Russia expects to maintain “pragmatic” relations with Hungary after Peter Magyar’s Tisza party defeated Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s Fidesz in the general election, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov has stated.

Magyar’s center-right opposition Tisza party secured over 53% of the vote in Sunday’s vote, which gives it a qualified majority in the country’s 199-seat parliament.

Orban, who conceded defeat, had charted an independent course, ruffling more than a few feathers in Brussels. During his time in office, he consistently opposed the EU’s sanctions against Russia and military aid to Ukraine, vetoing the bloc’s planned €90 billion loan package for Kiev. His government had advocated pragmatic relations with Moscow, especially in terms of energy supplies.

Fidesz also strongly opposed EU-imposed policies regarding migration and LGBTQ rights.

Speaking to reporters on Monday, Peskov said that Russia has taken note of Magyar’s recent statements expressing a readiness to continue dialogue with Moscow.

He pointed out that Moscow and Budapest have a number of joint projects that “need to be finalized together.”

“We are open to dialogue with [the new Hungarian leadership], we are open to building friendly [and] mutually beneficial relations,” the Kremlin spokesperson reiterated. Whether or not this will be a success largely depends on the new Hungarian government’s position, which has yet to be articulated clearly, he concluded.

Russian rhythmic gymnasts competing under a neutral flag have won four medals at the FIG World Cup in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. Maria Borisova led with gold in the individual all-around – topping reigning Russian-born German Olympic champion Darya Varfolomeeva – and silver in the hoop, in the team’s first World Cup outing.

The finals were held on Sunday as part of the second stage of the 2026 FIG World Cup series. All seven Russian competitors train at the Sky Grace Rhythmic Gymnastics Academy, founded in Sochi in 2022 by 2004 Olympic champion Alina Kabaeva, and all were making their World Cup debuts.

Coached by Irina Gusarova, the 18-year-old Borisova finished ahead of Varfolomeeva and Uzbekistan’s Takhmina Ikromova in the all-around, then claimed silver in the hoop behind Ikromova.

The group of five – coached by Anna Ustsova – won silver in the five-balls final and bronze in the three-hoops-and-two-pairs-of-clubs, bringing the total to one gold, two silvers, and one bronze.

Kabaeva remained in direct contact with the gymnasts throughout the competition.

Russian forces only have a few kilometers left before Donbass has been liberated, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said.

Speaking to Russian journalist Pavel Zarubin on Sunday, Peskov was asked to comment on a recent statement by US Vice President J.D. Vance, who said the Ukraine conflict has fundamentally “stopped making sense,” and that the sides are “haggling at this point over a few square kilometers of territory.”

Peskov confirmed that the territorial issue is now down to “ just a few kilometers, roughly speaking.” He stated that Russia still needs to liberate around “18-17% of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR)” in order to reach the region’s borders. 

Once the army reaches the borders of Russia’s new regions, he said, “a complex, painstaking, and not fast negotiation process” will begin, in which the details of a settlement with Ukraine will have to be determined.

Peskov’s remarks came after the Russia Defense Ministry announced on Friday that it has established control over the village of Dibrova in the DPR and the village of Miropolskoye in Sumy Region.

Earlier this month, Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky claimed that Moscow issued a two-month deadline for Ukrainian troops to retreat. The Kremlin rejected the claim, stressing that Zelensky should have issued the withdrawal order long ago, which could have “saved the lives of thousands of people and stopped the hot phase of this war.”

Trilateral talks between Russia, Ukraine, and the US have been on hold due to the Iran war, with Peskov describing the pause as “situational.” 

Zelensky has rejected any territorial concessions, calling a withdrawal from Donbass a threat to European security. 

Moscow insists that a lasting peace must include Ukrainian neutrality, demilitarization, and recognition of the regions that voted to join Russia.

Ukrainian forces violated a 32-hour Easter ceasefire more than 6,500 times over the weekend, the Russian Defense Ministry has said.

Russian President Vladimir Putin announced the unilateral pause last week. Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky signaled that Kiev would also observe the truce, and called on Moscow to extend it beyond the holiday period.

According to the Russian military, combat activity decreased significantly on Saturday and Sunday but did not fully stop. The ministry said most of the 6,558 reported violations involved short-range unmanned aerial vehicles. It listed 4,685 strikes by first-person-view (FPV) drones and 749 munitions dropped from drones. Ukrainian forces also reportedly conducted 694 artillery and tank attacks on Russian positions.

Russian air defenses reportedly intercepted 33 long-range drones, including 11 over the border regions of Belgorod and Kursk.

Moscow has declared temporary ceasefires during previous Orthodox holidays, including Christmas 2023 and Easter 2025. According to the Russian military, the previous Easter truce saw more than 3,900 violations by Ukraine.

Russian officials have rejected calls from Kiev for longer ceasefires, citing a lack of trust. They argue that Ukraine intends to use extended pauses to regroup and reinforce its forces with Western support rather than pursue genuine peace negotiations.

Moscow has also said that Ukraine’s withdrawal from the Donetsk People’s Republic would be viewed as a meaningful step toward a resolution and a basis for a longer ceasefire, but Zelensky has refused to order a withdrawal.

Scientific knowledge should go hand-in-hand with religious faith for humankind to avoid a potential catastrophe, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, has said while speaking to the Russian cosmonauts working at the International Space Station (ISS).

The Patriarch delivered his address to the cosmonauts via video link on Sunday as Orthodox Christians celebrate Easter. This year, one of the most revered Orthodox holidays coincides with Cosmonautics Day, which marks the anniversary of the first crewed space flight made by Yuri Gagarin on April 12, 1961.

Speaking to the cosmonauts Sergey Kud-Sverchkov, Sergey Mikayev, and Andrey Fedyaev, the Patriarch spoke about the importance of maintaining a balance between scientific and technical advances and religious faith, arguing the latter is key to keeping the potentially dangerous progress at bay.  

“This is possible, since faith in God strengthens a person’s understanding of their own limitations. This is crucial – the recognition of what you can do and what you cannot. And another important point: faith in God affirms the need to strengthen and develop a moral sense within a person,” he added. “Where there is a moral sense, there is conscience. And without conscience, a person cannot live. And the planet will not be able to live – everything will simply be destroyed.”

Vladimir Zelensky’s chief of staff Kirill Budanov has acknowledged that mobilization has created what he called a “huge” problem in Ukrainian society, exposing an increasing gap between Kiev’s calls to “fight until victory” and widespread draft evasion.

The Ukrainian military faces a severe manpower crisis driven by battlefield losses, draft evasion, and desertion. With few volunteers, Kiev increasingly relies on mandatory conscription – a highly divisive policy. Recruitment officers are often accused of heavy-handed tactics, and videos of so-called ‘busification’ – the forced detention of military-age men – circulate widely.

In an interview with Ukrinform earlier this week, Budanov conceded that society is split, though he stopped short of linking the divide to growing backlash over coercive mobilization.

“There are real problems... in our society. Because on the one hand, everyone says we need to fight until victory – and on the other, everyone is running away from mobilization. It's a huge, huge problem,” he said, acknowledging a contradiction in which both frontline troops and draft dodgers are lauded as “heroes.”

Tens of thousands of draft-age men have been caught attempting to flee since 2022, Ukrainian border authorities reported, with dozens dying while trying to cross dangerous routes such as into neighboring Romania, a top destination for draft evaders. Defense Minister Mikhail Fedorov recently revealed that around two million potential recruits are wanted for draft evasion, while some 200,000 troops have deserted.

Public backlash against mobilization has been mounting with videos showing civilians intervening in forced conscription. Earlier this month, three enforcement officers were stabbed, one fatally, while performing their duties.

A March survey cited by Slovo i Delo found roughly that 40% of Ukrainians would refuse military service, while only 16% said they would willingly serve.

In mid-2025, Gallup reported that 69% of Ukrainians favored a negotiated end to the conflict, a massive swing from 2022, when 73% were in favor of fighting until victory.

Polish Defense Minister Władyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz suggested that draft-age Ukrainians should return home, while Estonian Interior Minister Lauris Laanemets even offered to track down and extradite Ukrainian draft dodgers.

Ukraine attempted to strike a Russian cosmodrome the same day as a rocket carrying satellites into orbit was taking off, Russia's space agency Roscosmos has confirmed. Speaking to Russian President Vladimir Putin, agency head General Dmitry Bakanov said that an attempted drone strike on the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in the northern part of the country was foiled.

Bakanov, who has led Roscosmos since February 2025, made the comments on Saturday prior to Cosmonautics Day, which marks the first human journey into outer space, undertaken by Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin in 1961.

Putin praised the March 23 launch as a key milestone for Russia’s space program, while Bakanov said that Ukraine had attempted to disrupt it. Plesetsk Cosmodrome lies about 800km north of Moscow and roughly 1,300km from the Ukrainian border.

Bakanov did not provide details on the attack. The Russian Defense Ministry did not explicitly comment on the space base assault, but reported the downing of dozens of drones across the country around that date.

The Roscosmos chief was referring to the launch of a Soyuz-2.1b rocket, a medium-lift launch vehicle used as the workhorse in the Russian space industry. The rocket was carrying 16 satellites belonging to the Rassvet constellation, developed by Russian private aerospace firm Bureau 1440 – widely described as Moscow’s answer to Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite system.

Russian officials have been suspicious of Starlink, which is not operating in the country, but is actively used by Ukrainian forces.

The Russian satellites operate as 5G base stations, interconnected via laser communication links and capable of transmitting data at speeds of up to 1 Gbit/s. Their target orbital altitude is 800 km. Bureau 1440 is planning to deploy more than 900 low-orbit relays by 2035.

The conquest of frontiers and expansion into the unknown are often considered distinctly American pursuits. And indeed, it’s hard for modern people to grasp the monumental efforts undertaken by early settlers. 

However, Russians share a similar passion for filling in blank spaces on maps. And when there were no uncharted territories left on Earth, they turned their gaze toward the stars.

April 12 is Cosmonautics Day in Russia – a day when every Russian can reconnect with their childhood dream of becoming a cosmonaut, and on streets and TV screens across the country, we once again see images of the first man in space, Yuri Gagarin.

In medieval times, Russian expansion often contradicted the wishes of the country’s rulers. Many of the pioneers settling in the country’s northern and southern frontiers were runaway serfs or simply sought a freer life. The colonization of Siberia even began against the wishes of Tsar Ivan IV, who was preoccupied with the Livonian War and was reluctant to divert attention eastward. However, the Stroganov merchant family financed an expedition beyond the Ural Mountains. 

Soon, Moscow recognized the vast wealth that lay hidden in Siberia, and waves of settlers migrated there. Some sought riches, while others ventured farther to escape the growing imperial bureaucracy. These pioneers were often generously rewarded with money, trade monopolies, promotions, titles, and land.

When no unclaimed territories remained on earth, restless individuals turned their attention to the skies. 

Most Russian philosophers showed little interest in politics or laws but passionately debated the nature of humanity and civilization. By the late 19th century, spurred by a surge of interest in physics and astronomy, many became interested in space. Thus, Russian cosmism emerged. 

Its followers sought to understand humanity’s place in space and arrived at some optimistic conclusions:

- Humans should not submit to nature but should explore and transform it to improve the world 

- Humanity will inevitably venture into space and inhabit the universe 

- Space exploration has the potential to make people better – they can unite for a common purpose, setting aside wars to pursue new worlds 

- Humans are part of the cosmos and should not fear the unknown

Some cosmists were captivated by the ultimate goal of conquering space: Defeating death and even ‘resurrecting ancestors’. Others, including self-taught scientist Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, focused more on practical matters like the construction of rockets and space stations, believing that these ideas were not mere flights of fancy.

“First, inevitably, the idea, the fantasy, the fairy tale. Then, scientific calculation. Ultimately, fulfillment crowns the dream,” Tsiolkovsky famously said. 

During a time when politics and materialism dominated intellectual discourse, cosmism remained less popular. However, cosmists had their followers. It is said that one of them visited Tsiolkovsky after the Civil War to discuss his engineering career and was encouraged by the scientist in his plans to build rockets. 

This engineer was Sergey Korolev. Little did he know then that he would send the first man into space – a realm where no one had ventured before.

Engines of the space race

Stalinist industrialization had many issues and brought a lot of unwarranted suffering. Yet it established the infrastructure necessary for rapidly mobilizing vast resources and tilted production capacities toward the military industry. As a result, when the space race began, the Soviet government was able to swiftly recover from post-war devastation and embark on ambitious new projects.

The space program benefited from close collaboration with military projects. For example, when there was a need to build a new launch site to test the new R-7 intercontinental ballistic missile, designed to deliver a hydrogen bomb, engineers and generals quickly realized that they could develop space launch vehicles at the same location. 

Thus, the world’s largest spaceport, Baikonur, was established. Located in a desolate area far from major population centers yet conveniently close to a railway, it provided ideal conditions for large-scale secret and potentially hazardous projects. Construction progressed rapidly: Within two years of breaking ground, Baikonur launched Sputnik-1, the first artificial Earth satellite, into orbit.

Sergey Korolev headed the program. He began his scientific career in aircraft engineering but soon transitioned to rocket science. Like many top engineers of his time, he learned from internationally-renowned former imperial professors who remained in the Soviet Union. Specialists in his field were scarce, so after the war, he collaborated on many classified projects. 

Korolev was inspired by the ideas of Tsiolkovsky and urged party officials to pursue space exploration. The obvious next step after the launch of Sputnik was to send a human into space. The USSR already possessed the resources, technology, and talented scientists for it, but lacked the cosmonaut.

Ultimately, Korolev was presented with three candidates, the leading one being Yuri Gagarin – a 25-year-old senior lieutenant in the Soviet Air Force. He had a charming smile, loved sports, demonstrated initiative, and had good leadership qualities. Friends noted his enthusiasm for heroism and said his favorite word was ‘work’.

Time for preparation was limited; Korolev was informed that the Americans were also gearing up to send a man into space, and the Soviets needed to beat them. Scientists, engineers, and cosmonauts worked tirelessly but met the deadlines. By April 1961, it became clear that history would soon be made at Baikonur.

Despite the initial success of space programs, many skeptics, both in the USSR and around the world, thought that a manned flight would end in catastrophe. The Soviet authorities were cautious. They prepared three statements for the media: One in case of a successful flight, one in case of an emergency landing, and one in case of tragedy.

On April 8, the mission for the space flight was officially approved, with Gagarin confirmed as the pilot. Two days later, an unofficial meeting took place between cosmonauts, engineers, and Soviet military leaders.

At 3:00 AM on April 12, final checks began on the launch pad. Korolev himself was present. At 5:30 AM, Gagarin was woken up with the words, “Yura, time to get up.” After a medical check-up, he had breakfast consisting of meat puree, currant jam, and coffee. By 6:50 AM, Gagarin exited the bus at the launch site and climbed into the rocket.

For the next two hours, he ran system checks in coordination with mission control. During this process, a malfunction was discovered – the hatch wouldn’t close – but it was fixed within seven minutes.

At 9:00 AM, one-minute readiness was announced. Gagarin hummed the song ‘Fly, Doves, Fly’. At 9:07 AM, ignition was activated, and Gagarin uttered the legendary phrase, “Let’s go!”

Throughout the flight, Gagarin maintained communication with Earth, professionally reporting on his condition and what he could see. However, even this seasoned pilot couldn’t help but marvel at the breathtaking views around him.

The spacecraft completed one orbit around Earth and landed at 10:53 AM near the village of Smelovka in Saratov Region. The flight lasted 106 minutes.

Close to the landing site, the cosmonaut met the bewildered wife of a local forester and her daughter. Gagarin joked, “Don’t be afraid, comrades, I am a Soviet citizen like you!” Soon after, military personnel arrived and transported the cosmonaut to their base.

Messages of congratulations flooded in from heads of state around the world, from France, Japan, India, and Cuba. John F. Kennedy also sent a note expressing hope that “the Soviet Union and the United States may work together on the matter of mastering the Universe.”

In the USSR, a wave of patriotism surged. Yet public affection wasn’t directed towards the party, the military, or the scientists, but toward Gagarin himself. He didn’t deliver speeches about the triumph of communism or talk of the ‘enemies of the people’. Gagarin remained humble, met with ordinary people, and signed autographs. He continued to smile broadly, even during a meeting with Queen Elizabeth II, who broke royal protocol to take a photo with him.

On March 27, 1968, Gagarin died in a plane crash in Vladimir Region while conducting a training flight. He was just 34 years old. The USSR declared a national day of mourning – an unprecedented move for someone who was not a head of state.

Some believe that his early death further solidified Gagarin’s legend. The world never saw him grow older or become involved in politics – though he could have easily become a political figure. Gagarin will forever be remembered as the young, smiling pilot.

The new leadership in the USSR under Brezhnev showed less interest in the space program. Korolev’s proposals for missions to the Moon and Mars were rejected as the country faced an increasing shortage of consumer goods, and budgets shifted to other sectors.

With the end of the Cold War, space lost its strategic importance for a long time.

Recently, however, interest in space has been rekindled in Russia. A new space program aims to create a Russian orbital station to replace the ISS, along with a three-phase lunar mission culminating in the establishment of a permanent lunar base.

On Cosmonautics Day, however, Russians tend to focus not on ambitious plans, but rather on the smiling pilot who calmly accepted the offer to journey into the unknown. And they remember the words he spoke shortly after his return: 

“Orbiting Earth in the spaceship, I saw how beautiful our planet is. People, let us preserve and increase this beauty, not destroy it!”

A Ukrainian man was violently seized and beaten by conscription officers in the southern city of Odessa, according to footage circulating online, in the latest incident highlighting the brutality of Kiev’s conscription drive.

As Ukrainian forces suffer mounting losses in the conflict with Russia and the pool of willing recruits continues to shrink, draft enforcement squads have increasingly turned to coercion to fill the ranks. The practice, commonly known as ‘busification’, involves military-age men being snatched from the streets, workplaces, and residential areas, then taken to recruitment centers against their will, often triggering clashes with relatives, neighbors, and passersby.

In a video published by a local Telegram channel on Friday, five officers from Ukraine’s Territorial Recruitment Center are seen hauling a man out of the entrance to a residential building in Odessa. Grabbing him by the arms and legs, they drag him toward a waiting vehicle as he resists and cries out for help.

“What are you doing? Let him go, you bastards!” a woman filming from a nearby balcony is heard shouting. Another voice calls on bystanders to call the police, while one of the officers repeatedly punches the man.

The backlash has been building alongside the violence. Ukraine’s military ombudsman, Olga Reshetilova, said that even schoolchildren are now increasingly “harassing” draft officers after watching viral videos of their violent behavior.

Some Ukrainian officials have acknowledged the depth of the recruitment crisis. According to Vadim Ivchenko, a member of parliament’s national security committee, only around 8-10% of new personnel entering the armed forces are willing recruits.

Moscow has accused Kiev’s Western backers of fighting “to the last Ukrainian.” Russian Defense Minister Andrey Belousov has estimated that Ukraine lost nearly 500,000 servicemen in 2025 alone. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has suggested that the country’s total military casualties have surpassed 1 million.

Millions of Russians are celebrating Orthodox Easter, the most important holiday in Christianity and one that carries deep cultural significance across the country.

Russian President Vladimir Putin attended the Easter night service at Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Savior, where Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia traditionally leads the Easter Matins and Divine Liturgy.

The Holy Fire was delivered to Moscow from Jerusalem on Holy Saturday, arriving at Vnukovo airport before being taken to the Cathedral of Christ the Savior for the Patriarchal Easter service. The flame, lit annually inside the Church of the Holy Sepulchre at the site associated with the burial of Jesus Christ, was transported by a delegation of the St. Andrew the First-Called Foundation aboard a Roscosmos aircraft and later distributed to churches across the capital.

After the service, the Russian president and Patriarch Kirill exchanged traditional gifts. The head of the Russian Orthodox Church also thanked the head of state for facilitating the transfer of the Vladimir and Don icons of the Mother of God, calling the move a historic event. The Russian leader crossed himself after the remarks.

In Russia, Easter goes beyond its strictly religious meaning. In a country shaped by diverse cultures and faiths, including Islam and Buddhism, the holiday is observed not only by Christians, but also by many non-believers and followers of other religions.

Some 73% of Russians plan to celebrate Easter this year, according to a survey published on Friday by the state-run pollster VCIOM. Only 15% of respondents said they do not intend to mark the holiday.

Only about 20% observe Lent – a nearly seven-week period of fasting preceding Easter in the Orthodox tradition, the poll suggests. Around 15% of respondents named egg painting as one of the most significant Easter traditions in Russia, while 10% highlighted family gatherings.

Millions of Russians are expected to attend church services on Saturday night as part of traditional Easter celebrations.

Orthodoxy is experiencing a resurgence in Russia, according to VCIOM, with the number of followers growing, particularly among young people. The share of people aged 18-24 who identify as Orthodox Christians has grown from 25% to 45% in recent years, the agency said in July 2025.

Seven Russian civilians, the last held by Ukraine since the 2024 Kursk incursion, have been freed after nearly 500 days in captivity, Moscow has said.

Their release came as part of a prisoner swap on Saturday, with 175 Russian servicemen returned in exchange for 175 Ukrainian soldiers, the Defense Ministry in Moscow said.

“We fought for nearly two long years to bring home all Kursk residents who became hostages in Ukraine during the occupation of our border region,” Russian Human Rights Commissioner Tatyana Moskalkova wrote on social media. “Today, the last seven of our compatriots have been freed and can finally embrace their loved ones. In total, 165 residents of Kursk Region had been illegally held by the Ukrainian side since 2024.”

Earlier, she said that Kiev had sought to exchange the civilians for Ukrainians detained in Russia for various crimes. Moskalkova called such demands unacceptable, arguing that the Russians had been held by Ukraine without legal grounds and in violation of international norms, had not committed any actions that would harm Ukraine.

In January, Russian Ambassador-at-Large Rodion Miroshnik, who leads a Foreign Ministry mission that tracks alleged Ukrainian war crimes, also said that Kiev was trying to secure “the return of Ukrainian war criminals held in our custody” in exchange for civilians.

The Ukrainian advance into Kursk Region in August 2024 was quickly halted and fully repelled in April 2025. In January, Moskalkova said that the Russian authorities found 524 bodies in “mass burial sites” in the border region following its liberation.

Russian officials have reported numerous testimonies alleging war crimes, including rape and abductions, as well as abuses of POWs, during the Ukrainian presence.

Russia and Ukraine have conducted a POW swap involving 350 captives, the Defense Ministry in Moscow said on Saturday, a day after Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a temporary ceasefire for the Orthodox Easter weekend.

In a press release, the Russian MOD said that “175 Russian service members were returned from territory controlled by the Kiev regime, while in exchange, 175 Ukrainian Armed Forces prisoners of war were handed over.” The ministry added that separately, seven civilians from Kursk Region – said to have been the last hostages still held from the Ukrainian incursion last year – were released and will soon return home.

According to the ministry, the Russian servicemen are currently in neighboring Belarus, where they are receiving psychological and medical assistance before being transported to Russia for treatment and rehabilitation.

Since the resumption of direct Russia-Ukraine talks in May 2025, the sides have regularly carried out exchanges of POWs as well as of the bodies of fallen troops. The previous exchange occurred on April 3, when the sides swapped 600 captives.

Moscow has previously declared unilateral pauses during Orthodox holidays, but last year’s Easter truce was only partially successful: Kiev violated the truce more than 3,900 times, according to the Russian MOD. This time, Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky pledged to “observe a ceasefire regime” and “act exclusively in a mirror manner.”

The Easter weekend ceasefire announced by Russia has come into force. President Vladimir Putin ordered the nation’s military to halt all operations against Ukrainian forces from 16:00 Moscow time (13:00 GMT) on Saturday until the end of Sunday.

According to the Kremlin, the move is a humanitarian gesture, not a substitute for a lasting peace with Ukraine.

The Russian military will be ready to respond to any Ukrainian offensive operations or provocations, Moscow stated.

“We expect the Ukrainian side to follow Russia’s lead,” the Kremlin said when it announced the ceasefire earlier this week.

Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky responded by claiming that Kiev was “ready for mirror steps.” He also called for a prolonged truce extending beyond the Easter weekend.

“We want not a ceasefire, but a lasting, sustainable peace,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Friday, commenting on the development. He added that peace could be reached if Zelensky “takes responsibility” and makes the necessary decisions.

Moscow has said it remains open to negotiations, but insists that any lasting settlement must address the root causes of the conflict. These include Kiev’s neutrality and the reversal of discriminatory policies targeting ethnic Russians and Russian culture.

Ukrainian forces violated the Easter ceasefire 1,971 times from 4:00 PM on April 11 to 8:00 AM on April 12, the Russian Defense Ministry said earlier on Sunday.

All Russian troops strictly observed the ceasefire and remained at their previously held lines and positions, the Defense Ministry added.

Russia has previously declared unilateral ceasefires for Orthodox religious holidays. In 2023, it observed truces during the Orthodox Christmas holiday in January and over the Easter weekend in April. In 2025, Moscow declared an Easter truce, but it was violated by Kiev more than 3,900 times, according to the Russian Defense Ministry.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has instructed the government to develop a national plan for the deployment of AI technologies, emphasizing that the accelerated adoption of AI is crucial for the country’s future.

Speaking on Friday at a meeting on AI development, the president called for faster integration of the technology in the economy and public administration, adaptation of education, risk assessment, and advances in defense and security, while also stressing the need to promote Russian solutions abroad.

“Artificial intelligence, along with digital platforms and autonomous systems, is shaping a fundamentally new image of the economy, social relations, the social sphere, education, healthcare, logistics and industry, defense and security — and indeed the entire life of the country,” Putin said.

Russia must develop its own artificial intelligence solutions for national defense and security, the president said, warning that the country’s sovereignty and very existence depend on its ability to keep pace with global change. 

