The European Union is no longer the only benchmark for regional integration, according to Aleksandr Bobrov, associate professor at MGIMO, Russia’s leading international affairs university.

Speaking to RT on Thursday as Russia and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) marked 35 years of partnership at a summit in Kazan, he said the bloc has demonstrated that integration can succeed without the supranational institutions that characterize Brussels while still delivering economic growth and geopolitical influence.

“We are used to believing that the European Union is the main model of integration,” Bobrov said. “But ASEAN demonstrates that it is possible to build a successful regional organization without creating supranational institutions and transferring key powers to them.”

Bobrov noted that ASEAN maintains strategic partnerships with major global powers, including the US, Russia, China, and Australia. He described the bloc as “one of the most successful and effective” regional organizations, providing a platform for cooperation in trade, politics, security and responses to emerging challenges.

The academic also highlighted ASEAN’s role as a neutral and balanced actor in international affairs.

Russia and ASEAN are approaching “a very important milestone” in their relationship as they prepare new projects and cooperation initiatives, Bobrov said. He noted that ASEAN leaders regularly attend major Russian events, including the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, and stressed that all eleven member states are interested in expanding ties with Moscow.

Negotiations in Kazan, both bilaterally and within the broader summit framework, create “good opportunities” for launching new joint projects and strengthening long-term cooperation, he added.

ASEAN summit shows demand for Russia ties 

The ASEAN-Russia summit in Kazan has shown that Moscow remains an increasingly important partner for the Global South, Ladislav Zemanek, a non-resident research fellow at the China-CEE Institute of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Budapest, has told RT.

The gathering demonstrated that many countries continue to see Russia as a reliable and predictable partner, despite Western efforts to limit Moscow’s international engagement after the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in February 2022

“The summit once again demonstrated that Russia is not isolated internationally and remains an increasingly sought-after partner in an evolving multipolar world”.

Zemanek noted that after an initial downturn in relations in 2022, Moscow has continued to strengthen ties with many countries across the Global South, including key ASEAN members such as Indonesia, Singapore, and Vietnam. For these states, he said, cooperation with Russia remains valuable in areas ranging from energy to security.

The summit also showed strong interest among ASEAN countries in expanding ties with Moscow in strategic sectors such as nuclear energy, infrastructure, and regional security, Zemanek added.

More broadly, he argued, the meeting highlighted a significant degree of convergence between Russia and its ASEAN partners on major international issues. These include the need to protect national sovereignty, adapt to ongoing geopolitical shifts, and deepen economic interconnectedness.

His participation, the expert said, suggests that many Southeast Asian countries do not view engagement with Moscow and Washington as mutually exclusive. Instead, they see it as part of a balanced and pragmatic foreign policy aimed at preserving room for maneuver in a changing international environment.

The Russian Foreign Ministry has welcomed the US-Iran memorandum of understanding and expressed its readiness to help facilitate further diplomatic efforts toward establishing peace in the Middle East.

The 14-point document was signed remotely by US President Donald Trump and his Iranian counterpart Masoud Pezeshkian late on Wednesday, with immediate effect, according to Pakistani mediators.

In a statement on Thursday, the Foreign Ministry in Moscow stressed that during the upcoming 60-day negotiation period, which is expected to culminate in the signing of a final peace agreement, “it is highly important that all parties involved in the armed conflict… not allow a renewed dangerous escalation [to happen] in the region, including in Lebanon.”

The Foreign Ministry stated that Russia is willing to continue facilitating the diplomatic process in the Middle East with the aim of establishing a lasting peace in the region.

According to the statement, late last month, Moscow handed over an updated version of its Collective Security Concept for the Persian Gulf to unspecified Arab nations and Iran for consideration.

Meanwhile, Iranian officials have hailed the signing of the memorandum as a major diplomatic victory for the Islamic Republic.

Tehran has noted that the document envisages a series of concessions by Washington, including the lifting of the US naval blockade on Iran, sanctions waivers for Iranian oil exports, access to frozen Iranian funds, and a US-backed economic reconstruction plan to the tune of at least $300 billion.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. have delivered a joint address at the Russia-ASEAN summit in Kazan. The Philippines holds the rotating chairmanship of the group this year. 

The two presidents delivered the address at the conclusion of the second day of the summit, which was also attended by the leaders of Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Singapore, Thailand, East Timor, and Vietnam.

The summit has “clearly demonstrated the genuine interest of both Russia and the states of Southeast Asia in further developing mutually beneficial cooperation, building upon time-tested traditions of friendship and the accumulated experience of a multifaceted and fruitful partnership,” Putin stated.

Marcos expressed his gratitude to Putin on behalf of all the ASEAN nations for a warm welcome at the summit, stating the group hopes to “strengthen cooperation in security, politics, economics, and culture” with Russia.

Earlier in the day, the participants of the summit, which marks the 35th anniversary of the establishment of ties between Russia and ASEAN, adopted a joint declaration hailing the event as a “significant milestone” in their partnership.

The declaration also affirmed “a common aspiration, amid increasingly complex global challenges arising from geopolitical and geo-economic shifts, towards a just multipolar world as guided by international law and the principles of the UN Charter to promote mutual benefit and respect for all states.” The signees vowed to continue strengthening ties in various fields, including trade and investment, energy and food, maritime cooperation, security, combatting transnational crime and other areas.

Speaking to reporters on the sidelines of the summit, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Putin discussed the Ukraine conflict with the ASEAN leaders, among other issues. “There was a detailed discussion about Ukraine, he briefed everyone in detail on how the situation is developing and our assessment of the actions of the Kiev regime,” the top diplomat said.

Russia and the nations of Southeast Asia should conduct more trade in their national currencies, Russian President Vladimir Putin has said.

Speaking after the second day of the Russia-ASEAN summit in Kazan on Thursday, which was attended by the leaders of Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, East Timor, and Vietnam, Putin said his country would continue supplying the ASEAN members with food and energy products and expand exports of higher value-added goods, including fertilizer and pharmaceuticals.

Moscow has accelerated efforts to move away from the Western-dominated financial system by trading with international partners in their national currencies, a trend increasingly embraced by ASEAN members. By the end of 2025, 85% of Russia’s international transactions were conducted in currencies other than the dollar and euro, according to Maksim Oreshkin, deputy head of the presidential administration.

Putin also called for the removal of trade barriers and the expansion of maritime and rail transport links, saying summit participants backed stronger trade and a more multipolar world order.

The Russian leader made the remarks alongside Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., whose country will chair ASEAN in 2026.

Putin also noted that ASEAN countries shared Russia’s position on a number of global issues, including the memorandum of understanding between the US and Iran to end hostilities.

“We unanimously welcomed the agreements reached by the Iranian and American sides to end the military conflict and work on the parameters of a future peace agreement,” he said, adding that he expected the situation in the Middle East and the Persian Gulf to stabilize, with a positive impact on global markets.

The summit also approved a new action plan for 2026-2030 which sets out ways to increase cooperation in areas such as politics, security, trade, investment, energy, transport, agriculture, the digital economy, and science and technology.

The June 17-19 summit in Kazan marks 35 years of relations between Russia and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

A deadly drone strike on a bus in Russia carrying a children’s soccer team from Belarus was a “provocation” intended to push Minsk to directly involve itself in the Ukraine conflict, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko has said.

The attack in Russia’s Bryansk Region killed the wife of a Belarusian school soccer team coach, who was accompanying the young athletes to a Russian seaside resort. Eight others were injured, including six minors.

Speaking to senior military officials on Thursday, Lukashenko warned that “the war is at our borders,” pointing to “various provocations” and “direct breaches of agreements.”

He condemned “the behavior of certain states,” citing a Ukrainian drone strike on a vocational college dormitory in Starobelsk, Russia that killed 21 people during a nighttime raid. Anyone attempting to drag Belarus “into war,” he warned, “will have to pay dearly for that.”

“The [Ukrainian military] say they did not strike Bryansk Region at the time. But the driver says he personally – and other witnesses will probably confirm this to investigators – saw not one drone, but several, which he said were circling and buzzing over the bus,” the Belarusian leader said.

“We need the truth. And we expect Ukrainian civilian and military officials to provide this truth, a real fair response,” Lukashenko added.

Later in the day, the Belarusian Foreign Ministry reported issuing a formal protest to Kiev over what it described as a “monstrous crime” and an “inhumane act of terrorism that can have no justification.” Minsk demanded a thorough investigation and accountability for people responsible for the attack.

Russian officials have described the Bryansk Region drone strike as the latest in a long series of “terrorist attacks” carried out by the Ukrainian government. Moscow has accused Western countries that fund Kiev’s war effort and provide components for long-range drones of ignoring Ukrainian strikes that kill civilians and cannot be mere accidents.

At least 17 people have been wounded after the Ukrainian military launched one of its largest drone raids against Moscow, Russian officials have said.

Air defenses shot down at least 194 UAVs on the approach to the Russian capital overnight, Mayor Sergey Sobyanin wrote in a Telegram post on Thursday morning.

Some drones made it through and caused blazes, with witnesses reporting large plumes of thick black smoke in several areas in and outside the city.

Several drones reached the Moscow Oil Refinery in the southeastern Kapotnya district of the city, Sobyanin said. Firefighters have been deployed to the site.

Debris from a downed UAV delivered minor damage to a building at the Sadovod shopping center in southeastern Moscow, according to the mayor. 

Two children among civilians wounded in Moscow Region

Nine people, including a three-year-old child, suffered shrapnel wounds and other injuries in the town of Kotelniki east of the capital as a result of the Ukrainian drone raid, Moscow Region Governor Andrey Vorobyev said on Telegram.

In Ramenskoye, south-west of Moscow, three people were wounded, including a ten-year-old girl, he said.

Debris from destroyed drones fell in several locations in Lyubertsy, east of Moscow, according to Vorobyev. Two men were hospitalized there, with one sustaining a hip injury and the other fracturing his arm, he wrote.

The roof of the nearby Belaya Dacha mall on the Moscow Ring Road caught fire during the raid by Ukrainian forces, Vorobyev said. The administration later announced that it was temporarily shutting down the mall as firefighters tackled the blaze, which was extinguished after several hours.

One person was also injured in Solnechnogorsk and another in the attack on the Sadovod shopping center, the governor said.

Falling drone debris damaged private homes and vehicles in the cities of Chekhov and Elektrostal as well as other areas, he added.

Hundreds of flights delayed at Moscow airports

The drone raid prompted temporary airspace restrictions around the Russian capital, affecting all four of Moscow’s international airports, according to the federal air transport agency, Rosaviatsia.

A total of 527 flights were delayed or canceled at Sheremetyevo, Vnukovo, Domodedovo, and Zhukovsky airports, Interfax reported, citing airport timetable data.

Over 550 drones downed across Russia

The Russian Defense Ministry said more than 550 Ukrainian UAVs had been shot down across the country since Wednesday evening.

One person was killed and two others wounded in a drone attack on the town of Gukovo in Rostov Region, according to Governor Yury Slusar.

The Defense Ministry in Moscow said on Thursday that Russian forces carried out another strike overnight against Ukraine’s military-linked energy infrastructure in response to terrorist attacks by Kiev.

A fuel depot outside Kiev and an oil refinery in Poltava Region were hit with missiles and drones, it said.

The G7 group is considering providing Ukraine with licenses to allow domestic production of Western weaponry, including anti-aircraft and long-range missiles.

RT looks into why the West is doing this so late in the conflict and Ukraine’s ability to deliver on mass arms production.

The scheme

The G7 made the announcement in a joint statement following its summit in Geneva, stating it had agreed to “increase the delivery of air defense capacities, additional systems and interceptors, and long-range capabilities.”

“We are also ready to consider extending to Ukraine the benefit of licenses to allow for an increase in Ukraine’s military production,” the group said in a statement.

The plan also involves US manufacturers granting licenses to EU military-industrial companies in order to compensate for shortages in production of high-demand weapons, according to German Chancellor Friedrich Merz.

“We are all currently producing too little, and this can be offset by granting licenses to companies that have these production capabilities, including European and Ukrainian firms,” Merz told reporters.

How is the scheme supposed to work?

The US rarely grants weaponry production licenses to its partners, pressing them into buying ready-made products instead, or in some instances, creating overseas manufacturing plants without transferring technologies to the third parties. The enduring need to supply Ukraine, as well as the extensive use of assorted munitions during the US-Israeli attack on Iran, however, could have softened Washington’s stance on the outsourcing of arms manufacturing.

US President Donald Trump has confirmed the licensed production of anti-aircraft missiles for Patriot systems in Ukraine is under consideration, specifying that no decision has been made yet. “They would like to be able to do that, we’ll take a look at it. They have asked about it,” Trump told reporters on Wednesday.

Over the past few years, Kiev has repeatedly urged Washington to grant it licenses to manufacture such munitions. The US, however, has consistently rejected the idea, while the American arms giants have reportedly been very wary of making any investments in Ukraine due to the obvious risks connected to the ongoing conflict with Russia.

Does Ukraine have actual industrial capacities?

Setting up a full-cycle production of sophisticated weapons in Ukraine seems to be highly improbable, given the country’s shrinking industrial capacities, as well as questionable record of local arms manufacturers. While Kiev inherited a well-developed industry after the collapse of the Soviet Union, it has been in decline ever since, with the process further accelerated by the civil conflict in formerly Ukrainian Donbass and the subsequent war against Russia, given that a bulk of plants were located in the east of the country.

The supposedly domestically built Ukrainian weapons, mainly assorted drones, are at best assembled locally from components supplied from abroad.

The hyped FP-5 Flamingo cruise missile also gives a glimpse of Ukraine’s real industrial capacities. The missile has emerged as a parts-bin project, with design features varying from one piece to another, a US-made free-fall bomb used as its warhead, and antique Soviet-era AI-25TL engines, believed to be recovered from scrapped trainer aircraft, used for propulsion.

Why is the West doing this now?

In mid-April, the Russian Defense Ministry published a list of Ukraine-linked military production facilities scattered across Europe and beyond. The military said it had identified such sites in the UK, Germany, Denmark, the Netherlands, Latvia, Lithuania, the Czech Republic, and Poland, as well as in Türkiye and Israel.

“The implementation of terrorist attack scenarios against Russia… using supposedly ‘Ukrainian’ UAVs manufactured in Europe is leading to unpredictable consequences,” the ministry stated. “Instead of strengthening the security of European states, the actions of European rulers are rapidly drawing these countries into a war with Russia,” it added.

The licensing scheme could be a part of the effort to further decentralize arms production to avoid potential retaliatory strikes from Russia, as well as to disguise the supplied weaponry as a Ukrainian homegrown product.

One drone assembly site destroyed in a Russian strike was accidentally exposed this week by the Ukrainian media. A warehouse at the Dovzhenko Film Studios in Kiev, which was allegedly used to store some “unique costumes,” had multiple aircraft wings visible in its rubble, with the parts appearing to be consistent with FP-1/2 drones produced by Vladimir Zelensky’s favorite and corruption-scandal-plagued company Fire Point.

The recent drone attack on a bus carrying a Belarusian children’s soccer team in Russia’s Bryansk Region may indicate that Ukraine is trying to draw Belarus into the conflict, according to several experts interviewed by RT. They also argued that Kiev’s Western backers bear part of the responsibility for the atrocity.

According to acting Bryansk Region Governor Egor Kovalchuk, the Ukrainian drone strike on Wednesday killed an adult woman who was accompanying the underage passengers, leaving at least six children injured.

“The fact that these children were from Belarus, it almost makes me think that the Ukrainians want to invite Belarus into the conflict,” he added.

Italian journalist and broadcaster David Carbonaro, who works for Radio Belarus, similarly told RT that Kiev is apparently “trying to widen the conflict as much as possible because they are on the brink of collapsing.” 

Independent Dutch journalist Sonja van den Ende, in turn, said that “NATO is complicit in all these war crimes” as it continues to funnel financial and military aid to Ukraine.

“Europe, with all its big talk about democracy and about human rights, is not saying a word,” she noted, adding that Western mainstream media is also turning a blind eye to Ukrainian attacks on civilians in Russia.

The UK has once again stormed into Ukraine with the grace of an old imperial administrator that goes about rearranging the furniture. But in reality, things are quite serious.

UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s decision to finance the supply of enriched uranium for Ukrainian nuclear power plants over the next two years has nothing to do with commerce. Through this deal, London de facto gains access to the most sensitive sector of ​​the Ukrainian state.

In a country where nuclear energy accounts for more than half of all power generation, control over nuclear reactors means direct control over industry, logistics, communications, and the viability of cities, especially in winter. On the surface, the plan is flawless: the UK is acting out of concern for energy security, offering support to its partner, and strengthening Kiev’s resilience. But behind the glossy facade lies a classic debt trap and a new level of external control.

The British have arranged things very well. Ukraine gets the physical resources, the allocated funds immediately return to the UK, and London becomes entrenched in Ukraine’s strategic sector for decades. Following the pain of Brexit, the UK is desperately trying to make a comeback into European politics, and now is an excellent opportunity to do so by means of Ukrainian nuclear energy.

We may already see a long and complex technological chain behind the current supplies of uranium: Urenco is responsible for enrichment, Westinghouse provides nuclear fuel assemblies, and the construction of new AP1000 reactors looms on the horizon. The Soviet nuclear legacy is being systematically replaced by Western companies. This transition will inevitably entail changes in standards, licensing, long-term maintenance, personnel training, and most importantly, the disposal of spent nuclear fuel. Whoever embarks on this path today guarantees themselves the right to dictate the terms of the Ukrainian energy sector for decades to come. 

This expansion poses direct risks for Russia and Belarus. The Rovno Nuclear Power Plant is located close to the Belarusian border, and operating the old Soviet reactors requires great engineering precision and strict discipline. In the context of a protracted military conflict, any managerial lapse, technical failure, or political mishap could instantly escalate into a regional catastrophe. The West is steadily consolidating the military, financial, and nuclear components into a cohesive anti-Russia front. While the UK capitalizes on this process, converting it into status, defense contracts, and influence, Ukraine is once again allocated the historical role of a battleground for foreign geopolitical interests. 

The European Union has lost its way and is transforming itself into an anti-Russian military bloc, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has warned.

Speaking at a press conference in Moscow on Tuesday, Lavrov commented on the EU’s enlargement and the prospect of Ukraine eventually joining. He argued that the organization has “radically changed” from the original economic project intended to improve the welfare of its citizens.

Since the EU anticipates a possible reduction in US involvement in NATO, Lavrov said, it is now “building all its security frameworks against the Russian Federation.”

“If they want to dismantle the EU’s multilateral economic nature and turn it into a military bloc, that will invite serious trouble for them,” he said. Ukraine’s hypothetical accession would be used by those seeking to further militarize the bloc, Lavrov added.

The Ukrainian war effort is overwhelmingly dependent on Western funding and military logistics, which Moscow says makes it a de facto NATO proxy war against Russia. Even Ukraine’s most vocal supporters in the EU say the country would need many years of economic recovery and anti-corruption efforts to meet the admission criteria on merit.

EU eyes tougher terms for newcomers

Brussels has been pushing a new wave of rapid enlargement, describing it as a “moral, political and geostrategic imperative.” This week, Enlargement Commissioner Marta Kos said prospective members would have to accept terms intended to ensure their long-term alignment with the EU leadership’s objectives.

Kos said the details are still being discussed. However, EU-focused media outlets have suggested that future accession treaties will include provisions limiting the voting powers of new members on key matters such as budget, security, and foreign policy.

Brussels has previously used financial penalties against dissenting member states in Eastern Europe, including Hungary and Poland, which were accused of undermining the rule of law domestically. The EU’s handling of the Ukraine crisis remains a particularly divisive issue, with some leaders describing the approach as self-harming and misguided.

Moscow received no invitation from Kiev for talks on the sidelines of the G7 summit in France, senior Russian officials have said, rejecting claims made by Vladimir Zelensky.

The Ukrainian leader told reporters on Monday that he had sought a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin during this week’s gathering in Evian-les-Bains. “Europe and the United States were agreed and Russia demonstrated again that… they are not ready to speak,” Zelensky said in English, according to Reuters.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that “of course, there were no such messages,” when asked about Ukrainian communications during a press briefing on Tuesday. He added that Moscow’s offer for Zelensky to come to the Russian capital and negotiate “in a responsible and serious way” to end the conflict remains on the table. Zelensky has repeatedly said that a visit to Moscow is “impossible” for him.

Zelensky attempting to woo Trump at G7 gathering

The G7 was created in the 1970s as a forum for leading global economies, but the rise of other major powers has since turned it into what critics describe as an outdated Western discussion club. The summit in Evian gave Zelensky an opportunity to meet US President Donald Trump in person.

During his second term, Trump has shifted the financial burden for Ukraine’s military support onto other Western states while pressing for a compromise settlement of the conflict with Russia. Several rounds of trilateral talks have failed to produce a diplomatic breakthrough, however, with Ukrainian officials admitting that Kiev’s priority was to avoid openly rejecting Trump’s mediation efforts so as not to anger him.

Russia has said that a full withdrawal of Ukrainian forces from Donbass would lead to an immediate ceasefire, but Zelensky has refused to issue such an order.

