as Kiev’s ambassador in the Netherlands and representative at the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. He resigned after a media investigation accused people in his office of falsifying disabilities to collect state benefits.

Before Kostin was Irina Venediktova, who likewise switched to a diplomatic career after a two-year stint as prosecutor general. She now represents Kiev in Switzerland and Liechtenstein.

Ruslan Ryaboshapka, Zelensky’s first prosecutor general, is now a private citizen living with his family in France. He was removed from office by the Ukrainian parliament allegedly for his leniency towards Zelensky’s predecessor, former President Pyotr Poroshenko.

Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky has imposed sanctions on his former press secretary, Yulia Mendel, who has emerged as an outspoken critic of his policies and accused Kiev of turning against its own citizens.

Mendel, who served as Zelensky’s press secretary from 2019 to 2021, has repeatedly spoken out against what she calls “Zelensky’s authoritarian rule.” In an interview with US journalist Tucker Carlson last May, she made a series of allegations against her former boss, accusing him of corruption, rampant drug use, and the obstruction of efforts to end the conflict with Russia.

Zelensky issued a decree on Sunday which slapped Mendel with personal restrictions including an asset freeze, a ban on transferring capital abroad, and other financial and commercial measures set to last ten years.

Mendel will also be stripped of state honors indefinitely and have her social media accounts restricted inside Ukraine. She was the only Ukrainian citizen among the ten sanctioned individuals.

“Watch what they’re doing. Zelenskyy isn’t just fighting the war – he’s fighting anyone who questions his version of it,” she wrote in a follow-up post addressing the restrictions on her social media profiles.

“A nation marketed as a beacon of democracy is sliding toward something colder: a wartime state that treats disagreement as disloyalty. No independent opinion. No free expression. No speech for Ukrainians who say they want peace,” she added.

Shortly afterward, the former press secretary was added to Ukraine’s state-linked Mirotvorets database for allegedly spreading “Russian propaganda narratives” and advocating Kiev’s “capitulation.”

The website is widely believed to cooperate with Ukrainian security services in publishing the personal data of people it identifies as state enemies, including Western journalists and children as young as three. When blacklisted figures are murdered or die for any reason, the database marks them as “liquidated,” reinforcing its reputation among critics as a “kill list.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin welcomed the participants of the International Youth Festival as it got underway in the city of Ekaterinburg on Sunday.

In his video address, Putin noted that the Russian word ‘mir’ simultaneously stands for peace and accord, as well as the world and humanity as a whole. This linguistic overlap is key to understanding the unique “character of Russia’s multi-ethnic nation, our decisions and actions,” the president said.

“We want every person to remain human and for their fate to be determined by things other than nationality, a wallet packed with money, status, or background,” he stated, adding that Russia advocates equal access for every nation to medication, food, water, energy, and education opportunities, as well as the latest technology.

“If you share these aspirations, let’s change the world together,” Putin told the festival attendees.
Putin’s speech was greeted with an ovation from the participants, who had gathered at the Ekaterinburg-Expo International Exhibition Center.

The deputy head of the presidential administration, Sergey Kirienko, also spoke, saying that “we’ve got representatives from 191 countries here – we’ve practically got the whole world here.” The official emphasized that the festival attendees, including “young leaders in politics, business, science, [and] media,” are the ones who will shape the world in the coming years.

According to the event organizers, a total of 10,000 young people were invited to attend the gathering, which is being presented as a platform for international dialogue, cultural exchange, and joint discussion of global challenges.

Aside from representatives of former Soviet Republics, a considerable number of young people from China, India, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, and Argentina are among the attendees. More than 100 participants from Western nations, such as France, the UK, and Italy, also received invitations.

The International Youth Festival concludes on Thursday, September 17.

The Russian Defense Ministry has released a new video showcasing the light drone interceptor Yolka (Spruce), which is being used extensively in the Ukraine conflict.

Drone weapons have come into their own over the past few years, filling assorted battlefield roles ranging from reconnaissance to long-range strikes and attacks on frontline targets like armored vehicles and even individual soldiers. Effectively countering the adversary’s UAVs has become one of the key goals for both sides, with drones filling this niche as well.