“We must possess the most advanced technologies and rely on fully sovereign domestic products,” he stressed.

“These artificial intelligence agents are already approaching a new level of independence. They are learning to plan their actions, evaluate the results they achieve, and interact with people and the real world,” he said.

In late March and early April, Ukraine launched a series of drone strikes against the Baltic ports in Ust-Luga and Primorsk, as well as oil terminals on the south of the country in the city of Novorossiysk. This was clearly an attempt to disrupt Russia’s ability to export petroleum products. Additionally, the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) have targeted other Russian regions to inflict further damage to the oil and gas industry and strain Russia’s air defense network tasked with protecting critical infrastructure. 

Given the current global situation, increasing exports of petroleum products would provide Russia with much-needed revenue. This income could help offset losses from Western sanctions and stabilize economic growth. Of course, these additional revenues would also benefit Russia’s military-industrial complex, a fact that Kiev is undoubtedly aware of.

Ukraine’s intensified strikes on Russian oil and gas infrastructure, particularly export terminals, aim to reduce Russia’s export capacity. A secondary goal may be to influence the media narrative by demonstrating the AFU’s enhanced strike capabilities. The third objective involves depleting the missile stockpiles of Russia’s missile defense systems through massive drone attacks.

Routes, tactics, and technological edge

In March 2026, the AFU set a record for long-range drone usage. According to Western sources, Ukraine deployed over 7,000 drones. This has been possible due to the mass production of relatively inexpensive drones of various types, with a range of up to 1,500km. Notably, the cost of these drones is quite low, and Ukraine faces no shortage of components, as sanctions and other restrictions do not hinder this supply chain. Drone manufacturing can be decentralized, with some production potentially taking place outside Ukraine. Final assembly likely occurs in several facilities in various locations, disguised as ordinary manufacturing or logistics centers. Clearly, the mass production of drones is a major state industrial effort that also involves commercial companies.

While the flight paths of drones from Ukraine to Novorossiysk raise no questions, the routes by which the drones reached locations as remote from Ukraine as Ust-Luga in Russia's northern Leningrad Region remain less clear.

Several hypotheses exist regarding the flight paths of Ukrainian drones. One hypothetical route extends from northern Ukraine, over Russian territory along the eastern border of Belarus to Leningrad Region, and then onward to the Baltic ports. This route is supported by data on air-raid alerts in western Russia and various accounts. The use of Belarusian airspace is theoretically possible, yet Belarus possesses a robust air defense and detection system. If drones were to infringe upon its airspace, it seems likely that such incidents would be reported.

There is also another interesting hypothesis: the drones may be taking a roundabout route through Poland and the Baltic states, then flying over the neutral waters of the Baltic Sea to approach the ports from the sea. The absence of surface-to-air missile defense systems over the sea lends some credence to this theory, especially considering the reports of drones crashing in the Baltic states and in Finland. It’s also quite possible that NATO countries may allow drones to be routed through their territory. However, this theory lacks ample supporting evidence, and the Russian Foreign Ministry’s response came only several days later and included no substantial details.

Considering the current advancements in autonomous navigation systems, it seems more likely that the drones were routed through Russian territory, using the natural characteristics of the terrain to approach targets from unexpected angles. Drones routed over the sea may be easier to detect – though that’s not always the case. For example, it wasn’t easy for air defense systems to detect drones traveling over the Black Sea.

As a conspiracy theory, one could speculate about the installation of radio beacons in Russia or neighboring countries to enhance the navigation of attacking drones under conditions of electronic countermeasures against existing navigation systems. This is technically possible and does not necessarily violate airspace, although it would require an intelligence network. I believe the military has already figured out how the drones reached their targets. 

So, what steps should be taken to defend against such attacks? What scenarios and methods need to be implemented for effective protection?

The main priority is timely detection. Lightweight drones with piston engines are notoriously difficult to track with traditional airspace radar. However, they can be spotted visually and detected by the sound of their engines. Given that these drones have been in widespread use for some time, appropriate detection measures should be deployed. I hope this issue is being addressed at a level beyond volunteer initiatives, as part of the country’s air defense. 

The second task involves informing all relevant parties about threats. All the structural elements of the army’s missile defense forces must have real-time access to information on detected drones, their flight paths, and potential targets. This will enable swift countermeasures – deploying mobile units, preparing weapons, providing targeting data, and organizing layered defense. This should be the responsibility of a unified governmental structure within the armed forces; departmental or regional units aren’t efficient enough for this mission. Ultimately, the devices used to communicate this information to end users should be simple and user-friendly tablets, not multi-ton trucks. I believe this work is already underway and in the testing phase.

Finally, the third task is the destruction of the drones. On the one hand, any means necessary can be employed; on the other hand, using traditional surface-to-air missile systems (SAMs) isn’t always justified. Firstly, conventional SAMs may not be effective against small, lightweight drones. Secondly, the cost of a missile is many times higher than that of the drone itself.

This is one of the most pressing modern challenges: cheap drone attacks can financially devastate advanced missile defense systems. This is a global issue that affects all technologically advanced nations.

There are several options, each with its pros and cons. The most cost-effective solution in terms of firing costs is laser weaponry. The expense per shot can be measured in mere dollars. However, the systems themselves can cost millions of dollars. Moreover, lasers have limitations regarding range; as the distance to the target increases, the beam’s power significantly diminishes. These large, energy-intensive systems are stationary and primarily serve as a last line of defense. Nonetheless, they can effectively neutralize drones, cruise missiles, guided bombs, and other types of munitions.

Specialized interceptor drones are another promising and already deployed solution. Almost every nation focusing on drone defense is currently developing and implementing such interceptors. They are relatively low-cost, but they do come with a significant drawback: due to their design, they carry very small payloads or rely on kinetic interception – i.e., engage the target through high-speed physical impact. When deployed en masse, however, interceptor drones can prove effective in certain areas and situations. 

Lightweight, short-range surface-to-air missiles are another option. These missiles can utilize both radar and laser guidance; target illumination can originate from the launch platform or a separate carrier. They can be fired from specialized systems like the Pantsir missile system, as well as from aircraft, similar to American APKWS missiles. Their costs are comparable to those of long-range drones.

Additionally, we must consider the tactical construction of air defense. Ideally, we wouldn’t know exactly how this is organized – when it comes to missile defense, all armies protect their tactical secrets. However, it’s reasonable to assume that an effective air defense strategy combines layered stationary defense with mobile air defense units that establish operational lines in directions that are deemed a threat. In this regard, having a comprehensive and accurate picture of the air situation in the region would be invaluable – without such information, mobile units might prove entirely ineffective.

***

The massive waves of Ukrainian drone attacks have become a real test for Russia’s air defense system. Steps have already been taken to enhance both detection and response capabilities against such attacks. Efforts are continuously underway to modernize existing systems and develop new weapons designed to target lightweight drones. Tactics for countering large-scale drone swarms are being refined, and the production of ammunition for these systems is ramping up. Intelligence operations aimed at locating and destroying the production, storage, and launch sites of drones are also likely a priority for the military. Such a comprehensive approach is essential for effectively addressing the threat posed by drone attacks.

The Kremlin has clarified that Russia’s Easter ceasefire is a humanitarian gesture, not a substitute for a lasting peace with Ukraine. President Vladimir Putin has ordered a halt to hostilities from Saturday afternoon through Sunday.

“We want not a ceasefire, but a lasting, sustainable peace,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Friday. “And this peace could come today, if [Ukrainian leader Vladimir] Zelensky takes responsibility and makes the appropriate decision,” Peskov added, referring to Moscow’s repeated demands that Kiev withdraw its forces from Russia’s Donbass region.

Putin announced the unilateral Easter truce on Thursday, ordering Russian troops to pause offensive operations from 16:00 Moscow time on April 11 until the end of April 12. The Defense Ministry has been instructed to maintain readiness to repel any Ukrainian provocations.

“We expect the Ukrainian side to follow Russia’s lead,” the Kremlin said.

Moscow has previously declared unilateral ceasefires for Orthodox religious holidays. In 2023, Russia observed truces both during the Orthodox Christmas holiday in January and on Easter weekend in April at the initiative of the Russian Orthodox Church. In 2025, an Easter truce was declared again, but was only partially successful as Kiev violated the pause more than 3,900 times, according to the Russian Defense Ministry.

Trilateral peace talks involving Russia, Ukraine, and the US have been on hold for weeks due to the Iran war, with no new date set. Moscow has consistently said it remains open to negotiations but insists that any lasting settlement must address the root causes of the conflict, including Ukrainian neutrality and recognition of the Donbass republics as part of Russia.

The cooperation of private capital and state funding in space exploration and infrastructure became a key topic at the inaugural Russian Space Forum taking place in Moscow ahead of the upcoming Cosmonautics Day. The event will also delve into the use of AI, robotics and prospective medical technologies needed for flights beyond Earth orbit, such as to the Moon or Mars.

Kicking off ahead of the 65th anniversary of Yury Gagarin’s April 12, 1961 flight as the first human in space, the event brought together government officials, scientists, and investors from over 40 countries, including Russia, China and India.

“The advancement of the rocket and space sector, alongside the strengthening of its scientific, human resources, and technological potential, remains among our unconditional priorities. It is of utmost importance to expand satellite constellations and to widely integrate new materials, digital and nuclear technologies,” President Vladimir Putin said in a greeting message to the participants.

Just last month, Russia launched 16 communication satellites for the Russian Rassvet (Sunrise) high-speed internet project, which is being helmed by domestic company Bureau 1440, Bakanov said. The program will give Russia its own alternative to SpaceX’s Starlink.

“We work closely together, sometimes formalized through the regulatory framework, sometimes manually, to help companies thrive, to ensure fertile soil, and to create an investment climate conducive to people investing in the sector,” Bakanov said.

Real-time coordination between Roscosmos and private space firms was also discussed, to prevent potential collisions in orbit, which many fear could lead to the so-called Kessler Syndrome, a runaway chain reaction of crashes that could render entire orbital regions around Earth unusable.

China’s National Space Administration (CNSA) deputy director Bian Zhigang, speaking at a panel on future challenges and national strategies, spoke out against the weaponization of space.

“We need to support technologies in different countries in order to aid urban planning, resource exploration and disaster prevention. This requires all countries to cooperate,” he said, calling space “an important bridge” that facilitates this international collaboration.

The forum will also serve as the launchpad for a number of cooperation agreements between Roscosmos and Russian nuclear energy corporation Rosatom, as well as with private players in the space sector.

Russia’s Space Week, established by Putin to promote national achievements and popularize the industry, will conclude on Cosmonautics Day on Sunday with a number of other themed events all across the country.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered the nation’s military to halt all operations against Ukrainian forces over Orthodox Easter weekend, the Kremlin has announced. The unilateral pause is scheduled to last from 16:00 (Moscow time) on Saturday until the end of Sunday.

According to the Kremlin, Russian troops should still be ready to respond to any Ukrainian offensive operations or provocations, with relevant orders given to Defense Minister Andrey Belousov and Chief of General Staff Valery Gerasimov.

“We expect the Ukrainian side to follow Russia’s lead,” the statement read.

Moscow has previously declared unilateral pauses during Orthodox religious holidays throughout the Ukraine conflict. In 2023, Russia observed truces both during the Orthodox Christmas holiday in January and on Easter weekend in April at the initiative of the Russian Orthodox Church.

In 2024, a pause was not announced, with Putin arguing that Kiev could use it to rearm and regroup its forces. In 2025, an Easter truce was declared again, but was only partially successful. Although a certain lull in the hostilities was observed, Kiev violated the truce more than 3,900 times, according to the Russian Defense Ministry.

Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky rejected Hungary’s calls for a Christmas truce last year.

Moscow and Kiev held several rounds of direct talks in Istanbul last year, as well as trilateral talks that also involved the US. The negotiations led to several major POW exchanges but ended without a decisive breakthrough. The trilateral discussions have been paused over the past months because of the US and Israeli war on Iran.

Russia has repeatedly stated that it is ready to resolve the Ukraine conflict through diplomatic means, as long as its root causes are addressed and the situation on the ground is taken into account.

Ukraine’s Defense Ministry is reportedly weighing a plan to rebrand the agencies behind Kiev’s conscription campaign, according to a local lawmaker. Social media has detailed press gangs hunting for recruits in the streets while a desperate population is increasingly fighting back.

Kiev introduced Territorial Centers of Recruitment and Social Support (TCKs) in 2022 to replace Soviet-era military commissariats. Amid the conflict with Russia, the TCKs have become widely associated with forced recruitment raids and allegations of corruption that allow influential individuals to avoid mobilization.

According to MP Roman Kostenko, a military veteran and secretary of the parliamentary committee on national security, defense, and intelligence, who leaked the plan, the proposal is window-dressing and an attempt to deflect public discontent.

Kiev has claimed that the widely shared videos are a form of attack on the country, taken out of context, or fabricated by Russia. Last week, Ukraine’s military ombudsman, Olga Reshetilova, complained that teenagers are “harassing” TCK staff after exposure to what she described as “Russian TikTok.” 

At the same time, human rights ombudsman Dmitry Lubinets published photos from a TCK facility in Uzhhorod, reporting that as many as 60 men held in custody there had only three cups and eight plates among them and no means to properly clean shared utensils.

Lubinets also noted that one detainee had syndactyly, a condition involving fused fingers, while another required urgent medical attention due to high blood pressure, which he received only after intervention by the ombudsman’s office.

Under the proposal, “conscription offices” or “recruitment offices” will handle conscription, Kostenko told Liga.net on Thursday, saying that the ministry expects the word “office” to have a positive connotation.

During parliamentary confirmation hearings in January, Defense Minister Mikhail Fedorov identified fixing the conscription system as a priority. Kostenko said the ministry wants to force the national police to take a more direct role in mobilization in order to shift blame.

Moscow believes the US-Iran ceasefire has a regional dimension and extends to Lebanon, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told his Iranian counterpart Abbas Aragchi in a phone call on Thursday, according to a readout. 

Lavrov stated that Russia fully supports the cessation of hostilities between the US and Iran and Israel’s accession to those agreements. He expressed hope for the success of the upcoming negotiations and reaffirmed Moscow’s readiness to help “overcome the consequences of the unprovoked US‑Israeli aggression against Iran and ensure long-term peace and sustainable security in the region.” 

The Russian minister also emphasized that Moscow “firmly believes that these agreements, as announced by the Pakistani mediators, have a regional dimension and, in particular, extend to Lebanon.”  

Israel has insisted that Lebanon is not part of the ceasefire deal and said it intends to continue operations in the country, where it has conducted extensive airstrikes and launched a ground invasion.  

Shortly after the US-Iranian ceasefire was announced, the Israeli military said it carried out its largest wave of strikes on Lebanon since the war began, hitting approximately 100 targets across the country in just ten minutes.  

Iran has made clear that Lebanon must be included in any cessation of hostilities. It has also warned that the Strait of Hormuz will remain closed to shipping until Israel commits to a ceasefire on all fronts. 

Araghchi thanked Lavrov for Russia’s “principled position” during UN Security Council meetings on the situation in the Persian Gulf, according to the ministry. The two diplomats also discussed broader regional security issues. 

Moscow has consistently condemned the US‑Israeli campaign against Iran, which began on February 28. Russia has called for de‑escalation and a diplomatic solution, while accusing Washington of violating international law.  

The Kremlin has also criticized Israel’s strikes on Lebanon, including a March attack on a Russian cultural center in the southern city of Nabatieh.

France’s top military commander has told the country’s parliament that the prospect of a direct conflict with Russia is his “primary concern,” insisting on ramping up military spending as Paris reportedly prepares to shift to a “war economy.”

General Fabien Mandon, the chief of staff of the French Armed Forces, made the statement during a hearing before the National Assembly’s Defense Committee about a proposed update to the 2024-2030 military programming and budget.

“An open war with Russia remains my primary concern in terms of preparing the armed forces,” he told lawmakers, pointing to what he called “the continued presence of a Russian threat on our continent.”

Mandon, who had previously warned of a potential “clash in three or four years” with Moscow, insisted that France is in a “dangerous period” and desperately needs more investment in the military.

The general’s remarks come as the French government has announced a revised long-term military budget that would see it spend an additional €36 billion ($42 billion) on weapons, pushing annual spending to €76.3 billion by 2030, or 2.5% of GDP. 

The shift is being carried out “with a view to preparing for a ‘war economy’,” the document read. 

France’s rearmament push comes amid a wider European militarization trend as Germany is also undergoing a massive buildup, with Berlin planning to spend more than €500 billion on defense by 2029 and aiming to increase its active troops from 180,000 to over 260,000 by 2035. 

Moscow has consistently dismissed Western allegations of an imminent Russian attack as “nonsense,” arguing that such claims are used to justify record military spending, distract from domestic problems, and whip up anti-Russian hysteria. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov stated in February that Moscow “has no intention of attacking any part of Europe” and has “absolutely no reason to do so.” He warned, however, that if European nations launch an attack on Russia, “there will be a full-scale military response with all available military means.”

Russia and Ukraine have conducted a repatriation of the bodies of fallen troops, continuing a string of roughly-monthly humanitarian actions launched last year.

In the latest round on Thursday, 1,000 sets of Ukrainian remains were handed over to Kiev, while Russia received 41 bodies, as witnessed by Ruptly video agency.

The previous such event, facilitated by the International Committee of the Red Cross, was reported in late February, while in early March Kiev and Moscow returned 300 POWs each.

The ratio of soldiers sent back for burial has remained mostly consistent over the months, suggesting a significant difference in attrition taken by the two sides of the Ukraine conflict. However, there is no strict correlation, considering that Russian forces have long been making territorial gains and consequently collect more bodies of Ukrainian troops killed in action.

Kiev relies on mandatory conscription to replenish its battlefield losses, enforced with harsh tactics increasingly rejected by the Ukrainian public. In recent months there was an uptick in serious injuries and even death reported during confrontations between draft officers and civilians. The manpower shortage is further exacerbated by mass desertion of conscripts.

A Russian defense developer is testing a tracked robotic drone capable of launching a mortar using an integrated mechanical arm, according to newly released footage.

The video, published online on Monday, shows a snow-covered training ground where the small unmanned vehicle operates its weapon system. The drone is seen picking up mortar shells from an onboard supply and dropping them into the tube.

The system is part of a broader family built on the Kurier chassis, first introduced in 2024. The state-backed design bureau behind the project has been experimenting with multiple weapons configurations for small electric-powered vehicles. One version is armed with a small arms turret and is already being used in the Ukraine conflict, while another variant carries an incendiary rocket launcher.

The mortar module, named Bagulnik-82 (after a plant known in English as Labrador tea), appears to incorporate a Soviet-era 82 mm 2B14 Podnos mortar – weighing around 42 kg and originally designed for airborne and light infantry units. In the footage, the robotic arm takes about five seconds to load each round, resulting in a slower firing rate compared to a trained human crew.

However, the platform’s key advantage lies in its ability to operate in high-risk environments without endangering personnel. Its mortar has a relatively limited maximum range of under 4 km, which can be a major drawback in conditions where enemy FPV kamikaze drones pose a constant threat.

The Ukraine conflict has significantly accelerated the development of drone-based military technology on both sides. A notable trend has been the shift toward inexpensive, mass-produced systems that can be rapidly adapted by troops in the field.

Global energy markets will take months to recover from the shock caused by the US‑Israeli war on Iran, Kremlin envoy Kirill Dmitriev has warned, noting that the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz is unlikely to have an immediate effect.

His comments come after US President Donald Trump announced a “double-sided” two-week ceasefire with Iran to negotiate a long-term peace agreement based on Tehran’s 10-point plan that would see it retain control over the strait.

While oil prices have dropped in response to the news, Dmitriev, who serves as Russian President Vladimir Putin’s special envoy for investment and economic cooperation, has warned that energy markets “will take months to normalize even if the Strait of Hormuz remains open.”

Dmitriev’s prediction came in response to a Bloomberg report in which several Asian airline chiefs cautioned that jet fuel prices would still require “many, many more months” to stabilize. The director general of the International Air Transport Association (IATA), Willie Walsh, noted that if the Strait of Hormuz “were to reopen and remain open, it will still take a period of months to get back to where supply needs to be, given the disruption to the refining capacity in the Middle East.”

More than 800 vessels also remain trapped in the Persian Gulf after the Strait of Hormuz was virtually closed following the US and Israeli strikes in late February. According to Bloomberg, traders and shipowners are now closely monitoring which ships will begin to transit the strait under the fragile ceasefire. An International Maritime Organization tally from late March estimated that some 20,000 seafarers are stuck aboard trapped ships, facing dwindling supplies, fatigue, and psychological stress.

A recent Newsmax report, released just before the ceasefire announcement, also warned of a looming global commodity shock, noting that the true scale of the disruptions caused by the US-Israeli war on Iran has yet to materialize. The outlet cautioned that the world could soon face sudden and severe shortages that will quickly spread from energy to fertilizers, food production, and consumer goods.

In light of Vladimir Zelensky’s reluctance to make concessions and the stalled US-mediated negotiations with Russia due to the war in Iran, some Ukrainian officials have been wondering, “How do we continue fighting?”

Aleksandr Merezhko, an MP from Zelensky’s Servant of the People party, believes that Ukraine has enough manpower to wage war for ten more years, provided that the right incentives are created and soldiers are rotated in a timely manner. 

He’s partially right. Mathematically speaking, there are still several million eligible men in Ukraine. With around 30,000 men mobilized each month (the losses are similar in terms of deaths, injuries, and desertions), people like Merezhko might think Ukraine still has enough human resources to continue fighting. However, the situation is far more complicated. 

The primary issue for Ukraine isn’t the number of men who haven’t yet been caught by recruitment officers, but rather their motivation to fight and their combat readiness. 

Over 200,000 Ukrainian servicemen are officially listed as deserters, while up to 2 million Ukrainians are wanted by territorial recruitment centers for draft evasion. Meanwhile, the average age of mobilized men increases each month and is now around 45 years. According to Ukraine’s demographic pyramid, this age group makes up the largest portion of the population. Conversely, men aged 18-24 represent the smallest demographic group, so simply lowering the draft age won’t solve the problem. 

One alternative approach involves maximizing the robotization of the military, which is what the Ukrainian armed forces are currently trying to do. The idea is to free up as many people from secondary roles as possible and turn them into drone pilots. Yet, to operate drones, one still needs motivated individuals. 

The only viable scenario for Ukraine moving forward appears to be a total reform of the current system of forced mobilization. To ensure that half of the conscripts don’t desert the army, and to motivate volunteers to join the army on contract, Kiev will need to offer substantial financial incentives to every conscript or contract soldier. This could involve significant monthly pay along with one-time bonuses for enlistment.

That’s the only way that Zelensky can stretch the current mobilization resources for several more years. However, there simply isn’t enough money for such reforms. Ukraine is using European funds to wage war, and these funds grow scarcer with each passing year. The financial aid provided by Europe barely covers existing debts, purchases of weapons, and supplies for the military. Consequently, there’s no way Ukraine can fund large-scale and costly changes to the conscription system.

In theory, Ukraine has enough manpower to fight for many more years, but in practice, these people are either needed in the economy or have no desire to die. This makes it increasingly difficult to enlist them. Historical evidence shows that wars are won not by eliminating every single enemy soldier, but rather by crippling the enemy’s economy and undermining the morale and resistance of its frontline forces. And with Kiev’s current approach, the prospect of sustaining effective resistance for another decade seems unrealistic.

A twelve-year-old boy and his parents have been killed in an overnight Ukrainian drone attack in Russia’s Vladimir Region, according to Governor Aleksandr Avdeev. The family’s five-year-old daughter survived with burns.

Emergency crews extinguished a fire that broke out after the family’s home was struck in the attack. Residents in a neighboring apartment of the two-apartment block in the Aleksandrovsky municipal district were unharmed.

The boy killed in the strike had celebrated his birthday just the day before, Anna Kuznetsova, head of the district, said.

Moscow has accused Kiev of attacking civilians because it cannot halt Russian advances on the battlefield.

Also on Tuesday, Zaporozhye Governor Evgeny Balitsky reported that a Ukrainian drone had struck a school in the village of Velikaya Znamenka, injuring five children and one adult.

Leningrad Region was among the hardest-hit, with military forces continuing to repel a massive wave of Ukrainian drones. Governor Aleksandr Drozdenko said that, as of the latest update, 22 UAVs had been shot down. St. Petersburg’s Pulkovo Airport was also forced to introduce temporary flight restrictions due to the drone incursions.

In recent months, Kiev has intensified strikes on Russia’s regions, including civilian and oil infrastructure, in an effort to disrupt the country’s ability to export crude. Ukrainian officials deny deliberately targeting civilians, claiming that their goal is to inflict economic damage to pressure Russia to abandon its objectives in the four-year Ukraine conflict.

Moscow has accused Kiev of resorting to terrorist tactics and inflicting damage on third parties not involved in the conflict between the two nations.

The Kremlin has also noted that US-mediated talks with Ukraine have been placed on hold due to the US-Israeli war on Iran.

Armenian politicians should not underestimate the extent of Moscow’s support for Yerevan in the form of low gas prices, the vice speaker of the upper chamber of the Russian parliament, Konstantin Kosachev, has said. The senator’s comment came after a senior Armenian lawmaker suggested that Yerevan could drift further away from Moscow, should it reconsider advantageous supply terms.

In his remarks on Monday, Kosachev noted that the “current price of Russian gas is a potent stimulus for the development of many of Armenia’s economic sectors and a significant factor for social and political stability in the country.”

“It seems to me that it would be fair if Armenian politicians took into account the extent of Russia’s support to Armenia, instead of speculating on hypothetical changes to the pricing policy,” the Russian senator added.

He stressed that Yerevan is in a far better position in terms of energy security at a time when much of Europe is grappling with soaring oil and gas prices triggered by the ongoing US-Israeli aggression against Iran.