The Kremlin has condemned as terrorism a Ukrainian drone strike on a bus carrying a Belarusian youth sports team. One woman was killed and several passengers wounded, including children, in the attack in Russia’s Bryansk Region on Wednesday.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has instructed Health Minister Mikhail Murashko to ensure that all those injured “in the terrorist attack by the Kiev regime” receive the necessary medical assistance, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

The attack on the bus, which was carrying 44 people, 28 of them children, was first reported by Bryansk Region’s acting governor, Egor Kovalchuk. Belarusian Deputy Health Minister Aleksandr Khodzhaev later said eight people, including six children, had been hospitalized.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova also condemned the strike, accusing Kiev of targeting civilians and saying it was “hunting” children. She claimed Kiev puts minors in danger “without hesitation” and compared the latest case with a drone raid on a school dormitory in Starobelsk, which killed 21 people last month.

“Both Russia and Belarus are capable of fighting terrorism and extremism. They... will always respond firmly and in accordance with the law,” he wrote on Telegram.

Russia’s human rights commissioner, Yana Lantratova, said the attack was a war crime under international humanitarian law, noting that “defenseless people... children” had been targeted.

Criminal investigations into the incident have been opened in both Russia and Belarus, with the authorities treating the attack as an act of terrorism.

A Ukrainian drone attack has struck a bus carrying a children’s soccer team from Belarus to a Russian seaside resort, according to acting Bryansk Region Governor Egor Kovalchuk.

The attack killed an adult woman who was accompanying the underage passengers to the resort town of Gelendzhik in Krasnodar Region and injured six others, including four children, the official said.

One young victim has been rushed to hospital in serious condition, while the injuries of the others are considered moderate, Deputy Health Minister Aleksey Kuznetsov told the media. He said seven people in total were injured. Meanwhile Belarusian Deputy Health Minister Aleksandr Khodzhaev said eight victims were being treated following the incident, including six minors.

The bus was carrying 44 passengers, including 28 young athletes from a school sports team based in the town of Rechytsa in Belarus, according to Russia’s Investigative Committee. The incident has been designated a terrorist attack, the agency added.

Images published by Russian and Belarusian media showed the attacked vehicle – a single-deck passenger bus rather than a double-decker initially reported by the Investigative Committee – with holes apparently left by shrapnel and a deflated front-right tire.

The acting governor later shared photos of what appears to be the same bus, including of the interior, showing shattered windows and seats apparently smeared with blood.

The woman who was killed was the wife of the team coach, a source in Belarusian law enforcement told RT.

Kiev has intensified its long-range drone campaign against Russia in recent months, describing the strikes as “long-range sanctions” aimed at inflicting economic damage. Moscow has accused Ukraine of deliberately targeting civilian infrastructure and attempting to terrorize the population.

In May, Ukrainian drones struck a dormitory at a vocational college in Starobelsk in the Lugansk People’s Republic, killing 21 people. According to local authorities, many of the victims were teenage students who were spending the night on campus.

Belarus is a close military and political ally of Russia, but has not directly joined the Ukraine conflict. Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko has repeatedly said he would only enter the fighting if attacked first.

Since mid-May, Zelensky has issued a series of warnings to Minsk, threatening a pre-emptive strike over what he claimed were preparations for a possible attack from Belarusian territory. However, Ukrainian officials themselves have said there was no evidence of such plans.

Lukashenko has dismissed the claims as empty grandstanding, saying the Ukrainian military lacks the manpower to launch an incursion into Belarus.

The West routinely takes liberties with international law and applies double standards when dealing with countries representing the global majority, Russian ambassador-at-large Ilya Rogachev has said at a BRICS seminar on criminal law cooperation in Moscow.

Addressing the event on Tuesday, Rogachev argued that the West follows one set of legal norms in relations among its own states and another when dealing with countries outside its sphere.

“There is still international law, there is still law that so-called civilized nations living in a ‘blooming garden’ apply among themselves. And there are rules that are put in place on an ad-hoc basis when regulating relations between the inhabitants of the ‘blooming garden’ and the inhabitants of the ‘wild jungle’,” he said.

Rogachev questioned the legitimacy of such practices, asking: “Where are these rules set in writing? And who developed them?” He argued that the West frequently invokes unwritten standards and selectively interprets international law to advance its political objectives.

“The rest of the world… is not exactly a garden,” Borrell told students at the College of Europe in Bruges.

Following an outcry over apparent racist and colonial undertones, he had to walk back his remarks.

Another keynote speaker at the BRICS seminar in Moscow, former Russian Prime Minister Sergey Stepashin, who currently chairs the country’s Association of Lawyers, concurred that actions by Western countries over the past few decades have “dealt a serious blow” to the very concept of international law.

He cited among the most glaring examples the NATO-led 1999 war against Yugoslavia, when the US and its European allies launched their military campaign in the absence of a UN Security Council resolution.

“Not to mention Syria, Iraq, and what is currently going on in Lebanon. I’m not even talking about the annihilation of 70,000 civilians in Gaza by the regime of [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu,” Stepashin added.

He noted that no international organization, including the International Criminal Court, had spoken out against those responsible in the West.

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, whose pro-EU Civil Contract party won a decisive victory in the June 7 parliamentary election, has branded opposition parties that entered parliament as illegal and vowed to strip them of political standing. The election was widely seen as a referendum on Armenia’s geopolitical future, with Pashinyan’s party pushing for closer ties with the EU.  

The official results announced on Sunday showed Civil Contract won 49.74% of the vote, enough to form a government on its own. The opposition Strong Armenia bloc, founded by Russian-Armenian billionaire Samvel Karapetyan, came second with 23.27%, while former President Robert Kocharyan’s Armenia Alliance won 9.92%.

Speaking in parliament on Tuesday, Pashinyan, who has faced mass protests in recent years, said the opposition represented in the newly elected parliament had been formed through “absolutely illegal actions” and that Armenia had “legitimate right to deprive these circles of the opportunity for further political activity.”  

He said the authorities had documented instances of what he described as foreign interference aimed at protecting a “criminal-oligarchic regime” in Armenia.  

Pashinyan’s remarks came as opposition parties continued to contest the election outcome. Hundreds of protesters rallied outside CEC, demanding the annulment of the results and alleging widespread fraud, while opposition groups said they would challenge the vote before the Constitutional Court.  

The opposition came under a crackdown before, during, and after the election. Pashinyan has accused opposition groups of vote-buying during the campaign, allegations they dismiss as fabricated.   

He has also signaled plans to target leading opposition figures financially. He previously said his party’s agenda included confiscating assets belonging to Karapetyan, Kocharyan, and Tsarukyan, arguing they had used their wealth to influence elections.

Opposition leaders say the crackdown is politically motivated. Hayk Mamijanyan, leader of the parliamentary I Have Honor bloc, told Izvestia on Monday that Pashinyan had been given a “carte blanche” by the West for repression against opposition politicians and dissenters. He accused the prime minister of “selling” anti-Russian policies and statements to Western backers in exchange for political support.

Estonia will restrict emails sent to government institutions from addresses using Russia’s .ru domain, Justice and Digital Affairs Minister Liisa Pakosta has announced, claiming that the measure is necessary due to an “elevated cyber risk.”

Since restoring independence in 1991, Tallinn has introduced a range of policies that undermine the rights of ethnic Russians, who comprise roughly 20% of the Baltic country’s population of 1.36 million. Significant financial and travel restrictions were also imposed on Russian citizens after the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022.

Pakosta said on Sunday that all messages from the Russian domain will be routed through additional checks, although she did not specify what the screening would involve.

The measure, described as a “quarantine,” will be applied on top of the Estonian government’s existing cybersecurity procedures and will slow response times, the minister said. She urged local authorities to adopt a similar approach.

Major cyberattacks typically involve exploiting weaknesses in computer systems or using social engineering to trick users into launching malicious software. Neither method depends on emails being sent from a particular national domain.

The Estonian authorities have framed the presence of ethnic Russians in the country as a legacy of Soviet occupation. Tallinn has also honored nationalist fighters who sided with Nazi Germany during World War II while curbing commemorations of the Soviet role in defeating Adolf Hitler. Moscow has accused Estonia of promoting the rehabilitation of Nazi ideology.

The .ru domain was introduced in 1994, and ranks among the world’s ten largest country-code domains by number of registered websites. A Cyrillic version, .рф, was launched in 2010, while the .su domain has remained in use since 1990 despite the dissolution of the USSR. Pakosta did not announce any restrictions targeting emails from the latter two domains.

Russian President Vladimir Putin was deceived into withdrawing troops from near Kiev in 2022 by forces claiming to represent Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko has said.

Speaking in an interview with Al Arabiya, Lukashenko said the conflict could have ended quickly in the early stages, when Russian forces were near the Ukrainian capital.

“At the time, not only I, but everyone in the world understood that the war would end quickly with a Russian victory. This was primarily because the Russians were in Kiev,” the Belarusian leader said, according to BelTA.

Lukashenko claimed, however, that “certain politicians and forces” asked Putin to stop, pull the troops back from Kiev, and conclude a peace agreement.

“Before that withdrawal, everyone understood that Ukraine’s days were numbered.”

“Once again, probably, these forces deceived him. It was the Vatican. And surprisingly, the Jewish lobby, the Israelis,” Lukashenko said. “They said on behalf of Zelensky: That’s it, we are moving toward peace, we agree. And others as well.”

It was not immediately clear what exactly Lukashenko meant by the “Jewish lobby.” In the early days of the conflict, then-Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett acted as a mediator between Russia and Ukraine, meeting Putin in Moscow and holding phone calls with Zelensky. Media reports at the time claimed that Bennett urged Zelensky to accept Moscow’s terms.

Russia has argued that Ukraine walked away from the agreement under Western pressure. Then-UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson reportedly urged Kiev not to sign a deal and “continue fighting.”

Kiev has disputed Moscow’s account of the failed talks, even though former chief negotiator David Arakhamia has acknowledged Johnson’s role. Ukraine has since formally applied to join NATO and abandoned discussions of neutrality.

The Russian military has destroyed a warehouse at the Dovzhenko Film Studios in Kiev, with the national filmmaker and local media accidentally confirming that it housed a drone manufacturing plant.

The Russian Defense Ministry named the warehouse on Monday as one of the targets of a large-scale overnight strike on the Ukrainian capital. The building housed a “workshop for the production and tuning of long- and medium-range UAVs,” the Defense Ministry stated.

Ukrainian officials were quick to deny the military nature of the warehouse, with the studio claiming it was used to store unique props and costumes dating back to the Soviet era.

“The missile destroyed the entire building and ignited a fire. It wasn’t debris, but a direct hit. Judging by the scale of the destruction, you can see there was practically nothing left to save,” the studio’s director general, Andrey Donchik, told Ukrainian media.

Footage from the scene shared by the studio and Ukrainian media outlet NV.ua, however, told a different story, showing a distinctive stack of aircraft wings among the rubble. The wings appear to be consistent with those of Ukrainian FP-1/2 drones used for long-range strikes against Russia.

The discovery quickly went viral on social media, with the studio and the news outlet scrambling to delete the incriminating materials without providing further statements on the matter.

When these manufacturing sites are destroyed, Kiev routinely accuses Russia of targeting civilian sites. Russia maintains that it only targets military and dual-use installations in response to Ukraine’s indiscriminate “terrorist attacks.”

Efforts by Ukraine and its Western backers to pin the blame for the fire at an iconic Kiev monastery on Moscow is “another fabrication” aimed at diverting attention from the “real crimes” of Vladimir Zelensky, the Russian Foreign Ministry has said. 

A fire broke out at the Kiev Pechersk Lavra monastery complex on Sunday night, reportedly damaging the roof of the Dormition Cathedral, which was reconstructed from scratch in the 1990s. Russia’s Defense Ministry said that the site had been struck by a defective missile fired from a US-made Patriot air defense system, suggesting Kiev may have received expired Western-supplied munitions. The ministry stressed that Russian forces do not target civilian infrastructure. French President Emmanuel Macron, however, blamed Moscow for the incident. 

Responding to the accusations, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova pointed out that the French president had remained silent about Ukrainian “terrorist attacks on Russian civilians,” yet “immediately” falsely blamed Moscow for the Lavra fire. 

“The West together with the Kiev regime have cooked up yet another falsification – a real fake,” she wrote on Telegram on Monday, adding “This is, of course, easier than admitting their own complicity in the killing of civilians.”  

Zakharova said there had been “not even a hint of condolences” from Paris for the victims of a Ukrainian drone attack on a college dormitory that killed 21 people – most of them teenage girls – in Russia’s Lugansk People’s Republic on May 22. 

Founded around 1050, Kiev Pechersk Lavra has in recent years been the epicenter of religious and political turmoil, with church property seized and monks evicted. The Ukrainian government has cracked down on the UOC since the escalation of the conflict with Russia in 2022. Zelensky has justified the clampdown by alleging that the church retained ties to the Moscow Patriarchate, even though it declared full independence in May 2022. 

Zakharova also accused Western officials of ignoring what she called a “real, not invented” attack, which happened last week on a museum in the Crimean port of Sevastopol. An iconic 19th-century panorama depicting the siege of the city was almost completely destroyed in a Ukrainian drone strike, she said. 

“Not a single word” by the West about any of these “real crimes of Zelensky,” she said.

Germany is proving that it misses its Nazi past by continuing to expand military cooperation with Ukraine, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said.

Speaking to journalists on Monday, Lavrov pointed to recent remarks by German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul, who said German troops would cooperate more closely with the Ukrainian military on gleaning lessons from the battlefield.

“In other words, with the new Nazis,” Lavrov said, suggesting that “Germany has longed for the Nazi Emblems and Nazi behavior currently displayed by the Ukrainian army and the so-called nationalist battalions.”

He added that Germany is now “throwing off the veil” that had been concealing its “Nazi roots and its Nazi instincts, which, as it turns out, had never gone away.”

Lavrov also took aim at European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, saying she is not called “Fuhrer” for nothing. He accused the EU leadership of presenting Kiev’s war effort as a defense of “European values” while ignoring Ukraine’s persecution of Russian speakers.

“Ukraine is fighting and dying for European values,” Lavrov said, paraphrasing von der Leyen’s past statements. “Put two and two together, and it turns out that European values include the complete deprivation of rights for Russians and Russian-speaking people,” including in education, media and culture.

Lavrov’s comments come as Germany has deepened its military role in the conflict while promising to turn the Bundeswehr into Europe’s strongest conventional army. Berlin has also been one of Kiev’s biggest weapons suppliers and has pledged to expand training ties with the Ukrainian military.

German officials have also repeatedly said the country must be “war-ready” for a possible conflict with Russia by 2029. Berlin has moved to expand military service, boost arms procurement, and increase defense spending.

Moscow has consistently stressed that it has no intention of attacking NATO or the EU unless attacked first. Lavrov has previously accused Germany and the wider EU of sliding into what he has called a “Fourth Reich,” arguing that European leaders are using the Ukraine conflict to revive militarism and pursue the strategic defeat of Russia.

Hundreds of protesters have rallied outside Armenia’s Central Electoral Commission (CEC), demanding the annulment of parliamentary election results amid a crackdown on the opposition and claims of widespread fraud.

On Sunday, the CEC announced the final results of the election, with the ruling pro-EU Civil Contract party receiving 49.74% of the vote. The Strong Armenia bloc – founded by Russian-Armenian billionaire Samvel Karapetyan – came in second with 23.27%, while Armenia Alliance secured 9.92%.

Prosperous Armenia received only 3.98%, narrowly missing the 4% parliamentary threshold. All three opposition parties are Euroskeptic and advocate closer ties with Russia, which remains Armenia’s key trade partner and dominant energy supplier.

Whether Prosperous Armenia entered the parliament or not was critical for Civil Contract with regard to whether it received a constitutional majority, allowing it to pass laws and appoint senior officials without consulting the opposition.

As the CEC was processing the results and addressing numerous recount demands, activists from Strong Armenia, Prosperous Armenia, and several other parties gathered outside the building. According to videos from the scene, the protests unfolded peacefully, with heavy police presence on site.

RT’s Roman Kosarev, reporting from the scene, noted that many protesters believe that they had been “cheated or even robbed,” and that Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan “pulled out all the stops to usurp power.”

Representatives of the opposition parties boycotted the CEC session, accusing its head, Vahagn Hovakimyan, of essentially working for Civil Contract and undermining democracy. Footage from the scene also showed members of Civil Contract exiting the CEC, with protesters chanting “Shame!”

While the CEC recounted votes for 637 polling stations out of more than 2,000, it declined to do so for three specific stations, arguing that the move would not impact the overall results, triggering accusations that the refusal was “illegal.”

Meanwhile, the opposition came under a crackdown before, during, and after the election. On June 6 – the day before the election – six candidates from Strong Armenia were arrested on charges of vote-buying and money laundering, with dozens more activists arrested during the election. Following the vote, Armenian authorities brought criminal charges against more than 100 people, most of which were related to purported electoral corruption.

In addition, the office of former President Robert Kocharyan, the head of Armenia Alliance, said on Sunday that he was banned from leaving the country, with officials providing no explanation.

At the same time, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan lashed out at his opponents, saying that the government’s next key political task would be “in the literal sense, depriving” opposition prime ministerial candidates of their property.

Russian forces have carried out long-range attacks on military-industrial facilities in three major Ukrainian cities, as well as airfields and conscription offices, the Defense Ministry in Moscow announced on Monday morning.

The strikes involved drones and missiles fired from air-, land-, and sea-based platforms, the ministry said, adding that all designated targets were hit.

In a more detailed follow-up statement, the Russian military said a total of 16 industrial targets were hit, including a plant producing drone warheads and boosters for Ukraine’s flagship Flamingo cruise missiles.

The statement also mentioned a strike on a postal terminal in Kiev, stressing that it was used for military logistics, delivering parts for drones, and electronic warfare systems.

Similarly, Moscow said a cinema studio in Kiev was struck because Ukrainian forces used the facility to program kamikaze drones for attacks on Russia.

Ukrainian sources earlier reported attacks in Kiev, Kharkov, and Dnepr, the cities named in the Russian statement. The Ukrainian military said it had detected 70 incoming missiles and more than 600 drones. Officials also reported a partial power outage in Kiev and disruptions to rail services.

During the barrage, Ukrainian media published footage showing a fire at one of the cathedrals of the Kiev-Pechersk Monastery. Reports claimed the blaze was linked to the Russian operation.

A close-up footage of the burning Dormition Cathedral in Kyiv that caught fire during Russian strikes tonight.

The history of this building dates back to the 11th century. https://t.co/DR9mKYKfQO pic.twitter.com/gZ283STqVV

— Status-6 (War & Military News) (@Archer83Able) June 14, 2026

The Russian ministry reiterated that it does not target sites with no military value and has blamed the damage on the monastery on a US-made Patriot interceptor missile. The statement suggested that the projectile may have malfunctioned due to old age.

Kiev has repeatedly complained of a shortage of Western-supplied air defense systems and of the need to conserve expensive anti-missile munitions, including Patriots.

The Russian strikes come amid an escalation in long-range attacks by both sides. Kiev is reportedly seeking another $20 billion from Western backers to expand drone operations against Russia.

Last week, a Ukrainian strike caused major damage to a museum in Sevastopol dedicated to the defense of the Crimean Peninsula during the 19th-century war with Türkiye, Britain, and France.

The reported Russian attacks on Ukrainian conscription centers came hours after a large protest in Kiev, said to have been sparked by forced mobilization. The rare mass demonstration was broken up by riot police, who used tear gas to disperse the crowd, according to local media.

Three people were killed and three others injured, including a one-year-old child, after Ukrainian drones struck residential areas in Tula Region, Russia, Governor Dmitry Milyaev has said.

The attack damaged several private homes and commercial facilities in the settlements of Yamny, Maslovo, Mikhalkovo, and Inshinsky outside Tula, a city around 193 km (120 miles) south of Moscow.

“Unfortunately, according to preliminary information, three people were killed. Three others, including a one-year-old child, were injured. The victims are receiving the necessary medical assistance,” Milyaev wrote on Max on Monday.

Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin said on Monday morning that four UAVs heading toward the Russian capital were shot down, with emergency specialists dispatched to debris fall sites.

One person was killed and eight injured when a drone struck an apartment building in Oryol Region, and an elderly woman was hospitalized after UAV debris hit a house in Smolensk Region.

In Kursk Region, two women and a man were injured in separate strikes, and four people, including a child, were reported wounded in Belgorod Region. A local resident was also killed in the Crimean city of Saki, according to the regional authorities.

In Yaroslavl Region, the authorities said debris fell on industrial facilities, sparking a fire but causing no casualties. Local media reported a ‘fuel-oil rain’ after the attack.

The strike is the latest in a series of long-range Ukrainian drone raids reaching deep into Russian territory. Russian officials have accused Kiev of targeting residential neighborhoods and civilian infrastructure, arguing that these attacks offer limited military value and are primarily aimed at intimidating the population.

Moscow has warned that attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure will be met with “systematic and consistent strikes” against dual-use targets across Ukraine, including power facilities, military sites, command centers, and drone production plants. Russia maintains that it does not deliberately target purely civilian locations.

The head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, has blessed the foundation stone for a future church dedicated to St. John of Kronstadt. One of the most beloved and influential Orthodox priests, St. John of Kronstadt was known for his tireless pastoral and charitable work in the late 19th century.