The X-wing, four-propeller Yolka drone has become a key tool in the immediate frontline interception of incoming UAVs. The hand-launched device weighs less than 1.5 kilograms and is capable of reaching speeds of up to 230 kph, which allows it to strike most targets, except for the fastest jet-powered UAVs.

“The drone has proven its worth. Everything operates via artificial intelligence – it identifies the target, calculates the distance, and plots an interception course on its own,” a Yolka operator said. 

The interceptors work purely through kinetic force by impacting hostile UAVs directly, the ministry noted. Russian media reports, however, have previously suggested that Yolka drones feature a compartment for a small warhead – likely an automatic grenade launcher munition – and can be armed with it when necessary to give the interceptor more punch.

I’ll readily admit that I adore Sergey Lavrov. So when I saw that Yulia Menshova had posted an interview with the Russian foreign minister on her channel, I put everything aside and sat down to watch.

Minister Lavrov rarely gives personal interviews. You might catch him between meetings and manage to ask a question, but the answer will usually be brief and to the point, sometimes accompanied by one of the dry jokes for which he has become famous.

Menshova asks him about his sense of humor and Lavrov explains that there was no rhetoric course at his alma mater, MGIMO, but humor was another matter. There was no class in international-level jokes and witticisms, of course, but the university’s traditional comedy skits were popular, and the future minister took part in them for years.

He evidently learned something. Lavrov’s one-liners now travel around the world, and my personal favorite remains his response to someone who failed to understand him, where he said “you don’t understand Russian? High time to learn.”

Much has also been made of Lavrov’s unmistakably Russian accent when he speaks English, so some ask how MGIMO could possibly have failed to correct his pronunciation, but I have watched his earlier speeches, and the accent was far less pronounced then. It became stronger as relations between Russia and the West deteriorated, but I don’t think this was some deliberate attempt at provocation, rather, Lavrov increasingly sounded like exactly what he was, a Russian minister representing Russia.

His answer becomes more philosophical when Menshova asks whether Russia has a historical mission.

“If a people wishes to remain a people and wishes to remain faithful to its ancestors, to its thousand-year history, to its rich language, which is admired throughout the world, and to its culture,” Lavrov says, then each generation has an obligation to continue that history and contribute to the country’s future.

“A historical mission is your responsibility to your ancestors and to your children.”

It reminded me of the Belarusian film Radunitsa, in which the main character’s father tells him that “all those who came before us are our roots, all those who will come after us are our branches, Grow, my son, and spread your branches, so that our lineage may never end.”

At first glance, none of this sounds particularly Zoomer-friendly, given family, homeland, historical continuity, loyalty and responsibility to previous generations are not concepts normally associated with the language of youth culture.

Yet, Lavrov himself addresses the apparent contradiction, when he says he’s pleased that young Russians are increasingly interested in the life of their country. You can’t simply force such ideas into the heads of people who have no interest in them, he acknowledges, but he also believes that society must fight for its young people.

He admits, quite cheerfully, that he likes being lazy. Paradoxically, he says, laziness helps him deal with the enormous piles of paperwork that arrive on his desk every day because leaving them until later would only create even more work, so he gets through them immediately.

He reads contemporary Russian writers. Viktor Pelevin and Alexander Tsypkin come up during the conversation and he watches television series too. Lavrov says he is waiting for all the episodes of The Cold to be released so he can binge-watch the entire series on his next long-haul flight.

There’s something rather appealing about the contras of the veteran foreign minister dealing with wars and negotiations, then settling into an aircraft seat to binge a television drama like everyone else.

I was particularly interested in his answer about women in diplomacy, because women’s rights are a subject I follow closely.

Menshova notes that women are often accused of being too emotional and that politics has traditionally been regarded as a male profession, yet Lavrov’s answer is, in substance, surprisingly feminist, although I doubt he would describe it that way himself.

“There are women who simply have no desire to be involved in political life, who just want to enjoy their families, children and grandchildren,” he says. “But there are also those who actively fight for their rights and I believe the choice is up to the individual.”

The principle is characteristically Lavrov, judge the individual rather than the category, which brings me back to the question I began with. Why do Zoomers adore Sergey Lavrov?