Speaking to reporters on Saturday, Alen Simonyan, the president of Armenia’s National Assembly, suggested that if Moscow raised gas prices, Yerevan could withdraw from the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) and the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU).

Both groups include Russia, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, while Tajikistan is a member of the CSTO but not the EAEU.

In recent years, Armenia has increasingly adopted a pro-Western foreign policy direction, expressing a wish to join the EU and suspending its participation in the CSTO.

Yerevan has accused the organization of failing to adequately support the country during its conflict with Azerbaijan, which ended with the forcible transfer of the Nagorno-Karabakh region.

Russia argues that the CSTO could not have considered Baku’s military operation in the area as aggression against an alliance member, as Armenia never formally recognized Nagorno-Karabakh as its own territory.

The Russian Foreign Ministry has condemned the “illegal and unprovoked aggression” by the US and Israel against Iran, as well as the resulting international crisis which is continuing to escalate and intensify.

In a statement on Monday, the ministry said the scale and ferocity of the US-Israeli strikes are increasing, with attacks hitting not only military targets but also civilian infrastructure. It noted that nuclear facilities under safeguards of the International Atomic Energy Agency have been targeted with growing frequency. Particular concern was raised over repeated strikes on the Bushehr nuclear power plant, which Moscow said have caused casualties and heightened the risk of a radiological catastrophe more severe than the Chernobyl disaster.

“The conflict has already killed thousands of civilians, including women and children, and inflicted widespread suffering. Schools, hospitals, and cultural heritage sites have been destroyed, while diplomatic and consular missions have come under attack, in violation of the Vienna Conventions,” the statement said.

The ministry called for an immediate cessation of hostilities, describing the situation as rapidly deteriorating and at risk of slipping out of control. It welcomed mediation efforts by Pakistan, Türkiye, and China, and pointed to a recent appeal by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres for both sides to halt the fighting. Moscow said a diplomatic resolution remains possible and urged all sides to avoid actions that could plunge the region into wider chaos.

Ukrainian drones have attacked the oil infrastructure of the Russian port of Novorossiysk, which is operated by the internationally-owned Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC), the Defense Ministry in Moscow has reported. The CPC crude shipment hub on the Black Sea shore has been repeatedly targeted in suspected Ukrainian UAV strikes in recent months, prompting condemnation from Kazakhstan and the US.

The consortium ships oil from Kazakhstan through the Caspian Pipeline to a marine terminal in Novorossiysk, where it is loaded onto tankers bound for Europe and Asia. Among the CPC shareholders are major energy companies from Russia, Kazakhstan, several Western European countries and the US, including Chevron and ExxonMobil.

The latest attack also sought to “inflict maximum economic damage on the largest [CPC] shareholders – energy companies from Kazakhstan and the US.”

No casualties have been reported, but an unloading berth and four tanks were damaged.

Last November, the CPC’s office in Novorossiysk and one of the berths at its marine terminal were struck by suspected Ukrainian drones. The company stated at the time that it was the third act of aggression against a civilian facility protected under international law since the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022. In February 2025, UAVs targeted the consortium-operated Kropotkinskaya oil pumping station.

Following the November attack, Kazakhstan’s Foreign Ministry lodged an official protest with Ukraine.

In February, Ukrainian Ambassador to the US Olga Stefanishina revealed that Washington had similarly filed a formal demarche with Kiev over the strike, in which “American economic interest was affected.”

In recent months, Ukraine has intensified its strikes on Russia’s oil infrastructure including refineries, pipelines, and terminals in an effort to disrupt the country’s ability to export crude. Moscow has accused Kiev of resorting to terrorist tactics and inflicting damage to third parties not involved in the conflict between the two nations.

The war involving Iran has stirred mixed and uneasy reactions across Central Asia. The region, which has long seen itself as an island of relative stability between competing great powers, now faces a dilemma: both an Iranian collapse and an Iranian victory carry risks.

Since gaining independence, the countries of Central Asia (broadly know in the West as ‘The Stans’) haven’t operated in what might be called a hostile geopolitical environment. Their larger neighbors, Russia to the north, China to the east, and Iran to the south-west, have effectively formed a buffer, allowing these states to pursue development without direct exposure to the kinds of pressures faced by countries bordering Turkey and Israel. Or, indeed, the United States.

The only persistent source of instability has been Afghanistan. From the late 1970s until 2021, it was a constant theatre of war. Yet even there, the situation has stabilized in recent years, following the US withdrawal and the Taliban’s return to power. For all the uncertainties, Afghanistan today poses less of an immediate risk of large-scale regional destabilization than it once did. 

The conflict now unfolding around Iran is different. It threatens to upset the delicate balance that has allowed Central Asia to thrive. 

Initially, the greatest concern in the region was the possibility of Iran’s fragmentation, a scenario long discussed in strategic circles and viewed by some in Israel and the United States as desirable. A disintegrating Iran, plunged into civil strife, would almost certainly become a source of instability, exporting security threats northwards into Central Asia. 

Since the Taliban’s return to power, Washington’s options in Afghanistan have narrowed. But chaos in Iran could reopen possibilities. For Central Asian governments, which have ambitious development plans and value their relative calm, this would be a deeply unwelcome development.

The region has, in fact, benefited from its geopolitical position. Acting as a hub for trade, transit and financial flows, Central Asia has gained economically in recent years, particularly since the onset of the conflict between Russia and the West over Ukraine. Russian investment has increased, and trade routes have diversified.

An Iranian collapse would threaten this fragile prosperity. Already, the conflict in the Middle East has disrupted established trade patterns. The Gulf states and Iran itself have become less reliable partners in the long term. A broader regional war would only accelerate this shift.

However, a collapse of Iranian statehood did not occur. A month after the start of the war, Tehran is demonstrating a very high degree of resilience to the pressure being exerted on it. It is even shifting to tactical counteroffensives, testing the strength of US allies in the region. It appears that Tehran has a fair chance of emerging from this confrontation not as a victor, but as a battered yet worthy opponent of the United States.

A resilient Iran, having withstood pressure from the United States and Israel, could adopt a more assertive regional posture. For Central Asian states, this would likely mean a renewed need to align more closely with the preferences of Moscow and Beijing. Such an outcome would sit uneasily with the “multi-vector” foreign policies that have allowed these countries to balance between competing powers.

In this sense, Central Asia has found itself in a genuinely ambivalent position. Instability in Iran poses obvious risks. But stability, if it comes in the form of a strengthened Iranian state, may also constrain the region’s strategic flexibility.

The broader regional picture adds further complexity. Continued conflict risks turning the Middle East into a permanently unstable zone, raising the specter of nuclear proliferation and undermining the long-term viability of key economic partners in the Persian Gulf. These states have served not only as sources of investment but also as safe havens for capital and venues for discreet diplomatic engagement.

Transport and trade are also at stake. Plans to develop alternative corridors across the Caspian Sea, bypassing Russia, could be derailed by wider instability. These routes have only recently begun to function reliably. A deterioration in the regional security environment would threaten both their economic viability and their political rationale. All the more so if, in a couple of years, diplomats manage to achieve some easing of tensions in Eastern Europe: in that case, China will very quickly return to using transit routes through Russia.

For several years, there has been discussion of a Trans-Afghan transport corridor linking Russia, Central Asia and Pakistan’s ports on the Indian Ocean. The project has attracted broad interest, including from Moscow. While progress has been slow and current tensions between Afghanistan and Pakistan offer little cause for optimism, a prolonged crisis in the Middle East could alter the strategic landscape.

If instability drives trade routes away from traditional corridors, Afghanistan could, for the first time in centuries, become integrated into major international commerce. For Central Asia, this would be a significant development, potentially enhancing regional prosperity while reducing opportunities for external powers to reassert influence along the southern borders of the former Soviet space.

Ultimately, the war around Iran presents Central Asia with a paradox. It increases the likelihood of both serious disruption and new opportunity. Much will depend on how the region’s leaders navigate this uncertain environment.

Over the past three decades, the countries of Central Asia have shown a capacity for cautious, pragmatic decision-making. That record offers some grounds for optimism.

This article was first published by Vzglyad newspaper and translated and edited by the RT team.

A large-scale embezzlement scheme has been uncovered in Ukraine’s energy sector, resulting in around $6.8 million in losses to the state budget, law enforcement agencies have announced. The country has been rocked by a series of corruption scandals in recent months.

According to investigators, those implicated include officials from Ukrgazdobycha, the country’s largest gas extraction company and subsidiary of the state-owned giant Naftogaz, as well as private entrepreneurs. The findings were announced on Monday by three agencies involved in the probe.

The authorities allege that the scheme relied on procuring goods and services at heavily inflated prices – in some cases up to three times above market value. Two individuals, including a former company official and a businessman accused of manipulating tenders, have been formally charged.

Ukrgazdobycha said the investigation had been ongoing since 2022 and thanked the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), the Economic Security Bureau (ESBU), and the Prosecutor General’s Office for exposing the suspected ring. Officials believe the network operated between 2021 and 2024.

Corruption scandals continue to plague Ukraine’s energy sector. Last year, Western-backed anti-corruption authorities charged several suspects in a separate case involving state nuclear company Energoatom.

The case highlighted tensions between the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO), which led the probe, and the SBU, which allegedly targeted anti-corruption agents pursuing the case.

Zelensky previously attempted to eliminate the independence of NABU and SAPO but reversed course following blowback from international donors.

The scandal led to the resignations of several high-ranking officials, including Energy Minister German Galushchenko, who was later arrested while attempting to flee to Poland, and Zelensky’s influential chief of staff, Andrey Yermak. Mindich fled the country.

In less than two years, a little-known Ukrainian startup has secured nearly $1 billion in state contracts, built one of the country’s most ambitious missile programs – and drawn the attention of anti-corruption investigators.

A February article by Deutsche Welle and subsequent interviews with co-founder Denis Shtilerman have helped propel Fire Point into the European media spotlight, with bold claims about long-range strike capabilities deep inside Russia. But beyond the publicity, evidence of real-world effectiveness remains limited.

Fire Point: Sudden success 

In 2025, Fire Point rapidly emerged as a leading name in Ukrainian missile manufacturing. Today, it stands out as one of the most dynamic yet secretive defense startups in Ukraine, specializing in the production of long-range drones and missiles. Initially, the company developed only cruise missiles, but now it also designs ballistic missiles.

Reports suggest that the startup launched with $1.5-$2 million invested by the founders themselves. However, in 2024-2025, the company secured government contracts worth approximately $1 billion, which is truly remarkable. Perhaps the answer to this mystery lies in the backgrounds of the founders? 

At the helm of the company is Denis Shtilerman, the chief designer, founder, and majority owner (with a 97.5% share) of FP. He describes himself as a wealthy individual unafraid to invest his own money into the project. The co-founder is Yegor Skalyga (2.5% share) who previously headed a film industry company, suggesting ties to Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky and his Studio Kvartal 95. Irina Terekh, the technical director and co-owner of FP,  joined the team in 2023. And lastly, there is… former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who joined the advisory board in November 2025. Now that’s a smart move, considering the current situation in Ukraine. 

High-ranking Ukrainian officials have actively promoted the company’s products. Zelensky referred to the FP-5 Flamingo as the “most successful” missile in Ukraine’s arsenal. The company also reportedly has ties to the former head of Zelensky’s office, Andrey Yermak. This is quite possible, since Fire Point has become the largest recipient of the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense’s budget allocations for the construction of drones. Shtilerman attributes this to the fact that some state enterprises maintain secret ties with Russia, which is unacceptable at this time.

However, the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) may have a different opinion about the company’s success. NABU has launched an investigation on several fronts: firstly, it is investigating possible price inflation for components used in FP-1 drones;  secondly, NABU is examining the company’s connections with Timur Mindich and potential corruption schemes related to procurement through government structures. Amid these scandals, the appointment of Mike Pompeo to the advisory board has been viewed by many analysts as an attempt by FP to bolster its reputation and shield itself from corruption allegations.

FP indeed emerged out of nowhere and quickly became a leader in Ukraine’s drone and missile manufacturing sector. It specializes in the development and mass production of long-range FP-1 and FP-2 strike drones, as well as the FP-5 Flamingo cruise missile. By 2025, its workforce expanded to 3,500 employees, including 650 engineers, with production facilities covering 175,000 square meters across several secret locations.

The company’s most notable product so far is the FP-5 Flamingo cruise missile powered by a AI-25TL turbofan engine. It is reported that the company has been gathering these engines from decommissioned training aircraft all over Eastern Europe. The missile is marketed as a long-range weapon designed for deep strikes. In size, it surpasses its Western counterparts like the Tomahawk or Storm Shadow missiles. Its flight range is up to 3,000 kilometers, and the warhead weighs 1,000-1,150 kilograms (with about 600 kilograms allocated for explosives). The missile travels at speeds of 850-900 km/h and has a launch weight of approximately 6,000 kg. The fuselage length is about 12 meters and the wingspan is six meters. Equipped with a relatively modern guidance system – a combination of an inertial navigation system and a jamming-resistant satellite navigation system – it boasts a reported accuracy of approximately 15 meters from the intended target. However, confirming these specifications in real-world conditions has proven challenging – it is unclear how many of the missiles have been launched and how many have failed during testing.

Fire Point had ambitious plans to ramp up production to 200 missiles per month by 2026, but apparently, these are still distant prospects. To create an illusion of ongoing missile production, news reports occasionally surface about the deployment of these missiles, often accompanied by video footage. It seems the company has allocated funds for PR, as multiple stories about FP have appeared in leading Western media outlets within the past month.

The effectiveness of the missiles remains unknown. Russia’s existing missile defense systems were all designed to counter more advanced and stealthy weapons like Tomahawks and Storm Shadows. So they can surely detect the bulkier Flamingo, especially since it flies at higher altitudes. Furthermore, indications suggest that the missile lacks any countermeasures and its design is rather straightforward. Shooting down such a missile shouldn’t pose a substantial challenge.

However, the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) may hope to overwhelm Russian air defense systems if they manage to construct enough of these missiles. Currently, FP is struggling with producing a sufficient number, likely due to corruption issues or the difficulties of organizing production amid Russian airstrikes – likely, both issues are at play. Additionally, supplies of AI-25 engines aren’t infinite, and no one currently produces new ones. All this suggests that this ambitious program may remain largely theoretical, confined to paperwork and media headlines. 

What’s next?

At the end of 2025, news emerged that Fire Point is set to produce FP-7 and FP-9 ballistic missiles, among other projects. The FP-7 is expected to replace ATACMS missiles and is predicted to boast a range of up to 300 kilometers. It will be equipped with a small warhead. The second missile will be larger, and will carry an 800-kilogram warhead capable of hitting targets at distances of 800-850 kilometers. Apparently, the AFU intends to use these missiles to strike cities like St. Petersburg and Moscow.

According to the available information, the company’s goal is to produce simple and efficient missiles. The design is based on surface-to-air missiles from Soviet-era S-300 systems. The company does not plan to produce hypersonic missiles, separating warheads, or missiles capable of evasive maneuvers. Modern missile defense systems should be able to intercept such missiles more effectively than GMLRS and ATACMS from the HIMARS system. However, ballistic missiles are undoubtedly more challenging to intercept than cruise missiles. Fire Point aims to roll out the production of ballistic missiles by 2026, with FP-7 already undergoing tests and possibly entering serial production in the coming months. FP-9 is expected to enter production by the end of summer.

The proposal includes claims of significantly reducing interception costs – from an estimated $6 million per Iskander missile today to roughly $1–1.5 million per intercept. These projections are being presented at an early stage, before the systems themselves have been designed or tested.

At the same time, the company has not demonstrated prior experience in developing or producing complex air and missile defense systems. Taken together, the emphasis on future efficiency and cost advantages may suggest that attracting investment is, at this stage, as central to the project as technological delivery.

Whether Fire Point can convert these ambitions into viable systems remains uncertain – particularly as its activities continue to draw the attention of anti-corruption investigators.

A Ukrainian drone struck the Black Sea port of Novorossiysk during a large-scale attack on cities in southern Russia, leaving eight civilians injured, officials have said.

Krasnodar Region Governor Veniamin Kondratyev said air raid sirens rang in several coastal cities from Sunday through Monday, including the resort town of Sochi.

In Novorossiysk, two children and one adult were injured in a private home, while three others were injured in an attack on an apartment block. In a separate incident, two people were injured on a road on the outskirts of the city.

Момент попадания БПЛА в дом, Новороссийск https://t.co/IZghEli9dW pic.twitter.com/qKYddjkgU6

— Vlad webman(Влад Вебман) (@VladWebman) April 5, 2026

Kondratyev said six apartment blocks and two individual houses were damaged, while drone fragments fell on several industrial sites.

Novorossiysk has a commercial port and a naval base on the Black Sea, and is home to about 250,000 people.

The Russian Defense Ministry said 148 drones were intercepted in different regions on Sunday night.

Кадры последствий атаки украинских беспилотников на Новороссийск публикует оперштаб Кубани.

На данный момент известно о восьми пострадавших, среди них есть дети. pic.twitter.com/pFEUvIbyER

— ВЕСТИ (@vesti_news) April 5, 2026

On Friday, a Ukrainian drone sank the Russian grain ship Volgo-Balt 138 in the Sea of Azov, killing one person on board, a local official said.

The Russian International Affairs Council (RIAC) has a new president: the renowned international affairs expert Dmitry Trenin. In his first interview in his new role, he told Kommersant correspondent Elena Chernenko how he envisages the development of this important foreign policy think tank and who is more important to study, Russia’s partners or its adversaries.

Q: You become president of the RIAC at a time that diplomats describe not merely as turbulent, as it was before, but as dramatic. What is your plan?

Dmitry Trenin: My plan as president of the RIAC is to give this remarkable council new impetus and to rise to the challenges we face today and those that will arise tomorrow. Despite the apparent chaos and illogicality of what is happening, we should not pretend that nothing like this has ever happened in history. Today’s events have their own distinctive features, partly due to technological developments, but this is not the first time the world has gone through a period of fundamental change. In the past, such periods were linked to world wars. Today, we are experiencing something akin to a world war. I do not like to use the term ‘Third World War’, because it implies a continuation of what happened in the First and Second World Wars. A more accurate phrase is ‘a new world war’, distinct from the first two. We must get through this period and emerge from it in a stronger position, becoming better and wiser.

Dmitry Trenin: Yes. But it won’t happen by itself. Everyone has their own section of the front or line of advance. We can be on the defensive, on the offensive, or launching a counter-offensive. Since we are talking about war, we can use such terms. The RIAC is, as I see it, a small but unique area of Russia’s interaction in the international arena with other states and civilizations. And I already have some initial ideas for its further development, which I will now propose and promote and, if possible, implement.

Q: Is there demand for foreign policy expertise in Russia?

Dmitry Trenin: I am convinced that yes, it is in demand. But, unfortunately, a significant proportion of foreign policy expertise, and not only in Russia, is either not interesting or detached from reality. I speak with Foreign Ministry staff and have heard from them on numerous occasions that they are swamped with paperwork, but cannot always get anything useful out of it. The RIAC has many tasks, but one of the key ones must be to assist those who are actually engaged in foreign policy. Such people often have less time than experts to delve into the causes and origins of what is happening; they are overburdened and operate under time constraints. Experts must understand the substance of the issues and provide conclusions and recommendations that will be useful to those involved in decision-making. This is where I see a role for the RIAC. But, as I have already said, the council has other functions too, including promoting our foreign policy around the world and educating the public on foreign policy issues.

Q: Russian think tanks have begun to focus more actively on the countries of the global majority. Those states that are regarded as unfriendly are receiving less and less attention. So, who should we study more closely, friends or foes?

Dmitry Trenin: An expert in international relations must first and foremost focus on his or her own country, on its needs regarding the outside world, and on the opportunities and risks that arise for it from that outside world. In this sense, for an expert, there is no difference between friendly and unfriendly countries. The distinction lies in whether, and to what extent, it’s possible to engage positively with a particular country. With unfriendly nations, this is practically impossible at present and for the foreseeable future. But that does not mean they should not be studied. In war, studying the enemy is of the utmost importance.

In fact, I would start by studying the enemy in Ukraine. We need to gain a better understanding of the reasons behind their behavior. For instance, why haven’t they surrendered yet? It is clear that external factors play a significant role here, but there are internal factors too.

We need to understand Western Europe better. For a long time, we were under the spell of the West, which prevented us from accurately assessing its intentions and actions at a time when we were seeking to build a partnership with it. We had, and, incidentally, the president himself spoke of this, illusions about the West. We are now re-evaluating many things, and it is important not simply to swap positives for negatives, but to gain a deep understanding of what the modern West represents, both its American and European components. In recent years, Western European countries have on more than one occasion behaved differently from what we expected.

Dmitry Trenin: Ever since the days of the Soviet Union, we have viewed Western Europeans as hostages to the US: vassals upon whom Washington imposes its will. At the same time, we were firmly convinced that they were pragmatic and would not sacrifice business for the sake of politics. I think it came as a revelation to many of us just how quickly these European countries, including Germany, on which we had pinned our greatest hopes, severed ties with Russia, including cutting off trade links. Business didn’t stand in the way of these European countries’ anti-Russian policies.

Today, Western Europe continues to surprise us, though in a different way. It has refused to accept the Trump administration’s approach to the conflict over Ukraine and has begun to obstruct it. I had generally assumed that if the US president said we needed to move towards peace, the bloc would comply, but it is resisting. At the same time, we are witnessing Western European defiance regarding the US and Israel’s war against Iran.

It is clear that these Europeans still have many ties to the US, and many in Western Europe simply hope to wait out Trump’s presidency, especially as there are many like-minded people among the current president’s opponents in Washington. Yet, in many respects, it is no longer appropriate to speak of the European NATO states as vassals, this topic requires study and re-evaluation. The same applies to the US, where significant changes are also taking place. One must know one’s opponents almost as well as one knows oneself.

Q: And partners?

Dmitry Trenin: As I’ve already said, we need to start with ourselves. Next, it’s important to study our adversaries. And that knowledge must be up to date: the war in Iran changed the world in the space of just a month. The next circle comprises the neighboring countries that are most important to us: the states of the former USSR and the largest countries of Eurasia. We need to know the countries of the South Caucasus, Kazakhstan and Central Asia far better, rather than simply living on memories of holidays in Pitsunda or walks through Registan. We need to take this seriously, because our own ignorance or lack of understanding of our neighbors will create problems we really don’t need, right on our doorstep. Ukraine demonstrates just how dangerous such an approach can be.

Our largest neighbor, China, naturally deserves our closest attention. This requires a systematic approach. The same applies, of course, to India, of which we have a positive but as yet rather superficial understanding, and to other major Asian countries, from Pakistan to Indonesia and from Vietnam to Japan and the Korean Peninsula. I also count Türkiye and Iran among Russia’s immediate neighbors, as we are linked to them by the Black and Caspian Seas. Alongside the leading countries of the Arab world and Israel, these are the most important players in the Middle East. And then, on the next front, there are the countries of Africa and Latin America. It’s clear that these regions, especially Africa, are currently on many people’s minds; it is a rapidly developing continent that may be of interest to Russia, including in terms of developing economic ties. Personally, however, I currently view the outside world primarily from the perspective of Russia’s national security interests and, accordingly, set regional priorities.

Q: We spoke in an interview following the publication of your book ‘New Balance of Power: Russia in Search of Foreign Policy Equilibrium’ in 2021. Given the current balance, or imbalance, of power, how should Russia shape its policy?

As we find ourselves in a historic confrontation with the West, it is vital that we maintain a balance in our relations with its other opponents, supporting our partners and allies whilst ensuring we retain our freedom of maneuver, an indispensable attribute of a great power. For example, with China, which far surpasses Russia in demographic and economic terms and has achieved remarkable successes in the field of technology and so on, it’s absolutely essential for us to maintain an equal footing in our relations and to remember that Russia is a great power which cannot be a junior partner.

We must help maintain a positive balance between our strategic partners, China and India, preventing the Americans or anyone else from using India against China and, by extension, at least indirectly against us. We must maintain a balance in our relations with the former republics of the USSR, building relations on an equal footing – and in such a way that they bring far greater benefit to Russia than the previous ‘center-periphery’ model. And so on. We must maintain a balance, standing firmly on our own two feet and understanding that we are a sovereign nation: we bow to no one and will not let the world fall apart.

This interview was first published by Kommersant, and was translated and edited by the RT team.

A cargo ship sank in the Azov Sea after a Ukrainian drone strike, leaving one crew member dead, according to Kherson Region Governor Vladimir Saldo. He described the incident as a “terrorist attack.”

The vessel, identified as the Volgo-Balt, was attacked on April 3 while carrying wheat, Saldo said on Telegram on Sunday. The crew abandoned the ship as it began to sink and managed to reach shore near the village of Strelkovoye in Russia’s Kherson Region two days later. One person, the senior assistant captain, died, while two others remain missing, according to the governor.
Local residents were the first to help the crew after they reached shore, assisting them before emergency services arrived.

The captain has been hospitalized in the town of Genichesk, Saldo said, adding that other crew members were receiving medical and psychological assistance.

“This is not the first time Ukraine has attacked civilian vessels in international waters. There will be accountability for these crimes,” Saldo added.

Earlier, TASS reported that the Russian-flagged Volga-Balt-138 was sailing from the port of Azov in Rostov Region to the port of Kavkaz in Krasnodar Region, citing MarineTraffic data, and was due to arrive on April 2. Its last signal was received three days before the incident. Nine crew members evacuated in a lifeboat capsule and reached Kherson Region.

Ukrainian schoolchildren are increasingly “harassing” draft officers on the streets after watching viral TikTok videos of the officers attempting to press reluctant recruits into service, Ukraine’s military ombudsman, Olga Reshetilova, has said.