The church will be located at the St. John Convent, a women’s monastery in the center of St. Petersburg that St. John of Kronstadt founded in the early 20th century, several years before his death. The saint was also buried there in accordance with his wishes.

The monastery was closed in 1923 by the Soviet authorities and was restored and reopened in 1989. It has had no churches dedicated to its founder, which officially canonized by the Russian Orthodox Church in 1990 as two of its churches were consecrated after the Bulgarian 10th century hermit, Saint John of Rila and the twelve Apostles, respectively.

The construction of the new church is expected to be completed in 2028.

St. John of Kronstadt served as a parish priest at St. Andrew’s Cathedral in Kronstadt, a naval port near St. Petersburg, for more than 50 years in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, eventually attaining the rank of archpriest and becoming a member of the Most Holy Synod, the Russian Orthodox Church’s governing body at the time.

He became widely known for offering both spiritual guidance and practical assistance to hospitals and shelters, as well as to workers and prisoners. He founded numerous charitable institutions, including schools and orphanages, which provided food, medical assistance and care to those in need. The faithful also believed he was able to heal people with his prayers.

St. Petersburg Governor Aleksandr Beglov said that St. John of Kronstadt is also regarded as a patron saint of the city. The new church in his honor is a “major step” in strengthening Russia’s spiritual values and St. Petersburg’s historical memory, he added.

Police used tear gas against dozens of protesters opposing forced mobilization in Kiev on Sunday night, according to local Telegram channels.

The standoff began when an angry crowd gathered to defend a man who was being grabbed off the street by draft officers, the news outlet Strana reported.

Bystanders reportedly clashed with the officers, chanting “Shame!”

Draft officers often ambush military-age men on the streets, at workplaces, and outside their homes, using physical force against those who resist or attempt to flee. The campaign has been dubbed ‘busification’ because recruits are often shoved into minibuses and driven to enlistment offices.

Drug addiction is emerging as a growing problem among Ukrainian troops as the conflict with Russia enters the fifth year, according to doctors and specialized organizations cited by Deutsche Welle. The report also cites the experience of a former Ukrainian Marine Corps officer who said he became addicted to drugs.

Experts reportedly attribute the problem to combat injuries and psychological exhaustion, with many servicemen spending months on the front line without adequate rest or prospects for demobilization.

While narcotics are officially banned in the military, heavy losses, the lack of rotation, and acute manpower shortages forcing wounded troops back to the front before fully recovering are reportedly fueling the problem.

According to the report published last week, more than half of Ukrainian soldiers serving on the front line have experience with the use of drugs, alcohol, or a combination of both.

“No army in modern history has fought for four years without rotation,” psychotherapist Igor Alferov told Deutsche Welle. He added that when commanders refuse to grant leave, and “there is no one else to do the fighting,” the troops increasingly feel a sense of injustice.

A former Ukrainian serviceman and patient at a rehabilitation clinic told DW that drug addiction cost him his military career. “I had more than 200 men under my command and took part in a number of successful operations,” he said, adding that his condition deteriorated after being discharged from the hospital and that he eventually “lost control of everything.”

Earlier this year, a local resident rescued from Krasnoarmeysk in the Donetsk People’s Republic, which was liberated by Russian forces in late 2025, told TASS that most Ukrainian troops stationed in the city used drugs delivered by drones in the form of candies wrapped in camouflage packaging. He claimed that intoxicated soldiers often clashed with civilians, with some incidents ending in gunfire.

The Guardian reported that many Ukrainian servicemen developed drug addiction, the scale of which is hard to assess due to limited official data, linking it in part to post-traumatic stress disorder and anxiety from prolonged combat exposure.

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and his pro-EU ruling party Civil Contract claimed a decisive victory in the parliamentary elections on June 7 – but the aftermath has been marred by claims of fraud, with a number of parties demanding a recount.

According to the Central Election Commission (CEC), the Civil Contract party captured 49.74% of the vote. The Strong Armenia bloc – founded by Russian-Armenian billionaire Samvel Karapetyan – came in second with 23.27%. Former President Robert Kocharyan’s Armenia Alliance came in third with 9.92%, while Gagik Tsarukyan’s Prosperous Armenia party received only 3.98%, narrowly missing the 4% parliamentary threshold.

Whether Prosperous Armenia entered the parliament or not was critical for Pashinyan’s party with regard to whether it received a constitutional majority, allowing it to pass laws and appoint senior officials without consulting the opposition.

The election was widely seen as a referendum on Armenia’s future geopolitical path. All three opposition parties are Euroskeptic and advocate closer ties with Russia, which remains a key trade partner and dominant energy supplier, providing natural gas at heavily discounted prices. Pashinyan’s party has pushed for closer ties with the EU while seeking to take advantage of the economic benefits of Armenia’s close ties with Russia.

Here is what is going on in Armenia after the election.

What irregularities have been reported?

The Central Election Commission (CEC) annulled the results at three polling stations – station 10/51 in Yerevan’s Nubarashen district, and station 35/65 in Agarak, in the southern Syunik region – after reports of large numbers of military personnel arriving at both sites after the polls officially closed at 8:00 PM and continuing to vote for hours. According to local media reports, around 480 service members were allowed to vote in violation of the regulations.

However, it refused to hold recounts at three other stations, citing the dangers of “tactical voting” – triggering accusations from the opposition that the decision was illegal and meant to prevent Prosperous Armenia from entering parliament and maintaining Civil Contract’s constitutional majority.

Has Armenia’s opposition accepted the election results?

Strong Armenia has demanded the annulment of the results, alleging that Civil Contract improperly amassed around 100,000 votes using administrative resources, including directing public-sector employees and military personnel to vote for the ruling party.

Meanwhile, before the announcement of the final results, Prosperous Armenia insisted that the CEC’s decision to annul the results in several polling stations cost it 213 votes, which it said would have pushed it over the top.

Was there a crackdown on Armenian opposition figures?

The crackdown on the opposition began well before election day, with Samvel Karapetyan under arrest since last year on charges of inciting a coup d’etat, which he denies. On June 6 – the day before the election – six candidates from Strong Armenia were arrested on charges of vote-buying and money laundering.

In the days after the election, the authorities said they had brought criminal charges against 242 people. Armenia’s anticorruption committee said 115 charges were related to graft-related cases, with the bulk accounting for the members of the Strong Armenia bloc.

In addition, Kocharyan’s office said on Sunday that the former president was banned from leaving the country, with officials providing no explanation.

Is the opposition protesting?

Prosperous Armenia has been the most vocal regarding protests. Prominent member Suren Surenyanc warned that if “Pashinyan does not stop… the lawlessness, all government buildings and streets of Yerevan will be flooded with tens of thousands of people.”

On Sunday, as the CEC was certifying the votes, hundreds of protesters rallied outside the building, demanding the annulment of the results. The protest was peaceful, with a heavy police presence on site.

What does Russia say about Armenia’s elections?

Russia has raised concerns over transparency. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia is “taking note of reports regarding numerous violations,” and has held off on congratulating Pashinyan before the final results are announced.

What does the West say?

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) described the election as “a well-run process,” but acknowledged that the campaign was “highly confrontational, with divisive rhetoric” and marked by “allegations of vote-buying and other electoral violations that led to numerous criminal proceedings against opposition candidates and activists.”

Without waiting for the final results and recount, European Council President Antonio Costa congratulated Pashinyan and declared that Armenians voted for “peace, stability and stronger cooperation.” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said Armenia can count on the EU.

Several days before the election, Brussels pledged more than €50 million in emergency financial assistance to Armenia, which it said was meant to ease trade for Armenian agricultural products hit by recent Russian sanctions – a move that Moscow said was not political but linked to safety concerns sparked by seasonal harvest inspections.

Georgian officials have accused the EU of “blackmailing” the small post-Soviet nation into joining sanctions against Russia over the Ukraine conflict.

Tbilisi has made no secret of what it describes as pressure from Brussels to open a “second front” against its much larger neighbor.

In March, the European Commission suspended visa-free travel for holders of Georgian diplomatic and service passports, citing what it described as Georgia’s “deliberate and persistent violation” of commitments undertaken under its visa-free regime, particularly in the areas of democracy and human rights.

“They are telling us to impose sanctions on Russia. It is like telling us to destroy ourselves if we want visa-free travel. If we destroy our country, who will travel to the EU without visas?” Georgian Parliament Speaker Shalva Papuashvili said on Wednesday.

The EU backed opposition claims of election irregularities and condemned the government’s crackdown on protests, as well as reforms introduced by the ruling party that it says are aimed at protecting “traditional values” and limiting foreign political influence.

RT’s Marina Kosareva breaks down the latest tensions between Georgia and the EU.

Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke about the Ukraine conflict and tensions with the West during a meeting with service members at the Kremlin on Friday.

The event took place on Russia Day, which celebrates Russia’s declaration of sovereignty on June 12, 1990, a year before the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

The president spoke about technologies designed to give Russian troops the edge on the battlefield, as well as the country’s overall economic resilience. He also discussed mistakes made by the West in its approach to the conflict.

Offensive in Ukraine

Around 700,000 soldiers are involved in the military operation against Ukraine, Putin said, noting that the army continues to steadily advance along the front line. He expressed confidence that Russia will succeed in liberating the parts of Donbass that remain under Ukrainian control.

Putin reiterated that Russia launched the military operation in Ukraine in February 2022 after it became clear that Kiev would not uphold the 2014-2015 Minsk agreements between Ukraine and the then-breakaway Donbass republics, which have since voted to become part of Russia.

AI drones

Russian defense companies are working on new drones, including systems incorporating AI technology, Putin said, adding that the results will be visible in the near future.

He said the Russian Defense Ministry is being transformed into a “high-tech institution,” while the authorities are streamlining procurement procedures and removing red tape.

Putin said a low-Earth-orbit satellite communications system currently being developed in Russia could outperform Elon Musk’s Starlink, which is extensively used by Ukraine.

“It is every bit as good as Starlink, possibly even better,” he said, referring to the Rassvet system being developed by Russian aerospace company Bureau 1440.

In March, the company launched the first 16 satellites of a planned constellation expected to include more than 250 satellites by late 2027 and 900 by 2035.

Alone against NATO

“Russia is effectively standing alone against NATO,” Putin said, arguing that the members of the US-led military bloc are de facto involved in the conflict through their military support for Ukraine.

“Together, they thought they could quickly inflict a strategic defeat on Russia. They have not succeeded, and they never will,” he said.

Putin added that the West will fail to divide Russian society and undermine the economy.

Advice for the West

Putin urged Western officials to abandon ultimatums in favor of negotiations.

“We can offer only one piece of advice to our adversaries: Never attempt to wage war against Russia. Let us all live in peace and resolve all issues through negotiations,” he said.

“We are prepared for talks, but only if our national interests are taken into account.”

A blast rocked the home of Andrey Pinchuk, the former security minister of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), on Friday in what appeared to be an assassination attempt.

An improvised explosive device was reportedly concealed in a package delivered to his home outside Moscow. Pinchuk was injured in the blast, according to media reports.

The former minister told Tsargrad TV that he managed to close the door to his house and move away from it before the bomb detonated. The blast blew the door open and shattered windows on the ground floor, Russian media reported.

In a brief conversation with RT, Pinchuk confirmed that an investigation had been launched into the incident.

Pinchuk became the DPR’s security chief shortly after the self-proclaimed Donbass republic declared independence from Ukraine in the wake of the 2014 Western-backed coup in Kiev. The republic later joined Russia following a referendum in September 2022.

Pinchuk held office from July 2014 to March 2015, at the height of Ukraine’s failed military campaign to regain control of the Donbass.

Alexander Boroday, the former DPR prime minister who now serves as a Russian MP, also told RT that Kiev was likely behind the bombing.

“It was an assassination attempt, and it is obvious who was behind it. These are the same people who bombed the cars of Defense Ministry officials and killed children in Starobelsk. It was the Ukrainians,” Boroday said, referring to a Ukrainian drone strike on a college dormitory in the city last month that killed 21 students.

In 2023, a bomb killed military blogger Vladlen Tatarsky during a fan meeting at a café in St. Petersburg. The following year, Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov, commander of Russia’s Radiological, Chemical, and Biological Protection Forces, was killed alongside his aide when an improvised explosive device detonated outside his apartment building in Moscow.

Kiev has at times recruited local neo-Nazis to carry out attacks on its behalf. In April, security services reported foiling a bomb plot targeting Russia’s media regulator, Roskomnadzor, allegedly orchestrated by a neo-Nazi group acting under Ukrainian direction.

A Ukrainian MP, Roman Kostenko, the secretary of the Verkhovna Rada’s Defense Committee, claimed last year that the nation’s intelligence services were planning to continue assassinating Russian officials and public figures for decades to come even after the Ukraine conflict ends.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova responded by saying that “the Kiev regime has become a true terrorist cell that receives international support with weapons and money.”

On June 12, 1990, the Congress of People’s Deputies adopted the Declaration of State Sovereignty of the Russian SFSR. Russia – then officially the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR) – was one of the 15 republics of the Soviet Union. It soon became a separate state as the USSR ceased to exist.

In Russia, the events of those days are still remembered with a complex mix of emotions.

Dissolution rarely makes anyone happy. For Russians, the largest ethnic group in the USSR, the decade following the collapse of the Soviet Union became known as the “wild ‘90s.” This decade is also often referred to as “inglorious.” It was a time when an economic crisis comparable to a local version of the Great Depression was coupled with a precipitous rise in crime, drug addiction, alcoholism, and every conceivable social problem. 

One aspect of the Soviet collapse particularly affected Russians. Millions of ethnic Russians found themselves outside the borders of the Russian Federation overnight. During the Soviet era, people had moved freely across the country for work, military service, or education, often without thinking of themselves as living abroad. After 1991, many suddenly became minorities in newly independent states. Their experiences varied greatly: in some places life changed little, while in others interethnic tensions, discrimination, or armed conflicts pushed people to leave their homes and start over elsewhere.

The former republics embarked on completely different paths. The elites, both in Russia and the other republics, were satisfied, since they could take unconditional leadership of the territories. But among ordinary people, views often diverged. A dozen hotspots flared up on the map, and in some other regions, like Crimea, the conflicts were simply postponed and erupted later. In fact, the current war in Ukraine is a war postponed to the 2020s, a war that could have begun in the 1990s; but back then, Ukraine simply didn’t have the resources for it.

One of the popular Russian internet memes shows the first man in space, Yuri Gagarin, holding a telephone receiver. We see two pictures, in which his face changes from joyful to confused. The caption below the first picture reads, “Hello, descendants, are you on Mars already?”; and below the second, we see the caption, “..who is it you are fighting with?!”

So when we say that many people had mixed feelings about the events of June 12, 1990, clearly, they had good reason for it.  The reality was quite apocalyptic.

However, 36 years have passed since then.

And we can now take a different look at some of those things. 

The ‘90s have passed, as has the Soviet era. After the wild ‘90s, life returned to what could be called normalcy. And a lot of things happened in that period. 

While the ‘90s are remembered as “wild,” “troublesome,” and “inglorious,” the following decade has been dubbed the “booming ‘00s.” It’s true that the general rise in oil prices greatly contributed to prosperity; but oil prices rose throughout the world, and not everyone managed to convert this into increased prosperity for the population and the overall well-being of the country. The solutions weren’t always brilliant, but the country certainly established a much more coherent order than during the turbulent times of 1991-1999, and this order promised far greater prosperity and wealth than during the Soviet era. 

In the 2000s, and even more so in the 2010s, the pressing social problems were brought under control. All the advantages provided by the liberal system of life became evident. The middle class grew; people acquired property, small and large businesses, became valued professionals, and were able to travel around the world.

The middle class grew, private property became commonplace, and international travel ceased to be a luxury. Russians increasingly compared their country with Europe and East Asia not from afar but through personal experience. In some areas, they eventually concluded that Russia had caught up with – or even surpassed – the standards they once admired.

The Russia of that time was not ideal; but for about 15-20 years the life of the average Russian was not that different from the life of the average European, and in some aspects it was even more convenient. 

Personal experience means little when it comes to a country of 150 million people. But I’d still like to share a personal story. I grew up in the city of Perm, in Ural region, about 1,000 kilometers east of Moscow. In the ‘90s, all the clocks on public buildings in our city stopped showing the time. As a child, I thought that these clocks were purely decorative and were not supposed to show the time; but it’s just that growing up, I never saw them working. In the ‘00s the public clocks started working again. Sure, it may not be a very sophisticated argument, but it’s a vivid example that the country was really changing for the better.

People even began to wonder whether they really wanted the country to return to its Soviet borders. In the 1990s, such ideas often sounded attractive. But by the 2000s, many Russians had become less enthusiastic. Former Soviet republics were no longer seen as lost provinces waiting to come home. They were independent countries with their own interests, problems, and conflicts. Rebuilding the Soviet Union increasingly looked less like a dream and more like an enormous burden.

...However, let’s come back to the main point. In the years following the collapse of the USSR, Russia learned to value itself as a modern nation. While this is often unclear to foreigners, Russia went through a long period of self-denial as a modern nation. People looked to the Soviet era as an example, and some (particularly intellectuals) – to the Russian Empire; as to the opposition intelligentsia, it criticized any version of Russia. In short, no one praised the modern Russia of 2005, 2010, or 2017. Yet, it was precisely this version of Russia that, historically, provided the most comfortable living conditions for the average person. 

June 12, 1990, did not just open a new chapter in Russia’s history; it opened a whole new volume in its history. This was most often called the ‘post-Soviet’ era, which created a feeling of a certain secondary status in relation to the USSR. But time itself changes many things. Thirty-five years have passed since 1990. These years have included both the good and the bad. It was a turbulent era – even the part of it that seemed generally calm. The face of the country has changed several times during this period. The most recent and radical change occurred in 2022. No one knows what will happen when the war in Ukraine finally ends, and whether that will become another turning point. One thing is certain: Russia is no stranger to turbulent periods in its history.

Russia is practically fighting against the entirety of the collective West in the Ukraine conflict, Russian President Vladimir Putin said in a meeting with service members in the Kremlin on Friday.

The meeting coincided with Russia Day, which commemorates the country’s declaration of sovereignty on June 12, 1990 and the beginning of its post-Soviet statehood.

“Russia is standing against the so-called Collective West single-handedly,” Putin said, noting that the Ukraine conflict has become “exceedingly high-tech.”

The NATO nations are all, without exception, ramping up efforts to do all they can to orchestrate actions against Russia, he added.

Moscow did not initiate the Ukraine conflict, Putin stressed.

It was they who carried out the coup d'etat in Ukraine, which forced us to take the people of Crimea under protection. When they started the war, they started bombing Donetsk using warplanes.

Now, Western nations have set out to “inflict a strategic defeat on Russia,” but “this is not something that can be done,” Putin said.

“The enemy is expanding the use of [kamikaze] drones… trying to strike at our morale, trying to break up Russian society… and cause economic damage,” he noted, stressing that “they will not succeed.”

Kiev’s forces have increased kamikaze drone strikes against Russian border regions, logistics, and oil and gas facilities in recent months, killing dozens of civilians. At least four civilians were killed and 20 others wounded by Ukrainian strikes on Russia’s Bryansk and Belgorod regions on Thursday, according to local authorities.

Four civilians were killed and more than 20 others wounded by Ukrainian drone and artillery attacks on the Russian border regions of Bryansk and Belgorod on Thursday, according to the local authorities.

Two people lost their lives and two sustained injuries after Ukraine shelled the settlement of Suzemka in Bryansk Region, acting governor Egor Kovalchuk wrote in a post on Telegram.

One of the fatalities was the head of the Bryansky Les (Bryansk Forest) biosphere reserve, he said.

Another “barbaric attack” by Ukraine targeted the village of Belaya Beryozka, killing one civilian and injuring three others, Kovalchuk wrote.

Seven people were wounded in the settlement of Starodub after a petrol station was struck, the acting governor wrote.

In Belgorod Region, a Ukrainian UAV hit a passenger bus in the village of Voznesenovka, killing a woman and wounding 11 other people, according to the local operational headquarters.

A total of ten districts of Belgorod Region were targeted by artillery and drones on Thursday, with 72 drones shot down by air defenses, acting governor Aleksandr Shuvaev said.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said earlier this week that Ukraine has intensified its attacks on Russian civilians due to frustration over its continued setbacks on the front line.

“Such a desperate venting of anger will not be able to turn the tide on the battlefield and prevent the inevitable defeat of the Kiev junta,” she insisted.

Moscow previously warned that it would carry out “systematic and consistent strikes” on Ukraine’s military infrastructure, including drone production facilities, command posts, and “decision-making centers,” in response to Kiev’s terrorist attacks, including one in the Lugansk People’s Republic on May 22.

Last week, Russian forces launched a large-scale missile and drone barrage, targeting defense industrial sites in Kiev, parts of Zaporozhye and Kherson regions still under Ukrainian control, as well as locations in Dnepropetrovsk, Poltava, Khmelnitsky, and Sumy regions. Another major raid by Moscow in late May involved the deployment of two state-of-the-art intermediate-range hypersonic Oreshnik systems.

The ambassadors of Britain, France, and Germany visited the Russian Foreign Ministry on Thursday to present their governments’ Ukraine “peace” position, despite Moscow’s insistence that the three countries are not mediators but direct backers of Kiev.