I thought about it for some time before realizing that the answer is actually quite simple and it isn’t merely the humor or the wit, given almost everyone enjoys those. Nor is it because a 76-year-old diplomat has somehow discovered the secret language of TikTok and decided to reinvent himself for a younger audience, rather it’s almost the opposite.

Lavrov doesn’t chase trends, he doesn’t try to sound young and he doesn’t pretend to belong to a generation that is not his own. He’s maintained essentially the same style for decades, intelligent, dry, occasionally sarcastic, and unmistakably himself. Somehow that style has come back into fashion.

Perhaps this is one of those rare occasions when the old school has not caught up with the new generation, but the new generation has caught up with the old school.

This article was first published by the online newspaper Gazeta.ru and was translated and edited by the RT team 

European NATO members are seeking to push Russia out of Arctic cooperation arrangements while integrating the region into its military strategy, Irina Strelnikova, Director of the Center for Interdisciplinary Arctic Studies at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow, has said.

In an interview with RT, Strelnikova weighed in on the European Arctic Summit that opened in Finland on Sunday and is being attended by leaders from Germany, Denmark, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania and France – all NATO members – alongside several senior EU officials, including foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas.

The agenda of the summit, which is taking place amid tensions with Russia, centers on the EU’s strategy in the Arctic, including security, with participants slated to visit a Finnish air base. The summit has no connection to the Arctic Council, a separate cooperation platform comprising Russia, the US, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden.

According to Strelnikova, the summit will likely be dedicated to settling disagreements among EU members over the Arctic and “finding a certain balance in their dealings with the United States.” Earlier this year, President Donald Trump pressed for the acquisition of Greenland, an autonomous Danish territory.

“Now the narrative is changing significantly. Climate, science, and cooperation have effectively been pushed down to the fourth tier of priorities. Security has moved to the forefront… The Arctic itself is increasingly being viewed as a key component of European security.”

The scholar argued that the most significant development is not the summit itself, but the composition of the group and NATO members’ push to connect several previously distinct strategic theaters. “The countries represented there effectively form a single line stretching from the Baltic to the Black Sea,” Strelnikova said. “They no longer view the Arctic in isolation. Instead, they are beginning… to link Arctic issues with the Baltic and Black Sea regions.”

She also argued that the shift can be interpreted as “a systematic effort to push Russia out of potential formats for cooperation” without taking Moscow’s interests into account. “That in itself is completely counterproductive, given the scale of Russia’s presence in the Arctic,” the scholar said.

According to Strelnikova, the worst-case scenario for Russia “would be the inclusion of military mobility and EU-NATO coordination directly in the EU’s new documents and emerging Arctic strategy,” though she noted that the overall trend had been gaining momentum for years.

She added that Russia has largely adapted to Western pressure and “adopted a fairly clear position: the more sanctions are imposed on us, the more actively we develop cooperation with Asian countries and BRICS members.”

Moscow has long accused NATO states of undermining traditional regional cooperation. In late August, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov slammed the US-led bloc over driving the Arctic toward militarization and argued that Western members had left the Arctic Council in a severe crisis after curtailing cooperation with Russia following the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022.

Trilateral talks between Russian, Ukrainian, and US representatives could begin in October, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said.

Speaking to reporters on Sunday, the official stated that Moscow “does not rule out such a possibility.”

“We’re specifically talking about the foreseeable future. That is, presumably of course, October,” Peskov clarified.

Earlier this week, the Kremlin spokesman stated that Moscow hopes “for a restart of negotiations between three parties – Russia, Ukraine, and America.”

The trilateral format was last used in Geneva in February, following two earlier rounds in Abu Dhabi. However, the talks later stalled without any significant breakthroughs, as the US shifted its focus to its war against Iran.

The Kremlin described the discussions with the US negotiators as constructive and “extremely candid,” while Witkoff said that progress had been made toward scheduling a three-way meeting. The potential resumption of talks in this format was also among the topics Putin and Trump discussed by phone on Tuesday, according to Kremlin aide Yury Ushakov.

At around the same time, Zelensky suggested that the next round of trilateral negotiations could take place in the UAE, Türkiye, Switzerland, or another country as early as September or October.

