The outlet cites the accounts of two former political prisoners: Andrei (name changed) and Ilya Dubsky. Both were released and deported by the Belarusian authorities on Sept. 11, 2025, as part of a group of 50 political prisoners.

According to Andrei, he discovered that his passport had been invalidated while checking the Ministry of Internal Affairs database to see whether he had been placed on the country’s wanted list. The document was supposed to remain valid until 2031.

Likewise, Ilya Dubsky told Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty that he checked his passport on March 30 and found that it had been invalidated. He was also issued a ban on entering Belarus.

“You could say that I have effectively been stripped of my citizenship. I don’t care what they did there. Let them go crazy. Yes, it will cause some inconvenience... Without a passport, I can’t travel to another country — from Lithuania to Poland, for example. And if I use my Belarusian passport, I could face administrative liability, or perhaps even criminal charges,” the outlet quoted him as saying.

Both former political prisoners now live in Lithuania. According to Dubsky, he knows of at least 16 other Belarusians who have found themselves in a similar situation. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reports that such cases have been confirmed by other political prisoners, without naming them.

The most recent release of political prisoners in Belarus took place on March 19, when the press service of Alexander Lukashenko reported the pardon of 250 people — fifteen of whom were deported, according to the human rights center Viasna. In what has become a familiar pattern, the release coincided with the visit of a U.S. delegation to Minsk. Both the September release of 52 prisoners and the December release of 123 coincided with similar visits. Also as in both of those cases, Washington reciprocated by easing its sanctions pressure on Minsk. 

In his statement, Szijjártó alleged that his phone calls were being intercepted by “foreign intelligence services, with the active involvement of Hungarian journalists,” and added that the investigation merely proved “that I say the same publicly as I do on the phone.”

He also repeated his position on sanctions against Russia, saying he considers the European Union’s policy to be a “failure” that is “causing more harm to the EU than to Russia.” According to Szijjártó, Budapest will not support restrictions against companies and individuals important to Hungary’s energy security, and it intends to maintain that position going forward.

Earlier today, The Insider, along with its investigative partners FRONTSTORY, VSquare, Delfi Estonia, and ICJK, published an investigation based on the transcripts and audio recordings of phone conversations between Szijjártó and Lavrov. In them, the Hungarian foreign minister promised to work to remove a number of Russian individuals from sanctions lists, including the relatives of billionaire Alisher Usmanov. Szijjártó also provided his Russian counterpart with details of closed discussions within EU institutions.

The joint investigation showed that Hungary and Slovakia blocked or delayed the adoption of EU sanctions packages targeting Russian interests while simultaneously seeking exemptions allowing them to continue purchasing Russian natural resources. In one of the conversations, Szijjártó told a Russian official that he was “doing his best” to have the 18th sanctions package repealed and even asked for arguments he could use in order to justify his stance by appealing Hungary’s national interest.

Who synthesized the poison

In mid-February, a joint statement issued by Sweden, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, and the Netherlands confirmed that multiple independent laboratories had detected the alkaloid epibatidine, one of the most lethal poisons found in nature, in biological samples belonging to the late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny.

As The Insider has previously reported, the synthesis of this poison in Russia was carried out by scientists from the State Research Institute of Organic Chemistry and Technology and the Signal Scientific Center — the same institutions where the Novichok nerve agent that was used against Sergei and Yulia Skripal in 2018 and against Navalny himself in 2020 was produced.

How exactly these scientists synthesized epibatidine and what reagents may have been used can be inferred from a number of articles they have published (details here). Igor Yuryevich Babkin and Sergey Evgenyevich Galan of the Signal Scientific Center are among the authors of a paper devoted to a method for detecting epibatidine in blood (though in the paper they are listed as employees of the “High Technology Laboratory" (OOO "Laboratoriya vysokikh tekhnologii"), which previously supplied reagents to Signal).

While Babkin and Galan both hold advanced degrees, their dissertations are classified and are therefore not publicly available. Babkin’s, titled “Synthesis and evaluation of the properties of physiologically active polyfluorinated 7-azanorbornanes,” was defended in the specialty 20.02.23: “The damaging effects of special types of weapons.”

Other co-authors of the article on epibatidine also defended dissertations in the same specialty as Babkin. For example, Colonel Mikhail Gutsalyuk of the State Research Institute of Organic Chemistry and Technology, completed a thesis titled “Synthesis of physiologically active polyfluorinated bicyclic compounds with sulfur-containing substituents.”

The Insider spoke with a Russian chemist who is familiar with the work of Signal employees, worked on the synthesis of bicyclic compounds, and served as a consultant to one of the Western laboratories during the chemical analysis of Navalny’s biological samples. As that chemist explained:

“Epibatidine belongs specifically to the azanorbornanes that Babkin studied in his dissertation. He began working on this topic (bicycloheptanes, epibatidine derivatives) back in the mid-1990s, when he was studying at the Military Academy of Radiation, Chemical, and Biological Defense, where this was handled by the third department.”

Igor Babkin pretended not to understand The Insider's question when called by a journalist from The Insider.

Galan’s academic history is also of note. In addition to his research on epibatidine, he published notable scientific work in collaboration with the GRU’s leading poisoning specialist Sergey Chepur (whom The Insider has previously written about) in the study “Investigation of the psycholeptic effects of kappa-opioid agonists,” in which they examined a substance that drives rats into despair. The aim was to determine doses that make rats resign themselves to their fate — for example, by not actively attempting to swim when subjected to forced swimming.

At one time Galan also worked on nanoforms of drugs, which are intended, in theory, to deliver a compound more effectively to its biological target. A relatively recent article (2019) by Galan deals with an opioid receptor agonist tested as an analgesic; however, its analgesic effect began at doses of 200 mcg/kg, while toxic effects appeared at 3 mcg/kg.

Sergey Galan did not answer a call from a journalist with The Insider.

Where reagents for the poison were purchased

The creators of epibatidine had to source reagents from somewhere, and The Insider examined which Russian companies ordered reagents and auxiliary substances in 2022–2023 for the synthesis described in a 2013 article by the State Research Institute of Organic Chemistry and Technology.

More details on methodology and substances.

Of the 12 substances required for the synthesis according to the scheme described by Russian chemists in the above-referenced 2013 article, two were not imported into Russia by anyone. Of the remaining ten, some are very common while others are rare. The Insider selected those companies that imported at least four components — there were seven in total, but only four of them imported the key component for creating the bicyclic compound: 1,8-diazabicyclo[5.4.0]undec-7-ene.

As the Russian chemist mentioned above explained further to The Insider:

“All of these substances can be called marker reagents, but it is precisely 1,8-diazabicyclo[5.4.0]undec-7-ene that is the most important among them. Someone might even call it a precursor, but that would be incorrect, since a precursor is the base to which another substance is added to obtain the target compound, so in this case we are dealing with that second substance. Among all the other reagents, which may include ordinary solvents, this is the most reliable marker.”

After examining the call records of employees at the four companies that had imported 1,8-diazabicyclo[5.4.0]undec-7-ene, The Insider found that managers of one of them — ABCR Chemi Rus — were in regular contact with employees of the Signal Scientific Center (and occasionally also with the State Research Institute of Organic Chemistry and Technology and the Central Scientific Research Institute of Chemistry and Mechanics, both of which have been linked to the production of Novichok and other chemical weapons). These contacts were not with random staff members, but specifically with Igor Babkin, a co-author of the article on epibatidine.

For example, Babkin spoke repeatedly over an extended period with Liliya Ansarovna Sabirova, Deputy General Director and Commercial Director of ABCR Chemi Rus LLC, and with sales manager Alexei Valentinovich Kiselev, who is also responsible for completing customs declarations at ABCR Chemi Rus.

Igor Viktorovich Zavarzin, the head of the High Technology Laboratory associated with Signal, was also in contact with employees of ABCR Chemi Rus  — namely with its general director, Tatyana Danilova. In his main position, Zavarzin heads the Laboratory of Steroid Chemistry at the Institute of Organic Chemistry and is the most established academic scientist in this group, with a large number of publications. According to the Russian pension fund, he also held an official position at Signal — even if, in a conversation with The Insider, he stated that he had never worked there, was not acquainted with Babkin, and that only “long ago someone from his staff published a joint article with him.”

In fact, however, it was not merely “someone from his staff” who co-authored a 2017 article with Babkin. Zavarzin himself was a co-author (though prominent scientists sometimes forget publications they consider minor, especially those published with many contributors). In any case, Zavarzin’s connection to Signal is confirmed not only by collaboration between Signal employees and his High Technology Laboratory, but also by his regular calls with Signal’s chief research scientist — one of the co-authors of articles on epibatidine — Georgy Nazarov.

In his conversation with The Insider, Zavarzin similarly denied that he had spoken with Danilova, even though call records indicate that he did so repeatedly, as did the director of his “High Technology and Innovations Laboratory ("OOO Laboratoriya vysokikh tekhnologii i innovatsii"), Svetlana Sadikova.

Notably, although Zavarzin denied knowing Danilova and working with Babkin, he ended the conversation with The Insider with the remark: “You are building a case like an experienced investigator. All of this is nonsense. Nothing like this exists or ever existed. It’s all lies. You should be very ashamed that you are going to slander respectable people.” How he could have known that people with whom, by his own account, he was not acquainted, were not involved in anything nefarious — and what, exactly, “did not exist” — he did not explain.

Georgy Nazarov declined to comment in a conversation with a journalist from The Insider.

The general director of ABCR Chemi Rus LLC, Tatyana Danilova, told The Insider that her company has no dealings with the Signal Scientific Center, insisted that she is not acquainted with Igor Babkin, and stated that her company does not import triphenylphosphine into Russia due to the fact that the reagent is “under sanctions” (which was not the case in 2023), after which she ended the conversation.

Liliya Sabirova did non answer to a call from The Insider.

German management: We trust our partners, but we'll close the Russian subsidiary

ABCR Chemi Rus is 90% owned by the German parent company abcr GmbH, with the remaining 5% stakes held by its managers: Tatyana Danilova and Liliya Sabirova. The director of the German company is Dr. Jan Hans Alfred Schuricht, and its sole shareholder is abcr group GmbH.

Up until March 17, the German company’s website indicated that its Russian division was part of its team and included photographs of employees of ABCR Chemi Rus LLC. After an inquiry and a phone call from The Insider to Germany, the website suddenly stopped working, and a few days later all references to Russian employees disappeared from it.

Jan Hans Alfred Schuricht, director of the parent company, told The Insider that he intends to close the Russian division.

He also claimed that he complies with all legal restrictions and that “after 2018” he did not supply anything to the Signal Scientific Center. He said that the subsidiary ABCR Chemi Rus LLC supplies reagents from abcr GmbH to Russian universities. Schuricht added that while the German parent company is not required to conduct full due diligence on all clients of its subsidiary ABCR Chemi Rus LLC and does not influence the selection of its clients, the compliance department of abcr GmbH nevertheless carries out random checks of all clients of ABCR Chemi Rus LLC to determine whether they were selected in accordance with embargo regulations. At the same time, abcr GmbH is not in a position to verify the “military activities” of Russian companies not sanctioned by the German authorities. The company has not received dividends from its Russian subsidiary since 2020 and is generally considering the possibility of shutting it down.

Full response by Jan Schuricht

At The Insider’s request, Jan Schuricht reviewed specific shipments from the company’s warehouse in Germany of triphenylphosphine and 1,8-diazabicyclo[5.4.0]undec-7-ene carried out in 2023. He claims that these reagents were intended for Ural Federal University. 

The Insider has obtained invoices for goods allegedly issued by ABCR Chemi Rus to Ural Federal University. These invoices bear all the hallmarks of forgery: there is no contract number (even though the procurement should have been carried out under a government contract), and there are no delivery note numbers linked to that contract.

Documents also came into the possession of The Insider that were presented as contracts between ABCR Chemi Rus and Ural Federal University for the supply of these chemicals. However, they bear signs of crude forgery: they lack the parties’ signatures, there are no organization requisites, and there is no government procurement or state contract number.

Additionally, The Insider obtained documents presented as invoices for payment issued by ABCR Chemi Rus to Ural Federal University, which also show signs of falsification: at least one of them was dated a month earlier than the substance left the warehouse in Germany. Thus, the appearance of Ural Federal University in this story looks like an attempt to cover up the interaction between ABCR Chemi Rus LLC and Scientific Center Signal.

The Insider also found no calls in the billing records of ABCR's management with employees of Ural Federal University. Finally, it remains unclear how triphenylphosphine could have been intended for the university if ABCR’s general director Danilova had claimed that ABCR Chemi Rus LLC did not procure this reagent at all because it was “under sanctions.”

Dr. Schuricht also stated that, according to colleagues he consulted, there had been no contacts between Babkin and employees of ABCR Chemi Rus “after 2018.” However, the 2020-2024 billing records of ABCR Chemi Rus stakeholder Sabirova and sales manager Kiselev show such contacts. Schuricht could not explain why.

Schuricht did add that stakeholder Danilova did not deny having contacts with Zavarzin, stating that the latter is a well-known and respected scientist who procures chemicals for his “university” (apparently referring to the Institute of Organic Chemistry of the Russian Academy of Sciences). Schuricht also maintained that he continues to trust the employees of the Russian company:

“As the CEO of the parent company, I must first take them at their word. Since I also know Liliya and Tatyana well, I have no doubt that they have found themselves at the center of this unfortunate story purely by chance.”

German lawyers interviewed by The Insider said that if publicly available information shows a scientific center produces and supplies poisons for political killings, and that if a supplier, understanding its reagents could be used to make a murder weapon, ignores that information and continues providing the center with reagents, that could be interpreted as complicity in a crime.

The Insider also contacted Alexei Kiselev of ABCR Chemi Rus, who handled customs clearance and had repeatedly been in contact with Babkin from Signal. Kiselev was unable to confirm or deny from memory the deliveries of the substances in question in 2023; regarding Babkin and Signal, he said they had worked with Signal 8–10 years ago. He was also unable to recall any cooperation with Ural Federal University offhand.

The Insider has sent all available information about ABCR’s cooperation with Russian producers of poisons used in political assassinations to German law enforcement authorities.

On the morning of Feb. 28, Israeli and U.S. forces launched what they called a “preemptive strike” on Iranian territory. In Israel, the operation was named “Lion’s Roar.” In the United States, it was called “Epic Fury.”

In essence, both were a continuation of Israel’s operation “A People Like a Lion,” which was carried out from June 13 to June 24, 2025. As part of that campaign, the Americans conducted their own one-day operation, “Midnight Hammer,” striking key nuclear facilities inside Iran. The Insider analyzed the outcome of those operations in a separate report.

In April and October 2024, Iran and Israel exchanged two rounds of long-range strikes. As a result, in Iran the current war was named “True Promise 4,” a reference to the previous three “promises” of April and October 2024 and in June 2025.

In a statement posted on Truth Social on Feb. 28, Donald Trump called Iran “the number one state sponsor of terrorism in the world” and also blamed the leadership in Tehran for the deaths of tens of thousands of Iranian citizens during the mass protests that engulfed the country in recent months. The U.S. president outlined several specific goals for :

• to “flatten” the Iranian missile industry,
• destroy its navy,
• neutralize “terrorist proxies” in the region,
• undermine the current regime’s ability to obtain nuclear weapons.

Trump also urged Iranians to “take power into their own hands” in order to bring about a fundamental change in Iran’s political system.

The United States committed 50,000 personnel, 200 aircraft, and two full carrier strike groups to the operation against Iran. The campaign has notably involved every type of long-range strategic bomber in the U.S. Air Force’s arsenal, including the B-2, B-1 Lancer, and B-52H.

Israel has deployed an air grouping of comparable size. According to the Israeli Air Force, Feb. 28 saw the largest air operation in its history, with more than 200 aircraft striking more than 500 targets.

The campaign has involved every type of long-range strategic bomber in the U.S. Air Force’s arsenal, including the B-2, B-1 Lancer, and B-52H

According to The Military Balance, Iran’s armed forces had more than 600,000 personnel before the war, including nearly 200,000 in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). The air force included about 250 combat aircraft, though most were hopelessly outdated relics such as F-4 and F-5 fighter jets.

Similarly, the navy mentioned by Trump had fewer than 10 major surface combatants, several dozen patrol and missile boats, a few non-operational Russian-built Project 877 Paltus submarines, mini-submarines, and exotic vessels such as drone carriers and missile catamarans. The main threat to the U.S.-Israeli coalition came from Iran’s missile forces — and its drones.

“Major combat operation” and “we haven’t even started”

Since the start of the campaign against Iran, U.S. officials have seemed almost deliberately to echo Russian rhetoric about Moscow’s “special military operation” in Ukraine. In particular, the war has been turned into a “major combat operation” that is supposedly “ahead of schedule.” Donald Trump also described the opening phase of the war by saying “we haven’t even started hitting them hard” while pointing to an allegedly imminent Iranian attack as a pretext for launching it.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth also used language reminiscent of Vladimir Putin’s, saying the United States “did not start this war...but we are finishing it,” and that it plans to “achieve  [all of its] objectives.” On March 5, 2026, The New Yorker published a cartoon that closely echoed a meme widely circulated on Russian social media at the start of the war against Ukraine — a Leo Tolstoy reference highlighting the absurdity of the euphemisms used by governments to avoid calling war by its name.

On the Israeli side, the rhetoric has often taken on an apocalyptic tone. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he and Trump were “saving the world” and fighting the “yoke of tyranny” in the name of “humanity.”

Even so, the war against Iran is not popular in either the United States or Europe. Even the most favorable polls show that at least half of Americans do not support the Trump administration’s actions. In Europe, support for the fighting is even lower.

Interim results of the campaign in Iran

Over the course of the first three weeks, the U.S.-Israeli coalition carried out more than 15,000 strikes on various targets in Iran. In the first week alone, U.S. forces hit 2,000 targets, twice the comparable number for the Iraq campaign of 2003. The pace and intensity of the attacks have been made possible by the broad use of AI systems. After the 12-day war in June 2025, much of Iran’s air defense and missile defense infrastructure had already been knocked out, meaning this time the task of achieving air superiority was completed on the first day.

The pace and intensity of the attacks on Iran have been made possible by the broad use of AI systems

The main result of the opening phase of the military operation was the decapitation of Iran’s military and political leadership, as Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was killed in the very first wave of strikes — along with Defense Council secretary Adm. Ali Shamkhani, IRGC commander Gen. Mohammad Pakpour, armed forces chief of staff Gen. Abdolrahim Mousavi, and Defense Minister Gen. Aziz Nasirzadeh. It appears that the Israeli airstrike hit the complex housing Khamenei’s residence, where a session of the defense council was under way.

Khamenei’s second son, Mojtaba Khamenei, who was selected to replace his father, has still not appeared in public, apparently because he suffered serious injuries in that attack. Later, Ali Larijani, the most influential surviving Iranian politician, was killed, as were Basij commander Gholamreza Soleimani and Intelligence Minister Esmail Khatib.

According to statements from Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz, any successor to Khamenei would immediately become the target of a new strike, and the U.S. State Department has offered a reward for information on Mojtaba Khamenei and other leading figures of the Iranian regime.

As for the purely military side, coalition forces have inflicted critical damage on Iran’s navy, air defenses, and air force. Visually confirmed losses include 38 ships and submarines, meaning the Iranian fleet has effectively ceased to exist. Iran has also verifiably lost 34 combat aircraft and three helicopters, more than 30 air defense systems (including missile batteries and radars), and about 40 missile launchers. Targets linked to Iran’s nuclear program and its security apparatus are also being struck.

A number of milestone events have taken place over the relatively short span of the fighting in Iran.

• For the first time in history, an F-35 fifth-generation fighter shot down a manned combat aircraft, specifically a Yak-130 trainer-combat jet over Tehran.
• For the first time in combat, the United States has used PrSM ballistic missiles, developed as a replacement for ATACMS.
• For the first time since 1982, a nuclear submarine sank a warship with a torpedo when the USS Charlotte fired on the Iranian frigate IRIS Dena off the coast of Sri Lanka. Of Dena’s crew of 136, only 32 sailors survived.

For now, the category of targets that appears to be the most “protected” is Iran’s oil and gas infrastructure. Judging by available information, there are some differences on this issue between the American and Israeli leaderships. As far as can be discerned, the United States sees attacks on Iran’s oil export infrastructure as a measure of last resort. On the night of March 14, U.S. forces struck Kharg Island, which is involved in up to 90% of Iran’s oil exports, but the Americans pointedly chose only military targets.

How the Iranian military is responding

Since Feb. 28, Iranian forces have been carrying out a campaign of strikes using missiles and loitering munitions against Israel, U.S. bases, and America’s Middle Eastern allies. Iran’s targets have included purely civilian objects and energy infrastructure. Nevertheless, more than a dozen U.S. bases and the radars, communications equipment, and vehicles stationed there are also known to have been hit. Attacks by Iran and its Shiite allies in the region have affected 13 countries, including Cyprus and Turkey.

Overall, the scale of missile and drone use has been much smaller than expected. Only in the first days was Iran able to sustain launches of hundreds of long-range strike weapons, while current figures amount to only dozens per day. Available estimates, however, mostly do not take into account attacks on U.S. bases and rely on admittedly incomplete official reports from neighboring Arab states.

Judging by the intensity and geography of the retaliatory strikes, command over Iran’s security structures has indeed been disrupted, which is why Tehran’s missile attacks have had an often symbolic and chaotic character, as evidenced by strikes hitting hotels, residential complexes, diplomatic buildings, and airports. It is highly likely that this is what Iran’s concept of “mosaic defense” looks like in practice, with the country’s civilian administration and military command operating in as decentralized a manner as possible — effectively autonomously. At the same time, even raids of this relatively limited scale have required a colossal expenditure of air defense assets from the Gulf states that came under Iranian attack.

The U.S.-Israeli coalition’s losses over three weeks of war are limited for an operation of this scale. The United States has officially reported 13 service members killed and more than 300 wounded. Among the dead were six crew members killed in the crash of a KC-135 tanker aircraft, likely after a mid-air collision with another U.S. aircraft.

The most painful American losses of materiel have come from friendly fire. On March 2, three F-15E aircraft were mistakenly shot down over Kuwait in a single day, likely by a Kuwaiti F/A-18. All six crew members ejected safely.

Another five tanker aircraft may have been damaged in missile strikes on Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia. Iranian air defenses also managed to hit a U.S. F-35, but the aircraft made it back to one of the American bases in the region to make an emergency landing.

What has proved truly effective is Iran’s campaign of strikes on commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz. The IRGC declared the strait closed to vessel traffic on Feb. 28, and about 20 commercial vessels have been struck since then.

Awaiting a ground operation

Donald Trump is demanding Iran’s unconditional surrender, but so far there are no signs that the leadership in Tehran is ready to agree. After the death of Ali Larijani and given the unclear status of Mojtaba Khamenei, it is not fully clear who would even be in a position to offer up unconditional surrender. Nor are there any visible signs that the current regime is becoming less stable. Even if transformation is taking place behind the scenes, it is more likely to result in the appearance of a military junta than of a potential negotiating partner for Washington.

Meanwhile, the costs of the “major combat operation” are rising rapidly for the Trump administration, U.S. allies, and the global economy as a whole. The pace of American military spending now exceeds $1 billion a day, and the Pentagon is preparing to ask Congress for an additional $200 billion. Attacks on ships in the Strait of Hormuz and strikes on energy infrastructure in the region have put 20% of global oil and liquefied natural gas supplies at risk, along with 10% to 20% of petroleum product supplies. According to expert estimates, the Iranian military is capable of blocking shipping through the Strait of Hormuz for months.

Under these conditions, some form of ground operation is looking increasingly likely. At first, the main scenario involved Kurdish forces from Syria and Iraq, backed by the United States, invading western areas of Iran, which are predominantly populated by Kurds. Later, the scenarios under discussion expanded to include U.S. forces seizing the previously mentioned Kharg Island and carrying out raids deep into Iranian territory to remove stockpiles of enriched uranium, the whereabouts of which remain unknown.

The 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit is now heading toward the Persian Gulf. Its movement from the Okinawa area began on March 13, and it includes the USS Tripoli (LHA-7), USS San Diego (LPD-22), and USS New Orleans (LPD-18). On March 20, reports also confirmed that the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit had departed San Diego aboard the USS Boxer (LHD-4), USS Comstock (LSD-45), and USS Portland (LPD-27). Each group includes more than 2,000 Marines, as well as F-35A aircraft and CV-22 tiltrotor aircraft.

The 11th Expeditionary Unit arrived in Tripoli on March 28, increasing the chances that the conflict moves into a ground phase.

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“I am calling on the request of Alisher”

Just an hour after Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó arrived in Budapest from St. Petersburg on August 30, 2024, he received a phone call from his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov. Lavrov said Szijjártó had been quoted all over the Russian media following his visit.

“Did I say something wrong?” Szijjártó nervously inquired.

“No, no, no. They were just saying that you are pragmatically fighting for the interests of your country.”

The reason for Lavrov’s call was a request: the Russian oligarch Alisher Usmanov was looking to have his sister, Gulbahor Ismailova, removed from EU sanctions lists and Szijjártó had promised to help. Usmanov, a Russian-Uzbekistani tycoon, amassed his wealth in mining, industry, telecoms, and media. He has been described as one of Putin’s favorite businesspersons, one with “particularly close ties” to the Russian president.

“Look, I am calling on the request of Alisher and he just asked me to remind you that you were doing something about his sister,” Lavrov said.

“Yeah, absolutely,” Szijjártó answered. “The thing is the following, that together with the Slovaks we are submitting a proposal to the European Union to delist her. We will submit it next week and as the new review period is going to be started it's gonna be put on the agenda and we will do our best in order to get her off.”

Lavrov was happy and expressed his appreciation for Szijjártó’s “support and your fight for equality in all fields.”

The main purpose of the conversation accomplished, Lavrov and Szijjártó proceeded to bond over their shared disdain of the European Union, particularly countries with a pro-Ukraine orientation.

Both criticized Josep Borrell, then the EU’s High Representative of Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, whom Lavrov called his “biggest disappointment” and Szijjártó disparagingly characterized as the “European Biden.” The Spanish socialist, Lavrov noted, had been far more “reasonable” when he only represented the interests of Madrid as foreign minister, prior to his appointment to the European Commission, in which capacity a commissioner cannot prioritize his native country over the bloc in general. “So you cannot, you cannot name your country, but you must name your gender, right?” an incredulous Lavrov asked of Szijjártó, who had summarized these bureaucratic protocols.

Before hanging up, the Hungarian cooed about the new Gazprom headquarters he’d visited in Russia, adding, “I am always at your disposal.”

Seven months later, Ismailova was removed from the EU sanctions list.

Transcripts and the audio recording of the Lavrov-Szijjártó call were obtained and confirmed by a consortium of investigative news outlets consisting of VSquare, FRONTSTORY, Delfi Estonia, The Insider, and the Investigative Center of Ján Kuciak (ICJK). We confirmed it independently with sources in more than one country and additionally consulted the authenticity of the audio recording with Cauth.AI, members of WITNESS Deepfake Rapid Response Force.