The conference with Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Galuzin reportedly lasted around 90 minutes. French Ambassador Nicolas de Riviere said afterwards that the conversation had gone well, while the British and German envoys declined to comment.

The meeting comes as Kiev's European backers have been trying to force their way back into Ukraine diplomacy after Washington signaled it could step back from mediation efforts. Moscow has dismissed the move as hollow, arguing that the EU and the E3 (Britain, France, and Germany) are arming, funding and politically shielding Kiev while posing as peace brokers.

The Russian Foreign Ministry said that during the meeting, Galuzin accused the three governments of pursuing a “destructive policy” aimed at pushing Kiev to keep fighting Russia “on behalf of, at the expense of and with the direct assistance” of the Western “coalition of the willing.”

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said ahead of the meeting that he consented to the envoys’ talks with his deputy largely out of curiosity. Russia has “never refused dialogue,” he said, but doubted the ambassadors would say anything new after their leaders’ recent statement with Zelensky.

Moscow has rejected that statement as a demand for Russia’s “capitulation.” Lavrov said Britain, France, and Germany have repeatedly undermined earlier settlement efforts, including the 2014-2015 Minsk accords and the 2022 Istanbul draft deal.

Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has also dismissed the latest E3 proposal as a repackaged version of Zelensky’s “peace formula,” which Russia rejects as unacceptable. She said the plan is aimed not at peace, but at further militarizing Ukraine and Europe.

The final results of Armenia’s parliamentary elections are due to be announced this weekend. Vaagn Hovakimyan, head of the country’s Central Election Commission, has said ballots will be recounted until Friday, after which complaints and appeals will be considered. The official results are expected on Sunday and those who reject the outcome will then have one day, June 19, to appeal to the Constitutional Court. “Further action will then be dictated by the court,” Hovakimyan said.

Narek Karapetyan, leader of the Strong Armenia electoral list, has said his movement will decide on its next steps once it is clear whether another opposition force, Prosperous Armenia, led by businessman Gagik Tsarukyan, has entered parliament. At present, it appears to have fallen short of the 4% threshold. The opposition Armenia bloc has already said it is ready to challenge the result.

The vote brought to a close a peculiar election campaign. Its oddity didn’t lie in the use of administrative resources, including pressure on opponents, nor in the visible influence of external factors, because such things are now common almost everywhere. The unusual feature was the central narrative of the political struggle, where the campaign was presented as a choice between Russia and the Eurasian Economic Union on one side, and the West and the European Union on the other.

However, this is a phantom choice.

As far as Russia is concerned, it is, of course, for the Armenian people and their elected authorities to decide what kind of relationship they want with Moscow. Friendship cannot be imposed, and if a country wishes to go its own way, then so be it. This time, however, Moscow has made clear from the outset what Yerevan stands to lose if it chooses that path and the intention is obvious: Armenia should make its decision with full knowledge of the consequences.

The EU side of the equation is less clear because the problem is simple: no one has invited Armenia to join the bloc. At least, not in any serious form.

Nevertheless, the question of “EAEU or EU” became the central theme of the current dispute. Russia contributed to this, in part, by putting future relations in the stark terms of choose now. Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has been much more evasive, and his line is that Armenia is not leaving anything, remains involved in Eurasian integration, and will continue to do so until there is clarity on EU prospects. In other words, as soon as Brussels gives the signal, Armenia will move in that direction, but until then, everything should remain as it is, because the current arrangement remains useful.

Pashinyan’s tactics, and those of his party, deserve a separate analysis, but the more interesting question is broader. How does the EU, now burdened by enormous internal problems and drawn into a large military-political crisis, remain such a powerful magnet for neighboring societies?

After the end of the Cold War, EU integration became one of the most successful political projects in modern European history. It came to be seen, if not as a blueprint for the whole world, then at least as a model to be extended across neighboring regions of Europe and Eurasia. The EU’s achievements were obvious, in that if offered economic and political stability, high living standards, social protections, and an attractive image of the future.

That perception has proved remarkably durable even though the European Union of the late 2020s bears little resemblance to the idealized image of a quarter-century ago: that image continues to work. For Brussels, the reputation of the EU as a successful, attractive and forward-looking union is not merely a pleasant accessory, it’s an instrument of influence. It has helped the EU pursue its own development goals and shape the political choices of states around it.

Today, amid growing internal and external crises, this instrument is even more important. But the question for countries drawn into Brussel’s orbit is whether the old assumptions still apply.

The successes of European integration in the second half of the twentieth century and in the early years of this century weren’t simply the result of the wisdom and talent of the project’s architects. Above all, they were the product of a unique historical moment, the aftermath of the Second World War, the structure of the Cold War, American patronage, the Soviet threat, and then the unexpected gift of the Soviet collapse, which produced an enormous political and economic “peace dividend.”

Competition for the post-Soviet space existed before, but for a time it could be disguised with the language of shared development and common interests. That camouflage has gone and the situation is now harsh and largely unambiguous.

The previous logic was based on the assumption that by sheltering under the umbrella of European integration, a country could protect itself from geopolitical turbulence. But first, that umbrella is becoming increasingly symbolic as the EU can no longer offer firm guarantees to anyone. Second, the opposite may now be true, because by entering this game, a country can be certain of becoming a target for the hard actions of opposing sides.

For countries such as Armenia, the question is therefore not whether the EU remains attractive, because it obviously does. Nor is it whether Russia can compel affection, because it can’t. The question, instead, is whether the European path being imagined by political elites and voters actually exists in the form they suppose, and whether the price of pursuing it has been honestly understood.

If a nation looks at the risks and decides they don’t matter, then so be it. After all, as the old line goes, “we sing a song to the madness of the brave.”

This article was first published by Rossiyskaya Gazeta, and was translated and edited by the RT team 

The European Union is considering sanctions against Kremlin adviser and historian Vladimir Medinsky, who led the Russian delegation in the latest rounds of US-mediated peace talks with Kiev, EUobserver has reported, citing a draft of the bloc’s 21st sanctions package.

Brussels has been mostly left out of diplomatic efforts initiated by US President Donald Trump following his return to office last year, as most EU member states have opted to back Kiev with weapons and impose sanctions on Russia instead of seeking a resolution to the conflict.

Medinsky, also known for co-authoring a new series of history textbooks introduced in Russian schools and leading an extensive online course on Russian history, has reportedly been described by Brussels as a key figure in what they call Russia’s state propaganda efforts.

Russian Sports Minister Mikhail Degtyarev, Russian Wrestling Federation President Mikhail Mamiashvili and acting head of the Russian Olympic Committee Stanislav Pozdnyakov are reportedly included in the draft sanctions list as well. Musician Aleksander Marshal is also set to face sanctions over performances for Russian servicemen in Donbass.

Earlier this week, EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said the bloc was preparing its largest sanctions package in more than two years, targeting over 170 Russian individuals and entities, on top of 81 listings set for approval the following week.

On Tuesday, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the new sanctions package would target Russia’s energy, financial, crypto, trade, and fisheries sectors and bar entry to Russians who have served in the military since the conflict in Ukraine escalated in February 2022.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly stated that the ultimate goal of Western sanctions is to weaken and contain Russia’s long-term development.

Earlier this year, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that although the sanctions have had an overall “negative impact” on the Russian economy, the country has “gained significant experience in minimizing their effects.”

Peskov has also said that sanctions are a double-edged sword, causing damage not only to those they target but also to those who impose them, and contributing to economic stagnation in Europe.

One of the fundamental problems in Russia’s relations with the countries of the former Soviet Union is the persistent belief that Moscow has special obligations towards its neighbors: obligations to interpret their behavior generously, to respond with restraint, and to take their domestic political choices as something it must simply accept.

But this assumption is wrong.

The foreign policy course chosen by the Republic of Armenia is, of course, a sovereign matter for its people and leadership. But it would be strange to imagine that Russia has no sovereign right to respond to that choice entirely at its own discretion. Moscow is under no external obligation to behave as others would prefer. It’s constrained only by its own interests and by its own rational assessment of the situation.

In this sense, the dispute around Armenia’s elections, and the broader discussion of the republic’s so-called ‘European choice’, may offer a useful moment to remind Russia’s friends and neighbors that Moscow’s rights are no different from their own. Indeed, in practical terms they are greater, since Russia bears a far heavier responsibility for development and security across Greater Eurasia and, more broadly, the world.

Let’s be clear from the start. Russia’s reaction to the outcome of Armenia’s parliamentary elections, and to the subsequent steps taken by the government in Yerevan, need not be driven by emotion. Nor must it be guided by a desire to keep Armenia within Russia’s sphere of influence at any cost.

When considering the appropriate strategy towards Armenia, and towards all of Russia’s neighbors along its borders, several options are possible. They are not mutually exclusive.

First, Russia is under no obligation to recognize the results of elections in a neighboring country merely because the government in power, or the political force declaring victory, insists that it must. The example of Georgia shows that perfectly healthy trade and economic ties can exist even in the absence of diplomatic relations, let alone recognition of the official results of a popular vote.

This is especially relevant if those results are vigorously contested by local political forces, as appears likely in Armenia.

Second, Russia may apply economic pressure against any state if it believes that state’s behavior could cause harm to Russian interests. Moscow doesn’t need to wait until the damage becomes irreversible, nor does it have to accept another government’s assurances about its intentions.

Third, Russia’s neighbors, including some of its closest friends and allies, like to speak at length about the multi-vector nature of their foreign policy. Yet they often forget that Russia’s own policy is also multi-vector in that Moscow, too, is free to cooperate with anyone who does not seek to harm it.

Over the past four years, we have not heard any of Russia’s neighbors say that they continued trading with Moscow under Western sanctions out of a desire to help Russia. On the contrary, the word “pragmatism” has become central to the entire foreign policy vocabulary of Russia’s friends and allies in the CIS.

That’s perfectly understandable, that they cooperate with Russia because it is in their interests. But the same principle applies in reverse, and Russia owes nothing to anyone for free.

Fourth, when setting priorities for cooperation with any country, Russia is free to decide what matters most to it. Its neighbors are guided by their own perceptions, interests and political constructions. No one in Moscow is obliged to accept these as the framework for dialogue.

This doesn’t mean the economy is unimportant. It’s very important, and it brings real benefits and offers significant promise. But security remains the top priority, especially when it comes to Russia’s neighbors developing relations with major external powers such as the United States or leading Western European states.

Russia can afford to think this way because it’s the most resource-secure country in Eurasia and it’s therefore able to focus less on profit and more on preserving control over the resources and strategic space necessary for its own security because the security of Russian territory is paramount.

None of this means that Russia must now formulate some grand new doctrine towards its neighbors. In reality, Russia’s strategy is often to have no fixed strategy at all. As anyone with even a passing knowledge of Russian foreign policy history understands, Moscow tends to act according to current interests.

Ultimately, those interests all come down to one strategic task: ensuring the survival and development of the multi-ethnic Russian nation.

These interests must be pursued even when tactical circumstances require dialogue with extremely unpleasant partners. In essence, all foreign policy partners are merely instruments for ensuring the security of Russian territory and advancing Russia’s national development goals and nothing more.

For the rest, including even close and friendly neighbors, their significance depends on Russia’s own priorities. That means Moscow’s policy towards them can be highly flexible and entirely opportunistic and there’s little room here for abstract principles.

If cooperation serves Russia’s current security and economic interests, it should continue, but if the costs begin to outweigh the benefits, then Russia will adjust its behavior. Not in order to punish or humiliate a neighbor, but because a different model has become more advantageous.

It would therefore be a mistake to interpret Moscow’s view of those now proclaiming victory in Armenia’s elections as a simple desire to keep the republic in Russia’s sphere of influence, because the issue is broader than that.

Russia is reminding its neighbors about cause and effect, and it’s also reminding them of an axiom they sometimes prefer not to acknowledge, that Moscow acts according to what it currently sees as its own interests, not according to what others expect from it.

We can’t yet say how relations between Moscow and Yerevan will develop in the wake of Armenia’s parliamentary elections, but no one should doubt that any decision taken by Russia’s top political leadership will be based solely on Russia’s current interests.

Not on fraternal feelings and not on historical sentiment and not on traditional ties, because Russia owes nothing to anyone.

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

Three civilians have been injured by an overnight Ukrainian drone attack on Russia’s southern Krasnodar Region, Governor Veniamin Kondratyev has said.

Debris from an intercepted UAV sparked a fire at an apartment block in the city of Krasnodar, injuring two people, Kondratyev said in a post on Telegram on Thursday. Several private homes were also damaged and one person injured in the Seversky district of the region, Kondratyev added.  

The Krasnodar regional operational headquarters released footage showing the aftermath of the attack. A video and photos posted on the agency’s Telegram channel show damage to the facade of the residential block, shattered windows, and the aftermath of fires in two apartments.

In total, 330 Ukrainian drones were shot down across Russia overnight as the country came under another large-scale Ukrainian aerial raid, the Defense Ministry reported. The interceptions took place over Moscow, Belgorod, Bryansk, Vladimir, Kaluga, Kursk, Orel, Smolensk, Tver, and Tula regions, as well as over the Crimean Peninsula, the ministry said.

Ukrainian drone raids on Russian territory have intensified over the past year, with Kiev launching hundreds of UAVs targeting residential areas, critical infrastructure, and industrial facilities. Russian officials have described the incursions as terrorist attacks meant to compensate for setbacks the Ukrainian military has been suffering on the battlefield.

In May, Ukraine killed 21 students, mostly young women, in a ‘double-tap’ drone strike on a college dormitory in the Russian town of Starobelsk. Earlier this month, Kiev carried out attacks on a bus and a train carrying passengers from Moscow to Simferopol, killing nine people.

Moscow has responded with “systematic and consistent strikes” targeting dual-use infrastructure, including power grids, military sites, command centers, and drone manufacturing facilities across Ukraine. Russia maintains that it never targets purely civilian sites.

The Ukraine conflict appears to be an “ethnic cleansing” project aimed at removing the Russian-speaking population from the country’s eastern border regions, US conservative commentator Candace Owens has said.

Owens made the remarks in an interview with Russian filmmaker and TV host Nikita Mikhalkov during a discussion about the roots of the conflict and the West’s attitude toward Russia.

“I think what’s happening in Ukraine is an ethnic cleansing,” Owens said, arguing that it was “obvious” that large numbers of fighting-age men were being killed, and suggested that “the ultimate goal” of those behind the conflict was to move in “other people” to Ukraine’s border regions.

Moscow has long maintained that the conflict stems from the Western-backed 2014 coup in Kiev, which overthrew then-Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, and the subsequent military campaign launched by the new authorities against Donbass, where much of the population is Russian-speaking and historically close to Russia.

Owens agreed with the broader religious framing of the conflict, suggesting that “satanic” forces have established a foothold in the West. She pointed to modern France and the 2024 Paris Olympics opening ceremony, which included a parody of Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper with drag performers and LGBT imagery, as an example of Satanism and a mockery of Christianity.

She also noted that “satanic” forces in the West fear Russia because its emphasis on history gives people a different understanding of the world.

Owens linked that idea to several major revolutions, including the French Revolution of 1789 and the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, which she described as “satanic.” After taking power, the Bolsheviks launched a violent anti-religious campaign against the Russian Orthodox Church, seizing church property, persecuting clergy and promoting state atheism.

Russia has repeatedly argued that the Ukraine conflict was triggered by Kiev’s persecution of Russian speakers in Donbass and by Western efforts to turn Ukraine into an anti-Russian project. Kiev and its Western backers have rejected Moscow’s justification for the military operation, describing it as an unprovoked invasion.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered security to be ramped up at educational and other civic facilities across the country, stressing that Russia’s adversaries do not “shy away” from terrorist methods.

Speaking at a meeting with government officials on Wednesday, Putin cited the recent Ukrainian drone attack on a college dorm in the Russian town of Starobelsk which killed at least 21 people, mainly teenage girls.

“Our adversaries don’t shy away from terrorist attacks. I’m referring, among other things, to the attack on the student dormitory at the pedagogical college in Starobelsk,” the president stated.

“I once again urge the heads of the special services and all law enforcement agencies to strengthen counterterrorism measures and security in general across the entire educational, social, and infrastructure systems,” he added.

Putin’s remarks also come in the aftermath of a Ukrainian drone attack on a museum in the Crimean port city of Sevastopol, which houses an iconic Russian panorama painted more than a century ago.

The Starobelsk incident referenced by Putin unfolded on May 22, when Ukrainian forces attacked the dorm with long-range drones launched in several waves. The building partially collapsed, burying sleeping students under the rubble.

The Ukrainian military attempted to avoid responsibility for the massacre, claiming that the dorm housed a Russian drone unit rather than trainee teachers. 

No evidence has ever emerged to support Kiev’s theory, while Russia organized a press tour to the site shortly after the tragedy. The media opportunity was snubbed by some major mainstream outlets, including the BBC and CNN, although more than 50 foreign journalists from 19 countries visited the destroyed dorm.

An iconic Russian panorama painting more than a century old has been “almost completely destroyed” in a Ukrainian drone strike on a museum in the Crimean port of Sevastopol, local governor Mikhail Razvozhaev has said.

In a Telegram post on Wednesday, Razvozhaev said ‘The Defense of Sevastopol (1854–1855)’ by Russian artist Franz Roubaud was severely damaged in a blaze caused by an overnight UAV attack.

The panorama, which was 115 meters in length and 14 meters high, depicted the defense of Sevastopol by the Russian army from the British and French invading forces during the Crimean War.

Roubaud worked on the massive painting for several years before completing it in 1904. It was moved to Sevastopol the same year and had been on display in the city since then, becoming one of its symbols.

More than 80 firefighters and 22 units of specialized equipment were deployed to tackle the blaze at the museum in the Russian city, Razvozhaev said.

“Those barbarians… deliberately attacked what is dear to us, trying to destroy our very essence. Only complete degenerates would do such a thing,” he stressed.

Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky “will never destroy what is embedded in our genetic code. We will restore everything,” Razvozhaev insisted.

The governor recalled that the panorama had already been severely damaged in shelling by Nazi German forces in late June 1942, during the Great Patriotic War.

Later on Wednesday, a representative of the museum told RT that some fragments of Roubaud’s work have been saved following the Ukrainian attack and will become part of a separate exhibition.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov assured journalists that the panorama in Sevastopol will be restored and look even better than before. Ukrainian attacks on historical heritage sites are more proof of “Russia’s righteousness in the struggle for its regions. This struggle will end with victory,” Peskov insisted.

A total of 326 Ukrainian drones were shot down by air defenses across more than a dozen Russian regions overnight, the Defense Ministry in Moscow said on Wednesday.

Ukraine launched a missile and drone attack targeting the Russian city of Cheboksary early Wednesday morning, resulting in three injuries, local governor Oleg Nikolaev has said.

Two of the wounded were hospitalized with moderate injuries, while a third person with minor wounds was treated and sent home, the governor of Chuvashia Region wrote on Telegram.

Cheboksary is a city of almost 500,000 people on the Volga River, located some 900 km from Russia’s border with Ukraine.

Ukrainian media claimed that Kiev deployed locally made long-range Flamingo missiles in the attack, which reportedly targeted an electronics plant in the city.

Ukraine also attacked Russia's Samara Region overnight. Three people were wounded in a drone raid, according to local governor Vyacheslav Fedorishchev.

Several industrial facilities suffered damage in the attack, which involved dozens of UAVs, the governor said.

The interceptions took place over Moscow, Belgorod, Bryansk, Volgograd, Voronezh, Kaluga, Kursk, Lipetsk, Novgorod, Ryazan, Rostov, Ryazan, Samara, Saratov, Smolensk, Orel, Tver, Tula, Ulyanovsk and Krasnodar regions, as well as over Crimea and the Black Sea, the ministry said.

Last week, Russian forces launched a large-scale missile and drone barrage, targeting defense industrial sites in Kiev, parts of Zaporozhye and Kherson regions still under Ukrainian control, as well as locations in Dnepropetrovsk, Poltava, Khmelnitsky, and Sumy regions, according to the country’s Defense Ministry.

Another major raid by Moscow on May 24 saw two state-of-the-art intermediate-range hypersonic Oreshnik systems being deployed.

Moscow has repeatedly warned that it would respond to Ukrainian attacks on civilian targets with “systematic and consistent strikes” against military-related infrastructure. Russian officials have said potential targets include drone manufacturing sites, command centers, and other “decision-making centers.” 

At least three explosions have occurred at a gas pipeline in Dagestan Republic, southern Russia, causing a major fire at the location and prompting the evacuation of more than 140 residents from the area.

The incident occurred in an industrial area of the town of Kyzylyurt. The flames erupting from the ruptured pipeline were up to 15 meters tall, according to the local authorities. A preliminary assessment indicated that the explosions and fire caused no casualties, the interim head of Dagestan, Fedor Schukin, has said.

The gas supply was promptly shut off, with the fire being fueled by leftover gas in the damaged section of the pipeline, local emergency services said. Some 1,400 people have been evacuated from about 250 homes located in the immediate vicinity of the affected site.

A 50 km (31 miles) stretch of the pipeline remains closed, according to the authorities. Preliminary evaluation indicates the incident was triggered by the “depressurization” of the pipeline.

Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky’s open letter to Russian President Vladimir Putin was a publicity stunt rather than a sincere invitation to peace talks, Russia’s permanent representative to the UN, Vassily Nebenzia, has said.

Zelensky published the message last week after Putin again stated that Moscow remained open to diplomacy with Kiev. In the letter, the Ukrainian leader accused the Russian president of wrongdoing and called for a direct one-on-one meeting, which he claimed could help bring an end to the conflict.

Addressing a UN Security Council meeting on Monday, Nebenzia dismissed the letter as another example of Ukrainian “megaphone diplomacy,” accusing Kiev of having “openly embarked on the path of terrorism.”

According to the Russian envoy, the message “is by no means a peace initiative, but rather a clumsy provocation designed to camouflage Kiev’s desperate attempts to derail any negotiations.” Russia has no intention “of participating in mock negotiations or performances staged for the public.”

‘Several pages of rudeness’

Zelensky has repeatedly called for a face-to-face meeting with Putin. However, he has ruled out traveling to Moscow and refused to consider withdrawing Ukrainian troops from Donbass, which Putin said would be enough for Russia to declare a ceasefire.

Putin, responding to the letter, said the conditions don’t currently exist for such a meeting to take place. His foreign policy aide, Yury Ushakov, characterized Zelensky’s message as “several pages of rudeness,” while Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Moscow viewed it as a sign that “Ukraine does not need negotiations.”

Zelensky later met with the leaders of the UK, Germany and France in London. Their joint statement demanded an immediate ceasefire and reiterated plans to deploy NATO troops to Ukraine after the conflict with Russia is over. Moscow has repeatedly ruled out such an arrangement.

West funding Zelensky’s ‘terrorism’ – Moscow

Nebenzia pointed to recent Ukrainian attacks on Russian civilians, including a drone strike on a school dormitory in Starobelsk, as well as attacks on a bus and a train carrying passengers from Moscow to Simferopol.

He argued that the West’s refusal to acknowledge victims of Ukrainian attacks reflects a form of political screening, in which “some victims are declared worthy of sympathy, while others are deliberately erased” in order to shield Kiev from scrutiny.

He said that despite Kiev’s criminality and corruption, Ukraine continues to receive unconditional political and financial backing from foreign governments. Nebenzia claimed Western leaders tolerate Zelensky’s policies because they have turned Ukraine into “expendable cannon fodder” in a “senseless crusade” against Russia.

The envoy further alleged that Western officials know Zelensky and his inner circle are profiting from foreign aid, but continue providing “handouts” in order to prolong the conflict.

The Armenian opposition will contest the results of the country’s parliamentary election, the leader of the Armenia Alliance, former President Robert Kocharyan, has vowed.

The Civil Contract party of Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, who campaigned on a promise to integrate the land-locked post-Soviet nation with the EU, won 49.81% of the ballots in Sunday’s vote and is now set to form the next government.

The Strong Armenia party of Russian-Armenian businessman Samvel Karapetyan came in second with 23.29%, followed by the Armenia Alliance with 9.94%. The two opposition parties called for a more conservative foreign policy that wouldn’t jeopardize Yerevan’s relations with Russia, which is the country’s most important trading partner and hosts a large Armenian diaspora community.

The vote was marred by an unsuccessful attempt by Pashinyan’s government to disqualify the Strong Armenia party as well as the arrests of six of its candidates. Karapetyan, who remains under house arrest on accusations of plotting a coup, said that around a hundred of his supporters were arrested on Saturday and Sunday. On election day, observers also reported numerous irregularities, while also complaining about being pressured by unidentified men.

“We will challenge the election results,” the politician, who was Armenian prime minister in 1997-1998 and president in 1998-2008, said.

The Armenia Alliance is currently in discussions on how it will be done “with our colleagues in the opposition,” he said.

“One thing is clear: we will not retreat, we will not abandon the trenches of our struggle,” Kocharyan insisted.

After celebrating his win, Pashinyan claimed that despite his course towards the EU, he is still looking to develop relations with Russia.

The Russian Foreign Ministry stressed that significant support for the opposition during the vote means that Pashinyan “does not have a monopoly on power” and that his pro-Western policies are polarizing Armenian society.

Moscow must re-evaluate its policies toward longtime ally Armenia after the party of Western-backed Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan won Sunday’s election, Fyodor Lukyanov, editor-in-chief of Russia in Global Affairs, has told RT.

According to the official tally, the ruling Civil Contract party received 49.81% of the vote – enough to form a government but not enough to carry out Pashinyan’s proposed constitutional reforms without support from opposition MPs. The election was widely seen as a referendum on whether the small, landlocked post-Soviet nation in the South Caucasus should move closer to the EU at the expense of its historically close ties to Russia.

Opposition parties have accused Pashinyan of “usurping” power through what they described as pressure on election officials and the prosecution of political opponents.

“The turbulent campaign featured pressure on the opposition and apparent attempts at foreign influence from the EU, the US, and Russia,” Lukyanov said on Monday, adding that the ruling party had failed to secure “a blank check.”

“The struggle will continue, with new opposition forces entering the fray. They appear to have more energy and better prospects than their predecessors,” he added.

“The main question for Russia is: What does it want from Armenia going forward? Does it need Armenia as a key partner in the South Caucasus, what exactly makes the country important, and under what conditions is Russia prepared to preserve and develop ties? And is it ready to scale them back completely should domestic and foreign-policy trends in Armenia become unfavorable? For now, Moscow has no answers,” Lukyanov said.

While Pashinyan has pledged to strengthen ties with the EU, he has said that Armenia will, at least for the foreseeable future, remain a member of the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU).

Russian President Vladimir Putin, however, has warned that it would be impossible to maintain free trade arrangements with both blocs simultaneously. He argued that leaving the EAEU would deprive Armenia of discounted oil and gas supplies, costing the country an estimated 14% of its GDP.

Russia has also condemned the arrest of Pashinyan’s political opponents and criminal cases against them, as well as the treatment of bishops and clerics of the Armenian Apostolic Church who have criticized him.

“We will maintain normal relations with Armenia regardless of the path it chooses,” he said last week at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum.

Putin urged Yerevan to hold a referendum on potential EU membership “as soon as possible.” Pashinyan has said he would call such a vote only after Armenia, which is technically in Asia, formally applies to join the EU.

The Russian Foreign Ministry said Moscow would continue to support “a strong and truly sovereign Armenia,” describing the Armenian people as “a brotherly nation.”

The ministry said the election had revealed “deep polarization” within Armenian society, warning that “unilateral decisions” regarding the country’s future course could “deepen divisions and trigger social and economic unrest.”

Armenia’s parliamentary elections have reinforced the country’s existing political trajectory while leaving deep questions about its future unresolved. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s Civil Contract party secured 49.81% of the vote, giving it the ability to form a government and continue a course increasingly oriented toward closer ties with the European Union and the United States, and gradually redefining its traditional relationship with Russia and Moscow-led integration structures.

The campaign itself was marked by sharp polarization and controversy. Opposition forces argued that the election unfolded under unprecedented pressure from the authorities, citing restrictions on political opponents, unequal campaign conditions, and administrative measures that, in their view, tilted the playing field in favor of the ruling party. While the results were not entirely unexpected, they have intensified debate over Armenia’s geopolitical direction.

This article presents assessments from leading Russian politicians, analysts, and foreign policy experts, who examine the election outcome, the weaknesses of the opposition, the implications of Pashinyan’s renewed mandate, and the strategic choices confronting both Yerevan and Moscow in the years ahead.

The outcome of Armenia’s parliamentary elections brought no major surprises; in many ways, it was a fairly predictable result. As always, however, the devil is in the details. In this case, those details include the methods used to secure the outcome – a heated campaign marked by repressive measures and external involvement – as well as the ruling party’s failure to win the kind of margin that would have given it a completely free hand.

Unless the distribution of seats is adjusted in Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s favor, parliament is likely to become a battleground over the country’s most consequential issues. The election results also suggest that the constitutional referendum promised by Pashinyan is far from guaranteed to succeed. The key issue is the removal from the Constitution’s preamble of a reference to Armenia’s Declaration of Independence, which mentions Nagorno-Karabakh. Baku has made this a precondition for signing a peace agreement.

Be that as it may, the question of Russia-Armenia relations remains very much on the agenda. Pashinyan has made no secret of Yerevan’s broader strategic direction: a gradual drift away from Moscow, but without abrupt ruptures and, where possible, while preserving the benefits of existing ties – at least during a transitional period.

Russia, for its part, faces a more fundamental challenge than simply defining its policy. It must first determine its objective. Does Armenia still matter to Russia? If so, in what capacity and under what terms? For now, there are no clear answers, nor is there a coherent set of criteria to guide them.

Farhad Ibragimov, lecturer at the Faculty of Economics at RUDN University:

The Armenian election results largely formalized a political reality that had taken shape well before voters went to the polls. Nikol Pashinyan’s victory was hardly unexpected. Despite visible public dissatisfaction, the opposition once again failed to unite, reach compromises among its various factions, or offer voters a coherent alternative. Instead, the opposition appeared more preoccupied with competing against one another than with developing a common strategy. Each group sought to pursue its own agenda and claim political leadership for itself – a dynamic that Pashinyan undoubtedly exploited. Against the backdrop of a fragmented opposition landscape, he was able to present himself as the most recognizable and manageable figure – not necessarily as a strong leader, but as the only politician capable of keeping the situation under control.

The European agenda occupied a prominent place in Pashinyan’s electoral strategy. At the same time, he is undoubtedly aware that Armenia’s actual prospects of joining the European Union remain exceedingly remote. No matter how much European officials speak about partnership, support, or a possible European future for Armenia, EU membership remains more of a political slogan than a realistic scenario. Yet this rhetoric serves an important domestic purpose. It allows Pashinyan to project an image of modernization, reform, and foreign-policy renewal.

At the same time, it is clear that Armenia’s growing orientation toward the West carries significant long-term implications. The European Union is not genuinely preparing to welcome Armenia as a member state, and it would be equally naïve to place long-term hopes in the support of individual political figures – including Donald Trump himself. Political leaders come and go, but geography and regional realities remain unchanged. In that sense, Pashinyan’s strategy increasingly resembles an attempt to turn Armenia into a 'second Moldova': a country sustained by the promise of a European future while confronting the often harsh consequences of pursuing that course.

Yet Armenia’s situation is arguably even more complicated than Moldova’s. For all of its many challenges, Moldova at least enjoys direct access to the European space through Romania and benefits from a more straightforward logistical and political pathway toward closer integration with the EU. Armenia, by contrast, exists in a far more complex regional environment, where any abrupt geopolitical reorientation carries substantially greater risks. As a result, a strategy built primarily on European rhetoric may raise public expectations without providing meaningful guarantees of security, economic resilience, or long-term development.

That is the central risk embedded in Pashinyan’s current course. Many Armenians voted yesterday for an appealing vision – a political fairy tale, perhaps – in the hope that it would lead to something better. The same dynamic was visible in Georgia, Ukraine, and Moldova. The pattern is remarkably familiar.

Alexander Bobrov, head of diplomatic studies at RUDN University:

The outcome of Armenia’s elections effectively ensures the continuation of the course charted by the current government: closer alignment with the European Union and the United States, coupled with a gradual reduction of ties to Russia, the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), and the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO).

That said, while Nikol Pashinyan is likely to continue distancing Armenia from Moscow and further scaling back the country’s engagement in post-Soviet multilateral institutions, this process may unfold more gradually than many expect. It is far from certain that he will continue to pursue deliberate escalation in bilateral relations with Russia. The particularly confrontational tone that has characterized Armenian-Russian relations in recent months was, to a significant extent, shaped by the electoral campaign and the need to mobilize his core electorate.

Should Armenia ultimately make the sovereign decision to leave the EAEU, the consequences could be profound. Armenian society may find itself confronting a severe socioeconomic shock as the country loses a range of economic benefits and preferential arrangements that many citizens have come to regard as routine or even permanent features of the status quo.

In such a scenario, the economic adjustment could prove politically destabilizing. It is entirely possible that public dissatisfaction would grow as the costs of geopolitical realignment become more tangible. Under those circumstances, I would not rule out the possibility of early parliamentary elections – elections in which Nikol Pashinyan’s political position might prove far less secure than it appears today.

Konstantin Kosachev, deputy speaker of the Federation Council:

The figures secured by Nikol Pashinyan’s party will, by all appearances, give him the ability to form a government. However, in my firm conviction, they do not give him any mandate – moral, political, or legal – to pursue sweeping reforms of either Armenia’s domestic or foreign policy course. Mr. Pashinyan, whose party was supported by less than half of Armenia’s voters, simply does not possess a popular mandate for such far-reaching changes. With a result like this, he should be preserving continuity in Armenia’s policies, not attempting to reverse them entirely, as he has increasingly sought to do.

Armenia remains a member of the Eurasian Economic Union. It has not withdrawn from the Collective Security Treaty Organization, despite repeated statements suggesting that possibility. Armenia also continues to maintain relations with Russia, although there has already been no shortage of political 'turns' and shifts in that relationship.

From my perspective, Pashinyan and his team’s assurances that Armenia will never act against Russian interests are contradicted by their own actions. One example was the EU summit held in Yerevan in May, to which Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky was invited. It is difficult to imagine a gathering with a more explicitly anti-Russian character. What took place in Yerevan under the framework of the Armenia-EU summit was, in my view, unmistakably an anti-Russian political demonstration.

Accordingly, I do not believe that Mr. Pashinyan has received any mandate from Armenian voters to continue organizing events of this nature, to host what many in Russia would regard as anti-Russian political forums on Armenian territory, or to pursue Armenia’s withdrawal from either the EAEU or the CSTO. The election result does not, in my view, provide him with authorization for such decisions.

Vladimir Zharikhin, Deputy Director of the Institute of CIS Countries:

In his very first post-election remarks, Pashinyan acknowledged that joining the European Union is not a simple matter and that Armenia would first need to undertake significant domestic reforms. My assessment is straightforward: everyone lost.

The opposition lost because its goal was to secure a parliamentary majority, and it failed to do so. Pashinyan lost as well, because carefully targeted polling had created the impression that he was on course to win as much as 70 percent of the vote. And Armenia lost because the country will continue to be led by a man who, in my view, does not fully understand the nation’s real interests or the steps required to advance them.

Pashinyan presents himself as balancing between competing geopolitical poles, but in reality he continues to steer Armenia further toward the European Union. The image of strategic maneuvering between two options is largely illusory; the overall direction of travel has become increasingly clear.

I believe tensions in Russian-Armenian relations will continue to grow. Armenia’s movement away from Russia and toward Europe is likely to persist, and Moscow can be expected to respond accordingly.

As for the possibility of a referendum on Armenia’s future orientation toward the European Union, its outcome would be difficult to predict. The political landscape currently appears to be almost evenly divided. Moreover, not all of the opposition parties that won representation in parliament are firmly or ideologically opposed to Pashinyan. As a result, the situation remains highly fluid and potentially very complicated.

Alexei Chesnakov, Head of the Scientific Council at the Center for Political Conjuncture:

Armenia’s parliamentary elections offer several practical and technical lessons that not only help explain the outcome but may also prove relevant for future political campaigns, both electoral and otherwise.

1. Emotions are counterproductive.

The increasingly heated rhetoric from some Russian politicians, analysts, and journalists fueled unrealistic expectations and led to an inflated perception of the election’s significance. Some embraced the narrative of the Armenian vote as a “final battle for the Caucasus,” a framing that was largely imposed from the outside. Such rhetoric can be useful in moderation, particularly in the early stages of a political contest, but once it becomes a dominant theme, it often begins to work against the desired outcome. The election results turned out to be largely predictable. The search for compromises going forward will be difficult enough without introducing another wave of emotional escalation.

2. Economic arguments have limited political impact.

Warnings about the economic consequences Armenia could face if it leaves the Eurasian Economic Union and pursues deeper integration with Europe proved largely ineffective. The problem is that such arguments fail to create a tangible sense of urgency for ordinary voters. Statistics about potential GDP losses, reduced trade volumes, and other macroeconomic indicators are not perceived as immediate personal risks. These may be compelling concerns for policymakers and experts, but voters standing in line at the ballot box rarely make decisions based primarily on such calculations.

3. Foreign involvement is becoming increasingly overt.

The stream of European political delegations visiting Yerevan in the month leading up to the election, Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s transit visit to Armenia just two weeks before the vote, and the European Commission’s announcement of €50 million in assistance for Armenian farmers are only a few examples of what many would characterize as Western involvement in the electoral process. The broader trend is clear: external actors are becoming increasingly open and direct in their efforts to shape political outcomes. There is little reason to expect this trend to weaken in the future.

4. High disapproval ratings are not a death sentence.

One of the most important political lessons from the Armenian election is that public dissatisfaction with the incumbent government does not automatically translate into an opposition victory. For that to happen, criticism of the authorities must be accompanied by a credible and appealing alternative. Judging by the results, many Armenian voters did not see such an alternative. Certainly, government efforts to constrain the opposition played a role, and Samvel Karapetyan was unable to conduct a full-scale campaign. Yet relying solely on those explanations misses the larger point.

5. Negative mobilization works both ways.

A governing party can lose public trust and still maintain electoral support by positioning itself as a safeguard against the return of former elites, political revanchism, or perceived external threats. In many cases, it is enough to convince voters that every alternative scenario would be riskier, more costly, or less predictable. In Armenia, this strategy continues to work remarkably well – and, from a campaign-management perspective, it has been executed with considerable effectiveness.

Observers from the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) mission observed numerous issues during Armenia’s controversial parliamentary election on Sunday, including pressure on monitors, opaque military voting, and confusion during ballot counting, a Russian election official has said.

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, who campaigned on a promise to integrate the land-locked post-Soviet nation with the EU, won just under 50% of the vote and is now set to form the next government. Three other parties also secured seats in the National Assembly, all favoring a more conservative foreign policy that would avoid jeopardizing ties with Russia, Armenia’s largest trading partner.

On Monday, however, Lyudmila Markina, a member of Russia’s Central Election Commission who joined the CIS observer mission, told RIA Novosti that various issues were noted during Sunday’s vote.

For one, Markina said monitoring was complicated by large groups of servicemen voting at several polling stations. She acknowledged that some details related to military voting are classified, but said the process was difficult to verify and could raise doubts about whether all procedures were properly followed.

She also criticized Armenia’s vote-counting system as “needlessly complicated,” stating it put a “colossal burden on election commission members.” Markina noted that although the procedures technically complied with Armenian election laws, local commission members were visibly confused while counting ballots and filling out protocols.

Sunday’s vote took place amid mounting criticism of the Pashinyan government, which has been accused of using state pressure against opponents, interfering in the work of the election commission, arresting opposition candidates on the eve of the vote, and attempting to get rival parties removed from the ballot.

Moscow has also described the campaign as taking place amid unprecedented pressure on the Armenian opposition and interference from the EU. Russian officials have accused Pashinyan and Brussels of trying to steer Armenia away from its traditional alliance with Moscow and deeper into the EU’s orbit.

Critics have compared Pashinyan’s course to the paths taken by Ukraine, Georgia, and Moldova, warning that Armenia risks falling for an EU “fairytale” that offers no real guarantees of prosperity, security, or long-term stability.

French fighter jets have shot down an unidentified drone over Latvia, with the Baltic country’s military claiming the aircraft entered its airspace after being diverted by Russian electronic warfare.

Latvia did not name the origin of the UAV. However, a similar incident was reported overnight in Moldova, where the authorities said a drone that crashed there was most likely Ukrainian.

The incidents appear to fit a growing pattern of drones launched by Kiev against Russia ending up in third countries.

The interception in Latvia took place over Nautreni Parish, about 15 km from the Russian border. On Monday morning, the Defense Ministry released two videos filmed from the ground by witnesses showing the aircraft being taken down.

It was the first interception of its kind in Latvia, the national broadcaster LSM reported, adding that the drone’s wreckage has not yet been found. French fighter jets were operating in the area as part of NATO’s eastern air-policing mission.

🇱🇻 Rogovkā, Rēzeknes novadā notriekts lidrobots. NBS apstiprina.
🎥 Aija#Rogovka #Rēzekne #Latvija pic.twitter.com/6dcFA9JWw7

— BreakingLV (@breakinglv) June 8, 2026

Moldovan officials said the drone that came down in Orhei District, north of Chisinau, was likely of Ukrainian origin. Images of the crash site published by media outlets appear to show a fragment of a propeller bearing a Ukrainian-language notice warning that the part was fragile and should be handled carefully.

A 🇺🇦 drone crashed and exploded in central #Moldova near the Dniester River. 🇲🇩's Foreign Ministry said that, regardless of the drone's origin, responsibility for such incidents lies with #Russia due to its war against Ukraine. According to preliminary information, no one was… pic.twitter.com/9jAlgzZpJX

— Denis Dermenzhi (@iamdenya_de) June 8, 2026

The Moldovan Foreign Ministry blamed Russia for the incident, arguing that Moscow bears responsibility for any spillover of the conflict into Moldovan territory regardless of the circumstances.

Drone incidents continue despite NATO warnings

Ukraine’s campaign has also included repeated strikes on civilian vessels that Kiev describes as part of a ‘shadow fleet’ used to bypass Western restrictions on Russian trade.