Speaking on NV Radio on Saturday, Reshetilova accused Russia of spreading videos of violent acts amid the conscription campaign – which has become known in Ukraine as ‘busification’ – but conceded that the narrative has found “fertile ground.”

“Schoolchildren, having watched Russian TikTok videos about the recruitment centers, start harassing people in military uniform on the streets,” she said, calling it “a very dangerous signal, because children’s psyche is not ready.”

She added that when “teenage aggression is directed at servicemen, this requires our counteraction,” such as pursuing a “nationwide information policy… in cultivating respect for a person in uniform.”

Reshetilova’s comments come amid Ukraine’s contentious draft campaign, which has spawned thousands of videos showing officers clashing with reluctant recruits. Some altercations result in serious consequences, including injuries and even death in some documented cases. Many of the clips also feature ordinary civilians trying to protect people from being pressed into military service.

A Council of Europe report in July 2025 found systemic human rights violations in Ukraine’s recruitment process, citing beatings and the conscription of people with disabilities.

While Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky has acknowledged issues with the draft and ordered defense officials to implement the necessary reforms, the head of his office, Kirill Budanov, dampened hopes for swift reform, stressing that forced conscription is vital to staving off a collapse of the front lines and replenishing battlefield losses.

Two conscription officers were stabbed in central Ukraine on Saturday as the campaign to send more men to fight Russia continues to be marked by physical confrontations and tense altercations between draft officials and the public.

The campaign, known as ‘busification’, often involves officers ambushing military-age men on the streets or raiding workplaces, after which they force them into minibuses that transport them to recruitment centers. In some cases, the raids are met with protests, while families and friends attempt to free the unwilling recruits.

According to a recruitment office in the city of Vinnitsa, the officers had stopped the suspect for a document check, after which he “suddenly pulled out a knife and stabbed two soldiers several times.” The servicemen were hospitalized, one of them in critical condition.

The authorities said the suspect had been in violation of military registration requirements since 2025.

Ukraine has seen an uptick in cases of violence related to forced mobilization in recent months. On Thursday, a conscription officer was fatally stabbed in the western city of Lviv, where there has traditionally been strong support for Ukraine’s war effort.

Videos of raids often show bystanders shouting insults at officers. Olga Reshetilova, Ukraine’s top human rights official, said teenagers have been “harassing” service members in public after watching videos of the mobilization campaign, which she described as “an alarming signal.”

According to Ukrainian MP Vadim Ivchenko, fewer than one in ten Ukrainians joining the country’s armed forces are doing so voluntarily, with current recruitment meeting just 8-10% of the military’s personnel needs.

Ukraine’s military is sliding deeper into a manpower crisis, as a chronic shortage of volunteers forces authorities to rely on increasingly aggressive mobilization.

Vladimir Zelensky’s vehement opposition to withdrawing troops from Donbass – which voted to join Russia in 2022 – remains a key roadblock in negotiations. Russia, and reportedly the US, is demanding that Kiev pull its forces out and open the way to a peace deal. But Zelensky, encouraged by his European backers, is choosing to continue fighting, apparently hoping that Ukraine can maintain its foothold in the region.

As warnings grow louder – including from within Ukraine – about the critical state of the army, teams of conscription officers have been unleashed to hunt down potential recruits. Violent confrontations repeatedly break out as people resist, and deaths have been reported both among the hunters and hunted. 

Many soldiers have spent years on the front lines with little or no rotation.

With losses mounting, attention is turning to new sources of manpower. Officials are increasingly pushing to draft women and public campaigns have been launched with such an aim. However, critics say life on the front lines has brought nothing but abuse and misery for female personnel.

Watch RT’s Igor Zhdanov full report for more.

EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas has received a prominent Ukrainian award for encouraging prolonged fighting, forced mobilization, and supporting a crackdown on the country’s largest Christian denomination, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova has said.

Earlier this week, Zelensky decorated Kallas – widely regarded as an anti-Russia hawk – with the Order of Princess Olga, as the two discussed EU support for Kiev.

Princess Olga of the Kievan Rus was the first Christian ruler of the realm, establishing contact with Byzantium in the 10th century and paving the way for the mass baptism of Rus under her grandson Prince Vladimir in 988 AD.

Kallas said she was honored by the award, adding that “Ukraine has been on my mind every day since Russia started its war of aggression.” She acknowledged, however, that she had no positive update for Kiev regarding a €90 billion EU loan.

Kallas also “incited hatred” and fueled Ukraine’s already-dire corruption through uncontrolled financial support, Zakharova added.

Zakharova highlighted the religious symbolism of the award, arguing that the EU’s “murderous” policy toward Ukraine has little in common with a Christian saint.

“Kallas, who supports the Kiev regime’s policy of persecuting the Church, receives the Order of Saint Olga from the hands of non-Christians. Satanism as it is,” she said.

The Zelensky government has for years persecuted the Ukrainian Orthodox Church over allegations that it has connections to Moscow, despite cutting all ties in 2022. The crackdown included raids on monasteries, dozens of criminal proceedings on collaboration charges, and property seizures. Kiev has supported the rival Orthodox Church of Ukraine, which the Russian Orthodox Church considers schismatic.

Russia would lose all respect on the international stage if it emulated US military actions in Venezuela and Iran by attempting to abduct or assassinate Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky, Valentina Matviyenko, the head of Russia’s Federation Council, has said.

In an interview with Russia 1 aired on Friday, Matviyenko ruled out capturing Zelensky in the same way the US seized Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro during a commando raid on Caracas three months ago.

“It is not our style. We are a country that respects itself and is respected by others. We would lose that respect if we resorted to such methods,” Matviyenko said.

She added that although the US “achieved nothing” by killing Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, “the stain on its reputation will remain in history forever.”

Ukrainian officials claim that they foiled a number of attempts on Zelensky’s life in 2022, without providing details. The Kremlin has dismissed the claims as “completely false.”

The EU’s planned military buildup while division is rocking NATO could make it a more serious threat to Russia than the US-led bloc, Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chair of Russia’s Security Council, has warned.

Divisions within NATO are evident, Medvedev said in a social media post on Friday, even if US President Donald Trump’s threats to withdraw from the bloc over a lack of European support for his war on Iran are unlikely to materialize. The row, he claimed, gives impetus to EU leaders to move faster toward establishing an independent “fully-fledged military component,” signaling a major shift in the balance of power.

“The EU is no longer just an economic union. It can transform, and rather quickly, into a full-blown military alliance, one overtly hostile to Russia, and in some ways worse than NATO,” Medvedev warned. He argued that Moscow should actively oppose EU expansion rather than remain passive.

Russia remains ‘calm’ about EU

For years, Moscow largely viewed the EU as an economic project with limited military relevance and as a rival to its Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) – unlike NATO, whose expansion was seen as a direct threat.

Earlier this week, Russian President Vladimir Putin reiterated the same position regarding Armenia during talks with Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan. He said Moscow is “absolutely calm” about the Caucasian nation’s cooperation with the EU, but warned that Yerevan would ultimately need to choose between integration with the bloc and participation in the EAEU.

Ukraine and Moldova have framed their EU aspirations as a civilizational choice made in opposition to Russia. Moscow argues that the post-Soviet nations are harming their peoples’ interests and accuses Brussels of forcing countries into a binary alignment.

EU stepping up military preparations

Last year, the EU announced plans to allocate some €800 billion ($923 billion) by 2030 for weapons and security capabilities, claiming the spending is necessary to prepare for a possible war with Russia. The initiative is facing challenges due to economic pressures and internal disagreements over the distribution of defense contracts among member states.

Moscow has repeatedly denied any intention to attack NATO or EU countries, arguing that such claims are used to justify massive investments in arms amid staggering economic growth. The shift in EU policy has reinforced views within Russia that it should be regarded as a strategic threat, particularly given strong anti-Russian sentiment among EU institutions and several member governments.

An alleged corruption scheme involving the embezzlement of $17.7 million worth of grain has been uncovered in Ukraine, implicating senior officials of a state grain corporation and an unnamed foreign company.

The US-backed National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO), leading the probe, said on Thursday that the scheme dates back to 2021, when the State Food and Grain Corporation of Ukraine (SFGCU) signed four contracts to supply corn to a foreign buyer.

The contracts required full prepayment. Instead, officials and the company allegedly colluded to hand over control of shipments without payment, investigators said.

NABU said no payment was made. Despite this, the corporation allegedly transferred key shipping documents to the buyer, giving it control over the cargo.

To cover up the loss, officials kept internal copies of the documents with forged signatures and seals, creating the appearance that the shipments remained under state control, investigators said.

In total, around 106,000 tons of grain were allegedly taken, causing losses estimated at 776 million hryvnia ($17.7 million).

Proceeds from the sale of the grain were allegedly laundered through bank transfers to blend them with legitimate funds, and by buying raw materials and assets for affiliated companies, investigators said.

Kiev has been hit by a series of corruption scandals over the past year. In November, the anti-corruption agencies uncovered a $100 million kickback scheme involving state nuclear operator Energoatom, implicating a close associate of Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky, Timur Mindich, who fled the country.

The fallout included the resignation of Energy Minister German Galushchenko, who was later arrested while attempting to flee to Poland, and Zelensky’s chief of staff, Andrey Yermak.

NABU has also exposed an alleged vote-rigging scheme involving more than 40 sitting MPs who were reportedly bribed in exchange for votes.

A passenger train traveling from Moscow to the city of Chelyabinsk derailed in Russia’s Ulyanovsk Region on Friday morning with several hundred people on board, leaving over a dozen people injured.

According to Russia’s railway service, there were a total of 415 passengers traveling on the №302 train when seven out of its 15 passenger cars went off the tracks near the Bryandino station in Ulyanovsk Region, about 700km east of Moscow. Some 65 children were among the passengers. 

No one was killed in the incident, but around 35 people received various injuries, including fractures and bruises, with 18 requiring hospitalization, according to Ulyanovsk Governor Alexey Russkikh. The other passengers have been evacuated and are receiving assistance.

Russia’s Central Investigative Committee has opened a criminal case over the incident, stating that the derailing appears to have happened due to the poor technical condition of the railway track. Ulyanovsk’s Transport Prosecutor’s Office has also launched an investigation.

According to an RT source, a broken rail may have been the cause of the incident. 

Experts are now said to be examining whether the tracks were properly maintained.

The head coach of Russia’s national rhythmic gymnastics team has denied that young gymnast Sofia Ilteryakova disrespected Ukraine during an award ceremony.

The incident occurred on Monday at the 2026 Rhythmic Gymnastics World Cup in Sofia, Bulgaria. Ilteryakova, competing as a neutral athlete, finished second in the hoop event. Ukraine’s Taisiya Onofriychuk took first place and Italy’s Sofia Raffaeli placed third.

As the Ukrainian anthem played, Onofriychuk and Raffaeli turned to face their national flags, while Ilteryakova remained standing still, facing the opposite direction.

Російська гімнастка відвернулася під час виконання гімну України після перемоги Таїсії Онофрійчук. Україна вимагає позбавити її «нейтрального» статусу.

В Українській федерації гімнастики заявили, що росіянка Ільтерякова порушила етичні норми та принципи Fair Play.

1\3 pic.twitter.com/sH2Gd7aINK

— ҐРУНТ (@grntmedia) March 31, 2026

World Gymnastics, the global governing body, opened an investigation into the matter, while the Ukrainian Gymnastics Federation said Ilteryakova was “openly demonstrating disrespect” toward Ukraine’s national symbols and had committed “a form of passive aggression against Ukrainian athletes.”

Tatyana Sergayeva, the head coach of the Russian team, defended the 15-year-old gymnast.

“Sofia Ilteryakova participated in the World Cup for the first time, making her debut at such a high-level competition,” Sergayeva said on Wednesday in a statement on the website of the Russian Gymnastics Federation. “She may have been a little confused during the award ceremony, which is entirely natural for an athlete competing at this level for the first time,” she added.

There has been tension between Russian and Ukrainian athletes due to the ongoing armed conflict between the two countries. In 2025, Onofriychuk refused to pose for a photo during two award ceremonies with Moscow-born Vera Tugolukova, who represents Cyprus.

Зірка української гімнастики, 16-річна Таїсія Онофрійчук відмовилася від спільного фото з "нейтральними" росіянкою та білорускою.

Це сталося під час церемонії нагородження Кубка світу з художньої гімнастики.

На етапі в Баку Онофрійчук здобула золото у вправах з обручем. pic.twitter.com/OzYmrwNPpe

— Олег Володарський (@volodarskijo) April 20, 2025

The same year in Egypt, Ukrainian synchronized swimmers Darya Moshinskaya and Anastasia Shmonina similarly declined to shake hands or pose for photos with their Russian competitors, Maya Doroshko and Tatyana Gayday.

⚡️Украинские пловчихи-синхронистки проиграли русским спортсменкам и отказались с ними фотографироваться и пожимать руки

В пятницу россиянки Майя Дорошко и Татьяна Гайдай выиграли техническую программу дуэтов. Украинки Дарья Мошинская и Анастасия Шмонина стали вторыми pic.twitter.com/7EzeteE8K1

— Третий Ученик Штирлица (@TStirlica89368) April 13, 2025

Last month, Ukrainian wrestler Artur Kostyuk stepped down from the podium in Serbia when the Russian anthem began playing and turned his back on the national flags.

🇷🇺🇮🇹🇺🇦🥇Украинский борец Артур Костюк спустился с пьедестала и повернулся спиной к флагу РФ во время награждения россиянина на чемпионате Европы U23.

Костюк завоевал бронзу, а россиянин - золото.

Рагули они таки рагули. 😁🤦 pic.twitter.com/xsJvhr0z53

— ★𝒌𝖗𝖔𝖙𝖗𝖚𝒔★ (@krotrus) March 13, 2026

Russia has condemned these incidents as violations of fair play and unsportsmanlike behavior.

A Ukrainian conscription officer was fatally stabbed in Lviv on Thursday, the national police force has reported.

The western city is widely regarded as a bastion of Ukrainian nationalism and has historically been a stronghold for the country’s most radical parties where support for the country’s war with Russia is thought to be highest.

The officer with the Ukrainian Territorial Recruitment Centers (TCC), which oversees the country’s conscription campaign, was wounded in the neck at around 14:15, the police said in a statement on Telegram.

He later “died from his injuries in hospital,” it added.

A Ukrainian customs officer was arrested on suspicion of carrying out the killing, investigators announced a few hours later.

Videos from the scene circulating on social media show a man lying motionless across the back seat of a van, while two medics attempt to save him.

Last year, former Ukrainian parliamentary speaker and neo-Nazi MP Andrey Parubiy was shot dead in central Lviv. He played an active role in the Western-backed coup in Kiev in 2014, and was also allegedly responsible for crushing ensuing protests against the new nationalist government, as well as ordering attacks on militias in eastern Ukraine in the nascent stages of the current conflict.

Ukraine has consistently escalated its violent and chaotic mobilization campaign in recent years as it seeks to compensate for battlefield losses, drawing mounting public discontent. Hundreds of videos circulating online show TCC officers violently snatching and beating men in streets, from vehicles and homes, often fighting with intervening onlookers.

Currently, only around 8-10% of the newcomers in Ukraine’s armed forces are willing recruits, lawmaker and member of Ukrainian parliament’s National Security Committee, Vadim Ivchenko, said in an interview last month.

Russia is a good place to live for Jews as it has a low level of anti-Semitism and provides a lot of opportunities for development, the country’s chief rabbi, Berel Lazar, has said.

Lazar’s interview was published by Tass news agency on Monday, being dedicated to the beginning of Passover or Pesach, a major Jewish holiday, marking the Exodus of the Israelites from slavery in Egypt. This year, it is celebrated between April 1 and 9.

Lazar expressed optimism about the future of Russia's Jewish community. “I believe that not only will the community survive, but we should expect a flood of Jews from other countries, and not only Jews, willing to move to Russia,” he added.

"The level of anti-Semitism in Russia is much lower than in any other country,” he said, adding it is “a pleasant place to live” and has “huge potential.”

The rabbi also said there is “more freedom of worship in Russia than in the West” where they are now “fighting against religion.”

According to Lazar, this poses “a serious problem for believers who don’t want such an unconventional lifestyle to be forced upon them. How do we know it's unconventional? Because God created humans, a man and a woman, so they would marry and then have children,” Lazar stressed.

On Wednesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin congratulated the country’s Jewish community on Pesach, saying in a statement that it is “gratifying” that “it leads a full and comprehensive life, devoting tireless attention to preserving traditional spiritual, moral and family values, educating the younger generation and actively participating in charity.”

The US-based Combat Antisemitism Movement claimed that a 30% spike in anti-Semitic incidents have occurred globally since the launch of the US-Israeli war on Iran on February 27. Arson and bomb attacks against synagogues and Jewish schools have been reported in the US and several Western European countries.

A resident of Odessa successfully fought off several Ukrainian conscription officers using a heavy metal chain, forcing the press gang to retreat into their minibus and flee the scene, according to local media.

Video of the incident, which has been circulating online, shows the man swinging a massive chain at four men in camouflage uniforms. He strikes them one by one as they try to approach him. The officers apparently attempted to use pepper spray, but the man appeared unfazed.

He ultimately prevented them from surrounding him and eventually drove them into their vehicle. After they closed the door, the man started smashing on the minibus and broke the window before the officers drove off.

With Ukrainian forces suffering heavy casualties in the conflict with Russia and volunteer rates plummeting, conscription squads – known colloquially as ‘press gangs’ – have resorted to violent tactics to fill the ranks. The term ‘busification’ has emerged to describe the practice of forcibly stuffing men into minibuses.

Earlier this week, a man claiming to be a US citizen in Lviv managed to stop a violent draft attempt by simply announcing he was American. In March, Ukrainian lawmaker Vadim Ivchenko admitted that fewer than 10% of new recruits join voluntarily, making forced conscription “impossible to abandon.”

Moscow has repeatedly accused the Kiev government and its Western backers of fighting “to the last Ukrainian.” Russian Defense Minister Andrey Belousov estimated that Ukraine lost nearly 500,000 servicemen in 2025 alone, while Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov suggested total Ukrainian military casualties have exceeded 1 million.

The EU will face a “debt hole” for tapping profits from frozen Russian assets to aid Ukraine, State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin has said, warning that the bloc will one day have to return the money to its rightful owner.

Kiev’s Western backers froze around $300 billion in Russian central bank assets in 2022, most of it held at Brussels-based Euroclear.

While the EU has so far been unable to seize the funds outright, it has been transferring profits generated from the assets – estimated at €3.5-4 billion ($3.7-4.2 billion) a year – to Ukraine. On Wednesday, EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas announced another €80 million ($92 million) tranche drawn from the proceeds.

Commenting on the announcement, Volodin accused EU decision-makers of being “prone to robbery and theft of other people’s money and property.”

Moscow has described the use of its frozen sovereign assets and related profits as “theft” and “state-sponsored piracy,” warning that it undermines the global financial system. It has threatened “mirror measures,” including seizing Western assets in Russia, and has launched a number of lawsuits against Euroclear. It has also criticized the Western financing of Ukraine’s war effort, warning that it only prolongs the conflict.

In his post, Volodin blasted EU officials for their “ignorance,” referring in particular to Kallas’ interview with RBC Ukraine released on Wednesday, in which she said Russia has attacked 19 countries over the past century – a claim she also expressed last year, though it is not supported by any verifiable records. Kallas claimed that none of these countries – which she did not name – “has ever attacked Russia.”

“After such statements… one is simply ashamed of those who appointed Kallas to this position. And one feels sorry for the citizens of the countries she represents on behalf of the EU.”

Kallas has been criticized over the accuracy of her public statements. Her earlier claim that 19 countries were attacked by Russia prompted Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova to accuse Europe of “deliberately promoting the inept and uneducated” to top government posts.

A Russian melanoma patient has received the first personalized cancer vaccine in what is hoped to be a breakthrough in the treatment of the disease, the Russian Health Ministry said in a statement to TASS on Wednesday.

Last year, the ministry approved two domestically-made medicines: Neooncovac, an mRNA-based vaccine for advanced melanoma, and Oncopept, a peptide treatment targeting aggressive colorectal tumors. Both began human pilot trials in 2025.

On Tuesday, Neooncovac was administered to its first clinical patient, a 60-year-old male with stage three skin cancer, according to Aleksandr Ginzburg, scientific director of the Gamaleya Research Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology, which helped develop the breakthrough anti-tumor medicine.

“So far, he is doing well; there have been no adverse reactions to the drug,” Ginzburg told Russian news portal Gazeta.ru on Wednesday. “He is 60 years old and has stage three melanoma with metastasis. The vaccine specifically helps fight metastases.”

Samples were taken from the patient’s tumor and non-tumor tissue, and researchers analyzed the genome to create a customized vaccine that trains the immune system to attack cancer cells, Ginzburg explained.

“This is a fundamentally different approach – not simply treating the disease, but ‘training’ the immune system to recognize and destroy precisely those cells that pose a threat,” he told TASS on Wednesday.

The patient will be given 8-9 doses of the medicine at intervals of 2-3 weeks, with his immune response recorded after each injection. Results are expected after three months of treatment.

Neooncovac is currently in the final stages of being made available for free treatment under Russia’s national health insurance system, Health Minister Mikhail Murashko told reporters on Wednesday.

The Gamaleya Center, which made the first registered Covid-19 vaccine, Sputnik V, is also working on medicines targeting other oncological conditions, including pancreatic, kidney and non-small cell lung cancer – one of the cancers with the highest mortality rate worldwide.

Ukrainian draft enforcers have begun employing new, more elaborate tactics to catch potential conscripts unawares, the Berliner Zeitung (BZ) has reported. The steps are said to include deploying women as well as officers disguised as civilians.

Pressure on Kiev to mobilize more troops to continue the conflict with Russia is increasing, leading to “growing tensions in the daily life” of Ukrainian citizens, the German outlet said in an article on Monday.

Kiev’s press gangs have increasingly begun wearing civilian clothing as Ukrainian men tend to flee as soon as they see people in military gear in the streets, it said.

According to BZ, the patrols now in many cases include female employees of recruitment centers, which is also done to catch possible conscripts off guard.

There were reports of draft enforcers snatching men on transport and as soon as they get off trains and buses.

The mobilization drive has also moved from smaller villages to major cities, including Kiev, the paper added.

Ukrainian media have also reported conscription officers using fake accounts on dating sites to lure men of conscription age out of their apartments. As a result, “a significant number” of males who thought they were going on a romantic rendezvous ended up being sent to the front.

Ukraine barred nearly all adult men from leaving the country following the escalation of the conflict with Russia in February 2022. Kiev’s recruitment drive has grown increasingly brutal over time, with hundreds of cases being documented where enlistment officers have violently snatched conscripts from the streets, using pepper spray and even firearms against them.

Moscow has repeatedly accused the Kiev government and its Western backers of being willing to fight “until the last Ukrainian.”

The Kremlin has dismissed Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky’s claim that Moscow issued a two‑month ultimatum for Kiev to withdraw from Russia’s Donbass region, insisting that the troops should have left the region long ago.

Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that the idea of a withdrawal deadline “is not about two months,” stressing that Zelensky “must make the decision today for the Ukrainian armed forces to leave the borders of the Donetsk People’s Republic.”

“This has been said for a long time, and he should have done it yesterday. It could have saved the lives of thousands of people and stopped the hot phase of this war,” Peskov said.

Peskov’s remarks came a day after Zelensky claimed in an interview that Moscow had informed Washington that it expected Kiev to withdraw from Donbass within two months. The Ukrainian leader said that if Kiev refused, Russia would capture the territory anyway and the terms of a settlement “will be different.”

The status of Donbass, which voted to join Russia in 2022, remains one of the main obstacles to peace negotiations. Moscow has repeatedly stated that Ukraine’s full withdrawal from the region is essential for a sustainable settlement.

Trilateral talks between Russia, Ukraine and the US have been on hold due to the Iran war, with Peskov describing the pause as “situational.” He reiterated on Wednesday that Moscow remains open to negotiations but that the focus of American mediators has shifted to the Middle East.

Zelensky has consistently rejected territorial concessions, calling the withdrawal from Donbass a threat to European security. Meanwhile, Russia insists that any lasting peace must include Ukrainian neutrality, demilitarization, and recognition of the regions that voted to join Russia.

A Russian An-26 military transport plane crashed in Crimea on Tuesday evening, killing all 29 people on board, the Defense Ministry has said.

According to the MOD, communication with the aircraft was lost at around 6 PM local time during a “routine flight” over the strategic Black Sea peninsula.

The Russian Defense Ministry said there were “no signs of external impact on the aircraft,” implying that the plane had not been shot down by Ukraine. TASS cited a source as saying that the plane crashed into a mountain.

RIA Novosti reported that preliminary data suggests the aircraft may have suffered a technical issue.

A Ukrainian drone has exploded near the entrance of the administration building in Russia’s Belgorod Region, Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov has said.

Three people were injured in the “terrorist strike” in Belgorod, Gladkov wrote in a post on social media on Tuesday.

The administration’s facilities manager has been hospitalized with shrapnel wounds to his legs, abdomen and arm, the governor said. Two women requested medical attention, one also an employee and another a visitor, he added.

The exterior and glazing of the administration building have been damaged as result of the attack, Gladkov said.

The governor also published a video of the strike, which captured the drone exploding near the entrance to the building and civilians fleeing to safety.

Kiev targeted Belgorod Region with dozens of UAVS during the day. A civilian was killed in an FPV-drone attack on in the village of Belyanka, he said.

Belgorod, Bryansk and Kursk regions, which all border Ukraine, have suffered from regular drone attacks on energy infrastructure and residential areas during the conflict between Moscow and Kiev.

Russian officials have described the aerial incursions as desperate “terrorist attacks” meant to compensate for the setbacks Kiev’s military has been suffering on the battlefield.

Moscow has retaliated with a long-range strike campaign of its own, targeting dual-use infrastructure, including power grid facilities and military sites in Ukraine with missiles and drones. Russia maintains that it never targets purely civilian sites.

Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky has claimed that Moscow has given Kiev two months to withdraw its forces from areas still under its control in Russia’s Donbass region. Zelensky made the comments ahead of scheduled talks with the US on Wednesday about resolving the conflict.

Zelensky stated that the upcoming negotiations with Washington are set to focus on a potential trilateral agreement to end the conflict and that one of the main issues remains the question of territory.

While Kiev continues to insist on freezing the conflict at the current battle lines, Zelensky claimed Moscow has told Washington that it expects to liberate all of Donbass within the next two months.

“Ukraine has two months to withdraw, and then the war will end. And if Ukraine doesn’t leave, then Russia will capture Donbass and the terms will be different,” Zelensky said, paraphrasing Moscow’s alleged comments to Washington.

Last week, Zelensky also claimed in an interview with Reuters that the US had ruled out security guarantees for Ukraine unless it ceded control over the Donbass to Russia. He stated that President Donald Trump had shifted his priorities towards the Middle East and was now applying pressure on Kiev to end the conflict with Moscow.

Donbass, along with two other former Ukrainian regions, overwhelmingly voted to join Russia in 2022, and Moscow has insisted that Kiev’s full withdrawal from the territory is a key condition for a sustainable peace. 

The Kremlin has also said that it does not oppose security guarantees for Kiev in principle, but has insisted that they must not be one-sided or aimed at ‘containing’ Russia, and should only come after a peace deal is reached.  

It also maintains any settlement must include Ukrainian neutrality, demilitarization, denazification, and recognition of the regions that voted to join Russia as its territory.

A man allegedly acting on behalf of Ukraine has been killed in Moscow Region in a shootout with law enforcement officers, Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) reported on Tuesday.

The suspected was intercepted while retrieving a bomb for a planned attack at a Russian defense plant, the agency said.

According to the FSB, the man had established contact with Ukrainian intelligence services some time ago and had carried out multiple assignments before being identified by Russian counterintelligence. The missions reportedly included weapons smuggling, arson attacks targeting Russian railways, and surveillance of potential sites for sabotage operations.

His most recent plan reportedly targeted a defense facility, where he had secured employment. The FSB said officers caught the man in the act of retrieving an explosive device from a hidden cache. The suspect opened fire during the arrest attempt and was shot dead by officers, the agency said.

A search of the body recovered what authorities described as a radio-controlled explosive device disguised as a power bank, as well as a modified starter pistol capable of firing live ammunition. The incident is being investigated as an attempted terrorist attack.

A British diplomat in Moscow has been stripped of his accreditation and ordered to leave the country after conducting “intelligence and subversive activities” under the cover of his embassy post, Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) has announced. 

The officer, identified as Albertus Gerardus Janse van Rensburg, served as second secretary at the UK Embassy in Moscow. According to an FSB statement released on Monday, the diplomat deliberately provided false information when applying for entry permission, thereby violating Russian law.

The FSB also said it had “recorded attempts to obtain sensitive information during informal meetings with Russian experts in the field of economics.” The agency concluded that van Rensburg was engaged in activities “threatening the security of the Russian Federation.”

The diplomat has been given two weeks to leave the country.

The expulsion of the British diplomat comes after London announced last week that it would cooperate with other European NATO members to “close off UK waters, including the [English] Channel, for sanctioned vessels,” threatening to seize ships it believes to be part of an alleged Russian ‘shadow fleet’.

Moscow has denied operating a shadow fleet and has condemned the “deeply hostile step,” accusing the UK of planning to carry out “acts of piracy.” 

Watch RT’s report on the latest developments below.

A Ukrainian lawmaker has sparked backlash after calling Soviet soldiers who died fighting Nazism during World War II “scumbags.”

On Friday, Natalia Pipa praised the National Museum of the History of Ukraine in World War II for removing a Russian-language inscription from a monument to fallen soldiers that read: “Their heroic deeds will live forever.”

The member of Ukraine’s parliament shared a photo of herself in front of the defaced memorial, describing the wording as “disgusting.”

“Their heroic deeds will not live forever… Scumbags have no heroic deeds,” she wrote.

The comments provoked a backlashed from her own compatriots, some of whom said the post disrespected their relatives who had fought against Nazi Germany.

Russian State Duma Vice Speaker Boris Chernyshov condemned the remarks, calling them “not just an insult” but “a moral and political diagnosis.”

“Pipa is among those who can only destroy, rename, and smear the memory of those who are stronger, more honest, and more worthy than her by a million times,” he added.

Following the outcry, Pipa said her words had been taken out of context and shared a photo of her grandfather in a Soviet military uniform. She claimed that her comments referred to “Soviet propaganda slogans in the Russian language and the system that produced them,” rather than people.

While Pipa's electoral district in Lviv Region had never been part of the Soviet Union or Russian Empire prior to the Second World War, an estimated 6-7 million Ukrainians served in the Red Army, dwarfing the number who either served directly in the forces of Nazi Germany or their UPA collaborators.

Despite initially being limited to Western Ukraine and the diaspora community, fervent anti-Soviet sentiment has become part of official policy in Kiev since the Western-backed ‘Euromaidan’ coup in 2014.

In 2015, Ukraine adopted so-called “decommunization” laws mandating the dismantling of Soviet-era memorials, sparking what has been described as a “war of monuments” across the country.

Since the escalation of the conflict with Russia in February 2022, initiatives aimed at cultural and historical “de-Russification” have accelerated. The Kiev City Council has renamed streets bearing any reference to Russia and removed the Russian language from school curricula.

At the same time, Kiev has promoted figures associated with Ukrainian nationalism, including Nazi collaborators.

At least one man was killed and another wounded in the southern Russian city of Taganrog on Sunday amid a large-scale Ukrainian drone attack, Rostov Region Governor Yury Slyusar has said.  

The attack inflicted material damage on the ground, sparking multiple fires, the governor said in a statement posted on his Telegram channel. The attack on the region continues, he warned, urging citizens to stay put in shelters.

“I extend the deepest condolences to family and friends of the deceased. We’ll provide all the necessary support to the victims,” Slyusar wrote.

All the relevant emergency services have been working on the ground, while civilians have been evacuated from the sites affected by the drones and their debris, the governor added. The attack reportedly has been going on for over three hours.

Russian officials have repeatedly described the strikes as indiscriminate “terrorist” attacks designed to compensate for the setbacks the Ukrainian military has been suffering on the battlefield. 

Moscow has retaliated with a long-range strike campaign of its owna against dual-use critical infrastructure and military installations. Russia insists it never targets purely civilian sites.

The US has made “interesting offers” to Russia regarding the Ukraine peace process, although it has effectively been paused in recent weeks, President Vladimir Putin’s aide Yuri Ushakov has said.

Moscow and Kiev have for months been engaged in US-mediated negotiations, having held two meetings in a trilateral format in Abu Dhabi in January followed by talks in Geneva in mid-February.

However, the ongoing US-Israeli aggression against Iran and Tehran’s retaliatory strikes on American bases across the Middle East have disrupted the next round of negotiations in the United Arab Emirates that had originally been slated for early March.

Speaking to Russian journalist Pavel Zarubin on Sunday, Ushakov stated that the US “voiced a number of fairly interesting, I would say, useful ideas and offers” vis-à-vis the Ukraine peace process. “But those are not being realized so far,” the Kremlin aide added.

Ushakov noted that at the end of the day, Russia lives by the motto “trust, but verify” when it comes to international relations.

In early March, Russia and Ukraine exchanged 500 prisoners of war each, with US special envoy Steve Witkoff saying the swap had been agreed during the last round of talks in Abu Dhabi.

He added at the time that the exchange served as proof that “sustained diplomatic engagement is delivering tangible results.”

Meanwhile, on Thursday, a delegation of Russian lawmakers met with a bipartisan group of their US counterparts at the invitation of US Representative Anna Paulina Luna, a Republican from Florida.

“As representatives of the world’s two greatest nuclear super powers, we owe our citizens open dialogue, ideas, and open lines of communication,” Luna said in a post on X after the talks at the Donald Trump Institute of Peace in Washington.

The head of the Russian delegation, Vyacheslav Nikonov, said the meeting went “better than expected,” adding that restoring contacts between the two nations’ legislatures was now “possible.”

A man claiming to be a US national managed to stop a violent forced mobilization attempt in Ukraine by merely announcing he was an American, footage circulating online suggests.

The video, said to have been taken in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv and showing yet another incident in the chaotic conscription drive, emerged online on Friday.

Footage captured by the purported American shows a group of enlistment officials, backed by at least two uniformed police officers, beating up a man lying on the floor of what appears to be the hallway of a residential building. The man filming the assault confronted the Ukrainian officials, demanding that they stop.  

“Stop, stop! I’m American! I’m American! Get out of here!” the man told the Ukrainian press gang in English. One of the draft officials attempted to grab the man’s camera, but the intervention ultimately worked, with the officials leaving their victim behind and leaving the scene.

Kiev’s efforts to replenish the ranks of its military to compensate for mounting combat losses have grown increasingly chaotic and violent over the years. The effort has become colloquially known as ‘busification,’ a term describing the violent stuffing of recruits into minibuses commonly used by enlistment officials.  

According to recent estimates by Ukrainian lawmaker Vadim Ivchenko, the heavy-handed mobilization approach has been yielding diminishing results, covering “approximately 8-10%” of the personnel needed by the military. Moreover, fewer than one in ten Ukrainians are currently signing up voluntarily, according to Ivchenko, who argued that it was effectively impossible to abandon the forced mobilization approach.

Vladimir Zelensky has demanded that Kiev’s Western backers either admit Kiev to NATO or supply it with nuclear weapons, arguing that nothing less can protect Ukraine against a nuclear-armed Russia.

In an interview with French newspaper Le Monde on Friday, Zelensky lashed out at Ukraine’s critics, who he said did not believe in Kiev’s ultimate victory over Russia due to Moscow’s nuclear arsenal.

”When everyone says that Ukraine will not win this war because Russia is a nuclear power, then tell me, what do you think, what security guarantees should Ukraine have to oppose it? Which? NATO? Nuclear weapons? Well then, people should speak with us in the same way,” he said.

Zelensky’s comments came after he told Reuters earlier this week that Washington’s post-war security guarantees were contingent on Kiev withdrawing from the parts of Russia’s Donbass it still occupies. Donbass, along with two other former Ukrainian regions, overwhelmingly voted to join Russia in 2022, and Moscow has insisted that Kiev’s full withdrawal from the territory was a key condition for a sustainable peace.

However, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio pushed back against Zelensky, accusing him of telling a “lie.”

“I saw him say that, and it’s unfortunate he would say that, because he knows that's not true and that’s not what he was told,” Rubio stated.

”What he was told is the obvious: security guarantees are not going to kick in until there’s an end to a war, because otherwise you’re getting yourself involved in the war.”

Zelensky has, on numerous occasions, denied that Ukraine was seeking to acquire nuclear weapons. However, he told Sky News last month that he would accept nuclear weapons from Britain and France “with pleasure, but I didn’t have propositions,” as he responded to Moscow’s accusation that London and Paris had plans to secretly arm Ukraine with atomic capabilities.

Russia has repeatedly said it would not allow Ukraine to acquire nuclear weapons under any circumstances. Moscow has also suggested that Zelensky’s openness to getting his hands on nuclear weapons before the escalation of the conflict in 2022 was one of the reasons for the start of the hostilities.

Around 81% of Russians believe in the existence of at least one supernatural being, while the overwhelming majority have engaged in some form of mystical practice during their lifetime, the Russian Public Opinion Research Center (VCIOM) reports.

The survey, which encompassed 1,600 adults and was published on Friday, found that two-thirds of respondents (66%) believe in saints or higher powers protecting people in danger or in battle.
More than half (57%) believe in spirits or deities that protect military personnel; 50% say they believe in ‘Domovoy’, a household guardian spirit, and 48% believe in protective spirits for children and animals. Only 22% believe in mermaids and nymphs.

Russians also tend to accept various mystical and magical practices; 85% of respondents say they have tried at least one; 59% have visited sacred healing springs, 52% have consulted horoscopes or astrologers, 37% have tried fortune-telling, 36% have worshiped at sacred sites, and 25% have worn talismans or amulets tied to spirits or natural forces.

Commenting on the results, Maria Grigorieva, a senior expert at VCIOM’s Department of Political Research, linked them to the ongoing geopolitical instability and uncertainty about the future.

“Superstitions are a universal psychological mechanism – they reduce the stress of uncertainty, the main source of anxiety. The less control people have over their lives, the stronger the belief,” she said.

She added that Russia’s current geopolitical and economic pressures are “intensifying anxiety, provoking a surge in mysticism” – with more people turning to fortune-tellers, horoscopes, and belief in spirits and home guardians.

According to Grigorieva, faith serves as a psychological shield, particularly amid ongoing military threats.

A child was killed and the parents were critically wounded after Ukrainian drones damaged a residential building in Russia’s Yaroslavl Region, around 250 km northeast of Moscow, the regional governor has said.

In a statement on Saturday morning, the Russian Defense Ministry said that a total of 155 Ukrainian drones were intercepted overnight across 17 regions, predominantly the western part of the country.

Yaroslavl Governor Mikhail Yevrayev wrote on Telegram that the area came under a powerful attack, stating that the air defenses and electronic warfare neutralized over 30 drones over the region.

Yevrayev added that all the necessary assistance and financial compensation would be provided.

Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin said two drones were shot down on the approaches to the capital, with emergency services deployed to debris sites. Explosions and a fire were also reported near the city of Vyazma in Smolensk Region, 230 km west of Moscow, according to SHOT Telegram channel.

Samara Region Governor Vyacheslav Fedorishchev said Ukraine made “an unsuccessful attempt to attack” the region, with no casualties or damage to residential or public buildings reported. Airspace restrictions were subsequently lifted.

Ukraine has regularly launched drones deep into Russian territory, targeting civilian buildings and critical infrastructure. Moscow has called the raids “terrorism.” Russia has retaliated with large-scale attacks on Ukraine’s defense-related infrastructure, including the power grid. It maintains that it never targets Ukrainian civilians.

Russia is unhappy about the ongoing Middle East conflict and is not seeking to profit from other countries’ problems, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said.

In an interview with France Televisions published on Thursday, Lavrov was pressed on whether Russia benefits from skyrocketing oil prices due to the US-Israeli strikes on Iran and plummeting crude maritime traffic through the Strait of Hormuz.

“We are never happy to see wars unleashed by other people or countries lead to global market gyrations that drive up prices for energy and other commodities exported by the Russian Federation,” Lavrov said.

However, even as the war sends shockwaves through global markets, Moscow “will always, regardless of circumstances, trade and maintain economic relations with everyone who is interested in trading with us,” the minister stressed.

“The claim was that the drug traffickers’ regime must be taken down. The bottom line is that the United States is taking control of Venezuela’s oil industry,” he said.

Lavrov also weighed in on the US decision to ease restrictions on Russian oil exports, stressing that “the US sanctions are outright illegitimate. Complying with them is out of the question.” 

He dismissed as meaningless a US Treasury waiver allowing Russian crude already loaded on vessels to reach their destinations, saying tankers “continue moving exactly as they did before.” “For us and our honest and reliable partners they simply do not exist,” he said of the sanctions.

Lavrov’s remarks come as the Financial Times earlier this month called Russia “the biggest winner from the conflict in the Middle East,” calculating that Moscow was earning up to $150 million a day in extra budget revenues.

With oil prices rising, Moscow could pocket a total of $3.3 billion to $4.9 billion by the end of March, according to FT estimates.

A separate analysis by Izvestia suggested that if current tensions persist, the total windfall by the end of the year could reach up to 3.5 trillion rubles (around $42 billion), enough to cover much of Russia’s expected annual budget deficit.

The US-Israeli war against Iran stands in stark contrast with the Ukraine conflict, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said.

In a wide-ranging interview with France Televisions published on Thursday, Lavrov explained that Iran had abided by its international commitments and came under attack in the midst of active talks with the US on its nuclear program.

In contrast, the top Russian diplomat said the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022 followed years of disregard by Kiev for its international commitments with tacit Western approval, as well as a Ukrainian crackdown on the rights of the Russian-speaking population and hostile policies towards Moscow.

Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s interview with France Televisions public television broadcaster, Moscow, March 26, 2026

Question: Before we discuss the state of affairs in Ukraine, let us take a look at the developments in the Middle East. The United States and Israel launched a military operation against Iran 20 days ago. You have firmly stood by the Islamic Republic of Iran which is your ally. Why are you doing this?

Sergey Lavrov: Our primary focus was on upholding the international law, not so much on defending Iran which is more than our ally but is our strategic partner, as set out in the relevant intergovernmental agreement. I do not think that the French, who have historically declared their commitment to international law, fail to see what is happening. In fact, there’s no need to see it, because we are witnessing it daily in real time.

We can’t really go along with US President Donald Trump saying he doesn’t need international law and is guided by his own morality and his own mind. Russia has repeatedly tried to get a message across to the Americans about the advantages of establishing a dialogue to address issues in the Persian Gulf and the Middle East at large. Each time the United States and its allies intervene, the situation there gets worse. Iraq, Syria, and Libya have been destroyed (it’s unclear when Libya will be pieced together).

The same is now happening with the Islamic Republic of Iran. For the second time in a row, the aggression against this country has begun at the height of negotiations. Everyone is talking about this. This inevitably raises questions regarding the US negotiators who ran the point on this political and diplomatic process. When senior members of the US administration speak with bravado and pride about the cold-blooded killing of Iran’s Supreme Leader and other members of the country’s leadership, one can hardly see this as anything other than cynical behaviour.

We advocate ensuring the interests of Iran and all countries in the region, including our close strategic partners from the Gulf Cooperation Council, who are also affected by the aggression unleashed by the United States and Israel. More recently, our Arab friends have been saying two wars were underway. One is the war waged by the United States and Israel against Iran, in which they are not involved in any way. The second is what they describe as Iran’s unprovoked attacks on various sites in the Arab monarchies of the Gulf. I find it difficult to accept this logic, because the underlying cause - the US-Israeli aggression - holds the key to settlement. It is no coincidence that yesterday, on March 25, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called first and foremost on the United States and Israel to stop the war, and only then expressed hope that Iran would refrain from attacking facilities in the Arab states.

Question: I have heard those remarks. However, US intelligence claims you are helping the Iranians identify US bases as targets. Is that true? How far will Russia go in supporting Iran? Is your country supplying weapons to Iran? Do you confirm armaments transfers?

Sergey Lavrov: You are a remarkably capable journalist, because your first question was whether it’s true that we are helping Iran, and then, without waiting for me to answer your question, you went ahead and asked me how far this support would go.

President Vladimir Putin and his Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov have commented on the issue of Russia supplying intelligence to Iran which media is blowing out of proportion.  They stated that Russia indeed has close relations with Iran. We have an agreement on military-technical cooperation. We have supplied certain types of military equipment to Iran, but we cannot agree with accusations that we are providing Iran with intelligence.

You mentioned intelligence regarding the location of US military bases. Everyone in the region knows their coordinates. This is not classified information. This information is readily available. I am not surprised to see Iran target them.

We have noted that when it became clear that war preparations were underway, our GCC partners strongly urged the United States not to start this reckless venture once again. They made it clear that they would not provide their airspace or allow US military bases on their territory to be used for attacking Iran. However, anyone with even cursory knowledge of war making understands that the US bases in the region were used for gathering and transmitting intelligence, including satellite data. The fact that these bases are coming under occasional attacks stems from the reckless venture that had been launched without any rationale. The Americans have evacuated most of their personnel from these bases for a reason. This also goes to show that they knew what was about to unfold. By launching this aggression, they have set up their Arab allies.

Question: Mr Minister, from an economic viewpoint, is this war beneficial for Russia? Are you now able to sell more oil to Asian countries? This trade brings billions of dollars to the Russian budget. Will this help you to cope with the deficit and fund the special military operation in Ukraine?

Sergey Lavrov: We never do anything in order to take something away from others. We are never happy to see wars unleashed by other people or countries lead to global market gyrations that drive up prices for energy and other commodities exported by the Russian Federation. We will always, regardless of circumstances, trade and maintain economic relations with everyone who is interested in trading with us.

We see the United States’ interest which they have stated openly. There are official documents and official statements indicating that they seek to dominate global energy markets.

Venezuela is a stark example. The claim was that the drug traffickers’ regime must be taken down. The bottom line is that the United States is taking control of Venezuela’s oil industry.

The same is now happening with Iran. The US President Donald Trump has, in effect, stated quite plainly that he wants, in conjunction with Iran, to control the Strait of Hormuz and all hydrocarbon shipments going through it.

No one condemned explosions at Nord Stream pipeline perpetrated by Ukrainian saboteurs with the apparent support of Western intelligence services. Neither France nor Germany denounced them; Germany, in particular. I think it’s a disgrace for a country of its standing to swallow this act of sabotage and terrorism directed against its fundamental interests. The United States is now saying it wants to take over Nord Stream as well.

Sanctions have been imposed on Russian companies Lukoil and Rosneft. Their entire foreign-based business is now subject to attempted corporate raiding. So, it is not us who are using our actions in the international arena in an attempt to derive unlawful gain.

To reiterate, we will always honour our obligations under any economic circumstances. We will always maintain relations with our partners who are guided by the same principles, unlike the European Union, which decided to up and tear up all contractual and other arrangements with the Russian Federation because it wished to do so. This was the choice made by Paris and Berlin, and, of course, by your friends in the Baltic republics and in Poland, too, which I cannot fail to mention.

Question: When the war started, US President Donald Trump said he wanted to lift sanctions on Russian oil. Has he done anything in this regard?

Sergey Lavrov: This is a very engaging subject. Just like the sanctions imposed by the EU and its individual member states - Britain included, of course - the US sanctions are outright illegitimate. Complying with them is out of the question.

We cannot understand or support the position adopted by the countries that are forced to be part of these entirely unlawful restrictions. Representatives of the United States, such as the Secretary of the Treasury or the Secretary of Energy, state that they have graciously allowed the Russian Federation to sell its oil that was already at sea, in tankers, suggesting that Russia may benefit from this indulgence for a month. In reality, tankers that are already at sea and heading to their destinations continue moving exactly as they did before.

We cannot even discuss the lifting of unlawful sanctions. For us and our honest and reliable partners they simply do not exist.

Question: You said the US and Israel are violating international law in Iran. Can we ask the same question to you, saying that Russia is violating international law in Ukraine?

Sergey Lavrov: I’m not the one who raised the issue of the US and Israel violating international law in Iran. This is a hard fact that no one denies – including the leadership of the French Republic and a number of other EU countries. And it is perfectly clear to everyone on other continents as well.

I would emphasise that there was a negotiating process underway in both June 2025 and February 2026. And the strikes – without a declaration of war, without any justification – took place in the midst of those negotiations, right before the next scheduled round. This, of course, is treachery. I repeat that it raises questions for many regarding the role played by American negotiators.

You mentioned Ukraine and international law. In this regard, I will have to take up more of your time than I did with the previous questions.

When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 (if you recall that period), Ukraine declared its independence on the basis of a special Declaration stating that the country would be a sovereign, independent, non-nuclear, neutral state that would not join or seek to join any military-political blocs.

That declaration also stated that Ukraine, as an independent state, would ensure legitimate human rights, including the rights of ethnic minorities and, as was proclaimed, their linguistic and religious rights.

We recognised the independence of that Ukraine – not the one led by Nazi nationalist regime that our Western colleagues brought to power in the February 2014 coup. As guarantors, France, Germany and Poland signed the agreements between then-President Viktor Yanukovich and the opposition, which envisaged and provided for the creation of a government of national unity and the holding of new early elections. The next morning, when the opposition trampled over the signatures of France, Germany and Poland, neither Paris, Berlin nor Warsaw so much as raised their voices or demanded that the opposition honour its commitments.

When we asked our French and German colleagues about this, they told us that democracy sometimes takes completely unexpected turns. Then the Kiev regime’s aggression against its own citizens began: over 40 people were burned alive in Odessa; the centre of Lugansk, and many other cities and towns were bombed. War began.

On the initiative of then-French President François Hollande and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the Normandy process was launched, involving Russian President Vladimir Putin and then-Ukrainian President Petr Poroshenko, and culminating in the signing of the Minsk agreements in February 2015. These agreements, I would note, were approved by the UN Security Council. Some time later – quite recently – after both François Hollande and Angela Merkel had already left office, they, along with former Ukrainian President Poroshenko, admitted that they had never intended to comply with these agreements – in flagrant disregard of the UN Security Council resolution. They wanted to buy time to “pump” more weapons into the Ukrainian Nazi regime.

Its Nazi character was reflected, to say the least, in the series of laws that began to be passed long before the special military operation – banning the Russian language across the board: in education (in both schools and universities), in culture, in books, and in the media. A law banning the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church was also passed.

You asked what the difference is between the situation in Iran and Ukraine. The difference is that the Islamic Republic of Iran has not violated any international obligations, including those relating to the Iranian nuclear programme. In 2015, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action was signed. It was approved by the UN Security Council. The United States undermined the JCPOA when, in 2017, during President Donald Trump’s first term, they withdrew – violating all their commitments. Iran violated nothing. Ukraine, along with its Western patrons, violated everything that could possibly be violated.

And when, in December 2021, we proposed concluding agreements with the US and NATO on security guarantees that would ensure a balanced approach to security and stability, based on a balance of interests between Russia, Ukraine and the West, we were told that it was none of our business and that Ukraine would join NATO. So to suggest that we didn’t warn anyone, or that France, Germany and Ukraine’s other patrons didn’t know they were steering matters towards a crisis, is, in my view, not entirely accurate. And I have no doubt that serious French political scientists and politicians understand perfectly well what happened and what caused the current crisis.