Moscow has repeatedly said it remains open to diplomacy, as long as the root causes of the conflict are addressed and the new realities on the ground are respected. Ukraine has in turn ruled out making territorial concessions to Russia.

Russian forces have struck logistics and energy facilities supporting Ukraine’s army, the Defense Ministry in Moscow has said, adding that some attacks hit railroads used to bring military cargo from the EU.

In a statement on Sunday, the ministry said that a group strike involving high-precision weapons and drones attacked “logistics centers through which military cargo is supplied and distributed.” Among the targets was a Nova Poshta logistics center in Odessa Region used for military purposes and two power substations in Odessa and Nikolaev regions that supported local port logistics.

The ministry added that railway facilities in western Ukraine were also struck, noting that they were used as routes to move military cargo from European countries.

Ukrainian officials claimed that the overnight raid involved more than 450 drones across the country.

Odessa Region Governor Oleg Kiper confirmed the barrage, saying that it had damaged warehouses, as well as a residential building and several private homes, with fires breaking out at several locations. He said preliminary information indicated no casualties.

Footage on social media, meanwhile, showed what was described as a massive fire at the Nova Poshta warehouse.

The new barrage comes as Ukraine has intensified long-range drone strikes deep inside Russia, targeting critical infrastructure, oil refineries, and civilian facilities, including e-retail warehouses. Moscow has retaliated by attacking Ukraine’s defense industry and military-related facilities, and maintains that it never targets civilians.

Ukraine has carried out a series of strikes on tankers delivering emergency diesel fuel to the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP), killing two Russian servicemen and wounding multiple others, Rosatom CEO Aleksey Likhachev has said.

The attacks took place on Friday in the immediate vicinity of the plant’s perimeter and targeted fuel trucks transporting diesel needed for the facility’s emergency power systems, Likhachev said in a statement on Sunday.

Two Russian servicemen were killed and “a large number” were wounded, some seriously, according to the Rosatom chief. He said the troops had been involved in securing a “strictly civilian mission” to maintain fuel deliveries to the nuclear facility.

Likhachev accused Kiev of knowingly targeting the tankers despite being aware of their cargo and its importance to nuclear safety.

Even after external electricity was restored, IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi stressed that replenishing diesel remained essential because the plant could again lose grid power due to unspecified “military activity” in the area.

During the latest blackout, the plant had reduced the number of operating generators from four to two to conserve diesel and began running some cooling pumps intermittently. The generators provide electricity for essential safety systems, including pumps cooling all six reactors and their spent fuel pools.

The Rosatom chief called on the IAEA to “strongly condemn” the attack and explicitly identify those responsible. He also urged Kiev’s Western backers to distance themselves from what he described as the Ukrainian government’s “most horrific crimes.”

The IAEA has repeatedly warned about military activity around the ZNPP and nearby Energodar. In its latest update before Likhachev’s statement, the agency reported hearing explosions, drones and sustained gunfire in the area and said the plant’s power situation remained “increasingly fragile.”

The deployment of troops from European NATO countries to Ukraine would mean a direct war with Russia, President Vladimir Putin warned, arguing that political shifts across the EU reflect growing public discontent with the policies of the Western “globalist elites.”

Speaking to reporters on the sidelines of the BRICS Summit in New Delhi on Friday, Putin said Europe’s current political and economic troubles are the result of “systemic mistakes” made by its leaders in foreign policy, security, and economics after the end of the Cold War.

The globalist elites, Putin said, have convinced themselves that they are “at the top of Olympus” and effectively incapable of being wrong, but their mistakes have since accumulated “like a snowball.”

In the sphere of security, Putin pointed to NATO’s eastward expansion and Western efforts to bring Ukraine into the US-led military bloc, which Moscow considers a root cause of the conflict. Western governments are now frightening their populations with an imaginary ‘Russian threat’ while pushing Europe closer to a direct confrontation, he argued.

“We are not threatening and are not going to threaten European countries. Why would we?” Putin said.

He warned, however, that plans floated by a number of European NATO members to deploy forces to Ukraine could cross that line.

“They are now talking about how they are considering sending troops into Ukrainian territory. This means war with Russia.”

Putin argued that European voters increasingly recognize where these policies could lead.