The Hungarian Kim Philby

This call between the two foreign ministers, one of several between 2023 and 2025, highlights the exceeding comity between Szijjártó, who represents an EU and NATO member, and Lavrov, who represents a nation that has invaded and occupied a European country while waging a hybrid war that includes acts of arson and sabotage carried out against countries on NATO’s eastern flank. The calls traffic in sensitive information about the internal deliberations of both Budapest and Brussels, which are doubtless of interest to the Kremlin. They also provide clearcut evidence of how Russia is secretly behind the efforts of Hungary and Slovakia to hinder EU sanctions against Russian individuals or entities.

In his exchanges with Lavrov, Szijjártó comes across as deferential, bordering on obsequious. “If you remove names and show these conversations to any case officer, he will swear that this is a transcript of an intelligence officer working his asset,” one senior European intelligence officer said after reviewing a printout of the conversations.

Transcripts and the audio recording of the Lavrov-Szijjártó call, as well as Szijjártó's calls with other Russian government officials, were obtained and confirmed by a consortium of investigative news outlets consisting of VSquare, FRONTSTORY, Delfi Estonia, The Insider, and the Investigative Center of Ján Kuciak (ICJK). We confirmed it independently with sources in more than one country and additionally consulted the authenticity of the audio recording with Cauth.AI, members of WITNESS Deepfake Rapid Response Force.

The apparent willingness of Szijjártó, as a high official of the Hungarian government, to quietly act in Russia’s interests at the EU level may help explain why Moscow is investing significant effort in keeping Viktor Orbán and his pro-Kremlin Fidesz party in power.

Independent polling suggests Orbán is trailing badly ahead of the April 12 parliamentary election, with the center-right Tisza party, led by challenger Péter Magyar, holding a strong lead. As Orbán’s campaign struggles, Russia is reportedly stepping in to assist in covert ways, too. According to VSquare’s earlier report, the Kremlin has assigned Sergey Kiriyenko – a deputy chief of staff to Vladimir Putin and a key architect of Russia’s political influence operations – to covertly support Orbán’s campaign. Kiriyenko previously played an integral role in shaping election interference activities in Moldova.

At the same time, Orbán’s campaign has increasingly echoed Kremlin narratives: staging provocations against Ukraine and accusing opposition figures and critics of acting as Ukrainian proxies or spies while dismissing or ridiculing allegations of their own ties to Russia.

Szijjártó’s chumminess with Lavrov, while previously alluded to in the press, has never before been documented with leaked phone calls demonstrating the full extent of their collusiveness.

Apart from delivering on what he was asked to do, Szijjártó routinely kept Lavrov informed of details of supposedly confidential discussions by European diplomats.

For instance, in the same August 30, 2024 call with Lavrov, just after their discussion about delisting Ismailova, Szijjártó also revealed the details of the EU Foreign Affairs Council meeting that he participated in the day before.

“And that was crazy, you know, when Landsbergis said that we contribute 12% of each rockets and missiles,” Szijjártó told Lavrov, referring to Lithuania’s then-foreign minister Gabrielius Landsbergis, who had argued that Russia partly finances its war through gas and oil profits from European customers such as Hungary and Slovakia.

“I said, my friend, you are not right, because the Europeans contribute much more… it's not only the Slovaks and us who are buying gas and oil from Russia directly but all of you who are buying the same from them through…India, Kazakhstan.”

When reached for comment, Landsbergis confirmed the behind-the-scenes details of the EU foreign ministers’ meeting. “I can verify that this is a real exchange during one of the Foreign Affairs Councils,” Landsbergis said. “It seems that all this time Putin had, and still has, a mole in all European and NATO official meetings. If the integrity of these meetings is to be maintained, it would be appropriate to ban Hungary from all of them. Every generation has a Kim Philby” – a reference to the notorious Cold War-era KGB spy in the British Secret Intelligence Service. “Apparently Péter Szijjártó is playing the role with enthusiasm.”

That analogy goes slightly deeper than mere rhetorical flourish. Philby and Szijjártó both received the highest Soviet or Russian award that can be given to a foreigner: the Order of Friendship. Szijjártó’s was officially awarded by Vladimir Putin, but physically bestowed upon him by Lavrov on December 30, 2021.

Striking off names

Szijjártó’s efforts to get Usmanov’s sibling delisted from EU sanctions was not the only case in which he worked to relax economic penalties on well-connected Russians. Ismailova was removed alongside Russian businessman Viatcheslav Moshe Kantor and the country’s sports minister, Mikhail Degtyaryov. As reported by RFE in March 2025, the move came after Hungary and Slovakia threatened to block the six-month extension of EU sanctions – including asset freezes and visa bans – targeting Russian-linked entities and individuals (Lavrov among them).

A European diplomat closely involved in the sanctions negotiations among the 27 EU member states said that, while it has long been suspected that Hungary and Slovakia had been leaking details of negotiations to Moscow, it was valuable that there was now hard evidence to prove it.

“Hungary is clearly fulfilling political orders from Russia,” this source said when reporters showed them parts of the transcripts of the two ministers’ phone calls.

“Hungary is clearly fulfilling political orders from Russia,” a European diplomat said when reporters showed them parts of the transcripts of the two ministers’ phone calls.

While the EU has sanctioned about 2,700 Russian citizens and entities due to their role in enabling Russia to conduct its full-scale war against Ukraine, the bloc must vote every six months on whether to extend the sanctions. Decisions are made by consensus, meaning all 27 member states must agree. This gives Hungary outsized leverage, as it can threaten to block the continuation of the entire sanctions regime if specific people are not delisted.

The same European diplomat, talking to the reporters on the condition of anonymity in order to be able to reveal details of the process, said that Hungary and Slovakia usually start the negotiations with a longer list of Russian names they demand to be delisted. “They don’t use legal arguments, they just say they don’t want those people on the sanctions list for political reasons,” the source explained.

As negotiations progress, Budapest and Bratislava usually whittle their list down to only two or three people, as was the case with Ismailova, Kantor, and Degtyaryov.

Ismailova is one of Usmanov’s two sisters. She has been sanctioned by the UK, United States, Ukraine, and Estonia. Tallinn re-sanctioned her after she was removed from the EU list at Hungary and Slovakia’s orchestration.

Usmanov himself is sanctioned by a host of jurisdictions including the EU, the United States, Canada, and the UK as a result of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

In its Russian Asset Tracker, OCCRP linked the oligarch to more than a dozen luxury properties across Europe, as well as to bank accounts, boats, and aircraft. According to that project, the minimum value of Usmanov’s assets exceeds $3.4 billion.

A representative of Usmanov’s told OCCRP at the time that he had never benefited from the Russian government, nor from the privatization of state holdings. The representative said that Usmanov’s capital was obtained solely through transparent investment and asset management, adding that the ownership of most of Usmanov’s properties had been transferred to his family, and that he could only use them on a rental basis.

Joachim Nikolaus Steinhöfel, the Hamburg-based legal representative for Usmanov and Ismailova, declined to answer questions about the nature of the discussion between Lavrov and Szijjártó about his clients. “Your questions are based on the impermissible assumption that my clients were somehow aware of confidential conversations allegedly held between third parties,” Steinhöfel wrote in an email, adding that “in recent years, many prominent contemporary political leaders have spoken out regarding the need to lift the sanctions against A. Usmanov. This applies even more to the lifting of sanctions against his sister, who was subjected to these measures in an absurd manner solely due to her family ties.”

Steinhöfel also mentioned that over the past four years, Usmanov has won more than twenty court cases against media outlets, public figures, and politicians “who disseminated various false statements about him.”

Since being sanctioned, Usmanov and his two sisters have taken extensive efforts to relieve themselves of the burden, going so far as to file lawsuits against media outlets.  His other sister, Saodat Narzieva, managed to get her name off the EU list after just five months.

With Russia, Hungary, and Slovakia having succeeded with Ismailova’s delisting last year, the only remaining sibling is Usmanov himself.

During the latest round of sanctions extension negotiations in March, Slovakia and Hungary continued to press the bloc to have him removed as well.

“This time the negotiations went through Friday night until early Saturday morning on March 14, when Slovakia finally said it agreed to prolong the sanctions with Usmanov’s and [Mikhail] Fridman’s names on the list,” according to the EU diplomat quoted earlier.

If the 27 member states hadn't agreed to this by March 15, sanctions against all 2,700 people and entities would have expired.

In their efforts to get the Usmanov family back into international markets, Hungarians and Slovaks are supported by a powerful non-EU ally. At the beginning of March, before the key round of the latest negotiations, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan sent a letter to Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico, calling him “a dear friend.”

Erdogan praised Usmanov’s transparency and charitable nature: “he supported cultural, humanitarian, and sporting projects promoting the opening of Central Asian countries to the West, while also making a significant contribution to strengthening human ties within the Turkic world.”

The Turkish President also informed Fico about joint letters that the Organisation of Turkic States, along with the leaders of Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, and Uzbekistan, sent to then then-President of the EU Council, Charles Michel, and to the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen. “I also took initiatives with certain EU leaders,” added Erdogan, calling the sanctions against Usmanov and his family members an ”unfair practice.” 

The EU diplomat involved in the EU’s sanctions negotiations confirmed that the letter to get Usmanov off of the list in the last round of sanctions negotiations was submitted by Slovakia and signed by Erdogan. Hungary supported delisting both Usmanov and Fridman, the Russian billionaire who co-founded the financial giant Alfa Group.

“I find it peculiar that third countries want to influence the EU's sanctions decisions and their orders are presented by Hungary or Slovakia,” the diplomat said. “The EU conducts legal assessments to decide about sanctioning but then we will have a political order to withdraw one or another name from the list. The EU needs to make those decisions itself.”

"Negotiations on the regular semi-annual review of the sanctions regime for undermining Ukraine’s territorial integrity concluded on March 15, 2026,” the Slovakian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement to the consortium partners. It declined to “comment on or disclose details of its negotiating positions or those of other member states, as the negotiations are confidential." The office of the Slovak prime minister Robert Fico did not comment on our questions.

Fighting sanctions

Economic relief for Ismailova and Usmanov isn’t the only case in which Hungary secretly acted on the Kremlin’s behalf in Brussels.

We have obtained material on a separate conversation in which Szijjártó reported to another high-ranking Russian official, Deputy Energy Minister Pavel Sorokin, that he was doing his best to “repeal” a crucial EU sanctions package targeting Russia’s shadow fleet of false-flagged oil tankers — the means by which Moscow evades Western energy sanctions.

In one conversation with Sorokin, a London-educated former Morgan Stanley banker and Putin’s “secret weapon” in blunting Western energy sanctions, Szijjártó offered to remove Russian banks proposed for designation by the EU. Szijjártó even asked the Russian to provide him with arguments as to why doing so would be in Hungary’s interest.

In a June 30, 2025 phone call with Sorokin, Szijjártó complained that the EU refused to show him documents related to the proposed sanctioning of 2Rivers, a Dubai-based company trading in Russian oil. “[B]ecause they say that there is no clear Hungarian interest that they can identify, and therefore Hungary cannot legally ask them to be removed from the list,” Szijjártó elaborated after Sorokin asked why Budapest was cut out of the loop.

According to the EU, 2Rivers, formerly known as Coral Energy, has been one of the key players in selling Russian oil via its own shadow fleet of tankers and concealing the origin of crude from Russian state energy giant Rosneft, now under U.S. sanctions. 2Rivers then sells the crude above the internationally capped oil price and feeds Russia’s war machine with vital revenue. In December 2024, the UK sanctioned 2Rivers and its oil trading network.

It is unclear what interest Hungary – a landlocked country that receives oil through pipelines – could have in trying to preserve Russia’s shadow fleet operations. But the benefit to Russia is obvious.

After reporting that he was unsuccessful with 2Rivers, Szijjártó shared details with Sorokin on where the then-ongoing negotiations on the EU’s 18th sanctions package stood.

The Hungarian foreign minister explained to the Russian official that the vote was not yet on the agenda thanks to a postponement arranged by Hungary and Slovakia, one that would remain in effect until the EU agreed to “make an exception” for those countries and “allow us to continue buying Russian gas and oil.”

The 18th sanctions package was proposed by the European Commission on June 10, 2025, but Szijjártó announced publicly on June 23 that Hungary and Slovakia were blocking it. Officially, he claimed that this was “in response to European Union plans to phase out Russian energy imports.” In his call with Sorokin a week later, however, Szijjártó talked very differently about Hungary’s real activities and goals in Brussels.

Szijjártó told Sorokin that he was fighting against the whole sanctions package and trying to save as many Russian entities as possible. “I’m doing my best to have it repealed. The thing is that I have already removed 72 [entities] from the list, but there were 128. I'm trying to continue, but I have to say that this is in the interest of Hungary,” Szijjártó said.

“I've already removed 72 [Russian entities] from the list, but there were 128. I'm trying to continue, but I have to say that this is in the interest of Hungary,” Szijjártó told Russia's Deputy Energy Minister Pavel Sorokin.

It is not clear from the conversation exactly what 72 and 128 Russian entities Szijjártó referred to.

“If they [Sorokin’s staff] can help me identify the direct and negative effects on Hungary, I would be very grateful,” he added, “because if I can show something like that, you would give me a completely different opportunity.”

The call is proof that the Hungarian foreign minister not only uses Russian-authored talking points when attempting to dilute EU penalties on Russia — he actively seeks them out from Russian  officials.

According to Kinga Redłowska, a leading sanctions expert and the Head of CFS Europe at the London-based think tank RUSI, “Legally it remains a politically legitimate basis for a Member State to withhold consent in a unanimity-based system. Hungary’s use of this argument serves a dual purpose. Domestically, it allows Viktor Orbán to reinforce an anti-Ukrainian narrative. At the EU level, it provides leverage to extract concessions in unrelated areas, such as EU funding or rule-of-law disputes.”

While this strategy may help Orban and his embattled government, enabling an aggressive neighbor to capture and hold more sovereign European land runs counter to Hungary’s national interest. “Weakening sanctions risks bolstering Russia’s war economy, undermining the broader security interests of all EU member states, including Hungary itself.”

“Weakening sanctions risks bolstering Russia’s war economy, undermining the broader security interests of all EU member states, including Hungary itself.”

The conversation between Szijjártó and Sorokin also touched on Russian banks that were in the crosshairs of the EU’s 18th sanctions package. “[S]hare the names of those banks with me, I can check if they are on the list or not, I’ll check the legal grounds and then I’ll do my best,” Szijjártó told Sorokin. “I know they want to put Sankt Petersburg Bank on the list, which I managed to remove; they also wanted to put another bank related to the Paks project on the list, and I managed to remove it.”

After weeks of delays by Hungary and Slovakia, the European Union finally adopted its 18th sanctions package on July 18, 2025. 2Rivers was included in the package, prompting it to begin the process of dissolution. The measures also dealt a significant blow to Russia’s shadow fleet and its efforts to circumvent oil sanctions.

However, it remains unclear how much greater the impact might have been without Szijjártó’s efforts.

In March 2026, the Washington Post reported that Szijjártó has been regularly sharing information over the phone with Lavrov during breaks in EU talks, almost in real time. “Every single EU meeting for years has basically had Moscow behind the table,” a European security official told the Post, which did not have the verbatim transcripts of these calls.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk and Gabrielius Landsbergis, the former Lithuanian foreign minister, almost immediately confirmed the Post’s reporting. “The news that Orbán’s people inform Moscow about EU Council meetings in every detail shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. We’ve had our suspicions about that for a long time. That’s one reason why I take the floor only when strictly necessary and say just as much as necessary,” Tusk posted to X.

In March 2026, Politico reported that “the EU is limiting the flow of confidential material to Hungary and leaders are meeting in smaller groups.”

Hungary’s government dismissed such reports as “pro-Ukrainian propaganda”, while Szijjártó, who acknowledged frequent communication with Lavrov, said the Post article on his alleged leaks is “fake news.”

This strategy appears to be backfiring. Szijjártó was recently booed by protesters at a campaign event, with shouts of “traitor” and “Russian spy” leveled at him. All an angry Szijjártó could shout back was that the hecklers would have to pay three times as much for gas and oil if it weren’t coming from Russia.

Neither Lavrov nor Szijjártó replied to requests for comment on this investigation.

Hungary’s interference in EU sanctions policy began within months of Russia’s full-scale invasion, and what started as isolated vetoes hardened over four years into a systematic, semi-institutionalised lobbying effort for Kremlin-linked figures — later joined by Slovakia.

Hungary’s interference in EU sanctions policy began within months of Russia’s full-scale invasion, and what started as isolated vetoes hardened over four years into a systematic, semi-institutionalised lobbying effort for Kremlin-linked figures.

In June 2022, Hungary held the entire sixth EU sanctions package hostage — including the landmark partial Russian oil embargo — until Patriarch Kirill, a former KGB agent and the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, was removed from the list, with Prime Minister Viktor Orbán personally intervening on the grounds of “religious freedom.”

From 2022 onwards, Hungary also began blocking Latvia’s repeated attempts to add Iskander Makhmudov and Andrei Bokarev — the billionaire co-owners of Transmashholding, a producer of components for infantry combat vehicles since the onset of the war. Latvian diplomats attributed this move to Transmashholding’s existing joint ventures in Hungary with companies linked to the man who would become Hungary’s minister of defense, Kristóf Szalay-Bobrovniczky.

The full stakes of that protection became clearer in March 2026, when The Insider and Der Spiegel revealed that Bokarev was the “ideological architect and principal backer” of Center 795 — a secret assassination directorate established by Russian General Staff order in December 2022, staffed by elite GRU and FSB veterans and embedded inside the Kalashnikov Concern in order to use its payroll and facilities as cover.

In February 2024, Hungary failed in its attempt to delist oligarchs Usmanov, Kantor, and Nikita Mazepin — a former Formula 1 pilot and the son of fertilizer and chemicals tycoon Dmitry Mazepin — from the individual sanctions list. The following month, Slovakia secured the removal of Jozef Hambálek, a Slovak national and European head of the Russian nationalist Night Wolves motorcycle club, in what was described as a transactional swap: Slovakia backed Hungary’s broader list in exchange for Budapest supporting Hambálek’s removal.

In September 2024, Hungary finally secured the removal of Nikita Mazepin, while Violetta Prigozhina – the mother of the late Wagner Group chief Yevgeny Prigozhin – was also removed from the list (though there is no indication that the latter was at Hungary's request). In December 2024, Hungary again saved Patriarch Kirill from sanctions, along with Russia’s UN Ambassador Vasily Nebenzia.

In February 2025, Hungary extracted another Kirill exemption during negotiations on the 16th EU sanctions package, as well as saving the Russian Olympic Committee and two Russian football clubs (CSKA Moscow and FC Rostov) from sanctions. Viktor Orbán’s government then went on – with Slovakia’s support – to succeed in the already mentioned removal of Kantor, Degtyaryov, and Ismailova from the EU’s sanctions list in March 2025.

In February 2026, Hungary vetoed the entire 20th sanctions package outright — the first time Budapest had gone that far — blocking new restrictive measures that had been intended to mark the fourth anniversary of the invasion while citing a dispute over oil flows through the Druzhba pipeline. Both Viktor Orbán and Robert Fico use the issue of the Druzhba disruption for domestic political campaigning purposes.

Most recently, in March 2026, Slovakia threatened to veto the six-month renewal of the entire existing individual sanctions list unless Usmanov and Fridman were immediately removed. However, EU diplomats called what came next one of the strangest U-turns they had witnessed: Bratislava, backing down without securing the removal of either. Hungary, likewise, dropped its list of seven names.

The 39-year-old Chen Zhangjie was convicted under a charge of refusing to comply with lawful orders from the authorities. The sentence matched the position taken by prosecutors at a hearing on Feb. 23.

The incident in question took place on Sept. 27, 2025 in international waters off the island of Ushant in the Atlantic. French military personnel stopped the tanker, which was sailing without a visible flag, but the captain refused to allow unimpeded access for an inspection. According to deputy prosecutor Gabriel Rollin, that refusal forced the sailors to carry out “a dangerous maneuver capable of causing an accident.” Two employees of a Russian private security company — the Moran Security Group — were on board, reportedly to monitor the crew and gather intelligence.

The tanker, which was carrying Russian oil to India despite being under sanctions, had been flying the false flag of Benin. The vessel was also suspected of involvement in drone launches that disrupted operations at Danish airports in September 2025 (though that episode was not part of the French court’s proceedings). The captain’s lawyer argued that the case did not fall under French jurisdiction, asserting that under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), an incident in international waters should be handled by a Chinese court. The French court rejected those arguments. The tanker, now renamed Phoenix, is currently sailing under a Russian flag.

The tanker involved in the incident has repeatedly changed its name and flag, a standard practice used by Russia’s “shadow fleet” to make both the vessel and its owners harder to track. In April 2025, the same ship, then named Kiwala and sailing under the flag of Djibouti, was temporarily detained by Estonian authorities after it was found not to be listed in any registry. It then re-registered under the flag of Benin and changed its name to Boracay before being detained by France in the English Channel in September.

Earlier on Monday, Vladimir Putin and Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić held a “constructive” phone call in which they discussed bilateral ties, including those in the energy, oil and gas, and nuclear sectors. Following the call, Vučić said he had agreed to extend the gas supply contract with Russia for three months on favorable terms and claimed Serbia would become the second- or third-cheapest country in Europe in terms of natural gas prices for consumers.

“It was very important for me, and I thanked President Putin for this, that we received another three-month extension of the gas contract on very favorable terms,” Vučić told reporters in Belgrade. “We…pay between $320 and $330 (per 1,000 cubic meters). So the extension is, under the same conditions, 6 million cubic meters of gas per day…and if more gas is needed, it will allow us that kind of flexibility,” the Serbian president explained.

Last month, Vučić said Serbia, which is seeking membership in the European Union, wants to diversify its energy supplies away from Russia, aiming to secure about 20% of its needs through the EU’s joint gas-purchasing program, which it joined last year. However, in recent weeks the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran has left Europe with little spare capacity. On March 20, Serbia cut excise duties on crude oil in an effort to calm the domestic market and soften the impact of the conflict.

Serbia’s state gas company, Srbijagas, imports gas from Russia’s Gazprom. The two companies jointly own a gas storage facility with a total capacity of 450 million cubic meters in the town of Banatski Dvor in northern Serbia.

Serbia also pays for additional gas storage in neighboring Hungary. Gazprom and its subsidiary Gazprom Neft, with 44.9% and 11.3%, hold a majority stake in Serbia’s U.S.-sanctioned oil company Naftna Industrija Srbije (NIS), though they are required to divest by May 22.

On Jan. 19, Hungary’s MOL and the UAE’s ADNOC signed an agreement with the Russian companies to buy their stakes in NIS, pending approval from the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control. The deal with the Russian company would grant MOL control of Serbia's only oil refinery, located in Pancevo.

Moscow’s Meshchansky District Court also sentenced Ekaterina Wagner, who was detained at the protest, to 15 days in jail. She was charged with “disobeying police” and “violating the established procedure for holding a public event.”

According to reporting by the independent outlet Mediazona, the same court sentenced three men — Yaroslav Polyakov, Mikael Markaryan, and a man whose family requested his name stay out of the public domain — to 15 days behind bars on the same charges of “disobeying police,” bringing the total amount of protesters jailed in Moscow earlier today to seven.

According to Wagner’s lawyer, her client did not take part in any unauthorized actions and had simply been out walking with her nephews. One of them, Artur Wagner, has a second-degree disability. He was detained together with his aunt but was later released. Artur said that officers threatened to beat him and to “sit him on a bottle” — referring to a commonly used form of sexualized torture or humiliation — at the police station and record it on video. As a result, the defense says, Artur was forced under pressure to testify against his aunt, saying she had “urged him to go to the protest.” It was also reported that his bank card was taken.

Azarochkin’s lawyer said his client was beaten by police officers in a vehicle. After the court hearing, Azarochkin managed to call his girlfriend and said he was continuing to be beaten in a police transport van. The Moscow police deny that claim.

Shelestov told the court that at the police station officers called him a protest coordinator, demanded that he unlock his phone, and spent an hour examining its contents. Shelestov stressed that he had nothing to do with organizing the rally.

Susanna said she had simply been standing in the square and had not shouted any slogans. According to her, the police report said she had used obscene language, which she denied. She also said the court refused to review body camera footage that could have supported her account.

In all, at least 18 people were detained at nationwide protests against internet blockages, according to a report by the rights group OVD-Info. The group said 13 were detained in Moscow, two in St. Petersburg, two in Kaluga, and one in Voronezh. Among those detained were four minors. Two people were beaten. According to the independent outlet SotaVision, one of those detained in Moscow came to the square carrying a placard reading “No to war.”

Authorized rallies against internet shutdowns had been planned across Russia for March 29, but local authorities banned all of the announced demonstrations. By The Insider’s count, at least six organizers have been jailed — two were detained and four others came under pressure.

The nationwide protests scheduled for March 29 were announced by Dmitry Kisiyev, the former head of opposition politician Boris Nadezhdin’s campaign headquarters. His team filed requests to hold demonstrations in 28 cities across 17 regions. At the same time, the Telegram channel and chat “Scarlet Swan” attempted to hold rallies in Moscow and St. Petersburg around the same issue.  Despite the authorities’ bans, protests still took place in several Russian cities.

A city under air siege

Dubai, a city long seen as a symbol of stability and safety, is now living under regular air raid alerts and the constant operation of air defense systems.

The latest round of escalation began at the end of the third week of the ongoing war with Iran, when Tehran’s forces launched missile strikes on the Israeli cities of Dimona and Arad and attacked other countries in the region. The UAE came under attack as well. According to estimates from the Financial Times, it has become Iran’s most heavily shelled neighbor since the joint US-Israeli operation commenced on Feb. 28.

As of March 27, the UAE’s air defense systems had intercepted 378 ballistic missiles, 15 cruise missiles, and 1,835 drones. The overwhelming majority have been aimed at Dubai, with the airport and seaports suffering the most.

Explosions can be heard in various parts of the city, gradually becoming part of everyday life. At the same time, public discussion of what is happening is limited: the authorities have reminded residents of their liability for publications that could harm “national unity or the reputation of the state,” prompting some social media users to begin deleting videos showing the moments of impact.

“It's not like anything is falling on our heads,” says Svetlana, who moved to Dubai four years ago, shortly after the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. “Most of the strikes hit hotels, possibly because they supposedly think CIA people might be staying there — and even then, we are talking about the upper floors. Frankly, the authorities are now more worried about what we post on social media than about the fact that we are being bombed. Even before, you could not openly express your disagreement with anything, and now even stating facts can cause problems.”

On the first day of the war, Svetlana recalls, she was walking with friends in the Jumeirah Beach Residence area when they saw a drone crash into the luxury hotel Fairmont The Palm. Svetlana and her friends were on the beach when it happened. A few minutes before the strike, they heard gunfire connected to Ramadan celebrations. Soon after, an explosion followed, which eyewitnesses at first mistook for another festive cannon shot.