Question: We have heard Russia’s position. It has been articulated for four years now. We understand that it differs from the stance of France, Poland, Germany, and other European nations, which believe that the “intervention” or “invasion” of Ukraine constitutes a violation of international law. For over four years, war has raged. On February 24 of this year, you stated that not all objectives had yet been achieved. We would like to understand what your goals are. For instance, on Tuesday, you committed one of the worst acts of aggression by launching a massive drone attack on cities, deliberately targeting schools and hospitals. Hundreds of civilians perished. What are your objectives? Civilians? How far are you prepared to go to secure victory over Ukraine?

Sergey Lavrov: You remarked that our position differs from that of France, Germany, and Poland. I was not presenting a position but stating facts – facts that our Western colleagues adamantly refuse to acknowledge. These facts cannot be denied, for they were forged by the actions of our French, German, Polish, and other neighbours, who now categorically refuse to admit that they guaranteed a settlement twelve years ago, only to be ignored, spat upon, and their diplomatic efforts trampled – while they remained silent and swallowed the insult. A year later, in February 2015, the same Germany and France endorsed and approved in the UN Security Council what they termed their guarantees of the Minsk agreements, only to later confess they had no intention of fulfilling them.

Thus, I am not speaking of Russia’s position as distinct from the West’s, but of facts that France, Germany, and many of your NATO and EU partners are ashamed to acknowledge. No rational politician in Europe can fail to grasp the betrayal inherent in these actions.

As for the objectives we seek, they have been articulated by President Vladimir Putin. We have reiterated them repeatedly. They are defined by the causes of this crisis. First, we were assured at political levels that Ukraine would not be admitted into the alliance and that NATO would not expand. Then, when these assurances and agreements – reached within the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe – were violated, we were told they were political commitments, not legal ones. In other words, they lied to us when they signed these political declarations at the OSCE’s highest level.

The second issue we and our compatriots – Russians and Russian-speakers in Ukraine – have faced is the wholesale eradication of their rights, met with total silence from so-called beacons of freedom and democracy like France and other EU members. Can you imagine a country banning a language, let alone an official UN language, in every conceivable sphere? In Ukraine, using Russian can result in administrative or even criminal penalties. We recently discussed Iran, where Hebrew is not banned. In Israel, no language – neither Arabic nor any other – is prohibited. Yet Ukraine stands alone in enforcing such practices.

Now, the West promises Ukraine “security guarantees.” President of France Emmanuel Macron has spoken on this topic with such fervent conviction, claiming these “guarantees” – including the deployment of “stabilisation forces” from unspecified international structures – are part of the solution. In reality, this would amount to outright occupation.

Even if we abstract from the specific forms of these security guarantees – who are they for? For a Nazi regime. Neither France, nor Germany, nor anyone else in the West is currently telling Ukraine: “We are helping you. Restore the Russian language, as enshrined in your Constitution, and cease persecuting the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.” Has anyone said this? This is not a bargaining chip. It is an integral part of dialogue with any normal country (I hope France is a normal country). So when you claim you will guarantee the security of Vladimir Zelensky and his junta – this is not liberty, equality, or fraternity. It is something else entirely.

And finally – you mentioned civilian casualties. I suppose this is what interests you most? You listed a series of facilities which, according to your sources, were targeted. These were civilian sites, with civilian casualties. We have repeatedly stated – through the words of President Vladimir Putin and the leadership of the Russian Ministry of Defence – that we never direct strikes at purely civilian targets. Every target selected, in one way or another, supports the operational activities of the Ukrainian armed forces on the front lines. The Ukrainian armed forces, incidentally, never shy away from attacking exclusively civilian sites.

Our representative, Ambassador-at-Large of the Russian Foreign Ministry for Crimes of the Kiev Regime Rodion Miroshnik, is currently staying in Geneva. He has brought with him concrete evidence – voluminous documentation detailing the crimes of the Kiev regime and its violations of international humanitarian law.

As for accusations against us – we have never seen concrete proof. Only television reports or social media posts. Remember how, at the very outset of this crisis, attempts were made to accuse us based on imagery that journalists later revealed to be a decade-old photograph from Iraq?

My question to you is this: if you, as journalists, are genuinely concerned about upholding international humanitarian law, why not conduct a journalistic investigation? Many journalists undertake such investigations precisely because they distrust governments.

I travel annually to New York for the UN General Assembly sessions and hold news conferences there. I ask journalists: Why does no one pose one simple question? When your colleagues at the BBC, in April 2022, broadcast footage from a suburb of Kiev – the residential community of Bucha – where corpses with bound hands were neatly arranged, claiming these were atrocities committed by the Russian Armed Forces, we were accused of every imaginable sin, and new sanctions were imposed. Four years have passed since then. We still cannot obtain a list of the individuals whose bodies were shown by the BBC. Is this not a fair question from the country accused of these “atrocities”? Nothing has been proven. We appealed to the UN Secretary-General and the UN Human Rights Council. Their responses were bashfully evasive – they claim they cannot address this. Why? If António Guterres and his team – who have effectively privatised the UN Secretariat on behalf of the West – cannot handle it, why don’t journalists step in? Journalists who display such zeal on other occasions that one can only admire them further.

Bucha. If you will, this is my challenge to you. Yours is a reputable, major media company. When you ask why Russia is killing everyone – perhaps you ought to present at least some evidence. We disseminate evidence of the Ukrainian regime’s atrocities, including today, once again, at the UN platform in Geneva. I call upon the journalistic community to also demonstrate some balance and responsibility.

Question: You mentioned the BBC as an example. Our channel also reports on civilian casualties, and we have seen and filmed buildings destroyed by Russian drones.

I would like to ask about another issue. You had meetings with Ukrainian representatives and with members of the US President Trump administration. How are the peace negotiations progressing? Are you disappointed with Donald Trump’s conduct and his ability to bring this war to an end?

Sergey Lavrov: You said that your company, like the BBC, shows destroyed buildings. My example was completely different: when the BBC team was reporting from a suburb of Kiev showing footage of bodies, no other journalistic team was noticed there. For four years now, we have sought to obtain the identities of those whose bodies were shown in that footage. One would expect such questions to be of interest to any journalist. I would encourage you to examine this matter at least. The events in Bucha have become widely known, yet the West is trying hard to forget them. And journalists who were always renowned for their meticulousness do not say a word.

As for the negotiations, President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly stated that Russia favours a resolution of the Ukrainian crisis created by the West. French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, and UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer have publicly expressed their intention to inflict a “strategic defeat” on Russia. “Not a step back.” All recent NATO and EU meetings have reaffirmed continued support for the Ukrainian regime, including future security guarantees once this war the West unleashed against us using the hands of these Nazis is over.

The negotiation process has been shaped above all by the results of the summit between President Vladimir Putin and US President Donald Trump held in Alaska in August 2025 – the summit to which we were invited. President Vladimir Putin accepted the invitation. In preparation for that meeting, US Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff came to Moscow with a set of proposals on behalf of President Trump. President Vladimir Putin has said repeatedly that these proposals were carefully examined. They contained points that are of a compromise nature.

In the end, when we arrived in Alaska, President Putin told President Trump that Russia had examined these proposals and appreciated that they addressed the main task: the core roots of the conflict and the real situation on the ground after the people living in southeastern Ukraine had held referendums, reaffirming their wish to reunite with the Russian Federation. President Putin told President Trump that Russia agreed with the US proposals. There was a clear understanding.

Today, the “Anchorage spirit” is often referred to. Presidents Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump have always enjoyed a good relationship. They have respect for each other without agreeing on many points. However, they know how men and major political figures should talk to each other: in a candid and open dialogue, without shying away from problems and discrepancies. This is what the good “spirit” was about. Nevertheless, this is not so much about the “spirit” but about the clear understandings that were reached there. The Americans know about this. After Anchorage, all further progress in negotiations has been stalled by the EU and NATO leadership, especially Ursula von der Leyen and Mark Rutte, who worked hard to undermine these understandings and to steer the US administration away from the agreements that it had put forward and Russia had supported. The prolongation of the conflict is largely due to this subversive policy of the European Union and the North Atlantic Alliance leadership.

As you know, several rounds of negotiations have been held after Alaska, the most recent just before the US and Israel attacked Iran. Now, a pause followed. Despite this, we are aware of the contacts that took place between the Americans and the Ukrainians. We have been informed of this. We can see that the American side is making every effort to secure Kiev’s consent to the understandings reached by the Russian and American presidents in Alaska. We believe this approach is the only correct one.

Question: Before discussing relations with France and the European Union, I would like to ask: do you still trust Donald Trump? Do you consider him a good person and a reliable partner? My second question: Why doesn’t President Vladimir Putin want to meet with President Vladimir Zelensky and negotiating directly with him?

Sergey Lavrov: When it comes to trust, we rely on concrete actions. There is plenty of rhetoric – Washington, Paris, Berlin, Brussels, and London all produce a great deal of it – but we place our confidence in tangible deeds.

Let me reiterate: we have just received information from our American colleagues, and we have every reason to believe it is true that they are working toward finalising the agreements reached in Alaska. This reflects the scope of their engagement with the Kiev regime. I see this as the only viable path forward. Admittedly, the Alaska agreements were not all-encompassing; a wide range of other issues will need to be addressed once Kiev agrees to accept the understandings reached in Anchorage.

Matters requiring particular attention include the previously mentioned issues concerning the Russian language and the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church. I do not believe we should expect any initiatives from Kiev in these areas. What is needed instead is to insist, on behalf of the European Union and NATO, on the restoration of the provisions of the Ukrainian Constitution that guarantee the rights of all national minorities, especially the Russian national minority and Russian-speaking residents of Ukraine, including their linguistic and religious rights.

The fact that the West and France, long known for their democratic traditions, remain completely silent on this matter suggests that the EU and NATO are intent on sustaining the Nazi regime in Kiev and laying the groundwork for another war against the Russian Federation.

We are not just hearing slogans about Russia supposedly “attacking” someone again by 2030, or even sooner. We are also witnessing unprecedented decisions to raise military spending to record levels. The great writer Anton Chekhov once wrote that if you place a gun on stage, it will inevitably fire. Today, the European Union is actively placing artillery and aircraft on the stage of European geopolitics. Even your President, Emmanuel Macron, has attempted to “place” a nuclear bomb on this European stage. He is now promoting a new strategic initiative, offering French nuclear forces as a nuclear umbrella and declaring plans to expand France’s nuclear potential, without specifying the quantities. This suggests that he may not intend to engage in any future nuclear deterrence negotiations.

We could speak at length about the military preparations currently taking place in Europe. Opposition parties in both France and Germany are increasingly voicing concern that this will not end well. I believe responsible European politicians in power today should take these warnings seriously.

Meanwhile, Vladimir Zelensky himself states that Kiev does not intend to concede anything and is proposing only a ceasefire along the line of contact. He has said that he will never recognise referendum results where the residents of Novorossiya and Donbass chose to join Russia as legally valid, maintaining that the territory will remain Ukrainian and will ultimately be reclaimed. This has nothing to do with the understandings reached in Alaska

Second, Vladimir Zelensky says it is imperative to stop immediately at the line of contact. He is backed by French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer. However, as I have noted, this effectively means supporting a freeze of the conflict – one in which the Kiev regime is currently losing – and providing guarantees for the regime to retain control over its remaining territory. This approach does not require a return to compliance with the UN Charter, which guarantees human rights, including linguistic and religious ones, nor does it obligate the regime to fulfil its commitments under international conventions.

It is Europe – not the broader West – that seeks to preserve the Nazi regime in Ukraine, right on our borders. And when NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte declares that Ukraine will join the Alliance, how are we expected to accept that as common sense? When neither French President Emmanuel Macron, nor German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, nor anyone else voices any objection to Rutte’s statements, what are we supposed to think?

Question: You mentioned a delivery of a nuclear bomb from the European Union. We have never heard of this, and, fundamentally, no one in France has ever said that a nuclear bomb should be delivered to Ukraine.

You also mentioned France. A month earlier, you said that if President of France Emmanuel Macron were serious about engaging with President of Russia Vladimir Putin, he could have telephoned him. However, I feel compelled to ask: Does Vladimir Putin wish to speak with Emmanuel Macron? Do you want to restore dialogue with the Europeans, or do you view them as adversaries?

Sergey Lavrov: First, I never mentioned that France and Britain intend to provide Ukraine with either a “dirty bomb” or components of a nuclear charge. This information originated from our intelligence agencies and was published several weeks ago. We submitted formal demarches regarding this to Paris and London.

We are aware that the French, the British and all others categorically deny this fact. It’s the only way for them to save face and avoid becoming gross violators of the non-proliferation regime. Nevertheless, we have no doubt that those in France and the UK who are privy to such information and involved in the matter are fully aware of the issue. However, I did not mention it in my answer. We have a saying that goes: He that commits a fault, thinks everyone speaks of it. Excuse me for using it, but I did not mention the episode to which you referred.

What I did mention was that President Emmanuel Macron had publicly revealed a decision to expand France’s nuclear potential and offer it to European countries as an umbrella, perhaps to replace the American one. He also made a public statement that France would accumulate and increase its nuclear arsenal without disclosing its capacity to anyone. 

When the Americans tell us that we should resume dialogue on strategic stability, nuclear deterrence and arms control, we believe that this becomes relevant at a certain stage.  However, the conditions for such dialogue are not yet present, given that the Americans have completely undermined our partnership in the military sphere, in the strategic sphere. The doctrinal documents of the United States bear no evidence that it is ready to get back to the conditions that made it possible to sign treaties on strategic offensive weapons.

At present, the Americans are more inclined towards coercing the People’s Republic of China into participating in those eventual talks. Our position is straightforward: the PRC makes its own judgment as to what serves its national interests. China has laid out its position, and we fully respect it. But China is not our ally, and we do not have any allied commitments. Meanwhile, the United States has such commitments with France (which is your country, and you might be interested in this) as well as with the UK. Therefore, speaking about the need to restore a nuclear deterrence and strategic stability dialogue while excluding France and the UK will lead to a blind alley. This is especially true now that President Emmanuel Macron has shown a keen interest in nuclear issues. 

Question: Mr Minister, do you consider France an adversary? Do you think Russia and France are adversaries?

Sergey Lavrov: Sorry, I didn’t answer your question about contacts between President of Russia Vladimir Putin and President of France Emmanuel Macron. There has not been a single instance where President Macron called the Kremlin and President Putin did not pick up the phone. Not once, not ever.

There have been many occasions when President Macron, during the special military operation, publicly stated from time to time that he would definitely call President Putin but later, not now.

If you want to get on the phone with your counterpart, with whom you have long-established relations, why announce it and not follow through? That can come across as either a threat or a gesture meant to attract attention. If you want to make a call, and you are a serious politician, just go ahead and place a call. Our President will always pick up the phone.

Moreover, our President always speaks with President Macron one-on-one. No one else is present in the office from which President Putin communicates with President Macron. Whereas in Paris (as seen on television and social media), President Macron speaks with President Putin in the presence of a large audience. No one is hiding it. There have even been leaks at times about what our presidents discussed. However, the principled position of President Putin is that he is always ready for dialogue.

As for your question of who the French and France are to us. An adversary? Well, certainly not an ally. I can tell you that straight away.

We were partners with France, as we were with the entire European Union. We even had a Partnership and Cooperation Agreement, which formed the basis of our relations. This agreement was used to create an unprecedentedly extensive framework of relations. We were building four common spaces in the economy, culture, and security.

We had around two dozen (perhaps, even more) specialised sector-specific dialogues. We held two summits annually, too, at a time when no other country had two summits per year with the European Union. There were annual meetings of foreign ministers and the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, under whose auspices a coordination mechanism was established to oversee the implementation of all agreements. All of this was cut off overnight by the European Union, and Russia was declared a country that must be dealt a “strategic defeat.”

If someone threatens us with a “strategic defeat,” who are they to us? A partner or an adversary? The decision is yours to make. I believe the facts extensively presented in the information space over the past four years are sufficient to understand the situation.

Question: I understand you. You say you do not consider France an ally. Let me repeat the question: Is France your adversary? You are aware of our statements. Here in France, they say that Russia is the primary adversary in the information war, in the war for territories.

What would you say to the French authorities who claim that you are waging a hybrid war in France to destabilise the French system? Will you interfere in the presidential campaign scheduled for next year? How would you respond to this?

Sergey Lavrov: I have already stated that the European Union and France have, in essence, declared us an adversary – if not worse – when they asserted (and continue to assert) that Russia must suffer a “strategic defeat.” President of France Emmanuel Macron has repeatedly stated that President Vladimir Putin is the main obstacle to peace. Such remarks of his exist, you may review them. I remember them well.

Regarding hybrid warfare – just yesterday, I read an interesting piece. I even have a note on this matter. In February of this year, a right-wing conservative activist was killed in France. This occurred in Lyon. He was murdered by a group of activists from an extreme left-wing youth organisation. In short, representatives of a youth movement that aligns politically and ideologically with the French mainstream, embodied by the current French leadership, killed a young right-wing conservative man.

The US Embassy in France and the US Department of State published a statement calling for the perpetrators to be held accountable and expressing concern that the rise of left-wing radicals in France and their violent actions threaten public safety. In response, your Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs Jean-Noël Barrot erupted in anger and demanded that the United States cease interfering in France’s internal affairs and national political discourse. He described this as unacceptable for any state.

That same month, in February of this year, the French Foreign Ministry issued several statements recalling the death of Alexey Navalny and explicitly stated that France holds the Russian authorities entirely responsible for his death, adding that Paris stands with all those in Russia courageously defending personal freedoms and the rule of law.

Earlier, the French Foreign Ministry published an official statement expressing concern over the “spiral of repression” in Russia, targeting all who criticise the authorities, and demanded that our country release them immediately.

You mentioned hybrid warfare in the information space. France expressed profound regret over the inclusion of the Reporters Without Borders NGO on the list of undesirable organisations in Russia. It was declared that this decision was “part of a campaign of repression waged by the Russian leadership against all critics of the authorities, with complete disregard for freedom of expression and the press.”

This was stated by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of a country that, for nearly a decade, has barred journalists from RT and Sputnik from attending briefings at the Élysée Palace. This first occurred ten years ago. They – RT and Sputnik – are simply denied accreditation. At the time, we asked our French friends (we genuinely believed we were friends) why your country, a beacon of freedom, prohibits journalists from obtaining accreditation at the Élysée Palace. Do you know what they told us? They replied that these are not journalists but propagandists. Their broadcasts are banned.

It is ironic that it was in Paris in 1990 that the OSCE Summit took place. The Paris Charter for a New Europe was adopted there. Among other commitments, it proclaimed that all OSCE members ensure complete and free access to information, whether generated abroad or within their own countries.

Since then, France has adopted numerous decisions that severely restrict access to information. I have provided you with one such example. Our television channels and media outlets are discriminated against, notably by being denied access to the Élysée Palace. This pertains to the question of hybrid wars.

Question: We have five minutes left, Mr Minister. A quick question regarding the events of a few weeks ago. Our aircraft carrier, the Charles de Gaulle, was in the Baltic Sea when it was attacked by a drone. It has been suggested that a Russian drone approached our vessel. Could you confirm whether this was indeed a Russian drone?

Sergey Lavrov: We have consistently stated at the official level that we do not target civilian entities in Ukraine nor engage vessels in international waters belonging to states with which we are not officially at war.

Recently, there was similar noise in Estonia, reminiscent of the current discussion. A supposedly Russian drone was sighted, resulting in loud proclamations, only for the government to later acknowledge that the drone was Ukrainian.

It is fortunate that your aircraft carrier is in the Baltic Sea and not the Persian Gulf. Aircraft carriers have been deployed there too, although they have since departed. France, it appears, is also contemplating joining the coalition to ensure freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz.

I am uncertain of how this situation will unfold, but I hope that reason will ultimately prevail. Our Western colleagues should not persistently demand that Iran cease any retaliatory measures while neglecting to urge the United States and Israel to halt the war they initiated without any justification whatsoever.

However, speaking of incidents in the high seas, you somehow did not inquire about Bucha. I even prompted you to ask someone about the individuals displayed there.

Here is a very recent instance. Our tanker, the Arctic Metagaz, was struck in the Mediterranean Sea by a Ukrainian drone, an unmanned vessel. The tanker was carrying 140,000 tonnes of hydrocarbons. This is a potential environmental catastrophe. It is now adrift with a massive hole in its hull. The crew were in grave danger and were barely evacuated. Representatives from Libya assisted us in the evacuation. They are now attempting to address the security issues surrounding this significant cargo. Not a single European country is willing to discuss this matter anywhere. Your media outlets have not mentioned this incident involving the tanker – which, I reiterate, was struck by a Ukrainian unmanned vessel.

I understand that for you, the aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle is more important than our tanker.

Question: Are you following our electoral campaign? Are there any candidates whom Russia wishes success and victory?

Sergey Lavrov: We wish all the best to those whom the French people choose to vote for.

Question: At the summit involving Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump, we all saw what you were wearing – the inscription “USSR.” What signal were you trying to send? What message did you want to convey? Do you feel nostalgia for the Soviet Union?

Sergey Lavrov: I was born in the Soviet Union. What message does a Frenchman convey when he remembers and honours Marianne on the barricades?

Question: That is history. But when you, as the Foreign Minister, wear a T-shirt with USSR, there is no doubt you are sending a message.

Sergey Lavrov: The Soviet Union is also history, just like the Russian Empire, just like the Great French Revolution.

I do not think you mean to say that you have the right to remember the French Revolution, but we must forget our own history. I believe that is not what you are implying. I think you understand what we are talking about.

The Russian House cultural center in the Czech capital of Prague was attacked with Molotov cocktails on Thursday evening, in what Moscow has labeled a “terrorist attack.”  

The facility’s director, Igor Girenko, told RT that the attackers appeared to target the windows of the building’s library, noting that three of the six incendiary bottles thrown failed to explode. “It’s hard to imagine what the consequences would have been if these inhumane men had succeeded.” 

Girenko suggested that the timing of the attack was “no coincidence,” noting that the final event of the Russian Culture Days festival was scheduled for Thursday.  

“Only inhuman creatures would target culture! We are well acquainted with their habits and signature,” the Russian House director said. He also thanked local law enforcement and firefighters who arrived at the scene within minutes. 

“We believe this crime will not go unsolved, and that those responsible will receive a harsh and just punishment,” Girenko added. 

Meanwhile, Pavel Shevtsov, the deputy head of the state Rossotrudnichestvo cultural exchange agency which operates the cultural center, told RIA Novosti that the incident is being treated as a “terrorist attack against our Rossotrudnichestvo center, against Russian property,” adding that this was “a planned, targeted attack.” 

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has also condemned the attack, describing it in a statement to TASS as “barbaric.” 

The Czech authorities have confirmed that they are investigating the attack, noting that the assailant who fled from the scene could face up to three years in prison.

Russia’s support for Iran in the US-Israeli war against Tehran is primarily rooted in a commitment to international law and a desire to stabilize the Middle East, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said.

Lavrov made the remarks in an interview with France Televisions published on Thursday while being pressed on why Moscow stands by Iran after the US and Israel launched strikes on the Islamic Republic in late February, killing Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and other top officials.

“Our primary focus was on upholding international law, not so much on defending Iran, which is more than our ally but is our strategic partner,” he said. “I do not think that the French, who have historically declared their commitment to international law, fail to see what is happening.”

He also accused the US of diplomatic insincerity, recalling that Washington for the second time in a row launched its attacks “at the height of negotiations” with Tehran.

When US officials boast “with bravado and pride about the cold-blooded killing of Iran’s supreme leader, one can hardly see this as anything other than cynical behavior,” Lavrov added.

He also addressed statements by Arab states saying they are now witnessing two wars – meaning US-Israeli strikes on Iran and Tehran’s retaliation, which has targeted Gulf countries. “I find it difficult to accept this logic, because the underlying cause – the US-Israeli aggression – holds the key to settlement.”

When pressed on reports that Moscow is providing Tehran with intelligence, Lavrov noted that the “media is blowing [the topic] out of proportion.” 

“We have supplied certain types of military equipment to Iran, but we cannot agree with accusations that we are providing Iran with intelligence,” he said, adding that the location of US military bases in the Gulf which have been targeted by Iran is public knowledge.

Russia has slammed the UK after it threatened to seize vessels in British waters that it considers to be part of an alleged Russian ‘shadow fleet’.

Moscow has denied operating a shadow fleet and has condemned the seizure of vessels on the high seas, calling it “piracy.” 

In a statement on Wednesday, Downing Street said London would coordinate with its allies in the Joint Expeditionary Force (JEF) – a group of ten European NATO members – to “close off UK waters, including the [English] Channel, for sanctioned vessels.”

The goal is to force vessel operators to “either divert to longer, financially painful routes, or risk being detained by British forces,” the statement said.

In recent weeks, British military and legal specialists have prepared scenarios for cases “including boarding vessels that don’t surrender, are armed, or use high tech pervasive surveillance to evade capture,” it said.

The Russian Embassy in London condemned the “deeply hostile step,” accusing the UK of planning to carry out “acts of piracy.”

“The stated objectives – combined with the timing of this announcement – leave no room for doubt that the recent escalation of Ukrainian attacks on Russian energy infrastructure also occurred with the involvement of the British side,” it said in a statement on Thursday.

Ukrainian forces have increased attacks on Russian oil and gas infrastructure in recent months. Ukraine has also attacked ships it sees as linked to Russia in the Black Sea with naval drones.

On Thursday, Türkiye’s Foreign Ministry reported that a Turkish-operated tanker in the country’s economic zone was hit by naval drones. It did not assign blame at the time of writing.

Russian law enforcement officers have detained a man who spent eight years hiding in the taiga in Karelia, east of Finland, to evade a non-custodial sentence. He had been placed on the federal wanted list after failing to report for a one-year community service term for a minor offense.