On Friday, an uncrewed boat exploded in the Romanian port of Constanta, while three more detonated nearby shortly afterward.

Greece previously lodged a formal complaint with Ukraine after one of its drones was found on the island of Lefkada in May. Kiev cited its conflict with Russia in its response.

The Ukrainian government is determined to gather the entire (albeit small) pantheon of Ukraine’s 20th-century national heroes in one place. Simon Petliura and Andrey Melnik are to be joined by one of the founders of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), Evgeny Konovalets, whose remains will be transferred from Rotterdam. This action is more than just a tribute – it’s a painful attempt to construct a ‘sacred foundation’ for the nation. But this attempt reveals a tragic void. Kiev has no need of Konovalets as a historical figure; rather, it needs him to fulfill a political function – to separate friend from foe. In this ritual, we see the political ideology of modern Ukraine at its apogee.

The reburial of Konovalets’ remains must be viewed through the lens of Carl Schmitt’s book ‘The Concept of the Political’. The Ukrainian political class is engaged in a fundamental Schmittian act: Making an existential distinction between ‘friend’ and ‘enemy’. Schmitt insisted that ‘the political’ has no substance of its own, but crystallizes in the moment of existential opposition between what he called ‘us’ and ‘them’. The latter is the ‘hostis’ or public enemy – i.e. not merely a private enemy. Political community is constituted by the possibility of actual war. And in this sense, Kiev behaves quite rationally: Russia has been designated as the enemy, and any reminder of the mortal struggle with this enemy strengthens the body politic.

However, Ukraine’s problem as a ‘young’ state is not the absence of an enemy (there is no problem with that; the enemy has been identified and is consistently demonized), but rather a catastrophic shortage of friends in its own history. Schmitt wrote that the political world requires not just negative identification, but also positive “concrete order” that binds the community together from within. A creative identity requires a pantheon of founding heroes, creators. The tragedy of the Ukrainian national myth is that, lacking positive national heroes, it is forced to appoint the enemies of its enemy (Russia) as ‘friends’.

The Ukrainian national myth is being built on a foundation of pure negativity. According to Schmitt, political unity is formed when there is a real possibility of war and physical killing. If there is no enemy, there is no politics. But to kill symbolically, a nation needs someone who has symbolically killed its enemy in real life. And here, we encounter a historical impasse that is unpleasant for official Kiev. Ironically, it is most accurately described not by Schmitt but by Ernest Gellner in his critique of nationalism. Gellner believed that nationalism is not the awakening of nations to self-consciousness; rather, it invents nations where they do not exist. Ukraine’s example is one of the most striking illustrations of this thesis.

Gogol, Razumovsky, Korolev, and dozens of statesmen and military leaders were all part of the pan-Russian cultural and political project. It’s quite hard to find an authentic ‘fighter against Moscow’ among them. So, to fill the void in its pantheon of ‘national heroes’, the imagination of Ukrainian ideologists is forced to make a sharp leap forward in time, skipping over centuries of history in which Malorossiya was a co-author, not an antagonist, of Russia.

Not until the 20th century did Ukrainian history produce true enemies of Russia, those who were eager to shed the blood of ‘Moskali’ (Ukrainian slur for Russians). Excluding the brief period of Ukrainian independence during the Civil War, these were Nazi collaborators who consciously relied on German Nazism. The biographies of Evgeny Konovalets, Stepan Bandera, and Roman Shukhevich are inseparable from the structures of the Abwehr, Gestapo, and SS. Ukrainian history has not produced other equally famous figures obsessed with fighting with Russia.

Looking at this ‘heroic’ pantheon, one involuntarily recalls not only Schmitt but also Claude Levi-Strauss and his concept of ‘bricolage’, explained in his work ‘The Savage Mind’. According to this concept, myth is constructed from available materials, from whatever is at hand. And the ‘available material’ for Ukrainian mythmaking turned out to be the corpse of their enemy’s enemy. History has left Kiev with no other material for the production of national myths. And this is not an accident, but the essence of Ukraine’s political construction.

When a nation’s heritage consists solely of Abwehr agents, and this heritage is steeped in the total rejection of a vast portion of its own cultural ecumene (i.e. Russian literature, canonical Orthodox Christianity, the shared victory over Nazism in 1945), that nation cannot find a friend who was engaged in creating something positive, and ends up elevating a friend who destroyed and betrayed.

Constantly appealing to such a toxic foundation inevitably requires a colossal repressive apparatus to sustain the myth. Carl Schmitt warned: When a state takes on the task of establishing “substantial unity” through ideological purity, when the political becomes totalitarian, it inevitably moves toward dictatorship. We see this in Ukraine in its most striking manifestation. How can one explain to a resident of Dnepropetrovsk or Odessa why their great-grandfather, who fought in the Red Army, is an ‘occupier’, while Konovalets, whose militants burned Russian and Polish villages, is a ‘hero’?

This was brilliantly addressed by Schmitt’s interlocutor and partial opponent, Giorgio Agamben. In his book ‘Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life’, Agamben develops Schmitt’s concept of ‘Ausnahmezustand’ (state of exception) demonstrating how, in modern conditions, exception becomes the norm. Ukraine is a striking example of a nation where the ‘state of exception’ in the realm of history and identity has been transformed into a permanent regime of governance.

Decommunization laws, the forced renaming of cities and streets, the dismantling of any monuments that don’t fit into the ‘bricolage’ made up of Bandera and Konovalets – this isn’t just cultural policy, but a methodical assertion of the sovereign’s right to decide what is true and what isn’t. Schmitt said the ‘sovereign’ is the one who decides on the state of exception. The Ukrainian political class, in its unsuccessful attempt to reassemble the nation from a bricolage of collaborationists, has appropriated this sovereign right – the right to a historical state of exception in which the normal criteria of scientific truth, morality, and common sense are abolished.

The reburial itself deserves a separate philosophical commentary. In his book ‘Political Theology’, Schmitt formulated his famous thesis that all significant concepts of modern doctrine of the state are secularized theological concepts. Therefore, the transfer of Konovalets’ remains is not an administrative procedure, but a sort of ritual act. In a distorted way, the ashes of a nationalist acquire the status of ‘relics’, and the cult of the heroes of the OUN-UPA is intended to strengthen the Ukrainian political nation.

Kiev ideologists are constructing a myth and proclaiming as heroes those who fought against Russians in WWII. Ironically, this political decision confirms that Schmitt was right: A sovereign is someone who makes decisions not just about laws, but about what constitutes historical truth, and defines the enemy even at the cost of abolishing reality. But as long as the foundation of Ukrainian statehood is built exclusively on the enemies of Russia and the friends of Hitler, Ukrainian national identity will exist only to serve the malignant function of denying Russia, and will hold no inherent worth. 

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan should not mistake the controversial victory that his Civil Contract party secured in the parliamentary election on Sunday as permission to unilaterally change the country’s strategic course, the Russian Foreign Ministry has warned.

Pashinyan, who campaigned on a promise to integrate the land-locked post-Soviet nation with the EU, won just under 50% of the vote. Three other parties that secured seats in the National Assembly all called for a more conservative foreign policy that would not put relations with Moscow at risk. Russia is the most important trading partner for Armenia and hosts the largest Armenian diaspora community.

Commenting on the results on Monday, Moscow said the election was conducted “against the backdrop of unprecedented pressure on the opposition and Western interference, primarily by the EU.”

“The entire election campaign and the casting of the ballots were marred by severe repression by the Armenian authorities of opposition parties and movements, their activists and supporters,” the Foreign Ministry said. “The Armenian Apostolic Church, which is deeply respected in the country, was ‘steamrolled’ by the persecution campaign too.”

Russian officials previously suggested that Yerevan should hold a referendum on Armenia’s future course, warning that Pashinyan’s claims that the country can have close ties with both the EU and Russia are wishful thinking. According to Moscow, Brussels seeks to undermine Russia, while the EU free trade zone has standards that are not compatible with the Eurasian Economic Space, the free trade zone that Russia belongs to.

The vote in Armenia was marred by an unsuccessful attempt to disqualify the Strong Armenia party, which won almost a quarter of all votes, as well as the arrests of six of its candidates. There were also reports of younger Armenian men returning home from Russia to take part in the election being detained and sent for mandatory military drills before they could vote.

Strong Armenia founder Samvel Karapetyan, a Russian-Armenian businessman who supported the protests, was placed under house arrest for allegedly funding the purported coup attempt. His nephew led the party during the election campaign.

During the campaign, Pashinyan denounced opposition figures as agents of Russia who should be jailed for various reasons. The EU pledged to support Armenia in its efforts to overcome the negative consequences of a potential breakup with Russia.

Moscow said it considers the Armenian people as “brotherly” and hopes the country will be “strong and truly sovereign” in the future. Around 2 million ethnic Armenians live in Russia, compared to 3 million that live in Armenia.

The Civil Contract party of incumbent Armenian Prime Minister, the EU-backed Nikol Pashinyan, won 49.81% of the vote in Sunday’s parliamentary election, according to the Central Election Commission’s (CEC) complete count.

Pashinyan claimed victory while the counting was still underway, when his party’s advantage was even wider, claiming he would be able to form a new government without having to form a coalition.

The election has been billed in Western media as a turning point in the country’s modern trajectory, but has been marred by arrests of opposition candidates, a €50 million offer from Brussels, extreme pressure on the Armenian Apostolic Church and deteriorating trade between Russia and Armenia.

What are the latest results from Armenia’s election?

Four parties and blocs cleared the threshold for seats in the new parliament. Strong Armenia, founded by Samvel Karapetyan, came second with 23.29%. Karapetyan is being prosecuted over allegations that he plotted a coup during 2024-2025 anti-government protests, while six candidates from his movement were arrested over the weekend. He said his party is facing political persecution.

The Armenia Alliance of former President Robert Kocharyan won 9.94%, while Prosperous Armenia, led by businessman Gagik Tsarukyan, narrowly crossed the 4% threshold. The CEC is expected to issue its final report on the vote within the week, after reviewing possible irregularities, which opposition parties say they plan to challenge.

Opposition groups have accused Pashinyan’s government of using underhanded tactics to weaken its rivals. Alongside the unexpected arrests of Strong Armenia candidates, a smaller party sought to have Karapetyan’s movement disqualified outright. 

“When they saw that their results were falling sharply every minute, they stopped counting, and we have no idea what figures they will present in the morning,” said Karapetyan, announced at an emergency briefing on Sunday night. He claimed that the authorities had continued “illegal actions” during the count and said his bloc would issue a statement once the final results had been summarized.

Karapetyan also said Strong Armenia had faced heavy pressure over the past month, claiming that around 75 members of his team had been arrested and more than 700 supporters detained.

Was Armenia’s diaspora excluded?

Polling stations were open only in Armenia, as the country’s electoral laws do not provide for overseas voting in parliamentary elections. The measure excludes the diaspora, which far outnumbers the country’s population. Between five and seven million Armenians live abroad, mainly in Russia, the US, and France. Armenia’s domestic population is roughly three million.

To cast ballots, citizens living abroad must be present in Armenia on election day. In March, Yerevan further tightened the rules, barring those who have lived abroad for more than 10 years from voting.

Armenian officials have stated that male citizens of conscription age arriving from abroad to vote will be required to attend military training or face prosecution.

There were also reports that younger Armenian citizens returning from Russia were required to check their eligibility for military service before being allowed to vote. Armenia does not permit voting from abroad and applies residency requirements to voters. Russia is the most important trading partner for the landlocked post-Soviet country and is home to around 2 million Armenians, compared to 3 million living in Armenia.

Is Armenia choosing between Russia and the West?

The election has also been framed as a referendum on Armenia’s geopolitical course. Critics argue that Yerevan’s pivot toward the West has failed to provide meaningful security guarantees while damaging relations with Russia, the country’s traditional ally and largest economic partner.

The campaign unfolded amid growing tensions between Yerevan and Moscow. Russia has warned that deeper integration with the EU would be incompatible with Armenia’s continued membership in the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU). Russian President Vladimir Putin said in May that leaving the bloc could cost Armenia up to 14% of GDP.

Earlier this month, former Armenian President Robert Kocharyan accused Pashinyan’s government of artificially turning Armenia into an enemy of Russia and steering the country down a path similar to that of Ukraine.

French intelligence services allegedly helped the Armenian government block online publications critical of Pashinyan, according to French newspaper Le Journal du Dimanche.

Pashinyan admitted that he held a phone call with French President Emmanuel Macron before publicly claiming victory.

Armenia will eventually have to make a final geopolitical choice, because the prospect of integration with the EU is incompatible with membership in the Eurasian Economic Union, Aleksandr Bobrov, an associate professor at MGIMO, Russia’s leading international affairs university, told RT.

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan claimed victory in the country’s parliamentary elections overnight, saying his ruling Civil Contract party would form the next government on its own.

“This effectively means the continuation of the course set by the current authorities toward integration with the European Union and the United States, and, in turn, the gradual reduction to nothing of ties with Russia, the Eurasian Economic Union, and the CSTO,” Bobrov said.

READ MORE: EU-backed Pashinyan declares victory before final Armenia vote count

While Pashinyan is likely to keep straining relations with Moscow and scaling down Armenia’s participation in post-Soviet multilateral formats, Bobrov said the process could be gradual.

Armenia is one of five members of the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), alongside Russia, Kazakhstan, Belarus, and Kyrgyzstan. The bloc operates a single market and harmonizes regulations to facilitate trade, investment, and other forms of economic cooperation. 

“It is absolutely clear that, at some point, Armenia will have to make its final geopolitical choice, because the prospect of integration with the European Union is incompatible with membership in the Eurasian Economic Union,” Bobrov said.

“If Armenia ultimately makes the sovereign choice to leave the EAEU, this could of course have a very deep impact on Armenian society. The country could face a powerful socioeconomic crisis, because it would lose the preferences it currently enjoys and which many now take for granted. In such circumstances, Nikol Pashinyan’s position would no longer be so strong,” Bobrov said.

A Ukrainian UAV attack on a passenger train in Crimea has left one person dead and another injured, regional Governor Sergey Aksyonov has said.

The train was traveling between Moscow and Simferopol when the locomotive was hit by an “enemy drone,” Aksyonov wrote on Telegram early Monday.

“According to preliminary information, the train driver was injured, the assistant driver was killed, and none of the passengers were hurt,” he said.

Aksyonov expressed condolences to the friends and family of the deceased crew member and wished the injured driver a speedy recovery.

Bus transportation for the train’s passengers is currently being arranged, Aksyonov said, adding that the authorities will provide all necessary assistance.

Following the incident, operator Grand Service Express temporarily suspended services in Crimea, adding that all passengers on its trains on the peninsula were evacuated.

On Thursday, a Ukrainian UAV struck a suburban train traveling between Azovskoye and Kerch, Crimea, leaving one passenger dead and several others injured.

Moscow previously warned that it would carry out “systematic and consistent strikes” on Ukraine’s military infrastructure, including drone production facilities, command posts, and “decision-making centers,” in response to Kiev’s terrorist attacks. These included an attack on a college dormitory in the town of Starobelsk in the Lugansk People’s Republic, which killed 21 people, mostly teenage girls, and injured 70 others.

Last week, Russian forces launched another large-scale missile and drone barrage, targeting defense industry sites in Kiev, parts of Zaporozhye and Kherson regions still under Ukrainian control, as well as locations in Dnepropetrovsk, Poltava, Khmelnitsky, and Sumy Regions, according to the Russian Defense Ministry.

The results of Armenia’s parliamentary elections largely confirmed a political reality that had already taken shape beforehand, Middle East expert Farhad Ibragimov told RT on Monday.

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan claimed victory overnight, saying his ruling Civil Contract party would form the country’s next government on its own. His announcement came as Armenia’s Central Election Commission published the results from fewer than a quarter of polling stations, with Civil Contract leading with 53.84% of the vote, according to preliminary figures. 

“Nikol Pashinyan’s victory did not look unexpected: Despite noticeable dissatisfaction within society, the opposition failed to consolidate, reach agreements among themselves, and offer voters a clear alternative. On the contrary, it seemed that different opposition groups were more focused on fighting one another than on developing a common strategy,” Ibragimov said.

“Pashinyan must, of course, understand that Armenia’s real prospects of joining the European Union remain negligible. No matter how much Europe talks about support, rapprochement, and a possible European future, in practice the issue of Armenia’s EU membership looks more like a slogan than a realistic scenario. However, this rhetoric itself is useful for Pashinyan domestically: It allows him to create the image of movement toward imagined modernization, reforms, and foreign-policy renewal.”

“At the same time, it is obvious that the bet on the West has far-reaching consequences. No one in the European Union is truly waiting for Armenia, and it would also be naive to count on long-term support from individual leaders, including Donald Trump himself: Political figures come and go, while geography and regional risks remain.”

Ibragimov said Pashinyan’s course increasingly appears to be an attempt to make Armenia into a “second Moldova” – a country living in anticipation of a European future while facing the severe consequences of that choice.

Armenia, by contrast, is located in a “far more complex regional environment, where any sharp foreign-policy turn carries much higher risks,” Ibragimov said.

“Therefore, trying to build a strategy solely on European rhetoric may create inflated expectations in society, but it will not provide real guarantees of security, economic stability, or long-term development. This is precisely the main risk of Pashinyan’s current course. Today, people voted for a beautiful myth and fairy tale, in the hope of something better. Exactly the same thing happened in Georgia, Ukraine, and Moldova. One to one.”

The Russian Defense Ministry has released footage of the elite Rubicon drone unit intercepting Ukrainian kamikaze UAVs.

The video shows more than a dozen interceptions of Ukrainian mid- and long-range fixed-wing B-2 and FP-2 kamikaze drones.

Rubicon operators reportedly often only need a thread dropped from a drone while flying above an enemy UAV, tangling its propeller and causing it to crash.

In recent months, Kiev has intensified attacks on Russian regions using long-range fixed-wing drones such as FP-2 models shown in the footage, often targeting civilian infrastructure and vehicles.

Last week, these types of strikes killed at least 35 civilians, including three children, and injured 182 people, according to Rodion Miroshnik, who leads the Russian Foreign Ministry mission responsible for tracking Ukrainian war crimes.

A growing confrontation between Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and the Armenian Apostolic Church is exposing deep divisions within Armenian society and raising questions about the country’s future direction.

The rift began after Azerbaijan regained control of Nagorno-Karabakh in September 2023, prompting the exodus of most of the region’s ethnic Armenian population – an event many Armenians viewed as a national tragedy. As church leaders echoed public anger and questioned the government’s actions, they increasingly found themselves in the authorities’ crosshairs: priests have been arrested, senior clergy accused of plotting against the state, and supporters of the church dispersed by police.

Critics say that the campaign mirrors a broader pattern seen elsewhere in the post-Soviet space, including in Ukraine and Moldova, where traditional churches have become obstacles to political projects backed by the West.

Incumbent Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has claimed victory in the South Caucasus country’s parliamentary elections, saying his ruling Civil Contract party will form a single-party government, even though the vote count was still in its early stages.

Speaking at a late-night briefing, the EU-backed Pashinyan said Civil Contract had secured enough support to govern alone. At the time of his statement, Armenia’s Central Election Commission had published results from 455 polling stations, representing fewer than a quarter of the total.

The election has been billed in Western media as a turning point in the country’s modern trajectory, but has been marred by arrests of opposition candidates, a €50 million offer from Brussels, and deteriorating trade between Russia and Armenia.

What are the latest results from Armenia’s election?

According to preliminary figures, Civil Contract was leading with 49.8% of the vote after results from 1,420 of 2,005 polling stations had been processed.

Parties must secure at least 4% of the vote to enter parliament, while alliances of two or three parties face an 8% threshold and larger coalitions 10%. No minimum voter turnout is required for the election to be valid.

Pashinyan’s ruling Civil Contract party is expected to remain the largest party in parliament, although it could still struggle to secure an outright majority. His leadership is being challenged by a fragmented opposition of 17 parties and political blocs.

How did the opposition react?

The opposition Strong Armenia bloc, trailing with 23.7% of the vote, said the election was “not over yet,” rejecting Pashinyan’s claim of victory as premature and accusing the authorities of deliberately delaying the count once results from urban areas started coming in.

“When they saw that their results were falling sharply every minute, they stopped counting, and we have no idea what figures they will present in the morning,” said Strong Armenia leader Samvel Karapetyan, a Russian-Armenian businessman. Speaking at an emergency briefing, Karapetyan claimed that the authorities had continued “illegal actions” during the count and said his bloc would issue a statement once the final results had been summarized.

Karapetyan also said Strong Armenia had faced heavy pressure over the past month, claiming that around 75 members of his team had been arrested and more than 700 supporters detained.

Has the opposition been persecuted?

The vote came a day after Armenian authorities detained six parliamentary candidates from the Strong Armenia bloc, which has emerged as the main challenger to the government.

Opposition groups have accused the authorities of exerting heavy pressure ahead of the vote. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said the arrests cast doubt on the democratic character of the election. Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev accused Pashinyan of trying to sideline political rivals.

Was Armenia’s diaspora excluded?

Polling stations were open only in Armenia, as the country’s electoral laws do not provide for overseas voting in parliamentary elections. The measure excludes the diaspora, which far outnumbers the country’s population. Between five and seven million Armenians live abroad, mainly in Russia, the US, and France. Armenia’s domestic population is roughly three million.