“Alarms go off on our phones, louder than the explosions themselves. We’ve started turning on airplane mode for the night so we don’t jump up in panic. Lately, they've started sending silent notifications about air defense activity during the night. Otherwise, the alarm sound is very unpleasant — it can scare anyone. You’re sitting with your phone, reading the news, and suddenly it starts blaring like a siren.”

The text of the notifications advises residents to leave the streets, return home, and stay away from windows. In practice, however, people react differently to the alerts. In the first days, some residents panicked and went down to underground parking lots, Svetlana says. Now, she adds, many have stopped taking the warnings seriously: in areas like Dubai Marina, traditionally called “the Russian district,” the threat feels lower, as locals doubt anyone would suspect CIA personnel are there.

Dmitry, who moved to Dubai from Russia with his wife and two young children in 2022, says it was the scariest at the very beginning:

“It was only frightening in the first few days. Now the regular strikes have become background noise. In recent days, the intensity has dropped significantly. We get one or two emergency alerts during the day and another one or two at night. Sometimes, a minute or two after the alert, you can hear not very loud explosions in the sky.”

Like many other residents, his family has developed their own ritual for the alerts. According to Dmitry, he and his children wait out the air raids in the bathroom.

“The children bring pillows and blankets, make themselves a little nest, and lie there with tablets and phones. The younger one also brings the parrot’s cage and the dog — and we all sit there, waiting until the all-clear message comes. The kids are scared. The youngest doesn’t want to sleep alone and, after every emergency alert, runs to the bathroom to hide. They ask if we know when it will end and why this is happening to us at all — we live a peaceful life and don’t bother anyone. We try to calm them, saying we just need to wait and that everything will end sooner or later.”

Some residents, however, have chosen to leave, and several of these explain their decision on social media. A Threads user who lived in Dubai wrote:

“We ran away from Dubai. And we’re still in shock. We hadn’t planned to leave at all. The story began with our one-year apartment lease coming to an end. We were calmly packing our things, looking for a new place. But at some point, everything suddenly changed. The situation kept everyone on edge. Then a message came that the entire school in Dubai was moving to online learning. Plus, our parents were very anxious — they didn’t want us to stay there.”

Dmitry confirms that changes in the education system have indeed become part of the new reality. According to him, in the first weeks after the holidays, schools switched to online instruction. “It feels like this will continue until the end of the school year,” he says.

Nevertheless, most people living in Dubai do not plan to leave. According to Svetlana, the departures are mostly isolated cases.

“We don’t see any reason to leave. Some do panic, but they are a small minority. Some have left for Oman, abandoning their cats and dogs. But we feel safe — on the very first day, we saw how effectively the air defense works. We were sitting at Bluewaters, where hundreds of missiles and drones were heading, and everything was intercepted,” she says.

An economy on hold

Nevertheless, life in Dubai has indeed changed substantially as a result of the Iranian attacks. The biggest impact has been on the economy — primarily in the sphere of tourism, real estate, and business. Last year, the UAE led the world in the volume of foreign direct investment relative to GDP, but now some investors are moving their assets elsewhere. According to market players, such discussions are taking place most notably among investors from Asia.

In the meantime, the real estate market is cooling. Monthly rental prices have dropped, and the number of property sales transactions since the beginning of March has shrunk by 31% year on year (and by more than 50% compared to the previous month). Brokers and journalists are in agreement that the market is beginning to slump.

“The Dubai market is being cleansed. Businesses have suffered. Cost optimization is underway. The situation largely resembles the pre- and post-pandemic period, including when it comes to pricing policies. We’ve been through this before. Those who know how to wait and adapt will survive. Speculators and opportunists have left, and more of them will leave,” writes Elena Fetisova, a host at Novoie Radio Moldova.

Broker Antonina Trokhimenko gives a similar assessment while emphasizing that this is not yet a full market collapse:

“Dubai has become sort of quiet. Businesses have slumped. There are fewer transactions. People are starting to get nervous. There’s a lot of talk about distressed deals. But the truth is that 80% of them aren’t distressed. They are either illiquid properties that no one wanted, projects that were originally overvalued, or just attempts to sell anything in a declining market. And yes, brokers now will sell everything, because they also need to survive. It’s important to understand that the market hasn’t collapsed — it’s cooling. But this is just the beginning.”

Amid declining activity, brokers themselves are leaving the market. A Threads user who works in real estate (handle: senior.nastya) describes what’s happening as a mismatch of expectations and reality:

“I moved here over a year ago to start from scratch — no connections, no client base. Deals started coming in. I got my license, moved out of a shared apartment into my own place, got a driver’s license. I felt like everything was just beginning. And then February 28 happened, and my phone blew up: ‘The market will collapse, go back to Moscow.’ Many packed their bags and left — some to Bali, some back to Saratov.”

According to other market participants, the outflow is noticeable even in professional chatrooms. Broker Oleg Fomichev notes that activity has dropped sharply. Whereas previously around 200 users in a group of 800 were online on weekdays, now there are only about 50.

The drop in demand is also affecting the hospitality industry. Even luxury hotels have started offering discounts and special promotions for locals. Address Beach Resort in the JBR area is offering discounts of up to 30% from March 5 to April 30. According to Hotel Drops Dubai, a service that tracks prices at four- and five-star accommodations, maximum discounts at some properties exceed 50%.

At the same time, hotel staff report a drop in occupancy and mandatory measures imposed by employers.

“Our hotel has barely any guests left, and many staff members have been sent on unpaid leave. Mine is at least until March 31, without any guarantees,” an employee of Jumeirah Al Qasr hotel writes. Other industry workers report similar situations.

Layoffs have also affected the entertainment and service sectors. Arina, who moved to Dubai from Kazakhstan five months ago, says she and a few of her colleagues lost their jobs on the same day.

“I worked at a club, but the company closed because there are no tourists. I will try to find another job. If I can’t, I’ll go back home. I hope the situation improves by September,” she says.

“They fired our entire team,” says Ekaterina, who worked in customer support.

“Us too — after a month of leave,” adds another user.

Amid the overall decline in activity, everyday life in the city is also changing. Dubai, usually packed with tourists, is noticeably quiet.

“The city has become significantly emptier: you can see that tourists have left and new ones haven’t arrived. The waterfronts and beaches look deserted. There are fewer people in shopping malls, and restaurants and shops have started offering discounts. There’s almost no traffic on the roads. Fuel prices haven’t changed, and Tesla Supercharger stations have become free,” says Dmitry.

At the same time, he adds, there is no talk of mass business closures: the infrastructure continues to operate, only with fewer visitors and lower revenue.

The structure of city life has also changed. In a city whose vibe has long been determined by crowds of tourists, this role now belongs mainly to residents. According to Svetlana, areas like JBR and Dubai Marina have noticeably fewer people on the streets, precisely because these are “Russian” districts typically populated by vacationers. Locals, meanwhile, prefer to spend their time in beach clubs.

The Anatoly Kolodkin, which departed the Russian port of Primorsk on March 8, arrived in the Cuban port of Matanzas earlier today and was awaiting to be unloaded, according to a report by the state-controlled news agency TASS, citing the Russian Ministry of Transport.

“The Russian tanker ‘Anatoly Kolodkin,’ carrying a humanitarian shipment of 100,000 tons of crude oil, has arrived in Cuba,” the statement said.

As of the morning of March 30, Starboard Maritime Intelligence data indicated that the vessel was about 30 kilometers off the coast of Cuba and was approaching the island. The tanker is part of Russia’s “shadow fleet” and has been under U.S. sanctions since 2024.

The New York Times reported that the U.S. Coast Guard took no action to detain the tanker because it had received no such order, according to a source cited by the newspaper. Why the White House decided not to intercept the vessel remains unclear.

Analysts quoted by the Times said deliveries of Russian oil would ease Cuba’s fuel crisis by providing the island with energy supplies for several more weeks. It would also reduce pressure on the Cuban government, which has faced escalating threats from Washington.

U.S. President Donald Trump, speaking to reporters, in effect confirmed that the United States had allowed the Russian tanker to deliver oil to Cuba.

“If a country wants to send some oil into Cuba right now, I have no problem with that, whether it’s Russia or [anybody else],” he said while speaking to the press aboard Air Force One.

Trump added that Russian oil supplies to the island did not concern him. Asked whether he feared they would help Vladimir Putin, he replied:

“How does that help him? He loses one boatload of oil, that’s all… It doesn’t bother me much. It’s not going to have an impact. Cuba is finished, they have a bad regime, they have very bad and corrupt leadership. And whether or not they get a boat of oil is not going to matter. I’d prefer letting it in, whether it’s Russia or anybody else. The people need heat and cooling and all the other things that you need.”

If the Anatoly Kolodkin reaches a Cuban port, it will mark the first delivery of energy supplies to Cuba in several months. It is not the only vessel that sought to deliver oil to the island: the tanker Sea Horse (IMO 9262584) loaded about 200,000 barrels of Russian gasoil off the coast of Cyprus back in February, but later changed its destination and is now off the coast of Venezuela, where it arrived on March 27.

Pressure on Havana has increased since late last year, when U.S. forces intercepted a vessel carrying Venezuelan oil to Cuba. After U.S. forces took Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro into custody on Jan. 3, the Trump administration demanded that fuel deliveries to Cuba stop, threatening tariffs against countries supplying oil to Cuba. Mexico subsequently halted such exports.

In an effort to ease the pressure on international energy markets caused by the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran, Washington has permitted deals involving Russian oil that was loaded onto vessels before March 12. The U.S. Treasury later issued a new license restricting transactions involving Cuba, Iran, North Korea, and the illegally occupied and annexed territories of Ukraine.

FlightAware data indicated that the deportees arrived at Moscow’s Domodedovo Airport on Egypt Air flight 729 at 15:53 local time on Sunday, March 29.

According to Russian America for Democracy in Russia, several dozen Russian citizens from five or six immigration detention centers across the United States were gathered for the flight. Transfers to the detention center in Alexandria began about a week before their scheduled departure.

The organization said the U.S. government also attempted to deport people supported by its “Detentions” project. However, thanks to intervention by human rights advocates, numerous appeals, and coordination with lawyers, those people were removed from the flight and remain in the United States.

The organization also reported harsh transfer conditions, with people transported in shackles, spending many hours without being able to sit down, sleeping on the floor, and waiting for departure in overcrowded rooms. The conditions at the airport in Alexandria were said to be better than during transit.

According to Russian America for Democracy in Russia, Saturday’s deportation flight was the second since the start of 2026. In 2025, The Insider counted at least four such deportation flights removing large numbers of Russian citizens from the United States.

The United States began deporting large numbers of Russian citizens — including asylum seekers who had opposed the invasion of Ukraine and who face repression at the hands of the Kremlin — after Trump’s return to office in January 2025. Upon arrival in Moscow, deportees are questioned by FSB officers. Some have been taken into custody — or even handed military draft notices — right at the airport. According to statistics made public by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), 127 Russian citizens were deported from the United States in 2025. Human rights advocates estimate that about 1,000 more remain in immigration detention awaiting decisions.

According to TASS, the ban is to remain in place through July 31, although sources cited by RBC said the duration of the measure was not discussed at the meeting. As of the time of publication, the decision had not been officially confirmed.

The move would mark a return to strict restrictions that have already been used before. At the end of January 2026, the Russian government partially lifted the ban on gasoline exports for major fuel producers while keeping it in place for traders and small refineries. Now the restrictions are again set to apply to all exporters without exception.

Deputy Prime Minister Novak said as recently as March 26 that such a step was possible and stressed that the priority remained supplying the domestic market with fuel while keeping prices in check at a moment when fuel shortages caused by the ongoing conflict in Iran have made exports even more attractive to companies.

The decision to ban exports comes against the backdrop of rising gasoline prices inside Russia itself. According to the St. Petersburg Exchange, benchmark prices for 92-octane gasoline (AI-92) and 95-octane gasoline (AI-95) have risen by about 11% since early March.

At the same time, fuel sales on the exchange have been falling. According to the National Exchange Price Agency, gasoline sales dropped to 31,200 tons on March 26, down from more than 50,000 tons at the beginning of the month. The fall in 95-octane gasoline sales was especially sharp.

In previous years, restrictions on fuel exports were introduced as an anti-crisis measure. A full ban was first imposed in September 2023 in connection with a sharp rise in prices connected to gasoline shortages. Experts say there is no clear sign of an outright gasoline shortage in Russia as of today, but the market remains vulnerable. Amid high global energy prices, exports are more profitable than domestic deliveries, and the Kremlin is using export restrictions and the fuel damping mechanism to keep prices under control inside the country.

The Guardian reported that Rumiantsev, 23, was convicted of causing bodily harm and of perverting the course of justice. He was acquitted on one count of rape and intentional strangulation, and another of rape and assault.

During the trial, Rumiantsev — described as a “trained fighter” — admitted that he had been jealous of the victim because of her friendship with Barron Trump, whom she had met on social media.

The incident that resulted in the Russian man’s arrest took place in January 2025. According to Barron Trump, who later gave a statement to British police, he called his friend on FaceTime on Jan. 28, 2025, and contacted the authorities shortly thereafter.

In an email to police, Barron Trump wrote: “The individual who picked up the phone was a shirtless man with darkish hair, although I didn’t get a good look, this view lasted maybe one second and I was racing with adrenaline. The camera was then flipped to the victim getting hit while crying, stating something in Russian. The guy had hung up. This whole interaction lasted five to seven seconds.”

The victim later said she believed Rumiantsev had deliberately answered the call on her phone to show Barron that he was “punishing” her.

In a transcript of the emergency call released by the Crown Prosecution Service, Trump said: “I’m calling from the U.S., uh, I just got a call from a girl, you know, she’s getting beat up.”

Investigators said the assault lasted about an hour. The victim, whose name has not been disclosed, told jurors that Barron Trump’s intervention saved her life.

“Today, for the first time in close to a 1/4 century, 5 members of Congress (bipartisan) met with 5 members of the Russian Duma to discuss peace and bilateral relations. As representatives of the world’s two greatest nuclear super powers, we owe our citizens open dialogue, ideas, and open lines of communication. We will continue to foster this dialogue and push for peace in support of this admins push for peace, as well as economic opportunity.”

Photographs published by Luna show that the Russian delegation included:

• State Duma Deputy Speaker Boris Chernyshov of the nationalist LDPR party,
• former Russian ambassador to the United States Anatoly Antonov,
• first deputy chairman of the State Duma committee on international affairs Vyacheslav Nikonov,
• former speedskater and United Russia lawmaker Svetlana Zhurova, who also serves on the international affairs committee,
• and A Just Russia — For Truth lawmaker and economist Mikhail Delyagin.

The American side included Rep. Andy Ogles of Tennessee, Wisconsin Republican Derrick Van Orden, Arizona Republican Eli Crane, and Texas Democrat Vicente Gonzalez Jr.

Delyagin wrote on his Telegram channel that preparations for the visit had been underway since last year “behind closed doors, in order to avoid provocations by forces seeking to drag the United States into expanded support for Ukraine.” He said the makeup of the delegation had been determined by the “country’s leadership,” and that a return visit would most likely take place before mid-July. He also said members of the Russian delegation had been temporarily removed from U.S. sanctions lists to facilitate the trip to Washington, adding that the advance issuance of visas showed the Trump administration’s “strong interest” in “normalizing relations.”

“We did not avoid sharp and fundamental issues, including both Ukraine and Iran. A broad range of topics was discussed: from student exchanges, sports and visa issuance, to investment and technology,” Delyagin wrote.

Svetlana Zhurova told the Russian broadcaster RTVI that the meeting also addressed diplomatic property, direct flights, and the possible creation in Congress of a “friendship group” responsible for restoring relations with Russia.

The delegations exchanged symbolic gifts. The Russian lawmakers received souvenir challenge coins from Luna and socks depicting U.S. President Donald Trump that were produced during his 2024 campaign. The Americans, among other things, received from the Russians a postcard signed by participants in the Apollo-Soyuz space mission. The first meetings between the delegations took place on March 26 at the U.S. Institute of Peace in Washington and at the residence of the Russian ambassador to the United States. Meetings with U.S. officials and analysts were scheduled for Friday. The guests were also given a tour of the Capitol.

Diplomatic contacts between Russia and the United States regarding the war in Ukraine have been put on hold because of the start of the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran. The last round of trilateral talks on Ukraine took place Feb. 17-18 in Geneva. The next stage, which had been planned for early March, did not take place.

According to a correspondent for The Insider who was present at the farewell ceremony, the coffin was carried out by men in black, believed to be funeral service workers, and was immediately loaded into a vehicle. This occurred in the back courtyard, meaning that those present could observe what was happening only from a distance. 

As noted by Novaya Gazeta Europe, the funeral had to be postponed as Baymuradova's relatives in Chechnya did not respond to requests to take charge of her body, and was attended by just 20 mourners.

An error was also made on the plaque placed at the grave. Instead of the surname “Baymuradova,” which appears in the documents, the plaque bears the surname “Alikhanova.” The mistake apparently stemmed from the name of Aishat’s father, Alikhan. The plaque is temporary. The NC SOS (North Caucasus SOS) crisis group said the installation of a headstone would be the responsibility of relatives and concerned members of the public.

Aishat Baymuradova's body was found on Oct. 19, 2025, in the apartment in Yerevan where she lived after fleeing Chechnya. According to investigators, the cause of her death was mechanical asphyxiation (though Armenia’s Investigative Committee said this could not be determined with absolute certainty). Her body also showed hemorrhages and signs of blunt force trauma, as well as injuries that may have been caused by burning.

According to relatives and human rights advocates, Baymuradova had been subjected to abuse within her family since childhood, including sexualized violence. At age 17, she was married — not by her own volition — and people who knew her say she also faced abuse in that marriage. Baymuradova left a child behind in Chechnya, fleeing with the help of human rights activists who assist women from the North Caucasus.

In February, Armenia’s Investigative Committee named two Russian citizens, Karina Iminova and Said-Khamzat Baisarov, as suspects in the murder case and placed them on Interpol’s wanted list, although Armenian authorities believe both have since returned to Russia, where they are unlikely to face legal consequences. Investigators believe Baymuradova was strangled on Oct. 16 by Iminova and Baisarov, acting on the instructions of “an unidentified person,” after the pair befriended her on Instagram and lured her to an apartment in Yerevan, where police later found her dead.

Although Iminova had told Baymuradova that she too had fled to Yerevan from Dagestan — another conservative, Muslim-majority region in Russia’s North Caucasus — she was later found to have close ties to Chechen security forces. Several of her social media followers were also found to have connections to Ramzan Kadyrov, the Kremlin-backed head of Chechnya.

As The Insider previously found, Baysarov spent at least a year in a Moscow pretrial detention center from 2018 to 2019 in a case under Article 205.1, Part 1.1 of the country’s criminal code, which covers “aiding terrorist activity.” However, there is no publicly available information about the case having been heard in court, nor about any verdict being issued. Baysarov is not listed in Russia’s federal register of terrorists and extremists, suggesting that the case was dropped.

Russian oil terminals at the ports of Ust-Luga and Primorsk in the Gulf of Finland were hit by a new attack overnight on March 27, according to several Telegram and Twitter channels that published videos and photos from the sites (1, 2, 3).

The open source intelligence (OSINT) project CyberBoroshno geolocated footage from some of the videos, identifying viewpoints from the town of Vyborg (showing fires emanating from the port of Primorsk) and from Narva (showing the same from the port of Ust-Luga). The group said the strikes on the ports appeared to have been carried out almost simultaneously. Reports described multiple explosions and detonations near the facilities, with the glow from fires visible for dozens of kilometers.

Additional confirmation of the fires comes from NASA’s FIRMS service, which tracks thermal anomalies in the areas of the ports.

The attacks mark the fourth consecutive night of strikes on Russian oil infrastructure in the Baltic Sea region. On March 23, drones attacked the port of Primorsk, with local authorities saying the resulting fire was contained only on March 25.

Both Ust-Luga and Primorsk, key hubs for Russian oil and petroleum exports via the Baltic Sea, reportedly suspended operations as a result of the March 23 attack.

At least 40% of Russia’s oil export capacity is offline, according to recent calculations by Reuters — the result of Ukrainian drone strikes, the seizure of tankers by Western countries, and damage caused to the Druzhba pipeline by Russian strikes on Ukrainian territory.

The disruption amounts to the most severe hit to Russian oil supplies in the country’s modern history. It comes just as oil prices have risen above $100 a barrel amid the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran.

According to sources who spoke with The Bell, Putin told those attending the meeting that he intended to continue the war. “He said, ‘we’re going to continue fighting,’” one of The Bell’s sources summarized Putin as saying. Another said the discussion centered on Russia advancing to the administrative borders of Ukraine’s Donetsk Region. Putin then suggested that Russia’s business leaders make voluntary contributions to aid in those efforts. According to one of The Bell’s sources, the idea to elicit support from the business community came from Rosneft CEO Igor Sechin, who had sent Putin a letter ahead of the meeting proposing to “shake down business in a difficult time for the country.”

Some participants took action immediately. Billionaire Suleiman Kerimov, according to two sources cited by The Bell, pledged to contribute 100 billion rubles ($1.2 billion) to the budget. According to The Financial Times, steel magnate Oleg Deripaska has also agreed to make a contribution.

The RSPP congress also saw an awkward moment when a technical glitch prevented the Russian national anthem from playing at the opening. The union’s head, Alexander Shokhin, began singing it a cappella, prompting the entire audience to join in.

A day after the report from The Bell was published, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov responded, claiming: “It is not true that this came from Igor Sechin. It is not true that there was talk of money for the special military operation. It is not true that Putin made such a request.”

Peskov did confirm that such an initiative had been discussed at Putin’s closed-door meeting with business leaders. However, in the Kremlin press secretary’s telling, it had been proposed by one of the participants, and that Putin had merely “welcomed” the proposal. 

Russians are coming up with an increasing number of unconventional ways to communicate as access to Telegram in the country is restricted, mobile internet is shut down in a range of cities, and foreign messaging services are blocked. The Insider counted 10 unexpected solutions.

Cat feeder

On March 24, Alina, a Moscow native living in Bali, posted an Instagram video showing how she called her parents back in Russia through an automatic cat feeder. “Not POV, but real: it’s 2026, everything is blocked, and you’re talking to your parents in Russia through a cat feeder,” she wrote.

Avito

A St. Petersburg resident corresponded with friends through a classified ad on the online marketplace Avito, which is included on the Russian government’s “whitelists” and remains accessible even during internet restrictions. The ad in question was nominally posted by a user who was looking for a new home for a cat. However, the description clarified that the animal already had owners and that the page itself was being used as a chat.

“My friends have a link to this ad. When the internet works only through whitelists, we correspond there — like I’m doing with you now,” the author of the ad told the outlet Rotonda.

After news of the ad spread, Avito removed the cat listing and subjected the woman’s account to a review. The platform’s press service said the ad violated the site’s rules, as it did not contain an offer to sell a real good or service.

Excel spreadsheets

People in Russia are also known to be communicating via Microsoft Excel spreadsheets. One such spreadsheet was created by the science and technology-themed Telegram channel Concertzaal, with users commenting on the channel’s posts there.

Photos and Notes apps

On March 11, the publication High-Tech Mail published instructions on how to correspond with loved ones through the Photos app on an iPhone using the Shared Albums feature. The comments under uploaded pictures can function as a full-fledged chat: messages arrive with notifications, are sorted by time, and can even be deleted. In a similar way, people can also correspond through an iPhone’s Notes app.

Gaming apps

There have also been cases of people messaging through gaming apps. Travel blogger Elnar Mansurov, for example, posted an Instagram video titled “How to stay in touch without VPN and Telegram: greetings from 2026.” In it, he explains in detail how to correspond through the Chess app.

Pagers, walkie-talkies and landline phones

Finally, there are the less creative options: pagers, walkie-talkies, and landline phones. In mid-March, Russian media reported that Russians had begun buying these items in large numbers. According to the newspaper Vedomosti, sales of walkie-talkies on the Wildberries online marketplace have risen by 27%, purchases of landline phones are up 25%, and pagers are up 73%.

“To further strengthen our efforts to counter Russia’s sanctions evasion, Canada is adding 100 more vessels from Russia’s shadow fleet to its sanctions list,” the Mar. 26 statement on the ministry’s website read.

The document notes that Russia continues to rely on oil and gas revenues to fund its military operations in Ukraine, using a network of vessels and auxiliary organizations — primarily oil tankers — to transport sanctioned goods and raw materials, including crude oil.

The ministry emphasized that its sanctions are aimed at limiting Russia’s ability to finance the war while minimizing harm to the civilian population.

Canada, the U.S., the U.K., and other Western countries have repeatedly imposed sanctions on the “shadow fleet” and have been seizing such vessels with increasing frequency..

Russia’s “shadow fleet” consists of hundreds of aging tankers, formally owned by offshore companies and often sailing under false flags. The Kremlin and affiliated traders use the fleet to circumvent sanctions, including the price cap on Russian oil. According to the Helsinki-based Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA), in the first nine months of 2025 alone, over 100 Russian vessels used false flags to transport around 11 million tons of oil worth €4.7 billion.

The complaint against the prime minister was filed by Branislav Gröhling, leader of the liberal Freedom and Solidarity party, who says the document points to possible serious crimes related to the prime minister’s actions, including abuse of power, treason, and breach of duty in the management of another’s property.

The complaint was processed by the Office of the Attorney General after first being sent to the regional prosecutor’s office, then to the police. According to Gröhling, more than 13,000 people supported his submission, which he called “the largest criminal complaint in Slovakia’s history.”

In recent weeks, both Fico and Hungary’s Viktor Orban have accused Ukraine of impeding the supply of Russian energy to Europe. Transit of Russian oil through the Druzhba pipeline to Hungary and Slovakia was indeed halted in January following damage caused by a Russian strike. In Hungary, however, the disruption has been portrayed not as a technical issue, but as the result of political pressure being exerted against Budapest ahead of upcoming parliamentary elections. At the end of February, Hungary blocked a €90 billion EU loan to Ukraine.

Hungary and Slovakia have oil reserves and can also receive supplies via the Adria pipeline from Croatia, the EU reported. However, alternative sources are more expensive. Prices have also been affected by the ongoing war in the Middle East.

Under Swedish law, violating the sanctions regime can result in fines or imprisonment, especially if it involves large sums of money or trade in dual-use goods. Kubal deputy CEO Jonas Eriksson confirmed that the investigation is ongoing, adding that the company is cooperating with the authorities and providing all necessary information.

The investigation is being conducted by the Swedish Prosecution Authority. Prosecutor Sara Nilsson stated that the case concerns suspected crimes that could harm the security of Sweden and Europe. She emphasized that the case is at an early stage, adding that it is complex and large in scope.

Earlier, Sweden’s Centre Party called for the nationalization of the Kubal aluminum plant. The press office of the Russian company Rusal, which is controlled by oligarch Oleg Deripaska, expressed hopes for a “balanced and reasonable approach from EU authorities.”