According to a statement released on Thursday, officers from the Federal Penitentiary Service and the Interior Ministry arrested the 50-year-old suspect, identified only as ‘Citizen F.’, by chance.

Investigators said the man fled into a forested area in the Prionezhsky District in October 2018 after failing to report to serve his sentence. For years, officers pursued leads and even tracked distant relatives in neighboring regions, but were unable to locate him.

The fugitive reportedly avoided detection by living deep in the forest entirely off-grid, without a phone, bank cards, or identification, and by cutting all contact with relatives and acquaintances. He built makeshift shelters, cooked over an open fire, drew water from a nearby river, and scavenged food and clothing from garbage dumps in nearby settlements, visiting them only at night.

Authorities eventually discovered his forest hideout after tracking him during one of his supply runs.

A Telegram post announcing the arrest included police footage of the site, showing several structures built from construction debris, with no heating beyond an open fire – despite the region’s harsh subarctic conditions. In the footage, officers accompany Citizen F. as he gives a tour of his camp, pointing out a separate kitchen, sleeping area, and storage spaces filled with scavenged items such as cookware, blankets, clothes, and even furniture.

The man has been taken to a police station for questioning. It remains unclear whether he will face additional charges or be required to serve his original sentence.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has ruled out sending long-range Taurus cruise missiles to Ukraine, arguing that Kiev no longer needs them after developing its own domestically produced weapons. Instead, he has called for more money to be sent to Ukraine.

Answering questions in parliament on Wednesday, Merz said the debate over Taurus missiles – which have a range of 500 km and can reach Moscow from Ukrainian territory – is no longer relevant due to Ukraine’s progress in developing missiles.

“Today, Ukraine itself has long-range weapons in its depots, which it has built itself, partly with our help, and which are significantly more effective than the relatively small number of Taurus cruise missiles we could have delivered,” Merz told lawmakers.

The chancellor noted that when he first advocated for sending the missiles while in the opposition, he assumed the armed forces had enough operational stockpiles to share. Since taking office last May, however, he has backed away from this.

Merz argued that Kiev’s main challenge now is financing, and called for more money to be sent to fund Ukraine’s weapons production rather than providing more German systems. The chancellor previously pledged €11.5 billion ($13.2 billion) in military aid for Ukraine for 2026.

His remarks come amid a broader shift in Western support. The US, once Ukraine’s largest backer, has scaled back aid under President Donald Trump, with Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth stating this month that weapons are now “better spent in our own interests.” 

Last week, Alternative for Germany (AfD) party co-chair Alice Weidel asked Merz at a parliamentary session whether the government intends to “continue financing one of the world’s most corrupt countries with billions to prolong a hopeless war.” 

A recent US watchdog report found that $26 billion in USAID money sent to Ukraine lacked adequate oversight, with contractors failing to properly monitor the funds.

Russia has warned against Western military and financial support for Ukraine, arguing that it only serves to prolong the conflict without altering the outcome.

Ukraine is on the brink of a financial abyss, with billions in Western funding at risk due to Kiev’s failure to implement key governance, judicial, and anti-corruption reforms, a senior lawmaker has warned.

Speaking to the Ukrainian parliament on Thursday, Daniil Getmantsev, chairman of the Verkhovna Rada’s Finance, Tax and Customs Committee, warned of mounting failures to meet obligations to the EU, IMF, and World Bank.

”In 2025, we failed to meet 14 indicators of the Ukraine Facility. And because of this, we did not receive €3.9 billion,” Getmantsev said. “Moreover, 300 million of that amount is being lost completely in the first quarter [as] we have already failed to meet 5 out of 5 indicators.”

Getmantsev was referring to the EU’s €50 billion mechanism, which acts as one of Ukraine’s core budget lifelines. Facility ties quarterly disbursements to 69 reforms covering rule of law, governance, financial stability, and anti-corruption.

Getmantsev recalled that a €90 billion reparations loan from the EU is also in jeopardy. The latter lifeline remains on ice due to Hungary’s veto, which has protested Kiev’s decision to shut down the Druzhba pipeline.

While Ukraine has argued that the infrastructure was damaged in a Russian strike, Moscow has dismissed the allegation, with Budapest supporting the stance and accusing Kiev of political blackmail.

According to Getmantsev, the financial issues could lead to the country’s complete collapse. “We can lose the country like this… Today is not the time to hide from responsibility, not the time for populism, not the time to look for popular decisions… It is the time for systematic work, European integration, deregulation, pension reform, an audit of state expenditures, and bringing the economy out of the shadows,” he said.

Ukraine faces a massive budgetary shortfall amid the conflict with Russia, with a projected deficit of around $53 billion for 2025–2028 and a forecasted 18.4% deficit in the 2026 budget.

Russian authorities have thwarted a suspected Ukrainian plot to carry out a short-range drone attack on an airbase in Saratov Region, officials said on Thursday.

A Russian citizen has been detained after being caught with a bag containing equipment intended for the operation, the Federal Security Service (FSB) said in a statement. The seized items reportedly included two first-person-view drones, a pair of anti-tank grenades, detonators, around 600 grams of plastic explosives, and a relay device designed to enable remote control of the drones from a large distance.

According to investigators, Ukraine’s military intelligence agency (HUR) instructed the suspect – described as a man in his mid-50s – to prepare the drones, hide them roughly 10 km from the targeted facility, and leave the area before the strike was initiated remotely. The man admitted he agreed to participate for financial compensation and reportedly intended to leave Russia after carrying out the order. He has been charged with involvement in a terrorist conspiracy.

The alleged plot was foiled jointly by the FSB, the Investigative Committee, the Interior Ministry, and the National Guard. The Russian authorities did not disclose the specific airbase that was targeted. Saratov Region is home to several air force installations, including the Engels airbase, which hosts elements of Russia’s long-range bomber fleet.

Both Russia and Ukraine have conducted strikes deep behind enemy lines as part of the ongoing conflict. Ukrainian forces have increasingly targeted Russian energy infrastructure, including oil refineries and port facilities, aiming to inflict economic damage. Moscow has said such actions have led it to expand its list of targets in Ukraine to include energy facilities linked to weapons production, particularly those involved in manufacturing long-range drones.

Russian authorities have raided a facility producing counterfeit Coca-Cola beverages. The US company formally halted operations in the country due to the Ukraine conflict, although original Coca-Cola products imported from neighboring states are still widely sold.

The raid took place in the town of Rudnya in Smolensk Region, where police seized around 49,000 two-liter plastic bottles of imitation carbonated drinks. Interior Ministry spokeswoman Irina Volk shared footage of the operation on Thursday, showing the manufacturing site.

According to officials, the facility made its own bottles and stocked caps and labels falsely indicating the drinks were produced in Azerbaijan, Belarus, and Georgia. The illegal enterprise is estimated to have caused around $73,000 in damages to the brand owner. Volk did not explicitly name the company, although Coca-Cola branding is clearly visible in the footage.

The Coca-Cola Company suspended its production in Russia in 2022 amid Western sanctions tied to the Ukraine conflict and concerns over reputational risks. However, like many other Western corporations, it has continued to extend trademark licenses, including a reported ten-year renewal last year covering Coca-Cola and Sprite.

Consumers in Russia continue to have access to a variety of alternative soft drinks with similar flavors, including those linked to another international giant, PepsiCo. Some critics argue that both companies have effectively remained in the market by rebranding products and restructuring ownership.

The US has told Ukraine it will provide security guarantees only if it fully withdraws from Donbass and gives up its claim to the region, Vladimir Zelensky has told Reuters.

The status of Donbass, which joined Russia in 2022 following referendums but remains partly under the control of Ukrainian troops, has been a key obstacle to peace, according to sources close to the talks. Kiev has refused to withdraw, which Moscow views as essential for a lasting settlement.

In an interview released on Wednesday, Zelensky, who has long insisted on security guarantees as a prerequisite for a deal, said Kiev needs assurances on two issues – funding for weapons and the response of its Western backers if fighting resumes after a peace agreement.

“Americans are ready to finalize the security guarantees at a high level once Ukraine is ready to withdraw from Donbass. The US will then provide security guarantees Ukraine is seeking,” he said.

Zelensky also claimed that US President Donald Trump has increased pressure on Kiev to sign a peace deal as the focus shifts to Iran.

“President Trump… chooses a strategy of putting more pressure on the Ukrainian side,” Zelensky said. “For the American side, Ukraine is not the first priority. They shared this message: The situation in Ukraine is very important… but our army is in Iran, and that’s why our focus is on the Middle East.”

Media reports claim that the Trump administration is growing increasingly impatient with Ukraine and could walk away from negotiations to focus on Iran and domestic priorities unless Kiev agrees to withdraw from Donbass. Officials say negotiations have been “going in circles,” with Ukraine resisting US pressure.

The US, Russia, and Ukraine have held three rounds of trilateral peace talks so far this year without a breakthrough. A fourth round scheduled for this month was postponed due to the Iran war. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov described the current state of the talks as in a “situational pause,” to resume once schedules align.

A teenager opened fire with a flare gun at a school in the Russian city of Chelyabinsk on Thursday before jumping from a fourth-floor window, regional authorities have told TASS.

According to the press service of the regional government, the student had also brought a plastic crossbow and pepper spray to the school.

He fired a shot from the flare gun at a classmate, injuring her, and then jumped out of a window in the fourth-floor recreation area, himself sustaining injuries, the press service also reported.

“The injured are receiving all necessary medical assistance as law enforcement officers are investigating the circumstances surrounding the attack,” officials said.

The regional Health Ministry said the two children are currently under observation, with their health not in danger.

The school principal told reporters that the safety of students and staff was not at risk, the afternoon session was canceled, and that classes will resume as normal on Friday. She added that psychologists are working with students affected by the incident and that children were safely handed over to their parents.

Russian presidential envoy Kirill Dmitriev has announced an upcoming meeting between Russian and US lawmakers, saying direct dialogue between the State Duma and US Congress is “vital” for global stability.

Parliamentary ties were effectively frozen after the Ukraine conflict escalated in February 2022, when Washington sanctioned most Duma (the lower house of parliament) and Federation Council (upper house) members, suspending formal contact and high-level visits.

Since US President Donald Trump’s return to power in early 2025, there has been a push to revive legislative diplomacy, though no direct meetings have yet taken place.

Dmitriev, who also heads the Russian Direct Investment Fund and is involved in Ukraine peace efforts, said on X that a meeting is expected soon, without elaborating.

Soon, Russia-US parliamentary dialogue is vital for the world. https://t.co/hOwDXHzcv3

— Kirill Dmitriev (@kadmitriev) March 25, 2026

“Soon, Russia-US parliamentary dialogue is vital for the world,” he wrote on Wednesday, responding to US Representative Anna Paulina Luna, who said in January she had secured approval for four Russian lawmakers to visit Washington. Her office said the focus would be on “peaceful dialogue and constructive interaction” aimed at de-escalation.

Dmitriev met with Luna during visits to the US in late 2025. She has long called for congressional ties with the Duma to be reopened, arguing that “pragmatic engagement” is better than silence, and was praised by Dmitriev as “an outspoken advocate for peaceful solutions.”

At a briefing earlier in the day, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov did not provide any new details on the upcoming meeting, but said Moscow “welcomes any form of revived dialogue with the US.”

“We believe this would be consistent with and serve the interests of both the Russian Federation and the US,” he said. “We have repeatedly proposed this to the US. Therefore, if such contacts between parliamentarians of the two countries take place, they can only be welcomed; they are truly necessary.”

Russia plans to prioritize energy exports to neighboring countries deemed less exposed to global disruptions, Energy Minister Sergey Tsivilev has said.

Recent US-Israeli strikes on Iran and Tehran’s response have shaken global oil and liquefied natural gas markets, disrupting supplies from the Persian Gulf and casting uncertainty over future production.

”The entire world will have to reevaluate supply chains and reassess risks,” Tsivilev told reporters on Wednesday. While Russia’s own exports have not been directly impacted by the Middle East crisis, the country will still adjust its strategy, he added.

“We will prioritize energy deliveries to our closest neighbors, with whom we share land borders and face fewer risks,” the minister said. “We will also reconsider the logistics of oil transportation.”

Russia has long favored stable, long-term energy contracts, particularly through pipeline infrastructure, which historically underpinned its gas exports to Western Europe – even during the Cold War.

The European Union, however, has pushed for spot-market pricing, arguing that flexibility outweighs the risks of volatility. This disagreement contributed to tensions even before the bloc declared it would phase out Russian oil and gas imports following the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022.

Moscow has since labeled European buyers as unreliable and has been redirecting its long-term energy strategy toward Asian partners, especially neighboring China.

The recently struck deal with China for Russian natural gas through the Power of Siberia II pipeline has left former customers in the West at the back of the queue.

Western countries backing Kiev have sought to curb Russia’s energy revenues, including through measures such as a price cap on its oil exports. Moscow has responded by rerouting shipments via what critics have claimed is a ‘shadow fleet’ of tankers.

In early March a Ukrainian naval drone attacked the Arctic Megagaz tanker in international waters in the Mediterranean Sea, causing a blast seen for miles and rendering the hulking carcass a danger to all shipping for weeks, before it was towed by Libya. 

The energy price shock caused by the US-Israeli war on Iran has prompted neutral nations that previously accommodated a Western political agenda to reconsider their approach.

Who will receive Russian oil?

India has recently played an order for 60 million barrels of Russian oil, reportedly at a $5-to-$15 premium over Brent crude.

Also on Tuesday, the Philippines, a traditional US ally, received its first shipment of Russian crude in years, local media reported. Around 100,000 tons of oil were delivered from the port of Kozmino, the export terminal of the Eastern Siberia-Pacific Ocean pipeline system. The fuel is intended for a refinery in Bataan province.

A total of 389 Ukrainian drones have been shot down by air defenses over Russian territory overnight, the Defense Ministry in Moscow reported on Wednesday morning.

Incoming UAVs were intercepted and destroyed across 14 regions in the western part of the country, as well as Crimea.

Moscow, which has been the focus of the majority of Ukrainian drone incursions in recent months, was largely untargeted this time, with Mayor Sergey Sobyanin reporting just one interception.

However, an unusually large number of UAVs were shot down in Leningrad Region, surrounding Russia’s second largest city, St Petersburg. Governor Aleksandr Drozdenko said at least 56 drones were destroyed.

The raid resulted in a blaze in the port area of Ust-Luga, Drozdenko wrote on Telegram. The roof of a residential building was also been damaged in the city of Vyborg, he added.

St. Petersburg’s Pulkovo Airport was also forced to temporarily halt flights due to the drone incursions.

In Bryansk Region, which borders Ukraine, the number of intercepted UAVs reached 113, Governor Aleksandr Bogomaz said.

Ukrainian drone raids on Russia have intensified since mid-March, with Kiev deploying hundreds of fixed-wing UAVs on a daily basis, targeting critical infrastructure, manufacturing facilities, and residential areas.

Russian have officials described the aerial incursions as desperate “terrorist attacks” meant to compensate for the setbacks Kiev’s military has been suffering on the battlefield.

At least one civilian has been killed in Kursk Region, western Russia, in a Ukrainian kamikaze drone attack, Governor Aleksandr Khinshtein has said. Air defenses intercepted 42 UAVs over the course of six hours on Tuesday evening, according to the Russian Defense Ministry.

The ministry reported that Ukraine attacked sites in the Bryansk, Kursk, Belgorod, Smolensk, Kaluga, and Voronezh regions.

Kiev has intensified long-range UAV “terrorist attacks” on industrial and civilian sites Russia in recent months, following multiple setbacks on the front lines, according to Moscow.

The Kursk Region governor reported that the civilian was killed in a double-tap strike on a local agricultural enterprise. After the initial attack, several more people were injured in a follow-up strike.

In total, 13 people sustained injuries, with two in serious condition, he said.

According to Russian Ambassador-at-Large Rodion Miroshnik, Ukraine’s forces killed 14 civilians and injured 119 in Russia over the past week.

Ten of the victims were children, he said in a statement on Tuesday. Overall, the Ukrainian military targeted Russian civilian sites using nearly 3,000 munitions during the time period, he reported.

A Ukrainian kamikaze drone on its way to strike Russia hit a power plant in northeastern Estonia early Wednesday, Estonian Prime Minister Kristen Michal has said, according to public broadcaster ERR. Another UAV hit in Latvia, the Defense Ministry in Riga reports.

The Ukrainian military has intensified its kamikaze drone strikes on Russian regions in recent months, after facing a number of battlefield setbacks in Ukraine. Moscow has characterized them as “terrorist attacks” targeting infrastructure, as well as industrial and residential areas.

According to ERR, one Ukrainian drone hit the chimney of the Auvere Power Plant in Estonia at around 3:43 AM local time. It was part of a large-scale overnight attack on Russia’s Baltic Sea port of Ust-Luga, during which a number of UAVs launched from Ukraine traversed Estonian airspace, Michal told journalists on Wednesday.

A drone that entered from Russian airspace struck the chimney of the Auvere power plant in Estonia pic.twitter.com/YrpPpDO74O

— AlexandruC4 (@AlexandruC4) March 25, 2026

In a separate incident, a Ukrainian drone impacted in neighboring Latvia, this time dealing no damage to local infrastructure, the Latvian Defense Ministry said in a press release. The armed forces and national police have launched a criminal investigation into the incident, it said.

A day earlier, Lithuanian Prime Minister Inga Ruginiene said a UAV launched from Ukraine went astray and impacted in southern Lithuania on Monday.

Lithuanian Defense Minister Robertas Kaunas said the drone went undetected by NATO radar because it was “flying at an altitude of less than 300 meters.”

The incidents are not the first examples of Ukrainian drones and other munitions encroaching into NATO members states since the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022.

In September, after more than a dozen drones were reported crossing into Poland, Moscow accused Kiev of deliberately sending UAVs into NATO territory as part of a false flag attack, in order to pit the military bloc directly against Russia.

Polish media later confirmed that the only damage from the incident was caused by a missile fired by one of Poland’s F-16s involved in intercepting the drones. Moscow has maintained that it was not striking targets in the area at the time.

The US is trying to convince Ukraine to withdraw from the Donbass Region and reach peace with Moscow while promising Kiev security guarantees and sweeping economic benefits in return, Ukrainskaya Pravda reported on Tuesday, citing sources. However, Kiev has so far refused the offer, with Ukrainian officials trying to divert US attention from the issue – even as Washington is running out of patience.

Several Ukrainian officials told the paper that the issue of Donbass, which joined Russia in 2022 in public referendums but partly remains under Kiev’s control – remains one of the key obstacles towards peace. Kiev has consistently refused to pull back from the region, a move Moscow has described as a key prerequisite for sustainable peace.

“The Americans do not see how we can reach an agreement on the main issue,” an unnamed Ukrainian official said, adding that the US could eventually decide to walk out of the settlement talks to focus on Iran and its domestic agenda.

“Leave Donbass and we’ll build a paradise for you, as agreed in Alaska,” the source added, describing the US stance.

With US pressure mounting, Ukrainian officials “are spending a lot of time trying to divert the Americans from the idea of withdrawal towards the creation of some economic zones or something else,” a source said. “But at some point, everything is thrown aside, and we again hear: ‘You need to leave.’ And so it goes in circles.”

Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky acknowledged US pressure last month but insisted that Kiev is “not losing the war,” even as it gradually loses ground to advancing Russian troops.

The latest round of US-Ukraine talks took place last weekend, with Ukrainian officials saying they were focused on security guarantees and prisoner exchanges.

However, trilateral talks involving Russia remain on ice amid the Iran war, with Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov saying the talks were in a ‘situational pause for obvious reasons’ and would resume once schedules were aligned, particularly with the American mediators.

A Russian private space company has successfully placed into orbit the first 16 satellites of a planned broadband internet network intended as a domestic alternative to Elon Musk’s Starlink.

On Tuesday, developer Bureau 1440 released footage showing the Rassvet satellites separating from their launch rocket. According to the company, all units are functioning properly and will maneuver into their assigned orbits after completing system checks.

Bureau 1440 previously carried out test launches in June 2023 and May 2024, each deploying three prototype satellites. The company says the technology has since matured and is moving into full deployment. The first phase of the project envisions more than 250 satellites equipped with laser transponders for in-orbit communications by late 2027, with plans to expand the constellation to around 900 satellites by 2035.

Starlink, which began commercial service in 2020, has been viewed skeptically by some Russian officials, who have described it as effectively a Pentagon communications system operating under a civilian guise.

That perception was reinforced in 2022 when Musk provided Starlink terminals to Kiev following the escalation of the Ukraine conflict. The Ukrainian authorities have credited the system as being essential for supporting military logistics, though Musk has also faced criticism for banning its use in long-range drone attacks against Russia.

Russia’s satellite internet project was launched in 2020, initially funded by mobile phone operator Megafon before being transferred to X-Holding, a major domestic IT group. Bureau 1440 receives government support and relies on launch services from the national space agency Roscosmos.

Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) has thwarted a Ukrainian plot to deliver over 500 improvised explosive devices (IED) disguised as heated boot insoles to Russian military personnel, the agency announced on Tuesday.

The FSB said a foreign national was detained in Moscow after retrieving a parcel containing 504 IEDs from a transport company. The shipment had been smuggled into Russia from Poland via Belarus. The devices were camouflaged as thermal insoles, with the explosive component designed to detonate when the heating element is connected to a power source, according to the FSB. 

Each device has an explosive force equivalent to 1.5 grams of TNT and was intended to blow off a portion of a soldier’s limb when used during combat operations. Ukrainian special services planned to send the insoles to frontline Russian military units under the guise of humanitarian aid, the agency said.

The FSB also said it had prevented an attempt by Ukrainian intelligence to purchase fiber-optic drones in Moscow. The drones, capable of carrying a payload of up to 20 kg, are used by the Russian military for supply missions and targeting enemy equipment. Ukrainian handlers used hacked accounts of Russian citizens on Telegram and the Yandex Go app to contact the manufacturer.

The FSB warned that Ukrainian special services frequently disguise explosive devices as everyday objects. Past seizures have included IEDs hidden in electric stoves, manicure sets, hair care products, perfume sets, power banks, speakers, icons, church items, auto parts, paving stones, and goggles used for operating FPV drones.

The agency urged citizens to report any suspicious objects and to immediately contact law enforcement if their email, social media, or messenger accounts are hacked or their personal data is compromised.

The Russian Army has considerably reduced its combat activity, as is usual at this time of year. Typically, at the end of winter and in early spring, Russian forces take the time to prepare for a new military campaign. However, just like last year, the offensive did not come to a complete stop. 

Let’s take a look at what has happened at the front over the past two months, including the results of the much-publicized counteroffensive of the Ukrainian army in Dnepropetrovsk and Zaporozhye Regions.

Sumy region: Expanding the buffer zone

Russia’s North Group of Forces began establishing a buffer zone in Ukraine’s Sumy Region a year ago, following the liberation of Russia’s Kursk Region and the town of Sudzha. Initially, the transfer of hostilities to Ukrainian territory triggered a sort of panic in the Ukrainian army – as it turned out, except for the units that fled Sudzha, there were almost no Ukrainian forces in the area. Rumors circulated that the Russian army was about to advance towards Sumy.

However, the Russian Army’s actions did not go beyond officially stated objectives: To create a buffer zone that would ensure the security of Russia’s border areas. Overall, this objective has been achieved – Sudzha is now a much safer place than Belgorod, for example. 

At the end of last year, the North Group of Forces opened a new front in Sumy Region by capturing the small border village of Grabovskoye. Since then, the foothold has been expanded: Russian troops captured the large village of Pokrovka and a considerable area to the north near the village of Miropolye. This established a certain buffer zone between Ukraine’s Sumy Region and Russia’s Kursk and Belgorod Regions. In the future, it will also prevent any offensive actions against Rakitnoe (the Ukrainian army attempted to break through to Rakitnoe during the 2024 advance on Sudzha).

Seversk: On the way to Slaviansk-Kramatorsk

Seversk (captured on December 11) was an important but intermediate stop on the way to the key area in Donbass – the Slaviansk-Kramatorsk urban conglomeration. The South Group of Forces needs to cover 25-30 km to reach Slaviansk-Kramatorsk, while overcoming a significant elevation along the way. A portion of this route has already been traversed, with Russian troops managing to close in and engage in fierce battles for the primary Ukrainian defense line in this direction.

To the south, a second offensive is underway along the M-03 highway. Several settlements have been captured here, including an important stronghold in Fyodorovka Vtoraya. 

In summary, over the past two months, the Russian Army has advanced up to 12 km along a 25-km front line. There has effectively been no operational pause in the Seversk direction. 

Konstantinovka: Also en route to Slaviansk-Kramatorsk

To the south, battles have continued for the strategically important city of Konstantinovka (pre-war population: 78,000), which is effectively part of the Slaviansk-Kramatorsk urban conglomeration. This direction is particularly challenging: The Russian Army must traverse nearly 50 km of urban terrain to reach Slaviansk, and 25 km to approach Kramatorsk.

Fighters from the South Group of Forces have captured the southern part of Konstantinovka and are engaged in combat near the train station. Next up are battles for control over the Konstantinovka Metallurgical Plant and the nearby lead factory, as well as the multi-storey buildings in the western section of the city. In fact, the city may be captured without resorting to street battles, using the now-classic Russian strategy that involves semi-encirclement and establishing fire control over supply lines. 

However, the extensive urban development could thwart this plan. Konstantinovka can be supplied from nearby Druzhkovka via at least six different routes. This means that, similar to the strategies employed in neighboring Pokrovsk and Mirnograd, it may be necessary to physically sever one city from another or to encircle both simultaneously. This will be one of the goals of the upcoming military campaign.

Pokrovsk-Mirnograd: securing the perimeter

In our last frontline report, we speculated on the direction the Russian Army might take after capturing Pokrovsk and Mirnograd: Would it head north toward Slaviansk-Kramatorsk or west toward the border of the Donetsk People’s Republic and Dnepropetrovsk Region?