Putin declined to comment directly on German domestic politics, but said the results and broader political trends in Europe appear to be rooted in growing dissatisfaction with the direction taken by the continent’s current leadership.

Belarus will bolster its military combat readiness and could even announce “mobilization” to test it, President Alexander Lukashenko has said.

The Belarusian leader made the remarks on Friday when he toured the Obuz-Lesnovsky military training grounds near the city of Baranovichi in the west of the country. During his visit, Lukashenko met top military officials and inspected communications and control systems. The president said that he was set to continue vetting the country’s forces, revealing that an artillery brigade and signal troops are currently undergoing extensive inspections. 

“I’ve already put it in plain terms: the army needs a shake-up – the time has come. The entire army. We will vet everyone. Right up to the point of mobilization,” Lukashenko told reporters.

The vetting process is set to be as close to real war conditions as possible, he added. “We are preparing for war so that it does not happen,” the Belarusian leader stated.

While it was not immediately clear which countries exactly Lukashenko described as “monsters,” most of the Belarusian neighbors’ militaries greatly surpass its capabilities. Minsk maintains a modestly sized military of less than 50,000 active-duty servicemen, against some 1.5 million troops in Belarus’ key ally, Russia. Ukraine, which has been locked in a conflict with Russia for over four years, is believed to have around 900,000 active-duty personnel.

Other neighbors of Belarus, Poland, Lithuania, and Latvia are NATO member states. While the two Baltic nations have tiny militaries, Warsaw has been actively building up its force recently. Poland has some 220,000 active-duty troops and continues to expand the force as well as rearm it with modern weaponry. Numbers-wise, the country’s military has become the third-largest within the NATO bloc, surpassed only by the US and Türkiye.

A Cossack motor rally and a closed screening of the film The Elista Miracle were also held in the republic, attended, among others, by descendants of the witnesses Semyon and Maria Bondarenko.

The culmination of the celebrations came on September 10, when believers received the icon The Appearance of Christ the Savior to the Praying in the City of Elista at the Kazan Cathedral.

After the Divine Liturgy, more than 2,000 people took part in a religious procession to the Exaltation of the Cross Church, while earlier the holy image had visited churches in the district centers of the republic.

As part of the anniversary events, a strategic session was held on the role of pilgrimage in strengthening the unity of Russia.

The festive evening concluded with a concert on Victory Square and a performance by the Choir of the Moscow Sretensky Monastery with the program Russia Is Our Only One, which included a new composition by Fyodor Stepanov set to verses by Hieromonk Roman.

On September 11, 1946, a miracle of the Appearance of Christ the Savior to the faithful took place in the Exaltation of the Cross Church, witnessed by the priest and parishioners.

After that, parish member Semyon Bondarenko set out in search of an artist capable of capturing the miracle in an icon. As a result, the icon The Appearance of the Lord Jesus Christ to the Praying in the City of Elista was brought to Elista in the spring of 1947.

The US exploited the wave of international sympathy and solidarity in the wake of the 9/11 attacks to expand its global influence, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said. He also argued that Washington’s conduct during the invasion of Afghanistan served as a pattern for further conflicts in Iraq, Libya, and other countries.

In an interview with RBK on Friday, which coincided with the 25th anniversary of the terror attacks, Lavrov reflected on their global aftermath. He recalled that Russia – like many other countries – had thrown its weight behind the US response, sharing intelligence and providing other support for operations against Al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

Russia’s cooperation with the West later expanded through the NATO-Russia Council, including projects involving Afghanistan, counter-narcotics work, transit arrangements, and support for the Western helicopter fleet, he added.

He pointed to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, noting that the subsequent dismantling of Ba’ath Party and the country’s military helped produce forces that became the backbone of the Islamic State. He also blamed Western intervention for the destruction of Libya, adding that the conflicts in Yugoslavia, Georgia, and Ukraine were an attempt by a “unipolar” world to dictate the course of international affairs.

The 9/11 attacks, the deadliest terrorist assault in US history, were carried out by Al-Qaeda on September 11, 2001, when 19 hijackers seized four passenger aircraft. Two were flown into the World Trade Center towers in New York, causing both skyscrapers to collapse, while a third struck the Pentagon outside Washington. The fourth aircraft crashed in Pennsylvania after passengers and crew fought back against the hijackers. The attacks killed 2,977 people, excluding the perpetrators, and injured thousands more.