“The restriction was introduced on the basis of a decision by the operational headquarters of Russia’s Agriculture Ministry, which oversees supplies of nitrogen fertilizers to agricultural producers and the procedure for fulfilling them. Amid growing export demand for nitrogen fertilizers, suspending overseas shipments will make it possible to prioritize the needs of the domestic market during the spring fieldwork period and ensure that it proceeds without disruption,” the ministry said in a press release.

On Feb. 25, a Ukrainian drone attack shut down the Dorogobuzh chemical plant in Russia’s western Smolensk Region. The plant is part of the Acron Group, a mineral fertilizer producer which produces ammonium nitrate. Regional governor Vasily Anokhin said the ammonia unit is expected to restart by May, while the ammonium nitrate production unit is scheduled to resume operations by the end of June.

Dorogobuzh produces 5% of all mineral fertilizers made in Russia, accounting for 11% of all ammonium nitrate production (the fertilizer most in demand on the domestic market) as well as 9% of Azofoska, a nitrogen-phosphorus-potassium fertilizer.

Exports of nitrogen and compound fertilizers from Russia have been subject to quotas since December 2021.

On Feb. 18, 2026, the Russian and Iranian navies held joint exercises in the Gulf of Oman. On the Russian side, the Baltic Fleet corvette Stoikiy and its accompanying tanker Yelnya took part in the after previously visiting the Omani port of Muscat. On the Iranian side were the frigate Alvand, the missile boat Neyze, and the corvette Shahid Sayyad Shirazi. (A Chinese squadron was also expected to arrive in the Gulf, but Beijing pulled out of the exercises at the last moment.)

According to the official account put out by Russia’s Defense Ministry, Iranian and Russian sailors jointly ran drills focused on communications and ensuring the safety of civilian shipping. In reality, the exercises rehearsed possible scenarios for blocking sea lanes and attacking a mock enemy.

The end of the exercise was marked by a joint tea party. The sides exchanged commemorative souvenirs and assured one another of their strong military friendship. Many understood that a major war could soon begin and that the sailors might be seeing each other alive for the last time. The mood among those present was correspondingly somber.

Among those in attendance was 37-year-old GRU Lt. Col. Yuly Deryabin, a senior aide to the military attaché at the Russian Embassy in Iran. Deryabin arrived in Tehran in August 2023 and led a group of advisers on the operation of the latest Russian-supplied Resonance-NE radar systems, which are capable of detecting targets including ballistic missiles and stealth aircraft at a distance of up to 1,100 kilometers.

Radar systems specialist

Deryabin was invited to serve in the GRU after graduating from the Frunze Combined Arms Academy in Moscow in 2014. Later, he studied at the Military Diplomatic Academy’s agent-operational intelligence faculty,which trains officers for military attaché posts.

Deryabin is a co-author of the patent “Radar Station With Inverse Synthetic Aperture and Two-Level Neural Network Target Recognition.” According to the patent abstract, the system “belongs to the category of radar devices and is intended to determine the classes and types of airborne targets from range profiles and two-dimensional radar images on the basis of a neural network method.” (The technology is not exactly new; similar inventions have already been in use by the U.S. military and NATO forces for several years.)

After graduating from the “spy” academy, Deryabin completed further courses at the 106th Air Defense Training Center in Orenburg. He was then assigned to the GRU residency in Afghanistan, flying to the country several times.

For example, travel records show that in 2019 Deryabin accompanied Alexander Kononov, an officer from the GRU 170th Operational Coordination Center’s (OKTs) military unit 46179, to Kabul. OKTs is part of the Defense Ministry’s Special Control Service and is responsible for monitoring seismic and radiation conditions both near Russia’s borders and around the world. Among their various tasks, OKTs personnel track the atomic ambitions of North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, monitor the situation at the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine (in the guise of civilian specialists), and serve on site at nuclear facilities in Iran.

In 2021, when the U.S. hastily withdrew its forces from Afghanistan, Deryabin was sent to Kabul again, where he studied captured weapons that had fallen into the hands of the Taliban. He was mainly interested in the missiles and loitering munitions that the Americans had left behind. Two additional Russian Foreign Ministry employees, Yevgeny Yegorov and Alfat Urumbayev, arrived in Afghanistan together with Deryabin. What the diplomats were doing in Kabul remains a mystery, but in April 2023 Putin decorated both men with medals “For Courage.”

Deryabin and his colleagues remained active in the Middle East even as Russia’s war in Ukraine continued to eat up a substantial portion of the military’s resources. A source for The Insider at the Russian Embassy in Tehran said Russian intelligence learned in advance about the looming U.S. and Israeli airstrikes on Iran:

“As early as Feb. 25, Ambassador Alexei Dedov convened a general meeting and announced an urgent evacuation. Chaos ensued, and everything was done in a rush. On March 2, all the women and children, school teachers, and Rosatom employees, a total of 147 people, were transported to Azerbaijan, where they boarded a plane provided by the Ministry of Emergency Situations. It’s an eight-hour bus ride [from Tehran] to Lankaran, then another three and a half hours by plane to Zhukovsky Airport [in Moscow].”

On Feb. 28, when the United States and Israel launched massive strikes on Iran, the Russian Resonance-NE air defense systems overseen by Deryabin were among their first targets. In all, military experts estimate that 90% of Iran’s missile and anti-aircraft systems and radars were destroyed, including the latest Chinese HQ-9B and YLC-8B systems, which had been advertised as “stealth aircraft killers.” As a result, the Iranian military no longer had any need for consultant Deryabin’s advice.

Incidentally, the Iranian frigate Alvand, which took part in the joint military exercises with Russia, has already been sunk, and the destruction of the missile boat Neyze and the corvette Shahid Sayyad Shirazi appears to be only a matter of time.

A love since childhood

Among the evacuated employees of the Russian Embassy was Deryabin’s wife, Maria, who took an empty ant farm back to Moscow in diplomatic baggage, leaving its roughly 1,000 prior inhabitants behind. 

As The Insider found, Deryabin’s love of insects was instilled in him by his father, Albert, who until the mid-2000s worked as an engineer at a shipbuilding plant in the northern town of Severodvinsk before — to the surprise of relatives and friends alike — suddenly giving up everything to settle in the abandoned village of Anosinki in the Smolensk Region, where he founded a “Birch Bark Museum” while living in a Baba Yaga-style hut.  Local television even aired a report about him.

The recluse himself did not watch television, rejected the expertise of doctors, and treated himself with folk remedies. In May 2021, a group of travelers from St. Petersburg visited the museum. After they left, the elder Deryabin fell ill with COVID-19. Because of poor communications and impassable roads, an ambulance could not reach him in time, and he died.

The younger Deryabin set up his first home ant colony in the top-secret dormitory of the Military Diplomatic Academy in Moscow, at 52 Narodnogo Opolcheniya Street, where he established a trade in insects. The academy’s leadership either did not know about his side business or else simply chose to look the other way.

Australian Diacamma ants are back on the market

Among Moscow’s ant traders, Deryabin is a highly visible figure. The Insider obtained several text messages sent to Deryabin by other dealers in live insects: “Australian Diacamma ants available for sale, call now. The ‘Heel’ formicarium is an excellent solution for both beginners and experienced breeders. The formicarium consists of a nest and a large arena. The nest has three modules. Each module consists of two living chambers and a humidifying chamber.”

Deryabin’s money transfers also show that he ordered special equipment and feed for the ants.

Most likely, the GRU officer brought exotic specimens back from his foreign postings. Transporting rare ants without special authorization from sanitary control and customs is strictly prohibited, but the military attaché appears to have used his diplomatic immunity, and his baggage was not inspected.

Incidentally, the trade in smuggled ants can be quite lucrative. On Russia’s black market, for example, a Laotian Diacamma orbiculatum queen and 30 worker ants cost more than 100,000 rubles ($1,200). The price for a Messor arenarius queen and 40 members of the “service staff,” a species found in Israel, North Africa, and Saudi Arabia, comes in at a still substantial 30,000 rubles ($365). An Egyptian harvester ant costs 15,000 rubles ($180), while a colony of African predatory ants, Camponotus cf. fellah, sells for 9,000 ($110) rubles.

Lt. Col. Deryabin hid his costly live cargo in the bunker of the Russian Embassy in Tehran, where staff shelter from airstrikes. The Insider can report that he placed the ants in test tubes and empty bottles of mineral water, but the ants nevertheless began dying en masse.

The military attaché asked Igor Dyomkin, a GRU resident in Iran whose activities were previously covered by The Insider, to let him take the remainder of the colony back to Moscow. But Dyomkin refused, citing the difficult operational situation.

The ruble is not the first

In September, Russia’s financial system will enter a new technological era: the country’s largest banks and retailers will be required to ensure acceptance of the digital ruble, which the Bank of Russia is promoting as a tool of “convenience and low cost.”

The idea of a central bank digital currency (CBDC) is not new. Economists were discussing the concept as far back as the 1980s, with Nobel laureate James Tobin proposing a new type of account fully backed by reserves at the central bank in order to protect savings from risks. However, for a long time there was no convenient technical basis with which to implement such ideas. That aspect emerged only after the success of Bitcoin, when officials realized they, too, could use distributed ledger technology (or its centralized imitations) to regain control over money flows that had partially moved into the gray zones of the crypto world. Today, around 100 countries are exploring options for introducing CBDCs.

Options for introducing digital currencies are being explored by nearly 100 countries

The first country to launch its own digital currency into full-scale operation was the Bahamas in 2020, but it is not only tiny island nations that are pursuing such projects. China had been testing similar initiatives as early as 2014, and in 2025 the People’s Bank of China officially announced the launch of Renminbi Digital — the most extensive instrument of financial control in the world.

Russia’s model of a “two-tier retail system,” in which the central bank issues currency and commercial banks act as technical intermediaries, is almost entirely copied from the Chinese one. For Beijing, this project has become an effective means of combatting the monopoly power of private platforms such as Alipay and WeChat, as well as a tool of social engineering. Thanks to the “digital wallet,” the state can see every transaction its citizens make in real time.

The “digital euro” is also being actively discussed, but the project is facing fierce resistance from human rights advocates defending the privacy of citizens and businesses. Meanwhile, the United States is treating the “digital dollar” with extreme caution, as the country’s strong banking lobby understands that the introduction of a CBDC will undermine a business model based on fees and liquidity.

Digital, but not crypto

When the Bank of Russia presented its first concept for the digital ruble in 2021, it looked like a response to the hype surrounding cryptocurrencies. The project description included terms typical of that sphere, such as “distributed ledgers” and “smart contracts.” At the same time, the key feature of cryptocurrencies — decentralization — is absent from the digital ruble.

A classic blockchain is built on the principle of having no central authority, meaning that no one can unilaterally cancel a transaction. The digital ruble platform, by contrast, is a closed ledger with different levels of access rights for different participants. The Bank of Russia is the sole owner of the “master node,” the single operator of the platform that issues money and controls the entire database. Technically, it is a system with cryptographic protection, but with an absolute “right of veto” held by the regulator. If the central bank decides that a transaction was incorrect, it can annul it.

If the central bank decides that a transaction made in digital rubles was incorrect, it can annul it

Under the current system, non-cash money in a bank account represents a claim by a client on a commercial bank, which is supervised by the Bank of Russia. The digital ruble, however, is a direct liability of the central bank, with a mechanism for uniquely identifying each unit (a discrete token with an individual serial number). In this set-up, commercial banks act merely as “access nodes,” responsible only for authentication and transmitting instructions. The central bank uses elements of distributed ledger technology to synchronize data between its internal servers, but crucially, it retains the status of an administrator with full rights.

No panacea for corruption

When it comes to the state budget, the digital ruble is expected to simplify financial management and significantly speed up settlements. “Citizens and businesses will be able to receive assistance from the state faster, which is especially important in emergency situations,” the Bank of Russia wrote in its 2025 project status report.

Still, no one is promising to eliminate corruption. Instead, officials speak only of increasing the transparency of budget transactions, which is supposed to reduce “risks of abuse.” As Bank of Russia Governor Elvira Nabiullina explained in October: “We recently conducted a successful experiment with payments in digital rubles under contracts for capital construction, where control over the targeted use of budget funds is critically important. What is the advantage of the digital ruble platform here? Our technologies make it possible, at the program level, to determine who can be paid and for what — specific contractors, subcontractors, for concrete, for employees’ salaries, and so on. It is also possible to determine at what moment the payment should be made — for example, upon receiving confirmation from the state system that the work has been accepted.”

In other words, if every ruble is “colored,” and if its path is visible to the central bank, it is supposedly impossible to steal it. However, this in itself does not signify the end of corruption, as smart contracts can be used not only for legitimate purposes but also in automating complex schemes to conceal evidence of crimes, experts from the International Monetary Fund warn. A ruble can be “colored” programmatically for the purchase of construction materials, but the same cannot be done with an invoice. Schemes involving inflated estimates, fictitious work completion reports, and the purchase of low-quality materials at premium prices will hardly be affected by the introduction of a digital currency. The central bank will transfer digital rubles to the “cement supplier” once the state customer confirms that the service has been performed, but this does not mean financial authorities have verified whether the materials were actually delivered to the construction site or whether they met the specifications stated in the contract.

Smart contracts can be used not only for legitimate purposes but also in complex schemes to conceal evidence of crimes

If a digital currency is introduced in countries that already have a high level of systemic corruption (like Russia), it may even become a tool of selective prosecution, as noted in a report by the International Coalition Against Illicit Economies (ICAIE). If access to the transaction database is controlled by a narrow group of central bank officials, they may manipulate records or conceal operations, making external auditing even more difficult, ICAIE believes.

In short, the digital ruble is more likely to become an instrument of selective transparency than of actual reform. In authoritarian regimes, the system will see all transfers of the opposition but remain “blind” to dubious transactions made by loyalists. And since the registry is fully controlled by the central bank, the Kremlin will also gain the ability to preemptively block the accounts of those attempting to investigate corruption.

The transition from the theory of financial transparency to the real tracking of violations is possible only under conditions of an independent judiciary and a free civil society. In their absence, digital currencies act only as a more advanced means of state control over the population, ICAIE experts conclude.

No cashback

For users, the transition to the digital ruble will mean losing familiar perks. For example, bank cashback is not a gift to the client, but part of the commission that the store pays for processing a transaction. In the digital ruble system, tariffs for businesses are fixed at 0.3%, several times lower than market rates. In such a model, the intermediary bank simply has no source from which to pay rewards to clients. As a result, the declared convenience and “absolute reliability” of the state wallet come at the cost of consumers’ real income.

In addition, unlike deposits in commercial banks, digital rubles held in accounts at the Bank of Russia will not generate profit for their owners.

Unlike deposits in commercial banks, digital rubles held in accounts at the central bank will not generate profit for their owners

People will also have to give up part of their freedoms. Since January 2026, the digital ruble has been introduced on a pilot basis for a number of social payments, and digitalization allows the state to use technical means to restrict how money is used. For example, there are discussions about blocking people’s ability to place bets with bookmakers or to purchase alcohol. A separate subject of debate is maternity capital, which is sometimes cashed out through complex schemes. The digital ruble will make this impossible, as the system simply will not “recognize” a non-designated merchant code.

Any debt, traffic fine, or tax arrears will be written off from a digital wallet automatically. Mandatory write-offs already exist, but they require time in order to process requests from bailiffs. The platform of the Bank of Russia is always transparent to the state, meaning that in conditions of a budget deficit, calling in debts could become a convenient mechanism for increasing the collection of payments.

Control can even be exerted posthumously. The introduction of a system of “digital testamentary orders” means that the transfer of assets to heirs will now also depend on the regulator’s approval. Blocking inheritance for “unreliable” relatives in this system is possible with a single click, creating additional risks for any Russians who might be at risk for inclusion on the country’s ever-expanding lists of “foreign agents” and “extremists.”

Trillion-ruble losses for banks

For the banking system, the introduction of the digital ruble is a problem far deeper than the loss of marketing tools. Financial institutions anticipate a large-scale withdrawal of liquidity, because when money moves from people’s current accounts into digital wallets on the central bank’s platform, it will leave the balance sheets of commercial banks. The scale of this outflow could amount to trillions of rubles.

“After three years, we will see that around 2–4 trillion rubles will be transferred into the digital ruble. These funds will cease to be available for lending, which will ultimately lead to a liquidity shortage and, as a consequence, higher interest rates,” Anatoly Popov, deputy chairman of the management board of Sberbank, explained all the way back in 2020.

In other words, banks will lose their cheapest source of lending — balances held in people’s accounts. To fill this gap, they will have to borrow at the key rate from the Bank of Russia, driving up the price businesses and households pay to borrow money.

The National Rating Agency has estimated the positive effect of digitalization for the economy by 2031 at 260 billion rubles annually, due to reduced transaction costs. But for bankers, this means a reduction in net interest margins.

In effect, the launch of the digital ruble amounts to a soft nationalization of bank liabilities. Money will cease to operate within the private credit market, transforming commercial banks from full-fledged financial institutions into mere operators of mobile applications.

Technological risks

Behind the promise of instant payments lies the problem of performance “bottlenecks” in the platform. Unlike decentralized systems, the digital ruble is tied to a single validator in the form of the Bank of Russia, which will have to accommodate every purchase made in the country using the new currency.

Given Russia’s current shortage of high-performance chips, building an infrastructure capable of handling such a massive financial flow appears to be a near-impossible task. According to a central bank report, from the start of testing the digital ruble through mid-2025, fewer than 100,000 transactions were conducted, and there are risks that under peak loads the centralized registry will simply freeze. In the conventional banking system, the failure of one player does not paralyze the country. However, a failure of the digital ruble platform would instantly leave all Russians without access to their money.

This reality is all the more important given that the system is likely to become a target for hacker attacks. As experts at Kept (formerly KPMG) explain: “Despite the high security standards of the central bank platform, funds in the form of digital rubles are exposed to the risk of attacks by malicious actors who may gain remote access and carry out operations using social engineering, phishing, and malware. The very introduction of the digital ruble and low awareness of the relevant regulations may trigger a surge in fraudulent activity — offers to exchange funds in bank accounts into digital rubles at a favorable rate, speculation about the need for urgent mandatory conversion of cash, and so on.”

What the digital ruble is really for

From the perspective of the Russian authorities, perhaps the most useful function of the digital currency is its potential use in international settlements. “The Bank of Russia is developing cooperation with foreign financial market regulators. Thus, with a number of friendly countries, possible options for the bilateral integration of national platforms are being discussed,” the central bank writes. Issues related to the use of digital currencies are also being worked out within BRICS organization, and the idea of a “BRICS gateway” — where the digital ruble would be exchanged directly for a digital yuan, bypassing SWIFT — looks like a potentially promising solution for circumventing sanctions.

International transfers using digital currencies can indeed be instantaneous, and they are available around the clock, notes the International Monetary Fund. For legitimate users, this is convenient, and for criminals it also creates an opportunity to quickly move funds out of the jurisdiction of one country into another, bypassing traditional banking checks that usually take several days. If such a system comes into existence, law enforcement agencies will have much less time to freeze suspicious accounts (and countries where standards are the most lax will attract a disproportionate share of criminals to their digital infrastructure).

Without global coordination and unified identification rules, digital currencies may become a tool for the rapid and anonymous cross-border movement of illicit capital, the IMF warns. This fact goes at least some way in explaining why EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas proposed that European institutions  preemptively block the use of the digital ruble.

“I can point out an interesting trend: we've seen a significant increase in requests for landline installations. That's because people have realized that it's a very reliable and high-quality way to communicate. Every home should have one,” he said.

The increase is most visible in cities where there are disruptions in mobile service, and “there are many such regions,” Oseyevsky said. According to him, even “many very respected people” now want a home phone. He also compared a landline to a fire extinguisher, saying “it should be in every home.”

Oseyevsky told reporters that Telegram traffic in Russia “is dying right now,” while WhatsApp traffic is “dead.”

“There's virtually no WhatsApp traffic at all. Something might pop up there every few hours or days, but there's practically no traffic. That's why WhatsApp is dead, and Telegram is dying right now. We can see that foreign messaging apps — one is dead, the other is dying — while Max is growing, growing rapidly in terms of traffic,” he added.

Vladimir Putin also took part in the RSPP meeting. His speech was preceded by opening remarks from the union’s head, Alexander Shokhin, who complained that restrictions on mobile internet had complicated life for businesses and ordinary people.

“We certainly understand that these issues relate to national security and the need to ensure that whitelisted websites continue to operate. However, given the widespread use of mobile technology in our daily lives, we hope that a systematic and balanced solution can be found here, although we realize that this is no easy task,” he said.

Putin did not respond to Shokhin’s remarks in any way, nor did he mention the ongoing internet and cell service blackouts affecting multiple Russian regions.

In recent months, Russian authorities have tightened their control over the internet, blocking popular services and censorship-circumvention tools while periodically restricting mobile internet access in various parts of the country. A recent multi-week internet and cell service shutdown in Moscow caused over 5 billion rubles ($61.4 million) in losses for the city’s businesses, with locals actively searching for walkie-talkies, paper maps, and wired internet to cope with the outages. MPs in Russia’s lower house of parliament, the State Duma, ran into the same connectivity and communications outages as their fellow citizens, with many going to a nearby bank branch to try and catch a signal.

Mobile internet began working again in central Moscow on March 24 following more than two weeks of restrictions. The move was directly approved by the FSB, according to Sarkis Darbinyan, a cyber lawyer who spoke with The Insider.

“The internet was switched back on because, most likely, the FSB decided the threat was gone. What threat the chekists feared, we still do not know. Maybe it really was drones, or maybe something else,” the expert said.

Russian officials claim the measures have been undertaken for security reasons, including the threat of Ukrainian drone attacks.

The fine stemmed from a livestream Alontseva broadcast on the social media platform VK, in which she spoke crudely about the benefits that could be gained if her spouse went to war and was killed:

“Just think what a f***ing great payoff [it will be]: kindergarten benefits, school benefits, a monthly allowance as a military spouse. F**k, we’ll really be living the f***ing life. We’ll go to the seaside. And then he’ll get killed there, knock on wood. We’ll buy a house or something.”

Alontseva also said she was considering sending her partner to war after first “registering the children under him.”

In the police report, officers described Alontseva’s actions as follows: “A Slavic-looking girl (a Russian woman) laughingly talks about how one can get rich off a serviceman by marrying him and sending him to the ‘special military operation.’”

In court, Alontseva admitted her guilt and said she had expressed her opinion “in the heat of the moment.” She said she deleted the recording of the livestream, but that she continues to receive negative comments.

The idea of pressuring one’s husband to join the army for the sake of the benefits package on offer appears to be widespread enough that, over the past year, at least two bills have been introduced in Russia’s State Duma to protect servicemen from so-called “black widows” — women accused of marrying men who are fighting in the war or are preparing to sign a contract in order to receive cash payments from the Russian state.

This past December, the nationalist LDPR party proposed punishing such women for entering into sham marriages with Russian soldiers. Then, in February 2026, a group of lawmakers from the Communist Party and senator Airat Gibatdinov proposed allowing the parents of fallen soldiers to have the deceased’s marriage declared fictitious within six months of the death.

By The Insider’s count, rallies in support of a free internet have been banned in at least 13 Russian cities in recent weeks.

In the Vladimir Region’s town of Murom, local authorities demanded that a demonstration planned for April 1 be cancelled due to a supposed drone threat.

Authorities in Krasnodar revoked permission for a rally scheduled for March 28 — one that had been initiated by the local branch of the Russian Communist Party. According to a report by Kommersant citing regional party secretary Alexander Safronov, officials changed their minds due to the “difficult operational situation” created by air raid alerts. Organizers had planned to gather up to 200 people to demonstrate in defense of free speech and against government efforts aimed at censorship, blocking, and throttling internet services.

A demonstration against internet restrictions in Volgograd was banned for the same reason. The application for the rally had been submitted by a 20-year-old resident of the neighboring city of Volzhsky. She estimated that close to 200 people were set to gather at Metallurgov Square, but officials proposed postponing the event until “after the situation stabilizes and the level of danger goes down.”

In Perm, a rally was canceled two hours before it was set to begin, according to a report by the regional branch of opposition politician Yekaterina Duntsova’s unregistered Rassvet (lit. “Dawn”) party. The city administration claimed the existence of a “potential emergency situation” at the site of the rally. Despite the cancellation, about 50 people showed up at the appointed time, with two of them being detained and taken to a police station because they were carrying placards protesting the internet restrictions.

Permission to protest was also revoked in the Siberian city of Irkutsk. A rally planned for March 1 involving about 300 participants had been organized by the local branch of the Yabloko party. It was initially approved before officials later said they had “identified significant public attention to the upcoming event.” According to them, an increase in the number of participants threatened public safety.

Supporters of the opposition politician Boris Nadezhdin, meanwhile, were denied permission to hold demonstrations in support of a free internet in five towns in the Moscow Region: Krasnogorsk, Dolgoprudny, Khimki, Korolyov, and Mytishchi. According to Nadezhdin, local officials justified the bans by citing the risk of the spread of COVID-19.

In Moscow and St. Petersburg, requests by the anonymous Aliy Lebed (lit. “Scarlet Swan”) movement to hold demonstrations were not approved. The group, which launched a Telegram channel in mid-March, recently ran a large online campaign calling on Russians to take part in internet freedom protests on March 29. The independent outlet Verstka reported that several of the Aliy Lebed channel’s administrators are between the ages of 14 and 20. On March 23, a second channel with the same name appeared on Telegram; its authors said they had “made a serious mistake” by giving associates of pro-war blogger Vladislav Pozdnyakov access to the first channel, allegedly resulting in “his subordinates gaining control [over the channel] and posting a fake fundraiser in our name.”

In recent months, Russian authorities have tightened their control over the internet, blocking popular services and censorship-circumvention tools while periodically restricting mobile internet access in multiple regions. A recent multi-week internet and cell service shutdown in Moscow caused over 5 billion rubles ($61.4 million) in losses for the city’s businesses, with locals actively searching for walkie-talkies, paper maps, and wired internet to cope with the outages. MPs in Russia’s lower house of parliament, the State Duma, ran into the same connectivity and communications outages as their fellow citizens, with many going to a nearby bank branch to try and catch a signal.

Mobile internet began working again in central Moscow on March 24 following more than two weeks of restrictions. The move was directly approved by the FSB, according to Sarkis Darbinyan, a cyber lawyer who spoke with The Insider.

“The internet was switched back on because, most likely, the FSB decided the threat was gone. What threat the chekists feared, we still do not know. Maybe it really was drones, or maybe something else,” the expert said.

Russian officials claim the measures have been undertaken for security reasons, including the threat of Ukrainian drone attacks.

Based on images from March 23 and 24, they assessed that five or six fuel storage tanks may have been destroyed in the fire. They also noted that the smoke plume was far larger than initially estimated, extending for more than 200 kilometers (just over 124 miles) rather than the 35 kilometers (21.7 miles) previously reported.

After reviewing satellite images of the port of Ust-Luga taken on March 26, the experts said signs of burning remain visible, though cloud cover has so far obscured details.