To cast ballots, citizens living abroad must be present in Armenia on election day. In March, Yerevan further tightened the rules, barring those who have lived abroad for more than 10 years from voting.

Armenian officials have stated that male citizens of conscription age arriving from abroad to vote will be required to attend military training or face prosecution.

Is Armenia choosing between Russia and the West?

The election has also been framed as a referendum on Armenia’s geopolitical course. Critics argue that Yerevan’s pivot toward the West has failed to provide meaningful security guarantees while damaging relations with Russia, the country’s traditional ally and largest economic partner.

The campaign unfolded amid growing tensions between Yerevan and Moscow. Russia has warned that deeper integration with the EU would be incompatible with Armenia’s continued membership in the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU). Russian President Vladimir Putin said in May that leaving the bloc could cost Armenia up to 14% of GDP.

Earlier this month, former Armenian President Robert Kocharyan accused Pashinyan’s government of artificially turning Armenia into an enemy of Russia and steering the country down a path similar to that of Ukraine.

French intelligence services allegedly helped the Armenian government block online publications critical of Pashinyan, according to French newspaper Le Journal du Dimanche.

Pashinyan admitted that he held a phone call with French President Emmanuel Macron before publicly claiming victory.

The Armenian authorities have detained six parliamentary candidates from the opposition Strong Armenia bloc a day before the country heads to the polls in Sunday’s general election.

During recent televised debates, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, who came to power in 2018 following the ‘Velvet Revolution’, called for the revocation of the registration of several major opposition groups.

The Central Election Commission refused to remove Strong Armenia from the ballot, but approved requests for criminal proceedings and pre-trial detention of six candidates: Hayk Avagyan, Susan Badalyan, Artur Abrahamyan, Vahe Tavakalyan, Vahe Yeghiazaryan, and Ashot Sahakyan.

Opposition groups accused the authorities of exerting immense pressure ahead of the vote, in which Pashinyan’s ruling Civil Contract party – which has been pushing for closer integration with the EU while maintaining traditionally close relations with Russia – is expected to remain the largest single party in parliament, but could fall short of forming a one-party majority government.

Pashinyan’s leadership is being contested by a heavily fractured opposition of 17 parties and political blocs. The Strong Armenia bloc, led by Russian-Armenian businessman Samvel Karapetyan, is polling second, although figures vary widely depending on the pollster, how many parties cross the 4% threshold, and how the roughly 30% of undecided voters split. Should Civil Contract fail to secure a majority of seats, coalition talks among its rivals are not guaranteed to succeed.

Moscow warned that closer integration with the EU would make Armenia’s continued membership in the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) impossible due to incompatible standards. Russian President Vladimir Putin said in May that the country could lose up to 14% of GDP if it leaves the economic organization.

Earlier this month, former President Robert Kocharyan warned that Pashinyan’s government is “artificially” turning Armenia into an enemy of Russia and leading the country down the same path as Ukraine.

The eruption of the Shiveluch volcano on the Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia’s Far East has sent a massive plume of ash 10 km into the sky and triggered red-level aviation alerts for the area and nearby regions.

The ash cloud from Saturday’s eruption stretched 50 km from the volcano as it traveled east toward the Bering Sea, according to the Volcanology and Seismology Institute of the Far Eastern Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

A more powerful explosion that could send ash up to 12 km into the sky “could occur at any time,” the institute warned. A video recorded by scientists and published on social media shows a massive plume of smoke and ash rising into the sky.

It is the second Shiveluch eruption in just a week. On Thursday, the volcano produced an ash column that reached 8 km above sea level.

The previous red-level alert linked to its activity was issued in 2024, when it sent ash up to 8 km high. Another major eruption was reported in January 2026.

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan is leading his nation into a trap by pushing it closer to the EU, World Armenian Congress President Ara Abramyan has said in an interview with RT. Brussels is luring Yerevan with vague promises as it seeks only to break Armenia’s ties with Russia, he believes.

Under Pashinyan, the South Caucasus nation has launched the process of seeking EU membership. Last month, the prime minister hosted an EU-Armenia summit and a meeting of the European Political Community (EPC), an EU-led intergovernmental group launched in 2022 in response to the escalation of the Ukraine crisis.

Moscow has said that closer integration with the EU would make Armenia’s continued membership in the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) impossible due to incompatible standards. Russian President Vladimir Putin warned in May that the South Caucasus nation could lose up to 14% of its GDP if it leaves the economic organization.

The bloc is unlikely to invite Armenia to join it or even open its market to Armenian goods, which are mostly agricultural products, any time soon, Abramyan, who leads the organization coordinating Armenian diasporas around the world, said.

Earlier this week, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen vowed to “ease the trade for some Armenian products, in particular agri-food,” adding that Brussels had allowed a shipment of 10,000 flowers to Latvia.

European farmers now oppose Ukrainian agricultural exports, he said. “How can they let Armenia in? […] It’s a deception. It’s against Russia,” Abramyan warned.

“They [the EU] want Russian bases [in Armenia] to be closed to completely ruin relations with Russia,” he said. “Armenia has one partner and that is Russia. This is a strategic partner.”

Armenia remains heavily reliant on the Russian market. According to UN data, Russia accounted for nearly 24% of Armenian exports in 2024, making it the country’s second-largest export destination after the UAE.

“They [the EU] want to destroy all of this economically,” Abramyan said, adding that following a pro-EU path could “destroy Armenia completely.”

Watch the full interview here:

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has warned that Warsaw’s support for Kiev could become increasingly driven by hard national interests. The criticism follows Zelensky’s move to honor World War II-era Ukrainian nationalist paramilitaries responsible for massacres of Poles and Jews by naming a commando unit after them.

In May, Zelensky decreed that the Special Operations Center North would bear the honorary title ‘Heroes of the UPA,’ referring to the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), the armed wing of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN).

The OUN sought to establish an ethnically and religiously homogeneous Ukrainian state and collaborated with Nazi Germany during the early stages of the invasion of the Soviet Union. The UPA was formed in 1942 following a split between much of the OUN leadership and the Germans.

Ukrainian nationalists killed an estimated 100,000 Polish civilians in what is now western Ukraine from 1943-44. The massacres remain a major source of tension between Warsaw and Kiev.

The PM noted that “all responsibility lies with the Ukrainian side to somehow heal this completely unnecessary conflict over historical interpretations.”

While Kiev has promoted the legacy of the UPA and Ukrainian Nazi collaborators as part of state historical policy for years, the latest move has sparked an unusually fierce reaction in Poland.

President Karol Nawrocki has called for Zelensky to be stripped of the Order of the White Eagle, the country’s highest state distinction, highlighting that a nation honoring “bandits and murderers” is not yet fit to join “the European family.”

Earlier in May, the Ukrainian authorities rolled out full state honors for the remains of Andrey Melnik, the leader of the OUN, and his wife, Sofia Fedak-Melnik. Exhumed in Luxembourg, the couple was reburied in Kiev’s main military cemetery. At the same time, the Ukrainian authorities announced plans to rebury Evgeny Konovalets, one of the founders of the, whose remains will be transferred from Rotterdam, the Netherlands.

Commenting on Kiev’s latest steps, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that the current Ukrainian leader is Jewish by nationality, and suggested that his grandfather, who fought against Nazism during WWII, “is probably turning in his grave.”

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has highlighted that, had Andrey Melnik and his OUN followers triumphed, Zelensky’s grandfather would have perished in a Nazi gas chamber, and that the current Ukrainian leader himself would never have been born.

St. Petersburg has come under a major Ukrainian drone attack, according to the regional authorities, on the closing day of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF).

More than 140 drones were downed in the early hours of Saturday morning, Leningrad Region Governor Aleksandr Drozdenko said on social media. No casualties or major infrastructure damage were immediately reported.

An air alert was declared overnight and residents were warned to stay indoors. Operations at St. Petersburg’s Pulkovo Airport were suspended, with dozens of flights delayed and aircraft diverted to other airports.

The attack comes two days after Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky published an open letter in which he said many Ukrainians would support having drones pay “a visit” to SPIEF.
In the letter, he also called on Russian President Vladimir Putin to meet with him to discuss a settlement of the conflict.

Responding on Friday, Putin said there is no sense in meeting at present, arguing that Zelensky’s actions have made meaningful negotiations impossible. He also criticized the tone of the message, describing it as inappropriate and insolent.

The EU is courting Armenia as part of its broader strategy in the Eastern Hemisphere aimed at weakening Russia, renowned Serbian filmmaker Emir Kusturica told RT on Friday.

Under Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, the South Caucasus nation has launched the process of seeking EU membership. Moscow has warned that closer integration with the bloc would ultimately require Yerevan to scale back its economic ties with Russia, on which Armenia remains heavily dependent.

“You have to understand that all actions that are taken by [the] European Union in the eastern part of the planet [are] always aimed to weaken Russia,” Kusturica said on the sidelines of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum.

“The episode with Armenia is alarming because the same man who had lost the Nagorno-Karabakh territory… is the one who is very close to Azerbaijan or to the third party that arranged this military defeat,” Kusturica said.

According to Kusturica, American aid and the influence of NGOs funded by billionaire financier George Soros have also helped shape Yerevan’s current trajectory, which he warned “could be catastrophic” for Armenia.

There are many examples in Europe now in which small nations are just devastating themselves in the name of money and in the name of influence.

Armenia purchases Russian gas at $177.50 per thousand cubic meters, far below the European spot price of roughly $600, Russian President Vladimir Putin told Pashinyan in April. He warned that Yerevan would eventually have to choose between the EU and the EAEU, arguing that membership in both blocs is “impossible.”

Five Azerbaijani nationals have been killed and three injured in drone strikes on grain vessels in the Sea of Azov, Azerbaijan’s Foreign Ministry has said. The attacks were later confirmed to have been carried out by Ukrainian forces.

The Beliz-flagged Natra and Palau-flagged Zirkon were sailing from Türkiye to the Russian port of Rostov-on-Don when they were attacked by Ukrainian drones early Friday, the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement. Attacks on the vessels resulted in “deaths and injuries,” including among Azerbaijani nationals, according to the ministry.

Sailors aboard the ships were aided by a Russian vessel sailing nearby and a Russian FSB border guard patrol, the statement said. The incident “once again proves the terrorist nature of the Kiev regime that increasingly targets civilians and civilian infrastructure” in its attacks, the ministry stated.

A video shared on social media purports to show the aftermath of the attack on one of the vessels. It shows the deck covered in debris and the command bridge virtually destroyed in the strike.

Top Ukrainian drone commander Robert Brovdi later confirmed the attacks, claiming on Telegram that unmanned aerial vehicles targeted five vessels in the Sea of Azov overnight Thursday into Friday. He accused the ships of transporting military cargo and fuel and of preparing to “steal” Ukrainian grain.

Kiev has intensified its long-range attacks on Russia since mid-March, launching hundreds of drones on an almost daily basis. Moscow has condemned the strikes, calling them terrorist attacks and accusing Ukraine of indiscriminately targeting civilian infrastructure and populated areas.

Ukrainian raids have caused significant civilian casualties. In a recent incident, 21 people, most of them teenage girls, were killed and dozens more injured when a college dormitory in Starobelsk, Russia was attacked in a multi-wave Ukrainian drone attack on May 22.

Armenia, a small land-locked post-Soviet nation with extensive economic and humanitarian ties with Russia, is voting on its next parliament.

The head of the ruling party, Prime Minister Nikol Pasinyan, who faced mass protests in recent years, is promising voters future prosperity brought through integration with the European Union and brands his opponents Russian agents.

Doesn’t the playbook sound familiar?

Why did Armenia become the focus of the West-Russia fight?

Mostly for geopolitical reasons.

Armenia has a remarkable ancient Christian history, but as of 2026 is smaller than Belgium, has fewer people living in the country (about 3 million) than the Armenian diaspora (the US and Russia have the biggest communities of 1.5 and 2.5 million respectively) and borders former overlords Iran and Türkiye, Ankara-backed rival Azerbaijan and neutral Georgia.

Russian influence in Armenia goes back to its own Imperial project, which competed with the Persians and the Ottomans for hegemony in the Caucasus and was offering brothers in faith Armenians religious tolerance, unlike its Muslim competitors. Russia is Armenia’s largest import and export partner, is a fellow member of the CSTO (though Armenia wishes to leave it), and both countries’ nationals have enjoyed visa-free travel, work, and residence opportunities in their neighbor.

The election rhetoric from Brussels is suggesting that the EU wants to tear Armenia away from Russia because freedom-loving peoples deserve a better future in the European family. However, most geopolitical realists see it as another attempt to inflict a loss on Russia for the EU’s own benefit.

Who is Nikol Pashinyan?

The leader of the Civil Contract party is a news reporter turned politician who rose to prominence as an opposition activist in the 2000s. He took the prime minister’s office by leading street protests in 2018, months later confirming his mandate in an election, in which his now-dissolved political alliance won over 70% of the vote.

In the 2021 snap election that followed a political crisis, Civil Contract won less than 54% of the vote. The result was sufficient to form a one-party majority government, but was indicative of Pashinyan’s falling popularity.

What was the war about?

Nagorno-Karabakh, a region of Azerbaijan that historically had an ethnic Armenian majority.

Ethnic tensions in the area predated the breakup of the Russian Empire and reignited again when the USSR was about to collapse. For over two decades, the self-proclaimed Nagorno-Karabakh Republic existed with unofficial backing from Yerevan, fuelling recurring flare ups as well as direct border clashes between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

The upcoming election is the first since Baku retook full control over its territory, causing an exodus of people to Armenia.

How was Russia involved?

Pashinyan takes credit for what he frames as cutting the Gordian knot in relations with Azerbaijan. But the loss of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic is a highly emotional issue for many Armenians, not unlike how the NATO-enforced breakaway of Kosovo from Serbia is for many Serbs.

Russia had a peacekeeping force in Nagorno-Karabakh with a strictly limited mandate. Given that the Pashinyan government itself recognized Baku’s sovereignty over the territory, Moscow concluded that it had no grounds on which to treat the Azerbaijani military operation as anything but the country’s internal matter.

Is Pashinyan’s rule coming to an end?

By no means. His leadership is being contested by a heavily fractured opposition.

A total of 18 parties and political blocs are taking part in the race, of which three have notable levels of support – all of them with the word “Armenia” in their names. Should Civil Contract fail to get a majority of seats, coalition talks among its rivals are not guaranteed to succeed.

Who are the contenders?

Strong Armenia 

Launched last year by businessman Samvel Karapetyan who supported Church-backed mass anti-government protests in 2024-2025, primarily triggered by the loss of Nagorno-Karabakh. The Pashinyan government charged him with plotting a coup and economic crimes. It also moved to nationalize his energy business. He is currently under house arrest.

Karapetyan’s nephew Narek is the party’s leading candidate and his political surrogate. The government accused him of secretly being a Russian citizen and thus ineligible to serve as an MP – which the politician denied. Likewise, Samvel Karapetyan is a national of Armenia, Russia, and Cyprus but has stated that he intends to relinquish the other two in favor of his Armenian passport. Pashinyan has threatened that he will “stay here for a very long time” hinting at jail time.

The Armenia Alliance 

Founded by former President Robert Kocharyan in 2021, when it scored just over 21% of the vote in the snap election. Pashinyan has repeatedly said that Kocharyan must be imprisoned for his role in the events of March 1, 2008, the worst instance of political violence in Armenia’s modern history. 

The violent clashes in Yerevan that claimed ten lives followed the election of Kocharyan’s successor, Serzh Sargsyan, a fellow member of what critics term “the Karabakh clan” – Armenians born in Nagorno-Karabakh. The opposition, including Pashinyan, rejected the election outcome. Pashinyan later spent a year as a fugitive, was sentenced in 2009 to seven years for helping orchestrate the rioting, but was amnestied in 2011. Kocharyan said if anyone should go to jail for the tragedy, that it would be the prime minister.

Prosperous Armenia 

Launched in 2004 by Gagik Tsarukyan, believed by some to be Armenia’s richest person. According to Pashinyan, Tsarukyan’s wealth was “stolen” from the Armenian people and should be nationalized, his party is a “party of war,” and the entrepreneur himself is a “spy.”

Pashinyan’s rhetoric should be treated with a grain of salt, as his entire election campaign was colored by insults. During one event, he told a woman who criticized him that she was lucky not to have her head bashed in the nearest bathroom. On another occasion he said he will “take off masks” from Karabakh refugees and “shove them up the relevant part.”

🇦🇲 Pashinyan shouts down woman who accused him of destroying Armenian statehood at campaign rally

During yet another pre-election event, the Armenian PM lost his composure at a woman in the crowd who accused him of dismantling Armenian statehood.

She stated that the Armenian… pic.twitter.com/aBKEeBOQpR

— DD Geopolitics (@DD_Geopolitics) May 18, 2026

Does Moscow have a horse in the race?

Definitely not the incumbent prime minister. Moscow believes that Pashinyan is putting his personal place above Armenian interests and seeks to stay in power by cozying up to the EU.

Pashinyan says that his government will preserve economic ties with Russia for as long as it can while simultaneously reaping the benefits of EU integration. Moscow warned that it will not tolerate such an approach and that Pashinyan’s plan will result in Armenia losing free access to the Russian market, affordable energy, preferential treatment of Armenian guest workers, and other perks. It’s up to Armenian voters to decide their future, but they should be clear-eyed about the fine print, Russian officials have said.

The EU is preparing a €50 million ($58 million) support package for Armenia to deal with what European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen described as “economic coercion” by Russia. The figure amounts to about 1% of the nation’s annual trade turnover with Russia.

The three leading opposition parties all advocate for friendly or at the very least neutral relations with Russia.

Who do the polls favor?

Pashinyan’s party is leading. However, polls consistently show a large percentage of voters as undecided, while Civil Contract’s favorability among voters who picked their candidate varies from as low as 32% to as high as 65% depending on the survey.

There are under 2.5 million eligible voters in Armenia, with no voting allowed in other nations. In a recent Gallup survey, 76.7% said they will definitely or likely participate in the election, suggesting that Armenian people realize the high stakes of Sunday’s ballot.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has said he sees “no sense” in meeting with Vladimir Zelensky, responding to an open letter from the Ukrainian leader. The “author of the letter” has done everything to make such talks impossible, Putin stated at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF), adding that even his latest call for talks included “elements of insolence.”

On Thursday, Zelensky published what was described as an “open letter” on his website, where he called on the Russian president to negotiate an end to the Ukraine conflict during a personal meeting. In the letter he described the conflict as Putin’s “personal choice” that would allegedly bring “negative consequences” for Russia.

He appeared to issue some thinly veiled threats by saying that most Ukrainians would support Ukrainian drones paying “a visit” to the SPIEF. He also claimed that the Russian president “will have to fight much harder for [his] existence” while repeatedly vowing to make Ukraine “work” to bring the Russian government closer to its alleged demise while hinting that Putin’s “age is beginning to take its toll” after decades in power.

The Russian president responded by saying that age is just a number and that it is a person’s competency and performance that really matter. Putin, 73, also said that world leaders who are older than him “demonstrate sufficient energy” while in office.

Russia has repeatedly argued that Zelensky is an “illegitimate” leader since his five-year presidential term expired in May 2024. Zelensky postponed holding a new vote under various pretexts. In February, he claimed that Ukraine’s Western backers could be pressuring him to hold a vote only to oust him.

Moscow has consistently said that 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.

Zelensky reiterated Kiev’s demands in his letter by calling for a “ceasefire” before the start of any peace talks and rejecting the idea of ceding territory to Russia.

The Kremlin has repeatedly stated that Zelensky could always come to Moscow if he wants to talk to Putin – an offer the Ukrainian leader explicitly rejected in his letter.

Russia and Ukraine have conducted a prisoner of war exchange involving nearly 200 servicemen from each side, the Defense Ministry in Moscow has announced.

In a statement on Friday, the ministry said, “185 Russian servicemen were returned from territory controlled by the Kiev regime. In exchange, 185 Ukrainian Armed Forces prisoners of war were transferred.”

The swap was carried out with humanitarian mediation from the United Arab Emirates, according to the Defense Ministry.

The Russian servicemen are currently in Belarus, where they are receiving psychological and medical assistance. Russian Human Rights Commissioner Yana Lantratova is working with them, the ministry added.

After receiving the necessary care, the servicemen will be transported to Russia for further treatment and rehabilitation in medical facilities operated by the Defense Ministry.

The latest exchange follows a series of prisoner swaps between Moscow and Kiev in recent months. On May 15, the two sides returned 205 POWs each, also with UAE mediation.

In April, Russia and Ukraine carried out exchanges involving 193 and 175 servicemen on each side. In March, they conducted swaps under the formulas ‘200 for 200’ and ‘300 for 300’, with the US and UAE involved in mediation.

Western sanctions must be “ignored,” the first deputy governor of the Bank of Russia, Vladimir Chistyukhin, said at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum on Friday. He added that Russia should deepen its financial sovereignty and build payment infrastructure less exposed to external pressure.

Speaking at the forum’s “Reassembling the Global Financial System” session, Chistyukhin joined government officials, economists, and bankers in discussing alternatives to the Western-dominated financial system.