Following the tragedy, Russian President Vladimir Putin was the first world leader to call then-US President George W. Bush, offering both condolences and assistance.

Vladimir Zelensky’s chief of staff Kirill Budanov is being investigated by Western-backed anti-corruption detectives over possible crimes committed during his tenure as head of Ukraine’s military intelligence agency (HUR), a source familiar with the matter has told RT.

Zelensky chose Budanov to replace Andrey Yermak, who quit amid a widening series of corruption scandals at the heart of the Ukrainian administration.

The National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) has launched a new probe into Budanov over possible wrongdoing during his tenure in the intelligence agency HUR, which he headed from 2020 to 2026.

Last month, Ukrainian media linked Budanov to a money laundering scandal involving his now-fired deputy in Zelensky’s office, Irina Mudraya. NABU accused her of orchestrating a scheme to use bags of cash to pay bail for former Energy Minister German Galushchenko, who is a suspect in a separate graft case involving Zelensky’s inner circle.

In surveillance tapes published by NABU, Mudraya said she was acting on behalf of her superiors without naming anyone. The outlet suggested, based on the context of the conversation, that she was likely referring to Budanov when she quoted an official as saying that “corruption needs to be systematized and controlled” and not combated.

Asked by Hromadske about the allegation, Budanov said: “Let the court sort out whose names are mentioned and where.”

HUR came under media scrutiny earlier this month after its personnel engaged in firefights in Kiev with troops from the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU). The altercation stemmed from a custody dispute over a member of a neo-Nazi-led militia force, which the military intelligence incorporated under Budanov’s leadership.

Zelensky previously tried and failed to place the Western-backed agency under the control of the Prosecutor General’s Office.

Russia is open to cooperation and doing business with “the whole world,” President Vladimir Putin has said. This includes both Western economic powers – despite what he described as their “ugly forms of competition” – and the growing economies of the Global South and East.

“We are ready to cooperate with all our partners,” Putin told the BRICS Business Forum panel at the 18th BRICS summit in India, adding that they could be “old or new.”

Putin said that the shared goal is to unlock the development potential of Russia and its partners through “business diplomacy,” making it easier for companies and entrepreneurs to cooperate.

“We do not want to impose any restrictions on ourselves or turn inward – whether at the national, corporate, or even the broader level of our partnership,” he stated. “We are not building our cooperation against anyone. We stand for ourselves and our interests.”

Russia is seeking to expand practical business cooperation with its partners in industry, trade, and tourism, Putin said, noting that Moscow has established a national business cooperation committee bringing together more than 40 of the country’s largest companies.

“Together with our partners, we stand ready to contribute to global energy and food security,” Putin said.

Putin noted that the world is undergoing “deep structural shifts,” with traditional economic powers being displaced by new engines of growth – a natural process that he insisted “cannot be stopped.” He argued, however, that Western economies facing growing competition increasingly resort to unsavory methods.

“Sometimes competition takes ugly forms,” he said, citing the destruction of pipelines, attempts to block international transport routes, unilateral “illegal restrictions,” and secondary sanctions against countries “unwilling to follow others’ interests.”

Russia has faced more than 30,000 sanctions since the escalation of the Ukraine conflict – twice as many as all other countries combined, Putin said. Moscow nevertheless weathered the unprecedented pressure by relying on domestic business, science, and engineering while redirecting trade toward “reliable partners,” he stated. Russia’s economy has become more resilient, with growth outpacing the global average over the past three years, he added.

Speaking of BRICS, Putin described the group as an increasingly powerful force in the global economy.

“Through our combined efforts, BRICS is building a resilient and viable platform for global growth,” he said. “This is not being imposed on us from the outside by the so-called ‘golden billion’, nor are we trying to impose anything on anyone else.”

Putin noted that BRICS countries generated more than 40% of global GDP over the past five years, compared with 29% for the G7, while contributing more than half of global economic growth against just 18% for the G7. He attributed the momentum to the grouping’s vast population, dynamic domestic markets, and rapidly expanding national companies with global ambitions.