Primorsk — one of the key ports for Russian oil exports in the Gulf of Finland — was struck by drones on March 23. Reports later emerged of an attack on Ust-Luga, another important part of Russia’s energy export infrastructure. The Insider was able to confirm the authenticity of videos showing a large fire at the port, while analysts from the open source intelligence (OSINT) project GeoConfirmed verified its exact location.

Prosecutors had asked the court to ban the film “in the interests of an indefinite circle of persons.” They sought to restrict access to it at three web addresses: VK Video, Yandex.kz, and Motion Video.

According to the prosecution, “the content of the film is shaped through overall militarization,” and it expresses a “negative attitude toward the special military operation and the current authorities.” Prosecutors added that a white-blue-white flag shown in the film amounted to “propaganda of extremism and terrorism,” as the flag is considered a symbol of the Freedom of Russia Legion.

Separately, prosecutors noted that the film shows the faces of minors without permission from their parents. Last week, Russia’s Presidential Council for Civil Society and Human Rights sent appeals to the organizers of the Academy Awards and to UNESCO Director-General Khaled El-Enany complaining about the use of footage of Russian schoolchildren in the documentary without the consent of their parents or legal guardians.

The documentary Mr. Nobody Against Putin was directed by Pavel Talankin and David Borenstein. At the center of the story is Talankin himself, a schoolteacher and videographer from the town of Karabash in Russia’s Chelyabinsk Region. Prior to the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Talankin already worked as the school’s videographer. After the start of the invasion, he continued to film life inside the school, documenting the growing ideological push in the Russian educational system as mandatory “patriotic” lessons were introduced, signs of militarization appeared, and the state ramped up pressure on students and teachers.

In 2024, Talankin fled Russia, taking the footage with him. With Borenstein’s help, it was turned into a documentary film. Mr. Nobody Against Putin premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in the United States in 2025, where it received a Special Jury Award. The film also won a BAFTA. This marks the third time in recent years that a film critical of the Russian government has won the award, following Navalny in 2023 and 20 Days in Mariupol in 2024.

In March, the film won the Oscar for best documentary feature.

Several Ukrainian Telegram channels, as well as a large Russian Telegram channel that reports on the country’s shipping and seafaring industry, have published videos (1, 2, 3) that they say show a fire at the Baltic port of Ust-Luga in Russia’s Leningrad Region.

The location of the footage is confirmed by comparison with publicly available satellite images, as the videos show distinctive storage tanks and industrial installations that match the port’s infrastructure. The presence of a fire in the area has also been detected by NASA’s Fire Information for Resource Management System (FIRMS), a free web mapping platform which tracks thermal anomalies.

On March 25, Ukrainian channels published photos of a burning port with ships visible in the background, claiming the location was Ust-Luga. In one of the images, the word “Capital” can be seen on the side of a vessel. These markings are used on tankers operated by CAPITAL SHIP MANAGEMENT CORP., whose fleet includes 17 vessels, The Insider found.

One of the company’s tankers, AISOPOS (IMO: 9987029), was in Ust-Luga the day before and carries the same “Capital” marking on its hull. As of March 26 at 11:40 a.m. Moscow time (4:40 a.m. EDT), it had last transmitted an AIS signal about an hour and a half prior. The open source intelligence (OSINT) project GeoConfirmed said it had verified the location and that the site is indeed Ust-Luga (location).

On the eve of March 25, the same outlet confirmed the attack on Ust-Luga, posting video filmed from a different angle.

At least 40% of Russia’s oil export capacity is offline according to recent calculations by the Reuters news agency — the result of Ukrainian drone strikes, the seizure of tankers by Western countries, and damage caused to the Druzhba pipeline by Russian strikes on Ukrainian territory.

The disruption amounts to the most severe hit to Russian oil supplies in the country’s modern history. It comes just as oil prices have risen above $100 a barrel amid the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran.

It is unclear exactly when the attack on the vessel took place. Data from the ship-tracking service MarineTraffic suggests the tanker significantly reduced its speed near the Bosphorus on the evening of March 25.

NTV said the captain’s bridge was damaged, and that the engine room was flooded with water. None of the 27 crew members were injured.

The tanker departed from Novorossiysk on March 22 carrying 1 million barrels of Russian Urals crude, according to a report by Bloomberg.

The vessel was sailing under the flag of Sierra Leone, while its manager is the Turkish company Pergamon Denizcilik Isletmeler. The tanker itself is under European Union and UK sanctions for its suspected role in Russia’s “shadow fleet.”

“Putin is rubbing his hands at the war in the Middle East because he thinks higher oil prices will let him line his pockets. That’s why we’re going after his shadow fleet even harder, not just keeping Britain safe but starving Putin’s war machine of the dirty profits that fund his barbaric campaign in Ukraine,” Starmer said.

Starmer is due in Helsinki for a Joint Expeditionary Force (JEF) summit on March 26. The topics of regional security and possible measures to counter Russian aggression are expected to be discussed.

“A number of JEF allies, including Finland, Sweden, and Estonia, have carried out recent operations against suspected illegal shadow fleet vessels in the Baltic, closing off critical maritime routes to Russia’s malign operation,” the statement continued, adding that the Royal Navy has helped allies track several “shadow fleet” vessels in recent weeks, enabling them to be intercepted in European and Mediterranean waters.

The English Channel is one of the waterways that Britain is closing to vessels under sanctions. The UK government said it expects the move to force operators to “divert to longer, financially painful routes, or risk being detained by British forces.”

The UK military has been monitoring the “shadow fleet” for several years. After a successful U.S. operation to seize the tanker Bella 1 (IMO 9230880) was carried out with British support in early January, ministers ordered plans to be drawn up for similar operations against other Russian “shadow fleet” ships.

The note from Iran’s Foreign Ministry was sent as early as Sunday, March 15. It said civilian vessels may use the Strait of Hormuz provided that they coordinate passage with Tehran in advance:

"Non-hostile vessels, including those belonging to or associated with other States, may — provided that they neither participate in nor support acts of aggression against Iran and fully ⁠comply with the declared safety and security regulations — benefit from safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz in coordination with the competent Iranian authorities," it read.

The Financial Times also reported on the note.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi later clarified that passage was allowed for ships from countries that Tehran “determined are our friends.” He listed China, Russia, India, Iraq and Pakistan as examples. “There is no reason to allow our enemy to cross the strait,” Iran’s Tasnim news agency quoted him as saying.

Since the start of the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran, shipping through the Strait of Hormuz has largely ground to a halt due to the threat of attacks on commercial vessels. Under normal circumstances, around one-fifth of global oil and liquefied gas trade passes through the strait.

In recent days, however, Iran has allowed a small number of vessels to pass through the Strait of Hormuz via a corridor near Larak Island. The industry publication Lloyd’s List reported earlier this week that at least 20 vessels were known to have used the route — most were from Greece, though others were from India, Pakistan, Syria, and Iran. There has also been at least one known case in which a container ship owned by a Chinese company paid Iran for safe passage.

Over the past four weeks (ending March 22), Russian exporters shipped 3.6 million barrels per day, and from March 16 to 22 alone, 37 tankers moved 28.5 million barrels of Russian oil. Since deliveries to India resumed, Russia has been exporting 1.4 million barrels a day to the country.

As economist Vladislav Inozemtsev of the Center for Analysis and Strategies in Europe told The Insider, if current oil prices persist until the summer, Moscow may avoid running a federal budget deficit. However, Russia is still highly unlikely to salvage its struggling economy.

“Russia is benefiting from this war in every respect. While the average oil export price in February was $41.5 per barrel, on certain days in March it exceeded $100. Admittedly, contracts are concluded with a certain delay, and what was sold in March will be shipped and paid for in April. But I believe in March we will likely see a 60% increase in oil exports in dollar terms — and a 90% increase in April, compared to February.

The surge will bring substantial revenue to the budget, which already received about 400 billion rubles, or roughly $4.7 billion, in oil and gas revenues in February. I have no doubt that the new deals will add at least another $3–4 billion.

If these prices persist until June, the budget adopted last year will be balanced  — or perhaps even in a better state than planned. There will be no excessive deficit. In addition to rising oil prices, a weaker ruble will also contribute.

The question is whether this will affect the Russian economy. I would say not. True, revenues will increase, but they will all be used to cover the deficit instead of bringing about any significant improvement. There will be no tax relief or reductions. All of the extra money will go toward balancing the budget, and whatever is left will be directed to the war. The situation is similar to that of 2023, when the budget saw significant additional revenues, but they were all allocated to the military by the end of the year. We will likely see the same outcome again. The surplus will help the budget, but not the economy.”

For his part, Vladimir Putin said on March 23 that oil companies should use the windfall revenues from high oil prices to repay debts: “Russian oil and gas companies should consider directing additional income from rising global hydrocarbon prices toward reducing their debt burden and repaying obligations to domestic banks.” The central bank supported the idea, commenting that “this is indeed a very reasonable approach in the current situation.”

Meanwhile, according to economist Ruben Enikolopov of Pompeu Fabra University, oil prices would need to remain above $100 per barrel in order to close the gap in the Russian budget.

“Naturally, rising prices will help the budget. The question is how large that money is compared to the budget gap. If prices remain above $100 per barrel, that would be good news for the Russian budget. I am not sure this will help the Russian economy, because it has significant problems — even Putin has acknowledged an economic contraction. Oil money cannot plug this gap. This is a very important factor, and the question is how long such prices will last. The [Iran] conflict is unpredictable, as there is no logic to it.”

According to the police, at least one of those detained holds U.S. citizenship. Two of the suspects have been charged with a terrorist act and participation in a terrorist group.

Police stated that the court fully granted the prosecutor’s motion to continue holding the suspects, as all three were recognized to pose a risk of flight, collusion, and continued criminal activity. Law enforcement officials stressed that there are currently no signs of a new threat to the public; however, the search for other suspects is ongoing, in cooperation with foreign partners.

One of the defendants shouted “Free Palestine!” to journalists, while supporters gathered outside the courthouse with Palestinian flags and keffiyehs. As the defendants were being escorted out of the building, the protesters shouted words of encouragement to them. Czech authorities have not yet disclosed the identities of the suspects, apart from their citizenship.

On the same day, the Earthquake Faction, the group that claimed responsibility for the arson, released a second communiqué. It demanded that LPP Holding publicly sever all ties with Israel’s Elbit Systems by April 20 and that it condemn the “occupation of Palestine,” threatening to publish allegedly stolen internal company documents if the firm did not comply. LPP Holding had previously denied cooperating with Elbit Systems or producing drones for Israel at the site that suffered the arson attack. In its latest statement, LPP asserted that the damaged buildings housed no production equipment for Elbit drones nor for its own MTS drones, but instead contained administrative and warehouse spaces, as well as facilities for the production and modernization of other equipment. The company said it had complied with security requirements and, following the attack, strengthened security measures.

Meanwhile, Earthquake Faction’s claims about the theft of “classified” documents remain unconfirmed. While a video does show attackers taking papers from desks, there is no evidence of their value or content.

The company has stated that the fire did not affect the supply of MTS 40 strike drones to Ukraine. According to Czech media, the damage may amount to several million dollars. Investigators are treating the incident as a terrorist act.

According to the warrant, since December 2025 Serhii N. had been spying on a resident of Germany on instructions from Russia. His target’s company supplied drones and their components to the Ukrainian army. Serhii N. filmed the target’s workplace.

After Serhii N. relocated to Spain, Alla S. continued monitoring the drone supplier from at least March 2026, even going to his home to film him. Investigators believe these actions may have been done in preparation for an attack, or even an attempted killing.

As Der Spiegel reports, the owner of the drone supplier company is in a safe location and has been taking precautions for some time.

On March 25, Alla S. is due to appear before a court, which will decide on her pretrial detention. As for Serhii N., Germany is seeking his extradition from Spain.

“God, such a small thing, and how dearly it cost me”

On March 5, a Russian court in the occupied part of the Zaporizhzhia region sentenced 68-year-old Galina Bekhter to 11 years in a penal colony on charges of “state treason.” The case stemmed from a transfer made through the mobile app of a Ukrainian bank. According to Russian security services, the money went to support the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Bekhter’s case is far from unique. Courts in the occupied territories regularly report convictions for money transfers that investigators interpret as assistance to the Ukrainian army.

Bekhter’s case is not an isolated one. Marina Belousova worked as a seamstress in occupied Prymorsk, Zaporizhzhia region, where she cared for her 86-year-old mother, who had lost her sight. In May 2025, Belousova was detained. From jail, she wrote to volunteers: “God, such a small thing, and how dearly it cost me. It’s a one-way road.” She was referring to 450 hryvnias ($10.27) that she had sent to a Ukrainian foundation. According to a relative, Belousova did not see the transfer as anything serious: “She’s just that kind of person — if she does something, there’s no malicious intent. She herself said she didn’t think this could lead to such a sentence.” The court gave Marina 12.5 years in a penal colony.

65-year-old Irina Sukhovei, from Melitopol, lived alone. Before the war she had already buried her daughter, mother, and brother. When the occupation began, the pensioner was unable to leave — because of an illness, her legs would swell up to her knees. “She told me: ‘I talk to the television — it’s my only companion,’” says Irina’s sister, Tatyana.

In March 2023, Irina used a banking app to set up automatic payments to an account supporting the Ukrainian military. According to Tatyana, she only learned about these transfers after her sister’s detention. Shortly before Irina’s arrest, armed men came to search her home twice, first taking her phone and documents, and then, a few days later, confiscating a new mobile phone that acquaintances had bought for her. By the time the verdict was handed down, Irina had already obtained Russian citizenship and was receiving a pension, but the transfers continued to be debited from her old Ukrainian account. The court sentenced her to 15 years in prison.

By the time the verdict was handed down, Irina had already obtained Russian citizenship and was receiving a pension, but transfers continued to be debited from her old Ukrainian account

43-year-old Olga Gulchak from the Kherson region was accused by an occupation court of making several transfers in 2023 totaling 1,200 hryvnias ($27.38). According to the investigation, the money was sent to the account of a Ukrainian citizen and was intended for the provision of “financial support, material and technical assistance” to the Armed Forces of Ukraine. In a video published after her detention, Gulchak said she had transferred money to an acquaintance who was collecting aid for the military. In June 2025, the court sentenced her to 12 years in a penal colony.

The pattern in all such cases is the same: investigators claim that money was sent to an account “used for the needs of the Armed Forces of Ukraine,” and they classify the transfer as “state treason.” In most cases, the sums involved do not exceed $100, while the sentences are almost always more than 10 years.

Surge in “state treason” charges

Before the start of the full-scale war, Russian prosecutors applied criminal code provisions on “state treason” and “espionage” relatively rarely. According to a study by the human rights project “First Department” and the Parubets Analytics center, since the adoption of the Criminal Code in 1997 until the start of full-scale invasion in 2022, 196 people were prosecuted under these charges. An acquittal was issued only once — to environmentalist Alexander Nikitin in 1999.

After Feb. 24, 2022, the situation changed dramatically: more than 1,400 people have been accused of “state treason.” In 2025 alone, courts issued a record 468 verdicts in such cases. Punishments also became harsher. In 2024 the average sentence was about 12 years, while in 2025 it increased to around 15.

Some of these cases are linked to money transfers. According to data from researchers, in 2025 about 10% of charges under provisions on “state treason,” “espionage,” and “confidential cooperation with a foreign state” were related to donations to Ukrainian organizations or transfers that investigators interpreted as constituting financial support for the Armed Forces of Ukraine. At the same time, in 2024–2025 Russia’s security services continued to prosecute people for transactions made back all the way back in the opening months of the full-scale war.

In 2025, about 10% of charges under so-called espionage provisions were linked to donations to Ukrainian organizations

A significant share of cases brought under “espionage” provisions concern residents of the occupied territories of Ukraine. Of the 468 people convicted under these provisions in 2025, 161 held Ukrainian citizenship.

How security services identify transfers

In many such cases, the key source of evidence is not complex operational work but a routine phone check. According to Yevgeny Smirnov, a lawyer with “First Department,” this most often happens when a person is crossing the border — for example, at Sochi airport or at other filtration points between Russia and the occupied territories.

During such checks, Russian security services examine the contents of phones, opening banking apps and reviewing transaction histories. If they find a transfer to a Ukrainian account that they consider to be linked to support for the Armed Forces of Ukraine, this may be enough to initiate a criminal case. Sometimes case materials contain neither bank payment documents nor screenshots from apps; instead, the evidence can consist simply of correspondence in which a person says they transferred money.

“It creates the impression that at the border they already know whom to stop. The person is immediately taken aside, their phone is seized, and banking apps are checked. It may be random checks. Or they may already have some databases or leaks, whether from Ukrainian banks or from the foundations through which donations are collected. We don’t know for certain,” Smirnov says.

Checks do not take place only at the border. In the occupied territories, phones may be inspected at checkpoints or during so-called filtration procedures. “Even lawyers working in these territories may have their phones checked. It is effectively a gray zone, where such checks happen constantly,” Smirnov explains.

“Even lawyers working in the occupied territories may have their phones checked. It is effectively a gray zone”

At the same time, residents of the occupied regions have virtually no legal protection. Security services can come to people’s homes for searches and seize documents and devices “for inspection.” Sometimes this process drags on for weeks or months.

This is what happened to Marina Belousova of occupied Prymorsk. According to a relative, security officers were looking for her with a printed photograph from Facebook, questioning neighbors in her building. When they found Belousova, she was taken out of her apartment in handcuffs with a bag over her head. “They immediately told her what kind of sentence she could face — almost a life sentence. But that time they let her go and warned: ‘we’ll come back for you.’ A year later they returned and took Marina away for good,” the relative says.

“Any Ukrainian account is a red flag for security services”

In such cases, the substance of the charges almost always looks the same: investigators claim that the transferred money was sent to accounts “used for the needs of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.” These may include transfers both to charitable foundations and to private people. “Any Ukrainian account is a red flag for the security services,” says lawyer Nikolai Polozov.

In cases involving charitable organizations, investigators typically use as evidence the stated fundraising goals or reports on how the funds were spent. For example, if a foundation reports that the collected money was used to purchase prosthetics for wounded Ukrainian soldiers, this can become grounds for opening a criminal case against the donor.

In other cases, private accounts are involved — for example, fundraising efforts for a specific combatant organized by relatives or friends. According to Irina Sukhovei’s sister, Tatyana, during the search security officers showed particular interest in money transfers from Irina’s relatives. “My husband and I sent her money to maintain the apartment so she could pay utility bills for hers and ours,” Tatyana says.

In practice, the evidentiary basis for such charges is often built on internal documents from security agencies. In some cases, this amounts to just a few lines in an FSB memorandum stating that a particular account is used to support the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

As lawyer Polozov explains, such documents often become the key argument for the prosecution. “FSB officers are effectively unrestricted in their imagination. A classified memo or the results of operational-search activities can appear in a case file, and it is impossible to verify what these conclusions are based on,” he says.

According to Polozov, such cases also serve another function: they act as a demonstration to others. Russian authorities use them to sever ties between residents of the occupied regions and their relatives and acquaintances in territories under Ukrainian control.

Forced passportization

In order for Russian authorities to initiate a case of “state treason,” the accused must hold Russian citizenship. For Ukrainian residents of the occupied territories, obtaining Russian documents often becomes all but unavoidable. Tatyana Sukhovei says her sister Irina resisted for as long as she could. “They stopped admitting her to hospitals. They said: ‘without a passport, we cannot treat you.’ So she had no choice but to obtain one,” Tatyana says. Over the course of the occupation, Ukrainians without Russian documents began to lose other opportunities as well — first they were paid so-called “relocation allowances,” then it was announced that without a Russian passport all support would be cut off.

Marina Belousova also postponed obtaining documents for as long as possible, her relative says. However, over time it became clear that without them it was impossible to move around even within the region. “There are checkpoints between cities everywhere. They stop you and ask: ‘why don’t you have a Russian passport?’ Without it, they may not let you through. In the end, you realize that whether you want to or not, you have to get one,” the woman says.

Forced passportization is gaining momentum: without Russian documents it is impossible to move normally even within the occupied region

In many cases, Russian documents were also required to retain property. According to lawyer Yevgeny Smirnov, people who left the occupied territories are often forced to return in order to re-register apartments or houses under Russian law. “The authorities now require personal presence for property re-registration. If this is not done, people risk losing their property. Many decide to travel back, and it is during such trips that problems often arise,” the lawyer says.

Why so many of the accused are women

Among those charged in cases involving transfers to Ukrainian accounts, many are women, often elderly. Older women are more likely to continue traveling between the occupied territories and Russia in order to deal with everyday matters related to housing or documents, making them more likely come under inspection.

At the same time, according to lawyer Nikolai Polozov, the focus on women may also be linked to the logic of the repression itself. “The aim is to terrorize different segments of the population, to show that no one is protected — whether a man or a woman, an elderly person or a young one,” he says.

As Polozov notes, the persecution of vulnerable people has a stronger demoralizing effect: “It is an attempt to use the tragic fate of these women to demonstrate to others what happens to those who oppose the Russian authorities.”

“State treason” without citizenship: a new threat for foreigners

At the end of 2024, a new article — 276.1, “Providing assistance to the adversary in activities knowingly directed against the security of the Russian Federation” — was added to the Russian Criminal Code. It effectively repeats the language of “state treason,” but allows prosecution not only of Russian citizens, but also of foreigners or stateless people.

“Now not only Russian citizens are at risk. This article allows the prosecution of foreigners as well, if investigators believe they provided assistance to the adversary,” says lawyer Smirnov.

Verdicts under the new article are already being handed down. Lawyers note that the purpose of such cases is not only to punish alleged support for Ukraine, but also to sever any ties between people living on opposite sides of the front line.

Denial of the “genocide of the Soviet people” will now carry the same penalties as the article on the rehabilitation of Nazism. Under the basic provision, that means a fine of up to 3 million rubles ($37,200), or forced labor or imprisonment for up to three years. However, if such acts are committed under aggravating circumstances — for example, through the use of an official position, by a group of people, or through the media or the internet — the punishment becomes harsher: a fine of up to 5 million rubles ($62,100), or forced labor or imprisonment for up to five years.

At the same time, the article on the destruction and desecration of military burial sites is being broadened. It will now include the graves of victims of the “genocide of the Soviet people” and memorials to them, while also creating a separate criminal offense for damaging or desecrating them. The maximum penalty in such cases is up to five years in prison.

According to the explanatory note, the law is intended to “eliminate a legal gap,” as the Nuremberg Tribunal’s verdict did not use the term “genocide,” which has made it harder to prosecute these acts under the existing article on the rehabilitation of Nazism. The authors of the initiative also say the amendments are needed to protect “historical memory” and counter its “distortion.”

The law expands on provisions of a 2025 law on preserving the memory of victims of the “genocide of the Soviet people” and in effect places their legal protection on a par with the protection of the memory of participants in World War II.

The launch of the first satellites had originally been planned for 2025, but it was postponed as the manufacturer did not manage to produce the required number of spacecraft on time, according to a report by the newspaper Kommersant.

Dmitry Bakanov, head of Russia’s state space corporation Roscosmos, previously described Rassvet (lit. “Dawn”) as the Russian counterpart to Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite internet system. However, in comments to The Insider, journalist and science communicator Vitaly Egorov said the two projects should not be compared:

“It is more accurate to compare the Rassvet project to another international satellite internet company and system — OneWeb. The difference between OneWeb and Starlink is that Starlink is much more mass-market: several times more satellites have been launched, and its terminals are smaller and suitable for private users. OneWeb is geared toward business and government services, and its terminal is larger. That’s the difference for the end user.

Starlink proved far more effective for use in war precisely because of the mass availability of its ground terminals and their small size. Rassvet’s terminal is larger than Starlink’s and closer in size to OneWeb’s, but what matters here is not only developing the terminal itself, but also setting up mass production of it — just as with mass production of satellites. For Rassvet, the minimum number of satellites needed to provide acceptable-quality communications across Russia, or at latitudes matching its territory, is about 250 spacecraft. Only 16 have been launched so far, so it is too early to say that Russia has its own Starlink. Beyond launching satellites, it is also necessary to establish production of compact and inexpensive — which is also important — ground terminals. That is the next technological barrier Rassvet will have to overcome before end users on the ground, including the Defense Ministry, receive the services they had when they had access to Starlink.”

In total, at least 300 satellites are slated to be put into orbit by 2028, a goal that will require more than 20 launches. The target for this year is about 150 spacecraft, according to the federal project’s plan, under which 102.9 billion rubles will come from the budget and another 329 billion rubles from the company’s own funds.

ICS Holding is the main supplier of equipment for the Russian state’s internet surveillance and phone tapping operations, according to an investigation by the independent journalist Andrei Zakharov. The organization’s deputy director is Boris Korolyov, the son of First Deputy FSB Director Sergei Korolyov. Zakharov believes the Korolyov family may own a stake in the holding company.

Iran without air defenses

The first week of the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran offered at least one pleasant surprise: the decapitation of much of the leadership in Tehran. The ensuing two weeks, however, presented the coalition with a less pleasant development: the regime’s surprising resilience. Although by week three no Iranian air defence “system” remained in place, meaning the Israelis and Americans were able to bomb at will throughout almost all of the country, Iran’s ability to de facto block the Strait of Hormuz and to fire missiles and drones at targets all across the region indicated that the threat posed by the ayatollah’s was nowhere close to being eliminated.

The destruction of the country’s air defense network was the result of a major failure from the Iranian side. As has been previously discussed, the poorly integrated and technologically backward air defense network was no match for the Israeli and American capabilities, and any substantive fixes would necessarily have taken more time than the regime turned out to have.

The destruction of the country’s air defense network was a major failure for Iran

Iran attempted to mitigate the problem, buying 7 or 8 batteries of HQ-9B long-range anti-aircraft missiles from China, with deliveries starting in late summer 2025. But deliveries of the YLC-8B radar, which is supposed to be able to detect stealth planes and while integrating with the HQ-9B, started only in February 2026, and the Chinese technicians and advisers who accompanied these systems were pulled out the day before the war started, according to IRGC sources.

Under the circumstances, there was no way the Iranian operators could have managed to fully familiarise themselves with the foreign systems (especially with the YLC-8B). The new HQ-9B and YLC-8B network, moreover, made no progress towards integration with the existing Iranian air defense network, leaving two parallel systems to deal with the threat.

The HQ-9B/YLC-8B network was one of the priority targets of the Israelis and Americans, and by week two of the war all the HQ-9B missile systems had been destroyed, with just one or two radars still in operation, according to a source in the Iranian armed forces. The clearly disappointed Iranians blamed the Chinese technology, but clearly the network and its crews were not mature enough for operational deployment (especially after Beijing had pulled out its personnel).

Notably though, the non-Chinese part of the Iranian air defense system performed little better. According to an Iranian airspace forces source, only one of four S-300 batteries was operational as of week three, and only half a dozen batteries of the Iranian-made Bavar 373 system were still in service (while a large number of less capable platforms continued to operate). Neither the S-300 nor the Bavar 373 were able to track, let alone to shoot down, stealth planes. Moreover, Iranian sources acknowledge that their country is also far behind the U.S. and Israel in terms of electronic warfare capabilities. All the S-300s and the Bavar-373s managed to do was shoot down enemy drones.