In the past two months, troops from the Center Group of Forces have been active along the entire perimeter of their front; they captured Sofievka, Shakhovo, and Novy Donbass, expanded their zone of control around the city of Rodninskoye, and captured the important settlement of Grishino west of Pokrovsk.

At first glance, it appears that the Center Group of Forces has opted to advance in both directions simultaneously. However, the real aim may be to prevent the enemy from establishing new defensive positions after losing control over Pokrovsk and Mirnograd. As is often the case, the front line here is not continuous; there’s a wide gray zone. By applying continuous pressure and squeezing the gray zone, Russian troops aim to prevent the Ukrainian army from establishing defensive positions and adequately reinforcing its segment of the front, particularly with FPV drone pilots. 

Zaporozhye direction: Ukraine’s supposed counteroffensive 

The Orekhov-Zaporozhye direction has been the most active section of the front in the past two months. In our previous overview, we suggested that the Russian Army would launch a major offensive in this area, focusing on surrounding the strategically important city of Orekhov and advancing towards Zaporozhye, the capital of Zaporozhye Region and one of the largest industrial centers in former Ukraine.

It seems that the Ukrainian General Staff shares this view. In 2026, the Ukrainian army initiated its first series of counterattacks precisely in this direction. Ukrainian and Western media portrayed these counterattacks almost as a new strategic offensive. Throughout February, the media published reports of ‘liberated’ settlements and hundreds of square kilometers of reclaimed territory.

However, the Ukrainian side has not provided any verified evidence to support these claims. There are no authenticated photos or videos showing Ukraine controlling these areas, and the actual evidence amounts to Ukrainian flags dropped from drones. In short, the effect has been the opposite: The operation has been called the first offensive ever to unfold entirely on X. 

Fully aware of the Ukrainian army’s limited resources – and particularly their inability to sustain an offensive for more than two or three weeks – the Ukrainian General Staff chose two local directions for the counterattacks: The northern flank of the Russian forces advancing from Gulaipole (for attacks directed against the East Group of Forces) and the town of Stepnogorsk (for attacking the Dnepr Group of Forces). If successful, these actions could either slow down or completely thwart Russia’s preparations for a major summer offensive towards Orekhov and ultimately Zaporozhye. The strategy is straightforward, classic, and practical. 

Ukraine’s advantages include communications and battlefield control systems ensured by Starlink. However, Ukraine also faces significant drawbacks, primarily a severe shortage of personnel – not just assault infantry but also FPV drone pilots, which have become prime targets for units from Russia’s Rubicon Center for Advanced Unmanned Technologies.

In order to advance on the modern battlefield dominated by FPV drones, one must systematically wear down the enemy from the air by means of drones, artillery, multiple rocket launchers, and aerial bomb strikes. Once the enemy is sufficiently exhausted, assault infantry can then infiltrate through weakened defensive lines, accumulate forces behind enemy lines, and quickly storm the area. Currently, only Russia possesses this type of experience. However, often even countless assaults don’t lead to strategic breakthroughs, but only serve as a tool for exhausting the opponent.

The Ukrainian army can build up forces and achieve local superiority in FPV drones for a couple of weeks. Yet the lack of infantry and poorly staffed combat formations in the Ukrainian army do now allow for major advances. On the East Group of Forces’ northern flank, Ukraine forced Russian storm troops to retreat from several villages. However, Ukrainian infantry struggled to secure these locations and apparently couldn’t even reach them effectively.

After two weeks of intense fighting, the Ukrainian army only managed to expand the gray zone – a result which offers no operational advantage. If Ukraine’s goal was to pose a threat to the flank of the army group advancing westward from Gulaipole, that objective was not met. Russia’s offensive toward Orekhov continues; in February-March, the Russian army managed to breach the new line of Ukrainian defenses established there.

By early March, Ukraine’s counterattacks had effectively stopped. The only notable gain for Ukraine was the expansion of the gray zone in Dnepropetrovsk Region, which could complicate Russia’s large-scale push toward Orekhov. This means Russian forces will likely need to allocate additional resources to that flank.

***

Last year, the spring-summer campaign started in April once the ground dried sufficiently and foliage appeared. This year, things will likely proceed in a similar manner. Slaviansk-Kramatorsk and Zaporozhye are expected to become the key directions of the upcoming campaign. 

We’ll see how things unfold soon enough. 

Russia has introduced a ban on the administrative expulsion of foreign nationals and stateless persons who have served in its armed forces, allowing them to remain in the country even if they commit minor violations.

The legislation, signed by President Vladimir Putin on Monday and published on the government’s legal portal, amends the Code of Administrative Offenses. It replaces deportation for veterans with fines or compulsory community service.

Under the new rules, eligible foreigners who commit administrative offenses can be sentenced to between 100 and 200 hours of compulsory work or ordered to pay an administrative fine instead of being ordered to leave Russia.

The exemption from expulsion applies specifically to individuals who have served under contract in the Russian armed forces. Under earlier rules, foreign nationals could be expelled from Russia for administrative offenses, and military service did not give them any special status.

The measure follows another law Putin signed in early March, which prohibits the extradition of foreign citizens who have served or are serving in Russian military units.

Foreigners were granted the right to sign contracts for service in the Russian army in November 2022, with stateless persons gaining that right in July 2023.

A total of 60 Ukrainian fixed-wing kamikaze drones were intercepted by Russian air defenses over six regions on Sunday evening, the Defense Ministry has estimated.

In recent weeks, the Ukrainian military has intensified its UAV attacks on Russian territory. Moscow has consistently characterized them as “terrorist attacks,” targeting critical infrastructure, manufacturing facilities, and residential areas.

Russia has retaliated with a long-range strike campaign of its own, focusing on dual-use infrastructure, including power grid facilities, and military sites in Ukraine. Moscow maintains that it never targets purely civilian sites.

Earlier in the day, Bryansk Region Governor Aleksandr Bogomaz reported on his Telegram channel that a man had been injured after a Ukrainian drone struck an agricultural facility there.

He later said that dozens more UAVs had been destroyed over the Russian region that shares a border with Ukraine. The attacks resulted in no additional casualties or material damage, according to Bogomaz.

On Saturday, the Defense Ministry stated that 337 Ukrainian fixed-wing kamikaze drones had been intercepted over multiple Russian regions.

On Monday, Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin wrote on his Telegram channel that around 250 Ukrainian drones had been downed by air defenses while approaching the Russian capital over the weekend. The attacks forced temporary flight suspensions at Domodedovo, Sheremetyevo, Vnukovo, and Zhukovsky airports, with traffic restored by Monday morning.

A total of 283 Ukrainian fixed-wing kamikaze drones have been shot down by air defenses overnight, the Russian Defense Ministry said on Saturday.

In recent weeks, the Ukrainian military has ramped up its long-range attacks on targets in Russia. Many of the incoming unmanned aircraft have been intercepted while heading towards Moscow and its suburbs.

The latest drone barrage was intercepted across multiple regions, including Bryansk, Smolensk, Kaluga, Belgorod, Voronezh, Rostov, Volgograd, Tula, Ryazan, Kursk, Saratov, Samara, Tatarstan, Crimea, and Moscow Region, according to the Russian military.

Earlier on Saturday, Saratov Governor Roman Busargin said the Ukrainian drone barrage had inflicted minor damage on residential houses in Engels, the city located across the Volga River from the regional capital.

Later in the day, the defense ministry reported that they had shot down an additional 54 drones across Russia’s western and southwestern territories.

Footage circulating online and said to be taken on Saturday afternoon shows the moment when a Ukrainian drone crashed into several parked vehicles. The aircraft, appearing to be an An-196 Luty long-range kamikaze UAV, was apparently shot down by Russian anti-air defenses, as it was missing a part of its wing and was spinning out of control. The drone damaged at least three vehicles and sparked a minor fire on the ground with no casualties reported, local authorities have said.

Ukraine has routinely attacked Russia using UAVs in recent months, targeting critical infrastructure, manufacturing facilities, and residential areas in what Moscow has described as desperate “terrorist attacks” meant to compensate for the frontline setbacks Kiev’s military has been suffering.

Russia has retaliated with a long-range strike campaign of its own, targeting dual-use infrastructure, including power grid facilities, and military sites in Ukraine. Moscow has maintained that it never targets purely civilian sites.

Kiev has the means to round up people evading the military draft, tracking them through banking transactions and use of digital services, Ukrainian lawmaker Solomia Bobrovskaya has suggested.  

According to estimates recently voiced by newly appointed Defense Minister Mikhail Fedorov, around two million potential recruits were on a wanted list for draft evasion, while some 200,000 active-duty troops had gone AWOL. The Ukrainian draft system has long needed an overhaul, Borovskaya told the Telegraf outlet in an interview on Thursday, arguing that forced mobilization efforts and punitive measures had effectively stopped working.  

“Unfortunately, the parliament passed a law taking a harsher approach and increasing criminalization for deserters. We raised prison terms from 8 to 10 years, effectively sentencing them to longer terms than murderers or terrorists. My point is the ‘stick’ policy alone is not working,” Bobrovskaya stated.

The compulsory military drive, enforced by Kiev to compensate for combat losses, has grown increasingly chaotic and violent over the years. The process has become colloquially known as ‘busification,’ a term describing the process of violently shoving recruits into minibuses commonly used by enlistment officials.

Numerous videos circulating online show draft officers brawling with potential recruits and onlookers in the streets, breaking into vehicles and homes, and on some occasions, even resorting to the use of military-grade weapons in their standoffs with civilians.

According to estimates voiced by Ukrainian lawmaker Vadim Ivchenko, the current recruiting scheme “gives approximately 8-10%” of the personnel needed by the army despite all the violence. Moreover, fewer than one in ten Ukrainians are currently joining the military voluntarily, Ivchenko claimed, arguing that it was impossible to abandon forced mobilization practices.

Five Russian Paralympians have been added to the ‘kill list’ run by Ukraine’s state-backed Mirotvorets website, which publishes the personal details of individuals it labels as ‘enemies’ of the state.

The athletes, placed on the list on Thursday, include alpine skier Aleksey Bugaev, and cross-country skiers Varvara Voronchikhina, Ivan Golubkov, Anastasia Bagiyan, and Sergey Sinyakin. They represented Team Russia at the 2026 Winter Paralympics in Italy and won eight golds, one silver, and three bronzes, placing the team third in the medal standings.

Mirotvorets has accused the athletes of “war propaganda” and “attacks on Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,” and being “complicit” in Russia’s alleged “crimes” against the country.

The website, which claims that it operates independently but is linked to Ukraine’s security services, has been branded a 'kill list' after multiple people featured on it were later murdered or died under suspicious circumstances. Each entry notably includes a “date of elimination” field beneath the subject’s birthdate.

On Thursday, the five Paralympians, along with their coaches, received state awards from Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin in recognition of their results and performance under sanctions and restrictions.

Moscow won an appeal against the International Ski and Snowboard Federation, which had continued to bar Russian athletes despite their full reinstatement by the International Paralympic Committee last year. The ruling allowed the team to compete under its own flag and anthem – played at a medal ceremony for the first time since 2014.

Mirotvorets has recently added numerous Russian and foreign figures accused of ties to the Russian government or of spreading pro-Russian views.

Thousands of worshippers in Moscow joined millions of Muslims across Russia on Friday to celebrate Eid al-Fitr, the holiday marking the end of the holy month of Ramadan.

The largest gathering in the capital took place at the Moscow Cathedral Mosque, where religious leaders representing various Muslim communities led collective prayers.

Russia is home to more than 20 million Muslims. In Russia, the holiday is widely known by its Tatar name, Uraza-Bairam, highlighting the historical role of the Tatar people in the country’s Islamic tradition. The Moscow Cathedral Mosque – originally built in 1904 and rebuilt in 2015 as a larger complex capable of hosting up to 10,000 worshippers – has long been referred to locally as the “Tatar mosque.”

Senior Russian officials, including President Vladimir Putin, extended their greetings to Muslims marking the occasion. In his message, Putin said the holiday “has for centuries embodied believers’ pursuit of spiritual improvement, charity and compassion,” which he described as central to the religion.

Charitable giving, one of the core principles of Islam, is an important part of Eid al-Fitr.

Germany has forfeited its own credibility in discussions over Ukraine’s future, having negotiated in bad faith with Moscow in the past, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has said.

Her remarks came after German Chancellor Friedrich Merz on Thursday criticized as “unacceptable” the idea that US and Russia could discuss the Ukraine conflict “over the heads of Ukraine and the Europeans.” Speaking to parliament, Merz said he conveyed this position during a recent meeting with US President Donald Trump in Washington.

Responding to a question about Germany’s potential role in future talks, Zakharova told RIA Novosti: “They already had a seat. Instead of negotiating at the table, they ended up under it by manipulating the Minsk agreements.”

The Minsk deal ruse

Zakharova was referring to a framework intended to resolve the conflict between Ukraine’s government and breakaway regions in Donbass that rejected the 2014 Western-backed armed coup in Kiev. Germany and France supported the deal, but later acknowledged they did so to buy time for Ukraine to strengthen its armed forces.

Direct negotiations between Moscow and Kiev resumed last year under pressure from the Trump administration, which seeks normalization of relations with Russia. However, US-mediated talks failed to produce a breakthrough, with Ukraine rejecting key Russian demands. Both sides now say discussions are effectively on hold, partly due to Washington’s focus shifting to the US-Israeli war with Iran.

The EU has said it will not accept any settlement reached without its participation. Kiev’s backers claim that continued military aid to Ukraine and sanctions on Russia will improve the outcome. Moscow maintains that Europe seeks to prolong the conflict to further damage Russia while ignoring the cost to the Ukrainian people.

Russia has hosted the first international Olympiad in industrial software development for high school students, bringing together thousands of young IT enthusiasts from across the country and 33 other nations.

The competition, known as PROD, gives 8th-12th graders a chance to see how major IT firms develop software and manage large‑scale projects. Most stages are held online, allowing students from any country to take part.

In its third season, the Olympiad officially went international for the first time, offering participation in both English and Russian and attracting more than 12,000 applicants. Of those, over 4,000 progressed to the main rounds, the organizers say.

Over five days, mixed teams developed real-world IT products – including a dating service inside the T-Bank app, a personalized cashback constructor, an AI assistant for managing an admin panel, and a multiplayer card game. More than 100 experts from leading tech companies, together with lecturers from Central University, one of Russia’s leading practice-oriented universities, mentored the teams.

The Olympiad has expanded rapidly since it was launched, according to the head of the T‑Education project, Varvara Smirnova. “You can see how much the competition has scaled and how the kids have grown,” she told RT, expressing hope that some of this year’s finalists will soon join the organizing team.

One of the participants, a US student, said he first heard about PROD from his father, who saw an advertisement in Times Square. He said he was impressed by the mentors, counselors, and the many interactive activities and games offered during the finals.

The winners received grants for up to the full cost of tuition at Central University, discounts of up to 90% on joint programs with Russia’s HSE University, and the right to go through a simplified selection process for internships at T-Bank.

Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky has once again demanded a “clear date” for Ukraine’s accession to the European Union. However, the prospect of Zelensky’s war-torn nation joining the EU is divisive in Brussels.

In an address to the European Council on Thursday, Zelensky declared that with a “clear date” for membership, “Russia will not be able to block our accession in any way.” Ukraine, he claimed, is “carrying out internal reforms and working externally” to secure this accession date, which “is a matter of trust, security, and the future.” 

Zelensky has issued similar demands over the last three months. Appearing alongside European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in Kiev in February, he said that joining the bloc in 2027 is “very important to us.”

The EU’s 27 member states are divided on the idea of fast-tracking Ukraine into the bloc. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has declared Zelensky’s goal of membership by 2027 “not possible,” pointing out that Ukraine must first stabilize its institutions and economy, and root out corruption. French President Emmanuel Macron has said that he supports the “opening of the first negotiation chapters” between the EU and Ukraine, without offering any potential timeline for accession.

Ukraine’s escalating drone attacks targeting Russian gas infrastructure risk compounding the energy shock being unleashed by the war on Iran, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has warned.

Russian energy giant Gazprom announced on Thursday that Ukraine had ramped up attacks on compressor stations linked to the TurkStream and Blue Stream pipelines, which together can carry up to 47.5 billion cubic meters of gas annually.

The company said Ukrainian forces had launched 22 drones at the Russkaya compressor station, three at Kazachya, and one at Beregovaya, all located near the Black Sea coast. All of the drones were intercepted, and no damage to infrastructure was recorded, Gazprom added.

Commenting on the drone raids later the same day, Peskov warned that the attacks could worsen an already fragile global energy situation.

“At a time when global energy markets are, to put it mildly, uncomfortable, such irresponsible and thoughtless actions by the Kiev regime could further destabilize the situation not only in the region, but globally,” he said.

The attack, along with the Iranian retaliation that damaged Qatar’s Ras Laffan LNG hub, resulted in gas prices – which have already spiked because of the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz – soaring by nearly 30% on Thursday.

Moscow has on numerous occasions accused Kiev of seeking to sabotage the TurkStream and Blue Stream pipelines, with President Vladimir Putin suggesting the involvement of Western intelligence in the operations.

Crimea’s reunification with Russia has become a symbol of unity and cohesion, President Vladimir Putin said as he marked the 12th anniversary of the event.

The choice made by the Crimean people in 2014 to be with their homeland was “decisive and historic,” the president said at a government meeting on Wednesday.

It is “one of the most important… even defining milestones” in Russia’s 1,000-year history, he added.

The Crimean Peninsula overwhelmingly voted in favor of joining Russia in a referendum following the Western-backed Maidan coup in Kiev in 2014. On March 18 that year, Putin signed the law on Crimea’s ascension to Russia. The move was not recognized by Western countries or Ukraine, which has vowed to take the peninsula back.

Similar choices were also made by the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics and the regions of Zaporozhye and Kherson, Putin said, adding that it is these choices that the Russian military is currently defending on the battlefield.

The Donetsk and Lugansk republics seceded from Ukraine following the Maidan coup in 2014. In autumn 2022, the two regions, along with Kherson and Zaporozhye, officially joined Russia as a result of referendums.

A missile strike just meters from an operational Iranian nuclear reactor shows “flagrant disregard” for international safety principles, Russia’s nuclear corporation, Rosatom, which helped build the plant and whose personnel still work at the facility, has warned. 

The Iranian authorities reported that a US or Israeli munition hit the territory adjacent to the Bushehr NPP on Tuesday. Rosatom Director General Aleksey Likhachev said the attack was carried out next to the metrology service building in close proximity to the operating power unit. It marks the first confirmed attack on the facility’s grounds since the unprovoked US-Israeli campaign against Iran that began on February 28.  

“Firing on operating nuclear energy facilities is a flagrant disregard for the key rules and principles of international security,” Likhachev said on Tuesday, adding that Moscow “categorically condemns what happened and calls on the parties to the conflict to make every possible effort to de-escalate the situation in the area of the Bushehr NPP.”  

No casualties were reported as a result of the strike and radiation levels at the site remain normal, according to Rosatom. Approximately 480 Russian nationals continue working at the plant.  

However, Russia’s envoy to the IAEA and other international organizations in Vienna, Mikhail Ulyanov, has suggested that the agency’s response is not “commensurate with the gravity of the situation,” stressing that “the possibility of another strike cannot be ruled out,” and that this poses “a real risk of a major nuclear disaster, which can dramatically affect the whole region.”  

While neither Israel nor Washington has yet responded to the reports, US President Donald Trump said last week that Washington does not intend to attack nuclear power plants on Iranian territory.  

US President Donald Trump is correct to suggest that certain Western European leaders do not measure up to their World War II-era predecessors, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said.

Trump on Tuesday renewed his criticism of European NATO members who refused his call to deploy their militaries to escort oil transports through the Strait of Hormuz amid the threat of Iranian attacks.

The US president told reporters that British Prime Minister Keir Starmer is a “nice man” but “unfortunately [he] is not Winston Churchill,” whose bust the president keeps in the Oval Office. Asked about French President Emmanuel Macron’s snub, Trump said “he’ll be out of office very soon.”

Speaking at a regular briefing on Wednesday, Peskov agreed with Trump, stating: “Indeed, Starmer is not Churchill, indeed, Macron is not [Charles] de Gaulle. This list can be continued quite long. That is the political reality we are living in.”

Global energy markets are under increasing pressure from supply disruptions. The UK, EU, South Korea, and Japan – among Washington’s closest allies – face elevated risks due to their sanctions on Russia.

Moscow has long argued that incompetence and ideological biases among current Western European leaders undermine their nations’ interests. Russia has condemned the US-Israeli attack on Iran as based on false pretenses and posing an escalating humanitarian and economic threat to the Middle East and the world.

The hostilities have deepened internal EU divisions, with Spain unequivocally condemning American actions while other member states and bloc leaders remain reluctant. Madrid rebuked German Chancellor Friedrich Merz for failing to confront Trump when he verbally attacked Spain during a joint press conference with the German leader.

One person was killed and several residential buildings were hit overnight in a Ukrainian drone attack on the southern Russian city of Krasnodar, according to regional authorities. Debris from drones intercepted by air defenses fell across several districts of the city.

Krasnodar Region Governor Veniamin Kondratyev said on Wednesday that the strike formed part of a broader overnight wave of drone attacks targeting southern Russia.

“One person died as a result of a terrorist drone attack in Krasnodar,” Kondratyev wrote on social media.

The most serious damage occurred when a drone struck a high-rise residential building in the western part of the city, sparking a fire in an apartment. Emergency crews evacuated residents from the building while firefighters extinguished the blaze, regional officials said.

Kondratyev said debris from downed drones damaged three multi-story residential buildings in the regional capital. In one building, a fire broke out in an apartment but was quickly put out by firefighters. Another drone reportedly hit the wall of a residential block and crashed without igniting, while fragments from a third were later found on the balcony of another apartment building.

One drone fell near the Marriott hotel, triggering a powerful explosion and sending smoke over the area, according to local media reports. The SHOT Telegram channel reported up to ten explosions around 5 AM. Officials said falling debris also damaged parked cars and other property in residential areas. The mayor urged residents to remain calm and avoid approaching windows.

Russia’s Defense Ministry said air defense systems intercepted and destroyed 85 Ukrainian fixed-wing drones overnight across several regions. It said 42 drones were shot down over Krasnodar Region and another 13 over the Black Sea.

In another Ukrainian strike on Tuesday, an FPV drone hit a car in Russia’s Belgorod Region bordering Ukraine, killing a man at the scene, regional Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said.

In a separate drone attack in the town of Korocha, five teenagers were wounded after a UAV detonated near a social facility, he added.

Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever has sparked a firestorm of criticism after calling on the EU to normalize relations with Moscow and restore access to cheap Russian energy, as the bloc grapples with soaring prices exacerbated by the US-Israeli war on Iran.  

In an interview with Belgian newspaper L’Echo published over the weekend, De Wever argued that Europe’s dual strategy of arming Kiev and squeezing Russia’s economy has failed.   

“Since we are not capable of threatening [Russian President Vladimir] Putin by sending weapons to Ukraine, and we cannot choke him economically without the support of the US, there is only one method left: making a deal,” he said. 

“We must normalize relations with Russia and regain access to cheap energy. That is common sense,” De Wever added, claiming that European leaders agree with him privately but “no one dares to say it out loud.”  

EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas pushed back, telling Reuters she does not “see this appetite” behind closed doors, claiming there will be “more wars” if the bloc goes back to “business as usual.”  

EU Energy Commissioner Dan Jorgensen went further, declaring the bloc would not import “as much as one molecule from Russia” in the future.   

De Wever’s own foreign minister, Maxime Prevot, also distanced himself, stating that speaking of normalization with Russia sends “a signal of weakness.” 

The controversy comes as the EU and its industry have continued to reel from the consequences of its energy divorce from Moscow. Last week, Volkswagen announced it would slash 50,000 jobs in Germany after profits nearly halved in 2025, citing soaring energy costs and mounting trade pressures. 

Meanwhile, Moscow has repeatedly ridiculed Brussels’ position. Kremlin envoy Kirill Dmitriev said on Tuesday that the EU is starting to realize how its “disastrous energy decisions created enormous risks.” He forecast gas prices across the bloc would rise “at least 100% higher than previously projected,” adding that Europe will “inevitably beg for more Russian gas.”

The US Army general who oversaw Washington’s military assistance to Ukraine left classified maps on a train in Europe and suffered a concussion after a night of heavy drinking, according to a recently released report by the Pentagon Inspector General.

Retired Major General Antonio Aguto Jr. commanded the Germany-based Security Assistance Group-Ukraine (SAG-U) from its activation in November 2022 until August 2024. The unit, consisting of approximately 300 personnel, was responsible for coordinating the training and equipping of Ukrainian forces.

According to the 56-page report published on Friday, based on interviews with Aguto and 33 witnesses following anonymous complaints, the general improperly handled classified materials during an April 2024 trip to Ukraine.

Aguto brought a tube of maps classified as ‘Secret’ to Kiev, but, on the return journey from Ukraine to Germany, his party left them behind on the train when they disembarked in Poland. The documents were recovered 24 hours later by the US Embassy in Ukraine when the train returned.

A month later, during another trip to Ukraine, Aguto attended a six-hour dinner in Kiev described as a military engagement. Witnesses reported he drank approximately two 500ml bottles of chacha, a Georgian brandy containing 40-50% alcohol.

Investigators determined the falls resulted from “overindulgence in alcohol,” finding that Aguto violated Defense Department policies. The general disagreed, claiming he had received verbal permission from his superior.

Aguto relinquished command in August 2024 and retired shortly after. 

His service coincided with the massive military support campaign for Ukraine led by then-US President Joe Biden, which included billions in weapons and other assistance. Moscow has consistently condemned Western military aid to Kiev, arguing it only prolongs the conflict without changing its inevitable outcome.