Adapt and survive

What the Iranians could have done, however, was to use their available resources more flexibly — for example, by switching their air defence on and off to make Israeli and American air defence suppression operations more difficult to carry out. (For the little it’s worth, a source in the Iranian airspace forces says that they are doing something like this now with the relatively few systems they have left.)

With Iranian air defense all but done for, the Israelis and Americans have focused on taking out ballistic missile sites and drone and missile factories. Initially, this effort was quite successful too, aided by the Iranians’ merely partial adaptive efforts following the June 2025 war. Although Tehran’s forces started shifting to mobile launchers for ballistic missiles, as of Feb. 28 they still had a substantial number of fixed ramps. These did not last long. The attackers also managed to identify some of the underground missile bases used by the Iranians, as well as at least one each of the missile and drone factories, destroying them with bunker-busting bombs.

However, when faced with an existential threat, the Iranians began coordinating their missile launches to minimise the risk of detection and destruction. As a result, while the overall number of missile launches dropped after the first few days of war, it has since stabilised.

By the end of the first week, almost two-thirds of the ballistic missile launchers were destroyed, says one source in the airspace forces of Iran, but by the fourth week around a quarter were still left. The remaining mobile launchers emerge from their hideouts to fire and regain cover in just a few minutes, and as a result, the losses of mobile launchers have now declined dramatically. As of week four, the Iranians were still able to fire a few dozen ballistic missiles per day, as well as several dozen drones.

Most importantly, the Iranians’ de facto blockade of the Strait of Hormuz went all but unchallenged throughout the first 3.5 weeks of the war. Initially, Iran enforced the blockade against “hostile” countries mainly by using aerial drones (although a few missiles have also been fired from the shores of Iran and a few boat drones and fast attack crafts have been used). Then, according to a source in the Iranian Navy, it also started laying “smart” magnetic mines that can be activated or deactivated as needed — a move likely made in anticipation of a possible American attempt to seize control of Hormuz. While U.S. air strikes against the Iranian coastal installations around Hormuz can reduce or eliminate the threat of anti-ship missiles, it would take U.S. warships weeks to sweep the area, especially while under fire from drones and Iran’s remaining missiles.

In short, as of the fourth week of the war, the Americans had not figured out how to re-open Hormuz, and Trump was even hinting that he might leave the task to those countries that have a greater commercial dependence on the regular functioning of the strait. Control over Hormuz, with the impact it has over oil and gas prices worldwide, is recognised by the Iranian regime as their most valuable asset in the war.

Rally around the flag

Despite the intense bombing and effective decapitation of the political and military elite, by week four there was also still no sign of the armed forces beginning to fragment. On the contrary, morale appeared to be on the rise, as the American oversights in strategy and preparation were clearly becoming visible.

One clear sign that Tehran’s armed forces remain formidable comes by way of Kurdish military commanders and political leaders, who for three weeks have been trying and failing to convince the pro-regime Kurdish militias of western Iran to defect.

Gauging the state of opinion inside Iran is understandably difficult, but limited indicators suggest that after a short-lived period of high expectations for regime change at the start of the war, much of the Iranian population is feeling increasingly hostile towards the Israeli-American campaign.

The strikes against hospitals, historical monuments, and energy infrastructure, as well as the rising number of civilian casualties, are casting doubts over the real motivation of the attack on Iran. The number of citizens buying into the regime change narrative appears to be in decline, while those who see the attackers’ objective as outright state collapse seem to be rising. A source within the IRGC who mere weeks ago was sceptical of the regime’s chances for survival now speaks of a limited “rally around the flag” effect, with spikes in volunteer recruitment into the ranks of the IRGC and the Basij.

Much of the Iranian population is feeling increasingly hostile towards the Israeli-American campaign due to the strikes against civilian infrastructure and the rising number of civilian casualties

According to the Kurdish sources mentioned above, many Iranians who remain opposed to the ayatollahs nevertheless express a sort of awe towards a regime that is seemingly able to keep up its fight against the combined forces of the U.S., Israel, and the Gulf countries.

The IRGC believes that there are still dozens of “Mossad” cells of armed “provocateurs” (with a couple dozen of members each) ready to step into action at the first opportunity. However, despite repeated appeals by Reza Pahlavi, Iranians are not descending on the streets to protest. As some critics of the regime were already saying back in June, it is impossible for them to believe that the people behind the Gaza massacres somehow wish Iran well.

A younger and more radical IRGC

In the meantime, in just a few weeks the process of gradual transformation of the regime has been dramatically accelerated by the decapitation strikes carried out by the U.S. and Israel. The air campaign has been successful in setting out “regime transformation,” but seemingly not of the type hoped for by the Trump administration.

There is no strong political figure left in Tehran who is able to control or restrain the IRGC and its associated organisations, let alone to move Iran towards some kind of “Venezuelan solution.” The last candidate, Ali Larijani, was killed on March 17, and Mojtaba Khamenei, appointed new Supreme Leader in a controversial process, is too close to the IRGC to act as a restrainer. Moreover, the former Supreme Leader’s son was seriously injured in the strike that killed his father, leaving him unable to manage state affairs on a day by day basis. Rumours even circulate that he might have been moved to Russia for treatment, but regardless of his true whereabouts and condition, one thing is certain: very few people seem to have any access to him.

The last strong political figure that could move Iran towards some kind of “Venezuelan solution” was Ali Larijani, who was killed on March 17

IRGC sources say that the organisation’s “younger generation” is taking over, exploiting the transition to decentralized operations that started immediately after the first wave of attacks. This young generation is angry, radical, and full of destructive energy — and old guard types like Ali Khamenei and Ali Larijani are no longer there to manage them.

The upstarts see politicians as an impediment to the successful conduct of the war, believing that the only road to success is to strike where the enemy is weakest — namely, the Gulf’s energy interests — and to hit it hard.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and President Pezeshkian worry that this radical approach will compromise relations with the Gulf states for the long term, but the IRGC's younger generation, supported by the few surviving senior commanders of the older generation (who are all radicals themselves) maintain that if the Gulf states, too, are moved to a state of awe at Iran’s resilience, they will come to terms.

In any case, Pezeshkian cannot control the IRGC, and its previous commander Pakpour, a moderate who had the task of doing exactly that, died with Khamenei on Feb. 28.

IRGC sources say that Iran has stockpiles of up to 100,000 drones — accumulated before the war, when the country was manufacturing several thousand of them per month — and only a relatively small portion has been destroyed by the airstrikes. Even now production continues, albeit at around half of the previous rate, as some of the factories have not been discovered by Israel and the Americans yet, and several small production lines are being set up all over the country.

Iran’s missile stockpiles are more of a mystery. The same sources say that the aerospace forces, distrustful of their own colleagues due to the pervasive presence of Israeli spies, did not even share true stockpile numbers and location within the IRGC. In any case, the main problem faced by the IRGC is the difficulty with replacing launchers, as they take longer to manufacture than the missiles themselves.

Another potential Iranian weak spot involves infrastructure, which is extremely vulnerable to airstrikes. After the South Pars strike of March 18, further U.S.-Israeli attacks on oil and gas production facilities might not be so likely, as they would send prices skyrocketing. However, Trump has threatened attacks on energy generation facilities, even as the IRGC's younger generation remains confident they can retaliate by targeting similar sites — along with desalination facilities — in the Gulf states.

Over the past few days, the IRGC appears to be growing more confident that it can see this conflict through successfully. However, like the Trump administration, they have no clear “off ramp” for bringing hostilities to an end. It is not the IRGC’s interest to let the Americans bail out of the war without submitting to some major concessions, but at the same time, their list of demands for re-opening Hormuz includes the payment of war reparations to Iran — something not remotely realistic. Trump, for his part, has no interest in making obvious concessions to Tehran. After four weeks of fighting, it remains as unclear as ever when and under what conditions the ongoing conflict will end.

In 2024, the European Union began enforcing its twin package of digital rules: the Digital Services Act (DSA) and the Digital Markets Act (DMA). The first, at least in theory, is aimed at protecting consumer rights, while the second focuses on market practices. Almost immediately after the deadline for implementing the new rules expired, Brussels fined four Big Tech giants — Google, Apple, Meta, and X — for failing to comply. The total amount of the fines came in at 3.77 billion euros, though the bulk of that sum (2.95 billion euros) was imposed on Google.

The EU’s fines against American Big Tech firms totaled 3.77 billion euros

Both laws are aimed at strengthening the EU’s “digital sovereignty,” the bloc’s ability to independently set the rules of the game in the digital sphere and enforce them regardless of the influence of global corporations and international platforms. That includes algorithmic transparency, limiting the monopoly power of so-called gatekeepers, and, above all, protecting the data of European citizens. In a sense, the EU sees its digital sovereignty projects as a way of returning control over the internet to Europeans themselves.

In addition to fines from the European Commission, there are other examples of this kind of “returning control.” An important shift came in a recent court case between Meta, the owner of Facebook, and the Dutch digital rights group Bits of Freedom, which accused the American company of violating the DSA. A Dutch court ruled that Meta has to allow European users to opt out of algorithmic feeds in its apps and choose chronological ones instead.

A third legislative proposal is sometimes placed in the same category as the DSA and DMA: the so-called Child Sexual Abuse Regulation, or CSAR, more commonly referred to as “chat control.” In its original version, first presented in 2022, the act proposed the widespread scanning of Europeans’ private messages for material involving child sexual abuse. But unlike the DSA and DMA, the initiative faced sharp criticism from the European public and has since been revised several times.

A sore point

Washington reacted painfully, if not outright aggressively, to the proceedings against American companies. Even before the EU issued its final decision on its fines for Apple, Google, and Meta, Donald Trump called the new laws “extortion” and threatened to impose fresh tariffs on European goods.

The reaction from X owner Elon Musk was even harsher. In response to the official announcement of the fine, the billionaire wrote that the EU should be “abolished and sovereignty returned to individual countries.” Musk characterized the move as a personal attack and threatened a “response not just to the EU, but also to the individuals who took this action against me.”

After a fine was imposed on X, Elon Musk wrote that the EU should be “abolished and sovereignty returned to individual countries”

Over the course of several days, Musk posted repeated calls on his account for the dissolution of the EU — and of the European Commission in particular, accusing it of “killing Europe.” He also insulted European politicians by calling them “gay,” then barred the European Commission from running ads on X.

Many American officials also criticized the new European rules. Republican congressman Jim Jordan called the DSA a “global censorship law” and accused the EU of abusing antitrust legislation. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the fine against X was “an attack on American citizens.” And Vice President JD Vance accused European authorities of “censorship” even before they had formally announced their decision.

Censorship or rights protection?

Despite claims from top U.S. officials about “censorship,” the official reasons for the fine imposed on X are not related to the platform’s moderation policies, and they are not connected to widespread accusations that it spreads disinformation and incites hatred.

Instead, the European Commission concluded that changes to X’s account verification system mislead users. Previously, during its time as Twitter, the platform provided a blue verification check mark free of charge to confirmed accounts of public figures and organizations. However, some time after Musk gained control of the company, the check mark was awarded to those who signed up for a paid subscription, creating a false impression for users.

The commission ruled that the decision violated DSA transparency requirements. Users were effectively pushed into a new paid service, while the authenticity of accounts could no longer be reliably assessed. The platform was also accused of opaque advertising practices and of refusing to share data with independent researchers, something that had previously been guaranteed.

Despite the vehemence of the statements coming from across the pond, European officials categorically reject the censorship accusations. As stressed by the European Parliament, the DSA is aimed first and foremost at combating illegal content — material related to terrorism, child sexual abuse, and the like — while leaving broad room for freedom of expression.

The DSA is mainly focused on users’ rights. It applies to all online services, including small applications, with additional obligations for the largest ones (defined as those with more than 45 million users in the EU). The DSA requires platforms to be transparent about moderation, explain decisions to users, and disclose how their algorithms work. Users gain new rights, while services are required to provide clear information about advertising and recommendation systems. The law also bans so-called “dark patterns,” the use of deceptive buttons or AI to “force a user to do something they did not want to do, such as signing up or buying something.”

From a free speech perspective, there are criticisms to be made against DSA, and they have been voiced within EU institutions themselves. The European Parliament, for example, notes that the lack of a single definition of “dark patterns” could lead to enforcement errors. Additionally, experts such as lawyers Inge Graef, Martin Brenncke, and their colleagues warn that platforms may ignore the recommendations and continue using manipulative practices, or, conversely, begin removing perfectly lawful material or features. The same applies to the lack of a clear definition of “illegal content,” which gives platforms ample grounds to remove virtually anything by pointing to vague legislative language (even despite the law’s transparency requirements for moderation).

The invisible hand of the DMA

A handful of American firms almost completely control Europe’s online economy. Google handles around 90% of search queries, Apple sells nearly 40% of all smartphones, Amazon controls more than half of e-commerce in the EU’s largest markets, and Facebook reaches more than 80% of internet users on the continent.

When it comes to digital advertising, Google and Meta receive more than half of all revenue, while Microsoft remains the dominant player in the market for PC operating systems and professional software. Faced with such a concentration of American digital products, the European Union appears to have concluded that ordinary antitrust measures no longer work. As Amanda Lotz, a professor of media studies at the University of Michigan, has noted, each of these companies in effect controls its own market niche.

Facebook reaches more than 80% of internet users on the continent, while Google and Meta receive more than half of all digital advertising revenue

It is precisely for such corporations that the DMA introduces a special term: “gatekeeper,” meaning an entity that controls entire market segments and can restrict access to them for other players. In September 2023, the European Commission officially designated the first six gatekeepers: Alphabet (Google’s parent company),  Amazon, Apple, ByteDance (the owner of TikTok), Meta, and Microsoft.

Each of these companies provides one or another “core platform service,” from mobile app stores to search engines to social networks, connecting businesses with millions of users. The EU expresses concern that gatekeepers can create what are effectively bottlenecks — areas where monetary flows are almost entirely under the control of the dominant company in a given sector.

The EU position holds that if a company controls a service that is de facto vital, it should not abuse that power. Thus under the DMA, gatekeepers are required to follow a specific list of rules. For example, they must allow users to easily delete preinstalled applications or choose alternative app stores. Companies are also required to open access to data, whether performance metrics for advertising or information generated by business users on the platforms. Prohibitions include the practice of tracking user behavior outside the platform and of unfairly ranking their own products above those of competitors.

The text of the DMA repeatedly uses the word “unfairness,” which is defined as “an imbalance between the rights and obligations of business users” on a platform. If, for example, an app developer or seller gets lost in opaque conditions and requirements and thereby effectively falls under the control of the platform owner, the platform will be considered “unfair.” This consumer- and developer-oriented approach does not at all match the more big-business-friendly practice of U.S. antitrust law, creating yet another point of tension between Brussels and Washington.

American experts and officials, of course, have argued that the predominance of U.S. companies on the list of “gatekeepers” shows Europe’s bias against American technology (even if the inclusion of China’s ByteDance on the same list undercuts such claims). Moreover, the U.S. antitrust committee has expressed complaints about exactly the same firms.

Even so, given current tensions in trans-Atlantic relations, the EU’s digital policy has fueled talk of an economic “Cold War” in the technology sphere. As analysts at the Atlantic Council put it, the new European rules represent a “declaration of independence” from Silicon Valley.

Failure to comply with the DMA can result in fines of up to 10% of a company’s global revenue — or 20% for especially egregious violators. As a last resort, demands could even be made to break up corporations into smaller entities. 

Here there is actually an American precedent. In 1982, after antitrust proceedings, the U.S. government broke up telecom giant AT&T into smaller regional companies. And in 2001, Microsoft nearly suffered a similar fate before the matter ended in a settlement.

The Trump threat

The EU’s position has provoked not only criticism from Washington, but also retaliatory policies. In July 2025, the House Judiciary Committee published a report titled “The Foreign Censorship Threat: How the European Union’s Digital Services Act Compels Global Censorship and Infringes on American Free Speech.”

The American document cites unspecified, non-public EU materials to make the claim that the DSA’s content moderation requirements effectively force platforms to suppress political discourse worldwide, including in the United States. According to their account, the DSA is even used to censor “humor and satire.”

The legal community sharply criticized these allegations. One open letter notes that the House report entirely ignores the safeguards for the protection and promotion of free speech and expression envisaged by DSA and points out the fact that the law’s requirements largely align with long-established U.S. standards for removing illegal content. Moreover, the authors emphasize that there is no evidence American companies are treated any differently from European or Chinese ones.

Nevertheless, in August 2025 Trump warned on social media that “all countries with digital taxes, legislation, rules, or regulations” (that is, essentially any country) would face consequences, warning that: “Unless these discriminatory actions are removed, I, as President of the United States, will impose substantial additional tariffs on that country’s exports to the USA.” Trump followed up by threatening sanctions against European officials. In other words, digital laws adopted by the EU have become yet another pretext for Trump to wield the trade cudgel.

Internet protection measures adopted by the EU have given Trump another pretext to wield the trade cudgel

Representatives of the U.S. trade authorities made it clear that progress on seemingly unrelated issues, such as tariffs on steel and aluminum, could hinge on the rollback of European tech restrictions. Brussels rejected even the idea of bargaining on this front, insisting that protecting its digital market is a sovereign right of the European Union.

Such a combative reaction may be linked to the particular warmth Trump shows toward major technology companies. Google, Apple, Meta, and X have long been among the biggest lobbyists in the United States, investing tens of millions of dollars in outreach to Congress and the White House. Personal ties also play a significant role, with leading tech entrepreneurs and investors actively seeking to build relationships directly with Trump and the Republican camp: Elon Musk spent $277 million supporting Trump’s election campaign, Mark Zuckerberg donated $1 million to his inauguration, and Google co-founder Sergey Brin paid a high-profile visit to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence.

The chat controversy

The most controversial element of the EU’s digital legislation has been the proposal of so-called “chat control.” Initially, the plan envisaged screening users’ private communications for content related to child sexual abuse. It even contemplated scanning end-to-end encrypted messages — which, according to critics, would amount to the de facto installation of spyware on every European citizen’s phone.

Activists and scholars warned that the mass, indiscriminate interception of users’ messages before encryption would undermine the fundamental principles of online privacy and call into question basic human rights. Moreover, experts repeatedly emphasized that no existing technology is capable of reliably detecting illegal material without generating massive numbers of false positives coming from harmless content.

No extant technology is capable of reliably detecting illegal material without generating a vast number of false positives

Supporters of the proposal, including child protection groups and certain law enforcement agencies, argued that chat control was necessary to catch criminals. Unsurprisingly, disagreements arose even within European institutions: at the end of 2025, Denmark, which held the EU Council presidency, refused to back the initiative.

Ultimately, the bill was softened. Brussels abandoned the requirement to bypass encryption, opting for less invasive tools and voluntary information sharing. The mandatory element of widespread surveillance was removed.

However, some of the risks persist. Even in its revised form, the initiative limits anonymity, requiring user identity verification and age confirmation when registering for certain services.

This undoubtedly puts many potentially vulnerable people at risk. Journalists often use anonymous accounts or encrypted services to communicate with sources. Whistleblowers reporting corruption or other violations also rely on confidentiality. Activists, human rights defenders, and refugees, both outside and within the EU, could be endangered if their communications are exposed.

The same applies to LGBTQ+ people, especially in countries where homosexuality and transgenderism are criminalized or heavily stigmatized. They often have to rely on anonymous communication channels to safely connect with their communities and support networks.

The U.S., however, has different concerns. After all, the Trump administration has no qualms about disregarding the privacy of its own citizens. Instead, Washington is far more focused on the interests of its tech platforms, which are ramping up lobbying efforts both in the U.S. and Europe. If the United States continues imposing tariffs, suppliers of high-tech products from semiconductors to software could find themselves embroiled in a full-scale trade war. 

Mobile operators had previously said access restrictions were implemented as “security measures.” In some areas, subscribers could access only websites from a “white list” of pre-approved resources, which included state online services, the websites of some banks, marketplaces, and pro-government media outlets.

A day earlier, analysts also recorded improved access to Telegram in Russia after the messaging app had been almost completely blocked across the country. According to the international research project OONI, anomalies in the use of the service stood at 51% on Monday, down from nearly 80% at the end of last week. In comments to The Insider, cyber lawyer Sarkis Darbinyan said the return of mobile internet in Moscow and improved access to Telegram were unlikely to be connected.

“Telegram runs on its own MTProto protocol, which the authorities have learned to detect quite successfully. Once its traffic is identified by signature, the TSPU system begins dropping every second or third data packet, which is felt as slowing and the inability to use some functions. In this context, accessibility means that TSPU is letting through somewhat more incoming and outgoing messenger packets. Users may feel this in the sense that some messages and attachments are going through a little better than they were a week or two ago. There is no objective way to measure this. TSPU systems are black boxes. Neither the operators themselves, nor certainly public organizations, know what is happening inside them. There is still no fundamental research allowing anyone to say that any actions by services or users themselves can overload the system. Obviously, any filters are finite and a system can be overloaded. But we have no objective data showing that the TSPU system is already choking. 

A mobile internet shutdown and the throttling of a messenger through TSPU are two different processes, carried out by different bodies and for different purposes. The first is done by the FSB, the second by Roskomnadzor. The first still appears to be a temporary measure, the second a permanent one. Internet access in Moscow was restored not because the TSPU system is overloaded, and not at all because the state lacks the ability to keep blocking messengers. The internet was switched back on because, most likely, the FSB decided the threat was gone. What threat the chekists feared, we still do not know. Maybe it really was drones, or maybe something else,” the expert said.

As previously reported by the newspaper Kommersant, the first five days of shutdowns in Moscow alone caused losses worth billions of rubles, with small and medium-sized businesses hit hardest.

The attacks have been ongoing for several weeks. First, Signal users receive messages from an account called Signal Support claiming that their account is at risk. Victims are asked to enter a code and a PIN allegedly sent to them, after which the attackers gain full access to their accounts, messages, and contact lists. Among the known victims is a former vice president of Germany’s BND intelligence service, Arndt Freytag von Loringhoven. His account was hijacked, and messages were then sent to his contacts on his behalf with a link inviting them to join a WhatsApp channel — another part of the phishing scheme.

Correctiv identified several dozen domains believed to have been used in the campaign and linked them to the Russian hosting provider Aeza, a company sanctioned by the United States and the United Kingdom (but not the EU) for involvement in Russian propaganda campaigns and criminal activity.

A key tool in the attacks was Defisher, a software tool that had been advertised on Russian hacker forums as early as 2024, priced at $690. According to Correctiv, digital traces suggest the developer of Defisher is likely a young Moscow resident (and more of a freelancer than a state-backed hacker). They did not respond to the publication’s inquiries. According to Correctiv’s sources in IT security, hackers linked to Russian state agencies began using Defisher approximately a year ago. Google analysts associate the program with UNC5792, a group that has also targeted users in Georgia, France, and the United States.

Earlier, a Google report stated that Russian hacking groups, including GRU-affiliated APT44 (Sandworm), carried out a phishing attack on Signal accounts, primarily targeting Ukrainian military personnel. Signal released updates to protect users against such threats.

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Identifying the main international sources of equipment and spare parts for the Russian military is no easy task for investigative journalists. Standard trade and customs databases often list intermediary companies and logistics firms, rather than manufacturers or actual sellers. This lack of transparency allows international suppliers to plausibly deny their involvement in the trade of sanctioned goods, making it virtually impossible to determine to what extent companies are knowingly collaborating with the Russian defense sector.

However, by contacting manufacturers directly (albeit under a pseudonym), we managed to obtain compelling evidence that several Chinese companies’ shipments to the Russian defense industry were intentional. In conversations with these manufacturers, Nordsint presented itself as a potential Russian client, explicitly stating that the components being purchased were intended for military purposes. This never seemed to bother the suppliers. The Insider examined data on these Chinese companies’ previous transactions, contained in customs and trade registries.

Although the supply of drones and components is officially prohibited by Chinese law, sellers use convoluted financial schemes to meet the demand of the Russian defense industry. When supplying military equipment, some of the Chinese firms we investigated accept payment in yuan through the Shanghai branch of Russia’s VTB Bank or conduct transactions in USDT (Tether), a cryptocurrency pegged to the U.S. dollar. In this way, they are able to circumvent Western financial sanctions. Other firms use the services of Chinese and Hong Kong banks: China CITIC Bank, DBS Bank, Ping An Bank, China Zheshang Bank, and Bank of China Nanjing.

How the Chinese agreed to sell fiber-optic cables for drones

Since 2024, Russian and Ukrainian forces have increasingly been using FPV drones with fiber-optic control to strike targets along the front lines. These systems are resistant to electronic warfare, as the connection is provided by a fiber-optic cable (see video) rather than a wireless network. In particular, single-mode G.657.A2 fiber with enhanced bend resistance is often advertised by manufacturers for use in cable-controlled FPV drones.

As discovered by Nordsint, among the companies willing to sell equipment for such drones to Russian military clients was Zion Communication Co. Ltd, a fiber optic manufacturer based in Hangzhou. Nordsint managed to “place an order” for 500 pre-spooled rolls of fiber optic cable for kamikaze drones. Each reel contained 50 kilometers of fiber optic cable at an average price of $27.8 per kilometer. The deal, totaling over $700,000, also included guidance modules utilizing artificial intelligence. These allow drones to track both stationary and moving targets, such as vehicles or infantry.

To facilitate the payment, Zion Communication provided an invoice in yuan and dollars to a Russian front company, allegedly based in Vladivostok, requesting that funds be transferred to its account at China CITIC Bank. Citibank North America was listed as the correspondent bank in the payment details.

The Insider found that Zion Communication Co. Ltd. is virtually absent from Russian customs databases. In 2025, it is mentioned only as a participant in the minor trade of non-military goods. This may mean that the databases were edited or that more sophisticated concealment schemes were used.

Hongan Group Corporation Limited, a manufacturer based in Weihai, Shandong Province, also expressed a willingness to sell fiber-optic reels for use in drones. Nordsint attempted to place an order for 25,000 kilometers of fiber optic cable for kamikaze drones, but was told that such a volume might be too large for the company’s production capacity.

“At the moment, our company’s order and production schedule is fully booked through the end of August. We are not sure we can allocate a sufficient number of kilometers of fiber-optic cable for you, as many customers are buying it up in insane volumes. For my part, I am currently awaiting information from the company regarding the price and the estimated length of fiber-optic cable available this month,” a representative of Hongan Group Corporation Limited told Nordsint.

When the topic of payment came up, he said that funds could be transferred via VTB Bank, but also asked if it was possible to receive payment in U.S. dollars. “Payments and receipts go through faster via the VTB account, but it’s more difficult for my company to withdraw the money,” wrote the Hongan representative. “Would it be convenient for you to send USD? I’m concerned that banks might block payments from sensitive countries.” Hongan ultimately issued Nordsint an invoice for 504 kilometers of fiber optic cable at a price of $34.5 per kilometer, specifying a Bank of China account as the ultimate recipient.

“Please let me know before transferring the funds. Do not send them directly, as our company’s account has recently received too many payments, which could trigger the risk control system. I need to check whether the account has been subject to restrictions,” wrote a Hongan representative.

Shortly after Nordsint’s inquiry to Hongan Group, an unknown individual who identified himself as a Chinese fiber optic trader contacted Nordsint’s investigators. He refused to disclose how he had obtained the contact information. Later, the trader sent a commercial proposal, stating that he was a representative of Tianjin Textile Import and Export Inc. This seller acted as an intermediary for various fiber optic manufacturers.

According to data obtained by The Insider, in the first three months of 2025, Tianjin Textile Import and Export shipped over $10 million worth of goods to Russia, declaring them as bicycles and bicycle parts.

The seller sent Nordsint pro forma invoices listing Guangzhou Longpuxin Trading Co. Ltd and Tianjin Textile Import and Export as the counterparties. When asked why Guangzhou Longpuxin Trading was listed as the invoicer, the seller explained that both companies are controlled by the same owner. Neither Nordsint nor The Insider could confirm the existence of any legal or financial ties between these two firms. The Insider found no record of Guangzhou Longpuxin in Russian customs databases for 2024 or 2025.

Another Chinese fiber optic seller, operating under the name Fiberblade, sent Nordsint an invoice for 15,000 kilometers of fiber optic cable at a price of 205 yuan ($29.84) per kilometer, plus a handling fee of 60 yuan ($8.73) per kilometer. Fiberblade sent Nordsint an invoice bearing the stamp of Shenzhen Xianfeng Technology Co. Ltd, a company that does not appear in recent customs data.

Suzhou Sanxian Electronic Machinery Technology Co., Ltd, which contacted the “undercover buyer” (i.e., Nordsint) based on information received “from a friend,” sent an invoice with an estimated price of 230 yuan per kilometer ($33.44). Within 24 hours, the seller notified Nordsint that the price had increased by 10 yuan ($1.46). The invoice was issued by Suzhou Shizhen Technology, which the trader identified as his foreign trade company.

They requested payment be made through a VTB Bank branch, as the company could not accept payments in U.S. dollars, explaining that “the risk is too high” and “payments for goods with a delivery address in Russia are often returned.” Suzhou Shizhen Technology, likewise, does not appear in recent customs transactions.

Machines for fiber optic cable production

Aside from fiber-optic cable, Suzhou Sanxian Machinery was also ready to sell fiber-optic winding machines to the Russian defense industry. These machines are critical for fiber processing, as they automatically rewind cable from large “master” reels onto compact spools used by FPV drones.

Shanghai Rui Tai Photoelectronic Technology Co., Ltd., a manufacturer of optical lenses and industrial equipment, was prepared to sell ten fiber-rewinding machines to a Russian client even after being informed that the devices were intended for military production. The payment details listed on the company’s invoice indicate that Shanghai Rui Tai has an account with VTB Bank.

Similar machines manufactured by Rui Tai, which operates under the Raytek brand, have appeared in the Russian registry of certificates of conformity. In December 2024, sole proprietor Yermek Suyundukov declared Raytek fiber-optic rewinding devices with Rosaccreditation. According to trade data available to The Insider, Suyundukov was the largest importer of fiber-optic cable into Russia in 2025.

Mesh modems for “Geran” drones

Mesh modems manufactured by Shenzhen Xingkai Technology Co. Ltd. were found in Russian long-range strike drones. These networking systems are critical, as they allow strike drones to form an interconnected communication chain, extending their operational range and enabling ground operators to maintain control even if individual network nodes are destroyed.

Nordsint contacted Xingkai Technology and posed as a potential client from Russia interested in purchasing mesh modems specifically for military drones. The Chinese company replied that it was willing to sell the mesh radio systems, adding that it has “many clients in Russia.”

A representative of the Chinese company also showed Nordsint a certificate of participation in the “Army-2024” forum — a large annual exhibition organized by the Russian Ministry of Defense. The same document is featured in some of the company’s listings on Alibaba.

Xingkai Technology was ready to sell Nordsint XK-F303E data transmitters, along with XK-F358 mesh modems. The latter have been found in Russian fixed-wing drones, including the jet-powered “Geran-5” and the “Geran-2,” which is equipped with the “Verba” MANPADS, as well as in the “Gerbera” series of unmanned aerial vehicles. During the correspondence, a representative stated that Xingkai Technology is currently renting warehouse space in Moscow, where stocks of many components are already available.

Nordsint requested a list of goods in stock in Moscow. In response, the Xingkai Technology representative sent screenshots of inventory management software showing the total quantities of components available in Russia. According to this data, the Moscow warehouse held 102 XK-F303E data transmitters ready for immediate delivery.

However, components such as the XK-F358 modem were not available in Russian warehouses and had to be shipped from abroad. The company’s representative suggested doing so via third countries, such as Kyrgyzstan or Turkey.

One of the provided screenshots of the warehouse management software shows the logo of Xinyou Overseas Warehousing Limited — a company providing warehousing services and based in Shenzhen. The exterior of the Russian warehouse, discovered on Xinyou Warehousing’s social media pages, matches images of the “Atlant-Park” complex, a warehouse zone in the urban-type settlement of Obukhovo in the Noginsky District of the Moscow Region. Videos posted on Xinyou Warehousing’s Facebook page show trucks with license plates from Kazakhstan and China.

References to the appearance of Xingkai Technology products on the Russian market were mainly linked to the intermediary LT Global Forwarding, which in 2023 imported data processing devices and antennas manufactured by Xingkai Technology worth $1.9 million. However, at that time, there was no confirmed evidence of direct official shipments from Xingkai Technology itself.

Payment details provided by Xingkai Technology show that the company’s bank accounts are held in Hong Kong at DBS Bank, while the personal account listed in the documents under the name of Jiang Qin is held at Ping An Bank. In online registries, Jiang Qin is listed as the company’s legal representative.

No recent records of Xingkai Technology’s customs operations could be found.

Cameras and interceptor drones

Reconnaissance and strike drones used by the Russian military employ thermal imaging systems to identify positions on the front lines and track personnel and equipment under any lighting conditions. Nanjing Zhuoyu Intelligent Technology Co., operating under the brand Ubeesky, was prepared to sell suspended cameras to a Russian client even after being informed that the products were intended for the Russian military. Nordsint received a commercial offer for LM80-2-1 electro-optical modules, which operate in both the visible and infrared spectrums. These modules are equipped with AI-based target acquisition and tracking capabilities. To facilitate payment, Ubeesky sent a proposal specifying that funds be transferred to an account at the Bank of China.

In addition to the cameras, a Ubeesky representative also reported that the company is in the process of developing an interceptor drone called the X-2 and sent Nordsint a product presentation.

The X-2 is a high-speed unmanned aerial vehicle designed to intercept other aircraft. It is controlled using built-in artificial intelligence and a ground-based tracking system.

Ubeesky was already known to be willing to supply products to Russia’s military-industrial complex. But marketing materials specifically promoting the X-2 interceptor point to an even more cynical business model.

Ubeesky explicitly identifies the Shahed-136/Geran-2 and Zala T-16 as the primary targets of the X-2. In other words, the company is effectively advertising countermeasures against those very Russian systems that its own products help maintain. When Nordsint asked whether Ubeesky also sells its products to Ukrainian customers, a company representative replied in the negative while stating that the topic was “so sensitive” he would not discuss it further.

Shenzhen Zhenrong Era Supply Chain Management Co., operating under the name XT Shenzhen, was prepared to sell user-programmable field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) to Nordsint after being informed that the products were intended for use on long-range strike drones. FPGAs serve as the “brain” of high-precision weapon systems, providing low latency and parallel data processing.

When Nordsint expressed concerns that Western sanctions might hinder the import, a representative from XT Shenzhen acknowledged the complexity of the situation, calling it “very delicate.” He reported that the last sale to a Russian client took place eight years ago and proposed a workaround: “If we are to cooperate in the long term, I will need to register a new company and open an account with the Russian bank VTB before I can receive your payments directly.”

Radars and shell companies

A Chinese seller operating under the Cloudwalker brand offered to supply portable X-band radar systems designed to detect FPV drones. The technical specifications provided by the company indicate that the system is capable of tracking small quadcopters at a distance of up to 10 kilometers, providing early warning of approaching loitering munitions.

A representative sent Nordsint an invoice. Even after being informed that the systems were intended for the Russian military for use on the front lines in Ukraine, they stated that such equipment could be shipped directly to Russia. 

The invoice for the radar was issued by Cloud Services Trading Limited, a company registered in Hong Kong. There is virtually no public information available about this entity’s activities. Corporate records show that the company was registered in January 2025.

Cloudwalker requested payment in USDT (Tether) — a cryptocurrency pegged to the U.S. dollar that allows for nearly instant international transfers outside the traditional SWIFT network. An analysis of the blockchain for the specified wallet address shows high activity: since its creation, a total of 4,235,107 USDT has passed through this account.

When Nordsint requested identification documents, a Cloudwalker representative sent documents listing Shenzhen Yunchuang Linghang Technology Co. as the actual company behind the brand. Previous investigations, conducted in December 2025, had already identified Yunchuang Linghang as the shell company behind Cloudwalker.

It is noteworthy that Fiberblade — the previously mentioned fiber-optic cable supplier — is located in close proximity to Cloudwalker. The legal entities behind these companies (Shenzhen Xianfeng Technology and Shenzhen Yunchuang Linghang Technology) are registered at different addresses within the same building.

The Insider sent inquiries to the Chinese suppliers (Xt Shenzhen, Zion Communication, Hongan, Tianjin Textile, Raytek, Xingkaitech, Cloudwalker, Ubeesky, Fiberblade) but received no responses.

“Capture the ringleader first to nab the bandits”

The greed and moral recklessness of Chinese businessmen, willing to aid Russia in the killing of Ukrainians for the sake of the skyrocketing profits the market now promises, are well known. What is surprising is that the rather cautious Chinese banks continue to pretend they do not understand the purpose of incoming yuan transactions from Russia. 

The Insider sent inquiries to the banks that were proposed as the direct recipients of payments for military goods: China CITIC Bank, DBS Bank, Ping An Bank, China Zheshang Bank, Bank of China Nanjing, and China Bank of Communications, but received no responses. 

The Insider received a response to its inquiry only from Citibank, which appears in this investigation as a correspondent bank; it requested additional information, but then declined to comment. 

Sanctions authorities from Western countries might do well to recall the Chinese stratagem: “Capture the ringleader first to nab the bandits.” In the current situation, the Chinese banking system acts as the “ringleader.” It appears that only severe sanctions pressure on those Chinese banks that are still working with exporters can stop the “bandits” from supplying their products to the Russian military-industrial complex.

Shortage in the Russian market and rapid price growth

Fiber optic imports to Russia in 2025 accounted for 10.5% of global production. In previous years, that figure did not exceed 1%. This growth is attributable  to the cessation of production at the Optic Fiber Systems plant in Saransk following attacks by Ukrainian drones last April. Leonid Konik, CEO of ComNews Group, stated that all optical fiber used by Russia is now imported from China.

According to Anastasia Bizhelova, Director of Development and Operations at Telecom Birzhi, Chinese manufacturers have raised prices for optical fiber for Russian customers by 2.5 to 4 times. Alexey Babenko, CEO of the Ukrainian company Vyryi drone, stated in an interview with Militarnyi on March 5 that a 35-kilometer reel of fiber-optic cable for drone control now costs $700. This is more than the price of a Starlink terminal (which can also be used on drones to counter electronic warfare systems).

Chinese fiber optic manufacturers supply both the Russian and the Ukrainian sides in the ongoing war. Trade data shows that Hongan Group exported several shipments of fiber optic cable to Ukrainian companies, including to Shocktradestore LLC. This company, based in Bila Tserkva, is engaged in the “manufacture of weapons and ammunition” and participated in tenders for Ukrainian military procurement.

Chinese fiber optic manufacturers supply both Russia and Ukraine in the ongoing war

However, according to data from The Washington Post, fiber optic cable exports from China to Russia exceed shipments to Ukraine by a wide margin. In August 2025, China exported nearly 528,000 kilometers of fiber optic cable to Russia, while 116,000 kilometers were shipped to Ukraine that same month.

“To be honest, the Chinese fiber-optic market is in complete chaos right now, and prices are just insanely high,” one seller wrote in a conversation with Nordsint, adding that such prices are the result of “the current tense international situation.” The seller quoted a price of $28 per kilometer, noting that it was valid for only one hour. Later, the price rose to $34, as the seller was informed that the stock had sold out two days earlier and they needed to switch cable suppliers.

“The fiber optic market is constantly changing. Priority goes to whoever offers the highest price. So the price I’m offering you now, if you haven’t made a decision yet, could be snatched up by another buyer in just ten minutes,” the seller warned.

In recent months, the cost of Chinese fiber optic cable has skyrocketed. “Before the Spring Festival, the price was $13 [per kilometer]. No one expected it to rise to $30 after the holiday — that’s never happened before. Because of the price hike, I lost five clients this month,” the trader wrote.

The relevant amendment is to be added to the federal law “On Countering Extremist Activity.”

“An absurd situation arose: in order to find prohibited material and pass it to law enforcement agencies, it was formally necessary to locate and identify that material, which automatically fell under the elements of an administrative offense. This contradiction is now being corrected,” cybersecurity expert Igor Bederov told the publication.

In September 2025, amendments to the Code of Administrative Offenses mandating penalties for online searches of “knowingly extremist materials” came into effect. Article 13.53 of Russia’s Administrative Code sets fines ranging from 3,000 to 5,000 rubles ($35 to $60). The first case under the statute was opened in early November against a resident of the city of Kamensk-Uralsky when medic Sergei Glukhikh was accused of finding “extremist material” in the form of “a graphic image of the symbol of the Azov battalion.” He was ultimately fined 3,000 rubles.

In February, the second package of amendments passed a first reading in the State Duma.

The gas carrier was damaged on March 3 in the Mediterranean Sea. According to Russia’s Transport Ministry, the attack was carried out by Ukrainian sea drones launched from the Libyan coast. Thirty Russian sailors were on board; all were evacuated.

After the incident, the vessel drifted unmanned between Italy and Malta. Italian authorities considered various response options but took no measures that might have seen the ship end up being admitted to an Italian port. According to sources cited by Reuters, an unknown quantity of liquefied gas remains on board, making the vessel potentially dangerous. One of the sources called the ship “a ticking time bomb full of gas.”

The mayor of the Italian island town of Lampedusa, Filippo Mannino, said earlier that the situation was under control: the gas carrier was being escorted by naval ships, a tugboat, and an emergency response vessel. Maltese authorities also warned other ships to keep at least five nautical miles away.

According to NOC, the damaged tanker is gradually approaching the Libyan coast under the force of wind and waves. In response, Libya has set up an emergency task force to coordinate actions and prevent possible environmental damage.

Censors against “The Wind”

According to film critics, the best Russian film of 2025 was The Wind by Sergei Chliyants. The National White Elephant Award honored the film in several categories, including Best Screenplay. The script had been written nearly 30 years ago by Pyotr Lutsik and Alexei Samoryadov, neither of whom lived to see this particular work appear on screen.

For viewers familiar with their earlier films (particularly The Outskirts and Wild Field), the storytelling style was no surprise. The narrative unfolds like a folk tale, set in a dark and mysterious visual world filled with ominous characters who seem to have stepped out of the works of Andrei Platonov.

More surprising is that the screenplay material, which usually ages quickly, not only did not become outdated over the course of several decades but instead gained unexpected relevance. Consider the film’s final scene: the protagonist, Ivan, desperate to bring his dead young wife back to life, decides to go to war — not a specific war, but an abstract one.

“No one escapes war. Not a nation, not a person. And Moscow will not buy its way out,” a captain with the face of a fanatic tells new recruits. “The time has come to stand up for the motherland. Our great-grandfathers did not spare their lives. Why should we seek another fate? Why should we listen to outsiders? Do they love us? For a thousand years they did not love us, and now suddenly they do?”

Had this captain been played by an actor like the absurdly pro-war Ivan Okhlobystin, the scene might have shifted toward deranged farce and self-parody. Instead, the role is performed by a serious dramatic actor, leaving little room for dark humor. In the end, the character Ivan quietly goes to war — because the only alternatives in the wild Russian hinterland are poverty, theft, or the murder of one’s own people.

The Wind was supposed to premiere in October 2024 at the Mayak film festival in the Black Sea resort town of Gelendzhik, which has become one of the central platforms for Russian cinema since the Kinotavr festival ended in 2022.

But the intelligence officer responsible for monitoring the project’s investor apparently had not initially been familiar with the film’s content, which from the perspective of someone in uniform did not properly reflect the current narrative of the “special military operation.” As a result, The Wind was barred from the Mayak festival, and its director, who is not a public figure, was sent to the Russian-occupied front-line Donbas Region for a series of “creative meetings.”

In the end, the film was first screened in March 2025 at the Spirit of Fire international film festival in Khanty-Mansiysk, where it won the grand prize.

Alice no longer lives here

One of the favorites of previous White Elephant awards was Snegir (“Bullfinch”), based on the novel Three Minutes of Silence by Georgy Vladimov, first published in 1969 (though the film’s events were moved to the present day). Films of this type were once categorized as “the moral education of the Soviet person,” or “cinema of moral anxiety.”

In the plot, two very young friends arrive for an internship aboard a fishing trawler. Weakness and then betrayal by one of them leads to the death of the other. The film is completely free of common Hollywood clichés. Instead, it recalls psychological cinema in the tradition of Sergei Solovyov or Ilya Averbakh. Critics could hardly fail to admire it.

Somewhat surprisingly, the film also won strong support from the Golden Eagle awards jury led by Kremlin-friendly film director Nikita Mikhalkov, which gave Snegir four prizes, including Best Film.

But even here the story has its complications.

Snegir beat the ambitious project The Challenge, the first film ever shot in space. Among the producers of the latter were Senator Dmitry Rogozin (formerly of Roscosmos) and Channel One chief Konstantin Ernst. According to rumors, the result caused displeasure in the presidential administration, as the usually “loyal” Golden Eagle judges did not give The Challenge a single statuette save for a special prize awarded by the organizing committee to actress Yulia Peresild, well-known in Russia for her trip into space with director Klim Shipenko. Even the category for Best Visual Effects went to Snegir.

Despite Snegir’s official success, its creators Boris Khlebnikov and Natalia Meshchaninova have released no new films. Together with Alexander Sokurov, they are among the most respected Russian filmmakers who have remained in the country following the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and in practice, they have been pushed out of the profession. It is unclear whether this is connected to Khlebnikov’s signing of the collective “No to war” letter in February 2022 or to his cooperation with Igor Mishin, the general producer of the online cinema service Kion. Mishin was forced out of the industry after law enforcement searched his country house in 2025.

The most respected Russian filmmakers who stayed in the country after the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine have been pushed out of the profession.

In 2021, Khlebnikov and Mishin created the comedy series Comrade Major, about an eccentric FSB officer “eager to do good.” After pilot episodes were screened, the project never appeared on any online platform. Yet in August 2022 it somehow received a distribution certificate, allowing it to be shown in movie theaters. However, no cinema used that opportunity.

Natalia Meshchaninova had no connection to Comrade Major and did not sign any letters protesting the war. Artistically, she is primarily known for depicting stories dealing with everyday life, moral dilemmas, and family themes.

However, her sharp modern interpretation of those topics nevertheless displeases defenders of “traditional values.” Her film One Small Night Secret, shown in February 2023 at the Rotterdam International Film Festival despite sanctions, tells the story of a 14-year-old girl subjected to sexual coercion by her stepfather behind the facade of a seemingly happy family.

Another project, the series Alice Cannot Wait, focuses on a teenage girl who learns she is irreversibly losing her eyesight. She decides to sell her virginity to raise money for surgery. If the operation fails, she plans to at least enjoy life while she can.

At the online cinema festival New Season in 2022, the project won in the category for Most Anticipated Series, but after premiering on the START video platform, “activists” known for filing denunciations appealed to Russia’s communications regulator Roskomnadzor. The series was banned over its alleged purveyance of “information that must not be distributed through audiovisual services.”

One Small Night Secret appears to have had a somewhat better fate. The film has been allowed to exist — albeit only on online platforms, none of which have chosen to purchase it.

One Small Night Secret has been allowed to exist — albeit only on online platforms, none of which have chosen to purchase it.

These cases are not limited to filmmakers who sign protest letters or challenge “traditional family values.” Klim Shipenko, the director of the aforementioned The Challenge, has his own skeleton in the closet. His film December, about the suicide of poet Sergei Yesenin, has been prevented from reaching theaters since October 2022. There is no official explanation for the ban, while the unofficial one holds that the film shows “Chekists who are too bloody.”

How “shelves” were cleared during Perestroika

In May, 40 years will have passed since the legendary Fifth Congress of Soviet Filmmakers in the Kremlin, which in effect opened the era of Mikhail Gorbachev’s glasnost in the USSR. Among other decisions, the Congress ordered the creation of a conflict commission within the Union of Cinematographers to review so-called “shelved” films, meaning movies banned by censorship. The commission was headed by film critic Andrei Plakhov.

By his account, the commission initially suspected that there might be two or three dozen such films. Many of them were already well known, including Trial on the Road by Alexei German, A Bad Anecdote by Alexander Alov and Vladimir Naumov, Repentance by Tengiz Abuladze, and The Lonely Voice of Man by Alexander Sokurov. The commission recommended that these films be released with priority distribution.

Later the commission turned to less well-known films, among which The Commissar by Alexander Askoldov proved to be an undisputed masterpiece. After that came films that had been edited at the demand of censors, and their original versions eventually reached screens — including Ilyich’s Gate by Marlen Khutsiev, released in Soviet theaters under the title I Am Twenty, and The Story of Asya Klyachina, Who Loved but Did Not Marry, also known as Asya’s Happiness, by Andrei Konchalovsky.

Some time later, the commission concluded that manipulating the number of film prints was also a form of censorship. Who could have seen Otar Iosseliani’s film Pastoral given that only about 15 copies were printed for the entire country? The situation was no better for Andrei Tarkovsky’s Mirror or the films of Kira Muratova. Documentary filmmakers and animators also had their own “shelves,” as did television productions (even if, in Soviet times, the latter category was far smaller than it is today).

In 1986, the USSR’s Union of Cinematographers concluded that manipulating the number of film prints was also a form of censorship.

The conflict commission worked for two years, reviewing more than 250 films. This was during a period when the authorities still held a monopoly over filmmaking: production proposals had to be approved by officials, and films were produced at state studios. In the 1980s, the Soviet Union produced about 150 feature films each year, along with roughly the same number of films in other formats. All of them were regulated by permits issued by the state film committee, Goskino. Without such a document a film could not be released.

Similar certificates exist today, although they are called distribution licenses. However, today a film can also be released without any official approval simply by uploading it to a personal YouTube channel.

That is what happened with Alexander Sokurov’s film Fairytale. In 2023, after the Ministry of Culture refused to grant the film a distribution certificate, television personality Ksenia Sobchak posted it online and accompanied the screening with a public discussion featuring the director.

How the “shelves” are being filled today

Nevertheless, a new “shelf” is clearly filling up. This signals not only the growth of total censorship in modern Russia, which is already evident, but also the decline of the entire filmmaking process in the country. It is telling that the Golden Eagle and Nika film awards, which in theory represent opposing factions of the Russian film community, in practice receive state support and commit themselves not to include films without distribution certificates in their nomination lists.

In the case of the Golden Eagle awards this is understandable. In the case of Nika, traditionally considered the oldest and most democratic Russian film prize, it is harder to explain. Yet Sokurov’s Fairytale was not nominated, even though the director had received the Nika award for Honor and Dignity several years earlier.

The experience of the White Elephant award is important. The prize not only supported Fairytale, naming it the best film of the year, but also continues to evaluate the filmmaking process without observing censorship restrictions. Among the recent winners of the White Elephant award are Ilya Khrzhanovsky’s project DAU, in which four of the ten episodes were denied distribution certificates, Rezo Gigineishvili’s film Patient No. 1, which has no certificate and was never even submitted for one, and the previously mentioned One Small Night Secret.

The award also supports independent documentary filmmaking. In 2025 critics named the film The Doors Are Closing the best documentary of the year. The film, whose title echoes the familiar announcement on the Moscow subway, follows a choir of Moscow metro employees traveling to perform at a military patriotic celebration in Russian-occupied Crimea. Director Yana Isaenko subtly shows how, against the background of war, human connections and the contours of a world that traditionally sees itself as “outside politics” begin to collapse.

In general, whether a film has a distribution certificate or not doesn’t have much effect beyond the festival circuit (and in practice, by banning Fairytale, the Ministry of Culture only increased interest in it). Some lists of banned films include Captain Volkonogov Escaped, directed by Natasha Merkulova and Alexei Chupov. But that film actually has a distribution certificate issued in August 2021, which has never been revoked. The decision not to release the film in theaters belongs to the producers — and their caution is understandable. A confrontation with “outraged activists” can bring both reputational and financial losses, while releasing a film in theaters requires investment.

The historical and ethnographic film Nuuchcha by Vladimir Munkuev, a prizewinner at international film festivals in Karlovy Vary and Tallinn, also received a distribution certificate. It was issued in August 2021 and the theatrical premiere was scheduled for April 2022.

However, in February of that year the film was accused of being Russophobic, and since then the situation has remained unresolved. There is no formal ban, but there is also no certainty that the film could be released without provoking a scandal. Censorship and self-censorship go hand in hand.

Yakutia under suspicion

Nuuchcha was made in Yakutia, where a local film industry has flourished in recent years, driven by audiences wanting films in their native language and by directors determined to keep making movies on budgets far smaller than those typical in Moscow. But in Russia, projects that do not originate with the federal center often draw suspicion, which is part of the reason why at least three Yakut films are now either formally or informally banned, including Dmitry Shadrin’s comedy The Candidate, which was denied a distribution certificate in October 2023, and Stepan Burnashev’s psychological thriller Aita.

At least three Yakut films are now either formally or informally banned in Russia.

The main character of Aita, a Yakut man with the Russian name Nikolai, is involved in the investigation of a criminal incident. After a teenage party, 16-year-old Aita attempts suicide and later dies, but not before leaving behind a note naming a possible offender, Afonya. In the monoethnic settlement where the film takes place, there is only one person by that name: a Russian police officer.

The investigation has only just begun, but the settlement is already in turmoil, demanding vigilante justice. For safety reasons, the suspect is kept at the police station, but the crowd is ready to storm it. Nikolai himself feels no sympathy for Afonya. Under different circumstances, he might have joined the crowd. But he is the head of the police department, effectively the only authority in the settlement. Thus the hero, risking his life, protects the Russian man until another Afonya is found in a neighboring settlement — a Yakut by ethnicity, the girl’s peer and lover.

The film is made with a finely honed understanding of genre and a dense sense of everyday authenticity. At the box office, it earned back its budget tenfold, which sounds almost fantastical for Russian cinema today.

Nevertheless, in September 2023, the consumer safety watchdog Rospotrebnadzor intervened in Aita’s fate. The film’s distribution certificate was revoked with the verdict that “the picture demonstrates inequality among persons on the basis of nationality.” Yakutia’s head, Aisen Nikolayev, publicly backed director Stepan Burnashev. The regional newspaper Yakutsk Vecherny even ran an issue with the headline “Roskomdisgrace” (“Roskompozor”). Seventy critics and film scholars signed an open letter in defense of the film. Rospotrebnadzor was accused of lacking the professional expertise needed to evaluate works of art.

None of it helped. In the end, Aita was acquired by the international streaming platform Amazon Prime Video, and now viewers around the world can see it. But in Russia, the film is available only on pirate services.

Make it clear

On Jan. 29, the State Duma held a roundtable discussion on “State support and paths for the development of domestic cinematography.” Nearly all the key figures in the industry took part, from Culture Minister Olga Lyubimova to film director, actor, and producer Fyodor Bondarchuk. As it turned out, lawmakers had accumulated quite a few complaints about Russian film production — some disliked the re-imaged Soviet cartoon Cheburashka, others Buratino, another re-released popular mainstay. But above all, the State Duma sincerely does not understand why the great patriotic cinema that ought to be filling movie theaters still has not appeared. After all, Western distributors have already long since left Russia, yet instead of showing up for the types of films the Kremlin is backing, audiences have chosen to leave theaters largely empty.

The discussion at the Duma would likely have passed unnoticed had it not been for the remarks of director Alexei German Jr., who in cautious terms spoke out against oversight by state agencies. “If we keep multiplying supervisory bodies, we will simply suffocate,” he argued. He also criticized censorship, saying, “Excessive regulation right now may hinder the development of domestic cinema.” All of this was voiced less in defense of creative freedom than out of pure pragmatism. The industry needs rules so that it can follow them. “It is very important for us to understand,” German said, “what we are allowed to talk about and what we are not.”

Last summer, Mikhail Shvydkoy, Vladimir Putin’s special representative for international cultural cooperation and also a theater producer and critic, published a column on a similar theme in the government’s official newspaper, Rossiyskaya Gazeta. In Shvydkoy’s view, it is primarily the quality of works that suffers due to the many “requirements that are difficult to formalize from a legal point of view” and the lack of uniform rules. “You cannot create while keeping on your desk decrees of the president of the Russian Federation and law books that include not only the Civil Code but also the Criminal Code,” Shvydkoy wrote.

Given all of the above, it is not difficult to conclude that the more pragmatic part of the cultural establishment is trying to negotiate with the state over the boundaries of its censorial role in artists’ lives. Artists, in time, would presumably come up with ways to get around those boundaries, as they did in Soviet times. But Shvydkoy himself seems to understand how difficult such a task would be.

“It would be far more honest to return to censorship, handled by professionals rather than bureaucrats from various agencies, who themselves do not fully understand what they are supposed to fear in order not to lose their jobs. Yes, restoring the institution of censorship would not be cheap. It would require not hundreds but thousands of enlightened servants of the state. But perhaps only that could preserve a healthy environment in the creative sphere.”

In essence, this is a call to restore the Soviet era of stagnation, when the newspaper Pravda hung on every post, Georgy Daneliya made films like Autumn Marathon, and every artist clearly knew what was allowed and what was not. But such rules are the product of long and compromise-laden relations between artist and state. Does the current state need such relations, given that under its command are squads of “public activists” capable, at nothing more than a signal from above, of smashing a Vadim Sidur exhibition, dousing an unwanted artist with paint in a public place, or “canceling” any film or play, while another part of society has either left the country or has been buried under a pile of repressive laws?

For the authorities, it is much easier to keep both the intelligentsia and the people, as the classic said, “in a state of permanent astonishment,” declaring through their spokespeople and thinkers that the children’s film Cheburashka, based on an iconic Soviet-era cartoon character, is “a harmful film product that corrupts our children” (in the words of lawmaker Dmitry Pevtsov). Or, more dramatically still: “The appearance of Cheburashka coincides with the transition to petty-bourgeois values and infantilism. That is how the USSR collapsed. Cheburashka destroyed it” — or, at least, that’s what happened according to the words of philosopher-provocateur Alexander Dugin.

The idea of creating DOGE had occurred to Elon Musk long before Donald Trump was elected president. In September 2023, the businessman attended a dinner in honor of billionaire Vivek Ramaswamy, who was planning to run for the presidency. Musk tried to be cautious, as he did not yet want to publicly associate himself with politics, but after the meal, in conversations on the terrace, he spoke about his visit to the U.S.–Mexico border, reflected on the war in Ukraine, and complained that government regulation and bureaucracy were hindering the development of his company SpaceX. “It would be great to have access to the computers of the federal government,” Musk suggested at the time. “Just give me the passwords, and I’ll make the government fit and trim!”

In 2024, Musk became involved in Donald Trump’s election campaign. In August of that year, Trump said that if elected, he would consider appointing Musk as an advisor. The businessman responded on X: “I’m willing to serve!” — attaching an AI-generated image of himself at a podium bearing the inscription “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE). On Jan. 20, 2025, the day Trump was sworn in as president for the second time, Trump signed an executive order establishing DOGE.

DOGE was given a temporary mandate — expiring in July 2026 — to audit the government’s IT infrastructure. Government agencies were instructed to provide full and prompt access to all unclassified data, programs, and servers. The department reported directly to the Executive Office of the President.

Initially, Musk was supposed to lead the initiative in tandem with Ramaswamy. However, due to fundamental disagreements with Musk over legal frameworks and the pace of reforms, Ramaswamy stepped down, and Musk gained access to all government IT systems.

Formally, Amy Gleason was appointed to head the structure, with Musk listed as an “advisor to the president.” Later, when witnesses from agencies facing cuts testified in court that Musk had personally taken part in the dismissals, DOGE’s defense used the businessman’s non-official status as evidence of his non-involvement.

Former employees, however, argued that after gaining access to government data and financial infrastructure, the billionaire, under the guise of “optimization,” launched an ideological campaign against figures whom Trump and his allies claimed to be representatives of the “deep state.”

Under the guise of “optimization,” the billionaire launched a campaign against figures whom MAGA considers representatives of the “deep state”

His area of responsibility and influence extended beyond technological optimization to include broad government spending cuts, including decisions on personnel. Musk treated the federal government as an opposing team and took satisfaction in the fact that, when civil servants left for the weekend, he had a couple of days’ “head start” to outpace them in the struggle.

Breaking the world: how USAID became DOGE’s main target

The most severe blow fell on the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). On Trump’s first day back in office, he signed an executive order freezing all foreign aid and launching a 90-day audit of the agency’s operations.

Four days later, the president suspended all USAID programs and DOGE simultaneously began mass layoffs of agency staff — closing offices and terminating most programs that had provided financial support for development around the world.

USAID was created by the Kennedy administration in the 1960s during the Cold War and quickly became an instrument of American “soft power.” The agency distributed grants to more than one hundred countries worldwide, funding efforts to combat malaria, HIV/AIDS, and tuberculosis, as well as supporting family planning and vaccination programs, projects in education and climate change mitigation, providing support for the development of democratic institutions and media, and running humanitarian aid and refugee assistance programs.

USAID has never been popular with authoritarian regimes and has regularly faced accusations of interference in the internal affairs of other countries. Nevertheless, the agency helped fight famine in Ethiopia, provided sanitation resources for refugee camps in Gaza, and protected refugees from violence in Haiti, among countless other initiatives.

In total, the agency spent around $21.7 billion annually — a mere 0.3% of the U.S. federal budget. According to UN data, in 2024 the United States accounted for approximately 47% of global humanitarian aid, making it the largest donor in the world.

In 2024, the United States accounted for 47% of global humanitarian aid, making it the world’s largest donor

Over the past two decades, these programs helped prevent more than 90 million deaths, including over 30 million among children. For example, in Yemen U.S. humanitarian aid helped more than 19 million people living under conditions of civil war.

Nevertheless, DOGE halted all payments under most of the agency’s contracts, dismissed or placed on administrative leave thousands of employees, and announced the elimination of 83% of the agency’s programs.

A total of 92% of the agency’s multi-year grants (5,800 out of 6,200) and nearly 30% of State Department grants were canceled. This led to the closure of more than two thousand clinics in crisis regions, delays in the delivery of antimalarial and other medications, and an overall increase in mortality.

In addition, around two thousand family planning clinics worldwide have shut down, and about 9 million women have lost access to contraception. According to the World Food Programme, due to cuts in funding for humanitarian aid programs, another 13.7 million people could face severe hunger.

According to the estimates of various researchers, cuts to these grants (which previously supported emergency humanitarian aid, the development of medical infrastructure, and efforts to combat hunger) could lead to between 500,000 and 1 million preventable deaths annually.

A sociodemographic study published in February in the medical journal The Lancet projects even more alarming figures. The research was conducted by the Barcelona Institute for Global Health with support from the Spanish government and the Rockefeller Foundation. Scientists modeled how the situation would develop if aid cuts continue at their current average pace.

The authors compared these data with the projected number of deaths under a scenario in which aid levels had remained at their 2023 level. The analysis was based on data from 93 low- and middle-income countries — the primary recipients of international development assistance. The study concluded that by 2030, up to 9.4 million people worldwide could die as a result of the dismantling of USAID. About 2.5 million of these deaths would be among children.

By 2030, up to 9.4 million people worldwide could die as a result of the dismantling of USAID

In response, the White House describedThe Lancet as a “discredited journal” and claimed the study “relies on an outdated notion that the old and inefficient global development system is the only solution to human suffering.”

According to a U.S. government official, “instead of helping recipient countries transition to self-sufficiency, the old system has fostered a culture of global dependency, exacerbated by inefficiency and waste.” In July of last year, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio described the new approach to foreign aid as “prioritizing trade over aid, opportunity over dependency, and investment over assistance.”

Lee Crawfurd, a senior research fellow at the Center for Global Development who was not involved in The Lancet publication, told CNN that forecasting models may differ and that the exact figures should be treated with caution. However, in his view, “the overall conclusion is most likely correct: people will die in very large numbers.”

Under the influence of far-right activist Mike Benz

It appears that Musk and Trump turned their attention to USAID thanks largely to the efforts of the relatively little-known far-right activist Mike Benz, who served as a minor official during Trump’s first term. In December 2024, Benz appeared on the podcast of another right-wing influencer, Joe Rogan. During their conversation, the guest advanced a conspiracy theory that USAID is not an aid organization but an “operational switch” working in the interests of the Pentagon, the State Department, and various intelligence agencies. Benz described the agency as an instigator of “color revolutions” and a “terrorist Titanic.”

Notably, prior to this podcast, Benz had not been widely known on social media or the internet. However, various publications made it possible to piece together a profile of him: a white nationalist who has spoken about a supposed genocide of white people while railing against “Jewish influence.”

Before the release of the podcast, Musk had never mentioned USAID on his social media accounts. After the episode was published, however, he began regularly posting Benz’s statements, adding his own comments that USAID was a “nest of Marxists” and a “criminal organization.”

Less than two months after the episode aired, Musk gained access to the government and began mass layoffs at the agency, dismantling USAID itself and freezing its grants. According to a rough count by The Washington Post, in the year following the release of the podcast episode, Musk retweeted or mentioned Mike Benz more than 160 times.

In February 2025, Musk once again reposted Benz, writing: “We spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper. Could [have] gone to some great parties. Did that instead.” The post was published during the mass freezing of USAID grants and staff cuts.

Benz’s role was not limited to online influence. At the end of 2025, he was hired as a special employee into what remained of USAID to search the archives for “evidence” supporting his own accusations that the agency was acting against American interests.

Since the beginning of 2025, USAID has effectively ceased to exist as an independent agency. Following its dissolution by presidential order, its functions and budget were partially transferred to the State Department, and its staff was reduced to several dozen people. However, despite Musk’s efforts, some USAID programs have remained in operation, often as the result of court decisions.

These are mainly projects aimed at emergency humanitarian and medical assistance and crisis response. However, the grants remaining in effect do not cover areas such as education, governance, job creation, and human rights protection — efforts that are meant to help countries avoid crises in the future. Experts describe this approach as short-sighted. In their view, it reflects a deep misunderstanding of how the agency operates and will have long-term consequences for Americans as well as for the wider world.

“You know what’s really inefficient? Putting out fires,” Laura Meissner, a former USAID contractor whose work managing humanitarian aid in several countries was cut, said in an interview with The Insider. “It’s far cheaper to stabilize people’s situation so they can be prepared for a crisis than to wait until they have nothing left and their children are suffering from malnutrition.”

It is far cheaper to prepare people for a crisis than to wait until they are left with nothing and their children suffer from malnutrition

The administration has made some effort to mitigate the effects of its decisions. Several countries, including Kenya, Rwanda, and Nigeria, have signed bilateral healthcare agreements with the United States, providing for the delivery of aid directly through governments rather than through international partner organizations.

This is part of the Trump administration’s new America First Global Health Strategy. However, experts warn that the model carries risks of corruption and may leave the most vulnerable groups in society overlooked. Moreover, the strategy is narrowly focused: it primarily targets HIV/AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis, and outbreaks of infectious diseases, while omitting key areas such as maternal and child health and nutrition.

At the same time, the elimination of U.S. grants and assistance in global development programs has significantly undermined trust in America worldwide. The resulting humanitarian vacuum has quickly begun to be filled by actors such as Russia and China.

Was DOGE actually effective?

The answer is clearly no. DOGE had promised to cut federal spending to $1 trillion by October of last year, but under the oversight of Musk’s structure, government spending actually rose. The main reason, according to an analysis by The New York Times, is that most of DOGE’s calculations, claims, and promises were flawed from the outset. Although the structure did cut many outlays, most of them were relatively small.

In most cases, DOGE’s plans and reports contained significant errors or were simply misleading. For example, two government contracts with the Department of Defense totaling $7.9 billion were listed on the agency’s website as canceled, but in reality, the contracts remain in force. In some instances, DOGE simply counted reductions in “spending caps” as actual cuts. Meanwhile actual reductions in appropriations were implemented for agencies like USAID that the Trump administration had repeatedly labeled as representatives of the “deep state.”

When DOGE was formed, its cadres were mainly people who had not previously worked in government — representatives of the business and technology sectors with no experience in public programs. As a result, the initial approach to cutting costs was anything but efficient.

The initial approach to cutting costs was anything but efficient

Dr. Sunny Patel, a former senior executive at the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), told The Insider that he and his colleagues were given a target figure in dollars and an Excel formula to calculate savings. DOGE representatives specified which contracts should be terminated, while SAMHSA officials tried to protect the most important ones. “We had to reach a specific number, and there weren’t that many options for cuts,” Patel said. “In the end, it came down to: ‘Well, I guess we’ll sacrifice this one,’ simply because it was the lesser of evils.”

Media investigations showed that the greatest effect was achieved only through staff reductions across agencies. At the same time, cutting positions “saves” a relatively meager $40–50 billion per year. Around 60% of the $7 trillion U.S. federal budget is allocated to social programs such as Social Security and Medicare, which Trump had promised not to touch. Meanwhile, mass layoffs resulted in large severance payments, costly lawsuits, and the rehiring of more than a third of dismissed employees, leading to increased costs in 2025.

As of now, the Trump administration has dismissed, laid off, or accepted resignation agreements (with severance pay) from more than 387,000 employees. Over the same period, the administration has hired approximately 123,000 people.

At the same time, rehiring in some cases is carried out exclusively under the terms of the Trump administration, which selects applicants who demonstrate loyalty to Trump’s policies, undermining the principle of a nonpartisan civil service. For example, within USAID (or rather, what remains of it after its dissolution and incorporation into other agencies), rehiring previously dismissed employees has been prohibited.

According to officials, this is intended to prevent any “conflict of interest,” but in many cases the ideological orientation in hiring is explicit. For instance, in immigration services, applicants are now required to be prepared to “defend their homeland and culture,” and candidates must explain how they intend to support the implementation of Trump’s executive orders and policy priorities.

Domestic consequences for the United States

The handiwork of DOGE has affected America itself. In February 2025, the Trump administration announced the layoff of seven thousand employees from the Social Security Administration (SSA) — about 12% of the agency’s total staff — and the closure of 47 regional offices, describing the move as “optimization.”

At the same time, DOGE attempted to gain access to SSA databases and those of other departments. SSA head Michelle King refused to grant access and subsequently left her post (it remains unclear whether she was dismissed). Experts had previously spoken out against allowing DOGE access to the Treasury payment system and the taxpayer database, but Trump did not heed these concerns. Musk and his team gained access to all three systems, which contain the sensitive data on the overwhelming majority of Americans.

Nancy Altman, president of the advocacy group Social Security Works, commented on DOGE’s actions, saying:

“This breach cannot be overstated in its seriousness. The information collected and securely maintained by the Social Security Administration is highly sensitive. The SSA has data on every holder of a Social Security number (which is virtually all Americans), on every Medicare beneficiary, and on every low-income American who has ever applied for benefits under the Supplemental Security Income program — a means-tested system of payments.”

After gaining access to this data, DOGE quickly made a series of “false claims” as part of an attempt to justify the utility of its activities. For example, Musk and his team “discovered” in SSA databases that the agency was paying benefits to deceased people who were supposedly more than 150 years old. Musk wrote about this extensively on X, touting what he claimed to be proof of corruption within the SSA.

In reality, neither Musk nor his team understood the nuances of how data is stored and managed in government agencies. The data they pointed to turned out to be a long-known system glitch — a legacy programming issue in the language used by the agency, and in actual fact, no payments were being made to 150-year-old people. Of course, errors in SSA payments have occurred: between 2015 and 2022, 0.83% of payments were made “improperly,” most often in the form of overpayments to Social Security recipients whose data was not up to date.

However, DOGE’s efforts do not appear to have addressed this real problem. Instead, its decision to access the agency’s confidential data led to a major legal scandal and possibly one of the largest personal data breaches in the history of the U.S. federal government. DOGE attempted to obtain full access to the NUMIDENT database, which contains personal, financial, and medical information on 70 million beneficiaries, but in April 2025, a court barred DOGE from unrestricted access to the data and ordered the agency to delete the information it had already obtained, noting that the presence of deceased people’s names in the database does not mean that benefits continue to be paid to them.

Musk’s decision to access the agency’s confidential data may have led to the largest personal data breach in the history of the U.S. federal government

Legal proceedings are ongoing: the Department of Justice has filed a motion based on a complaint from the SSA stating that the agency uncovered a secret agreement between a DOGE employee and an unidentified political consulting group. According to court filings, the agreement provided for the transfer of Social Security data, which the group could use to review and challenge election results in certain states. The SSA, for its part, said it was unaware of the existence of this agreement and has already referred materials concerning potential violations of the Hatch Act to the body that investigates unlawful political conduct among civilian federal workers. In January, the Trump administration acknowledged in court that it had accessed the data without informing the agency.

Then in March, it emerged that one of DOGE’s former employees may have simply copied it onto a flash drive and attempted to pass it to an external company — his new employer. It remains unclear whether this actually occurred, but the complaint is currently under review and is likely to lead to new lawsuits against the Trump administration.

The SSA has been hit by a surge of early retirement applications from Americans who are worried that eligibility requirements may soon be tightened. In the first five months of 2025 alone, the number of new applications increased by 17%, to a total of 1.8 million. Legal battles, mass layoffs, the departure of key specialists, and overall disorganization have plunged the agency into a state of chaos that persists to this day: SSA services are overwhelmed, and as a direct result, beneficiaries are facing delays and disruptions.

Legal battles, mass layoffs, the departure of key specialists, and overall disorganization have led to chaos within the Social Security Administration

In addition to the Social Security Administration, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) were also severely affected. In April 2025, DOGE launched the Defend the Spend initiative, which mandated that all Health Department grants, including funding for the NIH and community clinics, be frozen and sent for manual review. Even the salaries of some doctors and nurses working in medical centers serving the most vulnerable populations were affected by the freeze.

In addition, the administration proposed cutting the NIH budget by nearly 40% — from $45.5 billion to $27.5 billion. For example, the budget of the National Cancer Institute was slated to fall from $7.2 billion to $4.5 billion, and that of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases from $6.6 billion to $4.2 billion. The Health Department also faced large-scale staff reductions. Initially, up to 10,000 employees were planned to be laid off, but the Trump administration later acknowledged that this plan had been a mistake and began gradually reinstating staff.

Perhaps most serious of all, Trump appointed the controversial (to put it mildly) Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as head of the Department of Health and Human Services. Kennedy has spoken out against vaccines, claimed that Jews and Chinese people have immunity to COVID-19, and called for restricting access to antidepressants. Many doctors urged the White House to remove him from his post. However, the administration did not heed these calls, and the “optimization” of Health Department grants continued — guided by the views of its new head. Large-scale cuts affected institutions engaged in pandemic research and vaccine development, while the agency responsible for mental health lost a significant number of grants.

According to the latest estimates, from September 2024 to January 2026 the number of federal government employees in the United States decreased by 12% — a total of more than 300,000 people. The Departments of the Treasury and of Health were particularly affected, with reductions of 24% and 20%, respectively.

An exception was the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which includes Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), an agency favored by Trump and his supporters. The number of employees in this department grew by about 1% over the same period, with active hiring taking place in ICE throughout the past year. At the same time, after the wave of mass layoffs, the Trump administration was forced to acknowledge that many agencies had been paralyzed by the loss of personnel, and they are now rehiring staff across most of them.

Reactions and outcomes

DOGE’s activities ended as absurdly and unexpectedly as they began. In May 2025, amid disagreements with Trump, Elon Musk left the administration. Then, a few months later, DOGE itself ceased to exist. Since the fall of last year, Trump and his supporters have spoken of the initiative in the past tense. The remaining staff of the structure were reassigned to other agencies, and the course toward “optimization” passed directly into the president’s hands.

At the same time, even at the height of DOGE’s activity, there was no full consensus within the Republican Party regarding its work. As early as the spring of 2025, many senators and party representatives began sounding the alarm over the consequences of the structure’s actions, which were being felt in their own states.

Indeed, DOGE faced numerous lawsuits. Labor unions, human rights organizations, and career civil servants began filing cases en masse, arguing that the agency’s ordered dismissals violated civil service laws. For example, court proceedings are currently underway over several lawsuits concerning unlawful layoffs at USAID. There are also many cases related to disruptions in the work of other agencies.

Court rulings limited DOGE’s powers, while public pressure forced the White House to partially revise its plans to “optimize” the work of Washington. In effect, DOGE turned out not to be an effort at improving efficiency, but an experiment in dismantling a significant portion of the federal government, with a focus on “liberal” agencies that the far right had long opposed. Although the efforts of Musk and Trump met with substantial resistance, the administration’s overall course has not significantly changed. This may therefore not be the last attempt at “optimization,” the full consequences of which still threaten the livelihoods of millions both inside America and beyond its borders.

The ship-to-ship transfer scheme allows ice-class tankers to make short voyages from Russian ports and transfer cargo to other vessels in the Mediterranean and Atlantic. Those ships then deliver the products to Asia. The arrangement helps shorten routes, allowing Russia to cope with a shortage of vessels. After the European Union embargo took effect in 2023, Asian countries became the main destination for Russian petroleum product exports.

The situation was worsened by severe cold in early 2026, when rules for sailing in the Baltic Sea were tightened: tankers without an ice class were barred from entering Russian ports, while Ice1-Ice2 vessels were required to use icebreaker escorts.

With those constraints in mind, traders have increasingly turned to ship-to-ship transfers. According to LSEG, in January two tankers carrying 240,000 tons of naphtha from the Russian port of Ust-Luga transferred cargo off Port Said and off the coast of Togo, after which it was delivered to Singapore. In February, ship-to-ship transfers also began off the coast of Morocco, with their volume exceeding 200,000 tons. In March, two more tankers headed for a transfer operation near the Italian port of Augusta.

Experts warn that the use of this practice is increasing risks.

Ship-to-ship transfers are not a new phenomenon, but the frequency with which they are now being used — in poor weather conditions and often to conceal the origin of sanctioned oil — significantly increases environmental risks, Isaac Levi, Europe-Russia team lead and “shadow fleet” expert at the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) told The Insider:

“Ship-to-ship transfers aren’t new, but the way they’re now being used more frequently, in worse weather, and often to obscure the origin of sanctioned oil raises the environmental risk profile significantly. We are seeing a convergence of environmental, safety, and legal risks: higher chances of spills or collisions, weaker oversight, and greater exposure to sanctions breaches. What used to be a controlled logistical operation is increasingly becoming a workaround tactic, and that’s where the real danger lies.”

In 2020, Russia’s Natural Resources Ministry proposed banning ship-to-ship oil transfers. The ministry’s head at the time, Dmitry Kobylkin, sent a letter addressing the issue to Vladimir Putin, who marked it “agree.”

At the time, Kobylkin justified the proposal with data showing the occurrence of more than 600 emergency incidents in the Black Sea alone, including petroleum spills, the death of marine life, and the release of chemical substances into the water. The letter did not specify the period during which the incidents occurred.

The natural resources minister saw particular danger in offshore transfers involving large oil tankers. “In the event of an emergency involving a large oil tanker, the damage caused to the sea and the coastal zone would be irreparable,” he said.

According to Macron, vessels in the “shadow fleet” evade international sanctions and violate maritime law, profiting from the war while financing Russia’s military effort. The president described them as “profiteers of war,” adding that France intends to stop their activity. “The war involving Iran will not deflect France from its support for Ukraine, where Russia’s war of aggression continues unabated,” Macron said.

Deyna is an Aframax-class oil tanker built in 2005. The vessel is affiliated with Sino Ship Management, which the United States sanctioned in January 2025 for its ties to Russia’s energy sector. In May 2025, the EU sanctioned the vessel itself for transporting oil and petroleum products of Russian origin through irregular shipping schemes. Since then, Switzerland (June 2025), the UK (July 2025), Canada (November 2025) and Ukraine (December 2025) have imposed similar measures, with Kyiv adding restrictions against the tanker’s captain this past February.

The detention of suspected “shadow fleet” ships has increased in recent months. In January, the French Navy detained the tanker Grinch in the Mediterranean while the vessel was en route to an undisclosed destination after departing from the Russian port of Murmansk. In February, the vessel’s owner paid a multimillion-euro fine, after which the tanker was released. In early March, French forces supported an operation by Belgian authorities to detain the tanker Ethera in the North Sea; the vessel was forced into the port of Zeebrugge and was later fined 10 million euros.

Russia’s “shadow fleet” consists of hundreds of aging tankers formally owned by offshore companies and sailing under false flags. The Kremlin and traders linked to it use the vessels to circumvent sanctions and the price cap on Russian oil. According to the Helsinki-based Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, in the first nine months of 2025 alone more than 100 such vessels used false flags while transporting about 11 million tons of Russian oil worth 4.7 billion euros.