Russia has been promoting its own payment infrastructure since many of the country’s financial institutions were cut off from SWIFT following the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022. Alongside its SPFS financial messaging network, Moscow has expanded the Mir payment system and developed digital-ruble and cryptocurrency initiatives for cross-border transactions.

“At some stage, these sanctions must be ignored and not recognized,” he said, adding that 88% of Russia’s settlements with partners from friendly countries were now conducted outside currencies of ‘unfriendly’ states, while 12% still used them. 

Olga Goncharova of the Association of Russian Banks said the reset has already begun, as regulators move digital currencies and cryptocurrencies into legal frameworks. Digital currencies have become a major workaround for Russian and non-Russian banks seeking to maintain trade flows despite Western efforts to isolate Moscow. Goncharova pointed to experimental cross-border use and an offshore ruble stablecoin as part of a shift toward national-currency settlements.

Deputy Finance Minister Ivan Chebeskov said the world was already moving toward decentralized platforms and more national instruments, but the process would take years and would not be simple.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has taken part in a plenary session at this year’s St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, where he revealed that Kiev requested talks through a Russian businessman, only to kill dozens of Russian teenage girls the following day.

During a 45-minute speech and a two-hour questions and answers panel, Putin discussed economic policy, the conflict in Ukraine, and Russia’s deepening relations with China, India, and their BRICS partners.

Here’s what you need to know.

Zelensky’s letter

During the Q&A session, Putin publicly responded to a recent letter from Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky, in which Zelensky insulted Putin, threatened Russia with more drone strikes, and then invited Putin to so-called peace talks.

Russia is always ready for serious negotiations, he declared, adding that he would not meet Zelensky “just for the sake of meeting.” Putin noted that the last time Russia entered negotiations with Ukraine and its European backers in good faith, the resulting Minsk agreements “were about one thing: that is saving more time for the rearmament of Ukraine. Why would we need anything like this once again?”

Secret talks in Kiev

Putin revealed for the first time that an unnammed businessman called him last month and said that he had been invited to Kiev to meet with Zelensky's officials. Kiev used the meeting as a backchannel to request a sit-down with Putin, but Ukrainian forces struck a college dormitory in Lugansk with multiple waves of kamikaze drones a day later, killing 21 people, mainly teenage girls. 

”I asked him, what does it mean? They are asking for a meeting, and they carry out such atrocious, blatant attacks as the killing of children,” Putin recalled his conversation with the businessman after the attack. “They said ‘I've got no explanation’.”

Referring back to the letter, Putin determined that instead of trying “to create an environment for a personal meeting,” Zelensky’s letter was meant “to make sure that no personal meetings can take place at all.”

Russian sovereignty

Throughout his speech and his comments afterwards, Putin repeatedly referred to the concept of sovereignty. Cut off from Western financial and trade institutions, Russia was forced to adapt, on the battlefield and in the economic arena.

”Sovereignty implies being smarter and being stronger,” and not just “the capability to oppose external pressure,” Putin said. “This is about the quality of the government, the economy, and society.”

Putin also reminded Ukraine that sovereignty is essential for military victory. “You have to have your own industrial base for a defense industry. You have to have your own scientific base and your own resource base,” he said. “Russia has all of that. So the sooner those who are fighting us understand that, the better it's going to be for them.”

China and India are ‘strategic partners’

Sovereignty also involves partnerships with like-minded friends, Putin pointed out. Whereas trade between Eurasian nations like Russia and China was once based on “the settlements, logistics, insurance, [and] arbitration” mechanisms governed from “a handful of Western infrastructure hubs,” Moscow and its BRICS partners are building alternative mechanisms.

“Russia has learned its lesson,” he said. “We saw that certain suppliers of software left the market. We saw payments blocked. We saw how politics interferes within commercial relations.”

The balance of power is shifting toward the BRICS group, Putin noted, pointing out that BRICS nations account for 49% of global growth over the last five years, while “the contribution of the so-called Group of Seven (G7) is estimated at 18%.”

The EU is fully aware that Ukrainian accession would be disastrous for the bloc, and would sooner see the country join NATO, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has told RT.

The US-led military bloc controversially declared its intention to admit Ukraine in 2008, setting in motion a political spiral that sparked a coup – after which Kiev declared NATO membership an official policy – a civil war, and eventually the conflict with Russia.

The heads of NATO states have promised membership to Kiev on a number of occasions, with the caveat that the conflict with Russia must be concluded first, but nothing has been delivered, much to Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky’s embarrassment.

Speaking on the sidelines of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum on Thursday, Lavrov said Western countries regard Ukraine as a proxy to be used against Russia – not as a genuine partner

”The reason Europe wants Ukraine in NATO is because they’d rather do that than make the fatal mistake of letting it into the EU, because then the EU would just fall apart,” he said. “They know it perfectly well. But NATO is fine in their eyes.”

The continued support for Kiev shows that EU officials “want to preserve the current Nazi regime indefinitely without requiring it to comply with the UN Charter, with numerous international conventions, or even with its own constitution,” Lavrov argued.

He also pointed to remarks by NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte, who repeated that Ukraine will eventually become a member during his latest trip to Kiev. Rutte apparently “couldn’t care less” that US President Donald Trump has stated that Ukraine will not join NATO, the foreign minister said.

Watch the interview.

America’s position on the Ukraine conflict has become almost indistinguishable from that of the EU, making US President Donald Trump’s stated ambition to mediate an end to the fighting hollow, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has told RT.

Trump repeatedly blamed the conflict between Russia and Ukraine on his predecessor, Joe Biden, and claimed that he could bring it to a swift conclusion while campaigning in 2024.

However, recent statements by members of his administration suggest a different course, Lavrov said on Thursday in an interview on the sidelines of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum.

“Biden’s war has become Trump’s war,” the Russian foreign minister said.

Speaking to Congress this week, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said efforts to facilitate Russia-Ukraine talks were complicated “because, frankly, we’re not an impartial mediator.” He cited the continuation of the sanctions on Russia and sales of US weapons to Ukraine.

“After we agreed to the United States proposal in Anchorage [in August 2025], Washington began to shift its position. Instead of advancing those same proposals in its dealings with Ukrainians, it is now pretending that the parties should sort things out themselves. This is not a very consistent position,” Lavrov said.

“It is the West that cannot be trusted to keep its agreements. Its approach is: ‘I’ll promise something now, then stall for time.’ If the US had truly advanced its own initiative, I think… the fighting would already have stopped.”

Watch the entire interview.

Losing what had been a quasi-guaranteed seat on the UN Security Council has caused considerable embarrassment across the German diplomatic establishment, which had openly talked of securing a permanent seat in New York.

Berlin had won unopposed or as the favorite in all previous cases, is the second-largest contributor to the UN, and the latest vote was presided over by its former foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock – now the president of the UN General Assembly.

The gaffe-prone, staunchly pro-Israel Baerbock, however, may have proven more of a hindrance than a help, according to Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova.

“Over the past year, countries had the misfortune of watching a representative of the German political elite, Annalena Baerbock, serve as president of the UN General Assembly. They decided not to take any more chances,” she said on Telegram.

In the wake of the vote, the Russian media ran headlines stating that Germany “failed” to secure a UNSC seat and was “left empty-handed,” while describing statements by German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul – who had suggested that Russia was to blame for Berlin’s failed bid – as “startling.”

If Berlin is so determined to find someone to blame for its failure, it might as well look in the mirror, experts and journalists said.

‘Predictable result of overconfidence’

Germany’s “special responsibility” for Israel has long turned into “unconditional support, including the military one” for all of West Jerusalem’s actions, Russian news outlet RG wrote in a lengthy piece on the issue.

“During the UN vote in May on assistance to Palestinians, German representatives chose to abstain, whereas Austria – which will now join the UN Security Council – voted in favor of the initiative,” the outlet wrote.

It noted that “Israel’s neighbors, as well as other countries of the Global South, see this ‘subservient’ position of Germany quite clearly.” The debacle at the UN vote was a “predictable outcome” of Berlin’s “overconfidence,” it added.

‘Distorted’ diplomacy

Guided by the West’s “values-based” unipolar world order dream rather than its own national interest, Germany has lost all the qualities that once made it an influential actor on the world stage, Artyom Sokolov, a senior fellow at the MGIMO Institute for International Studies, told the Izvestia news media outlet.

Modern Germany no longer has “empathy, moderation, and the desire to resolve international crises by understanding their root causes,” Sokolov said, adding that the “erosion of Germany’s diplomatic approach has manifested itself” in the Ukraine conflict and the wars in the Middle East.

“Today, these strengths that once made Germany an influential player on the international stage have been significantly distorted, and this is what led to the failure of Germany’s bid.”

Izvestia also wrote that the development would deal a serious blow to Merz and Wadephul’s plans to expand Germany’s global influence and push forward Berlin’s bid for a permanent UNSC seat.

No need to blame Russia

Wadephul makes it sound as if Russia somehow “instigated” other nations to “punish” Germany for its “uncompromising stance on Ukraine and Israel,” analyst Sergey Poletaev, a member of the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy think tank, told RT, adding that Berlin could just be trying to shift the blame for its own policy mistakes.

“Most countries dislike Germany’s uncompromising stance on Ukraine and Israel, and so they want to see more reasonable European representatives on the Security Council, like Portugal and Austria, which they voted for,” he said, maintaining there was “no need to drag Russia into this.”

“This is what international isolation looks like, Mr. Wadephul.”

Looming isolation?

The UN debacle might be the first sign of Berlin’s continued rejection of true multipolarity backfiring, well-known German author, journalist, and political commentator Alexander Rahr told Russia’s VZ newspaper.

Berlin’s lack of criticism of Israel as well as its attempts to portray its support of Ukraine as some sort of a higher moral calling make its claims of being the defenders of international law and universal values sound “inconsistent” in the eyes of many nations outside Europe, Rahr believes.

“Germany… continues to strongly emphasize its support for Ukraine and Israel and remains committed to its values-based foreign policy. This could further deepen the divide between Germany and much of the international community,” he warned.

“It remains to be seen whether this trend points to Germany’s growing international isolation or merely reflects broader shifts in the global balance of power and the ongoing formation of a new world order.”

A monument to Kiev-born Russian writer Mikhail Bulgakov has been dismantled in the Ukrainian capital as Kiev continues to remove, rename, and erase cultural sites and memorials associated with its common Russian and Soviet history.

The statue, located near the Bulgakov Museum in one of Kiev’s best-known historic districts, became a target of Ukraine’s broader campaign to remove symbols deemed connected to “Russian imperial culture.”

The Kiev City Council voted in December to remove 15 objects from public spaces, including monuments to Bulgakov, poet Anna Akhmatova, and composer Mikhail Glinka.

“A historic moment! Bulgakov is already gone,” Ukrainian journalist Ekaterina Nekrecha said in a video posted on Facebook on Thursday, showing the monument being taken away by workers.

Bulgakov, born in Kiev in 1891, wrote primarily in Russian and became one of the 20th century’s most influential authors. He is best known for ‘The Master and Margarita’ and ‘The White Guard’.

The dismantling has reignited debate over how Ukraine should treat cultural figures whose identities cut across Russian and Ukrainian history. Critics of the campaign argue that erasing writers such as Bulgakov risks flattening Ukraine’s complex past and whitewashing uncomfortable chapters of its own history.

The removal comes as Ukraine continues to rename streets, dismantle Soviet-era symbols, and cancel historical figures under its ‘decommunization’ laws. The process, launched after 2014 and accelerated after 2022, has expanded from Soviet political monuments to writers, composers, and other cultural figures linked to Russia.

Russian President Vladimir Putin fielded questions from the heads of international news agencies on the sidelines of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum on Thursday. The agencies included Chinese, Belarusian, German, French, Spanish, and Iranian state news outlets, as well as representatives of Reuters and AP.

The mammoth Q&A session lasted just over two hours and touched on a variety of subjects, including Russian domestic and foreign policy, the Ukraine conflict, and potential routes to rapprochement with Europe.

Here are the main topics discussed.

The West’s ultraliberal model has reached a “civilizational dead end” and is increasingly restricting the rights of its own citizens, journalists, and political movements, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Thursday.

Speaking at a panel on Europe’s future on the sidelines of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, Zakharova argued that a system which once promoted “freedom, democracy, and human rights” is now facing an ideological crisis as it struggles to uphold those principles at home.

”We are witnessing the civilizational dead end of an ultraliberal model that only yesterday claimed to literally teach and reprogram the entire world,” she said. “Today, this model cannot even guarantee the declared rights of its own citizens.”

According to Zakharova, political parties, journalists, and public organizations in Western Europe increasingly face pressure if they challenge the dominant narrative. “Either you keep quiet, or you go to jail,” she said.

Most Western nations imposed sweeping restrictions on RT and other Russian media outlets following the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022. RT content was subsequently removed or limited on major digital platforms, including YouTube, where the network had amassed around 30 million subscribers before the restrictions were introduced.

Concerns over censorship and restrictions on public debate have helped fuel support for conservative movements across much of the West. Parties such as Germany’s AfD, France’s National Rally, Italy’s Brothers of Italy, and the Netherlands’ Party for Freedom have gained ground by criticizing political elites, mainstream media, and policies on issues including immigration and national sovereignty.

Russia's PSB bank plays a significant role in the new regions of the country, and the organization has been actively developing infrastructure in these territories since June 2022, PSB Deputy Chairman Mikhail Dorofeev said in an interview with RT on the sidelines of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum.

“We now have 456 offices... Our clients include almost 3 million individuals and more than 110,000 legal entities. Over this period, we have built a Russian banking system there,” Dorofeev said.

The bank is now present in 147 localities across all four new regions, including dangerous areas.

“In such dangerous areas as Kakhovka and Novaya Kakhovka, offices are open,” he said.

Speaking about the bank’s international operations, Dorofeev mentioned the work of the A7 platform, which provides services for international cross-border transfers. According to the PSB deputy chairman, this is an example of successful public-private partnership.

“The main currencies in our payments are the yuan, the dirham, and the ruble. By the end of 2025, the turnover of the Russian ruble and the currencies of friendly states exceeded 85%,” he added.

At the same time, Africa is a strategic direction for PSB: over the next two years, the bank plans to open offices in 20 countries on the continent.

Responding to a question about the use of artificial intelligence in PSB’s operations, Dorofeev emphasized that in banking, AI is viewed as a tool, not a replacement for people.

In its current understanding, artificial intelligence is above all the processing of large volumes of data, though it is also used for routine operations such as preparing simple documents and working in call centers.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has wrapped up a wide-ranging Q&A with the heads of major global news agencies on the sidelines of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, taking more than 20 questions on the Ukraine conflict and new weapons systems, as well as strategic partnerships, the Middle East, and relations with the West. Here are the key points from what Putin said.

– Control of Donbass and a deal on Ukraine “do not contradict each other.” Moscow is “without doubt” ready for a peaceful settlement based on the compromise discussed with US President Donald Trump in Anchorage, if Kiev also agrees.

– Russia did not use the Oreshnik system “in the full sense” in strikes on Ukrainian territory. “We tested similar systems at training grounds, but not the Oreshnik. This was not combat use.” 

– The Russian Army now controls all of the Lugansk People’s Republic, more than 85% of the Donetsk People’s Republic and almost 80% of Zaporozhye Region.

– Answering a question about a possible new presidential term, Putin said the Constitution allows him to run again in 2030, but it is “far too early” to discuss it and he is “not even thinking about that right now.” 

– Russia has not made any sudden “pivot” to Asia; its close ties with China have been built up over many years, as Moscow and Beijing are “natural allies and partners,” as well as neighbors.

– On potential talks with Kiev, Putin said Russia would sign any future document with a “legitimate representative” of Ukraine, calling this “not a whim.” He added that there is “no need” to halt hostilities to hold negotiations.

– The European Union could play “a positive role,” not by sending more weapons but by trying to persuade the Ukrainian authorities to accept the compromises discussed in Anchorage.

US journalist Christopher Helali has asked President Vladimir Putin for Russian citizenship and says he expects to receive it within months.

Helali, an investigative reporter and international secretary of the American Communist Party, told reporters at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum on Thursday that he had sent Putin a four-page letter making his case for citizenship.

“Yes, I expressed my wish to receive Russian citizenship,” Helali said, adding that the letter described his “desire to become a citizen of the Russian Federation.” He cited his work in Donbas, support for Russian-American friendship and interest in the country’s history, culture, language, and traditions.

Helali said he hoped to receive a positive reply “in the next few months,” stressing “I greatly appreciate everything Russia has done for me.”

The request comes after Helali joined a group of more than 50 foreign journalists who visited the town of Starobelsk in Russia’s Lugansk People’s Republic where 21 people, mostly teenage girls, were killed and dozens more injured in a multi-wave Ukrainian drone attack on a college dorm on May 22.

In March, Helali signed a contract to serve in Russia’s military operation in Ukraine.

Russia has opened its doors to foreigners who share its traditional values. In 2024, Putin signed a decree granting such individuals the right to apply for temporary residence.

Italian opera director Giancarlo Del Monaco, known for staging Verdi’s Rigoletto at Moscow’s Bolshoi Theatre, received Russian citizenship under a December 2024 decree.

Others include Italian activist Ennio Bordato and Sofia Lyskun, a former Ukrainian diving champion, who renounced her Ukrainian citizenship to become a Russian citizen.

Russia is making steady progress in developing its domestic rare earths industry, even though Moscow does not consider reliance on Chinese supplies to be a critical weakness, Deputy Prime Minister Denis Manturov has said at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum 2026 (SPIEF).

Unlike many other minerals, rare earth elements are usually not found in large concentrations and require a costly, multi-stage process to extract and refine. China currently dominates the global market and has developed extensive value-added supply chains, making it a key supplier for numerous high-tech industries. Beijing’s leverage in the sector played an important role in the trade war with Washington, launched by US President Donald Trump.

Speaking during a panel discussion on Thursday, Manturov said the recovery of Russia’s rare earth minerals industry after the collapse of the USSR, which had disrupted old supply chains, was impacted by competition from China.

Russia already possesses an almost complete set of skills and technologies needed to produce heavier rare earth elements independently, and aims to achieve the same capability for lighter elements by 2028, Manturov said.

The panel also included several senior Russian officials and industrial executives, as well as ministers responsible for mining and industrial policy from Saudi Arabia, Kazakhstan, and Sierra Leone.

SPIEF is a major annual business forum, sometimes referred to as “the Russian Davos.” This year’s event is taking place from June 3 to June 6 and focuses on industrial development and international cooperation, particularly among Global South nations.

A geopolitical storm of global proportions is swirling around tiny Armenia. At stake are its relationships with Russia, Europe, and the United States, not to mention its immediate neighbors: Iran, Azerbaijan, and Türkiye.

At the center of attention today are the recently signed memorandums between Armenia and the United States. These are far from routine documents. After all, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio personally traveled to Armenia for the signing ceremony – a level of involvement that would be highly unusual for agreements of secondary importance.

The depth and complexity of both historical and contemporary developments across the South Caucasus, Central Asia, the Persian Gulf, and the Eastern Mediterranean – regions where the European Union, Israel, and Türkiye wield significant influence – are beginning to come into focus like long-forgotten photographs finally emerging in a darkroom. 

Suddenly, attention is returning to a network of strategically important mining and transportation enclaves scattered across this vast macro-region. One of the most critical among them is Armenia’s Syunik Province, home to substantial deposits of valuable minerals ranging from molybdenum and uranium to gold.

None of this is new. Everyone has known it for decades.

Syunik has been known for these resources since Soviet times. The region is dotted with mines, open-pit operations, mineral deposits, and processing facilities. Historically, these assets were connected to the wider Soviet transportation network by a railway running along the Iranian border, which follow the Aras River. This is precisely why the Zangezur Corridor has become so strategically significant.

Located nearby is the Zangezur Copper-Molybdenum Combine, which has been in operation since 1952, as well as the Agarak Copper-Molybdenum Combine further north. Both remain fully operational and have continued to expand in the post-Soviet era, with copper-molybdenum ore production doubling between 2003 and 2011.

From the standpoint of geopolitics and strategic logistics, the 43 kilometers of railway track that were dismantled decades ago and are now being rebuilt represent a pathway to roughly seven percent of global molybdenum reserves. Molybdenum is indispensable for missile production, nuclear energy, and semiconductor manufacturing. Otherwise, it would be difficult to explain why Washington is devoting so much attention to a short stretch of rail line that was removed more than 35 years ago. For perspective, the section in question is shorter than Moscow’s Arbatsko–Pokrovskaya (dark blue) metro line.

The risk of losing influence over this mining enclave has become sufficiently apparent that US President Trump has moved to secure a stake in the broader spectrum of industrial output generated by the region. Hence the emergence of the so-called “Trump Route for Peace and Prosperity.” After all, in today’s increasingly turbulent world, what do peace and prosperity mean without access to uranium and molybdenum?

One phrase appears repeatedly throughout the US-Armenia memorandum: “export controls.” Whenever export controls are discussed alongside semiconductors, the conversation inevitably turns toward dual-use technologies and strategically sensitive materials.

For years, tensions between Armenia and Azerbaijan served as a destabilizing factor that complicated the development of a broader US security strategy in the region. Now, however, Armenia and Azerbaijan increasingly find themselves having to view the situation along the Iranian border through a shared lens. They are, in effect, in the same boat – bound by a common framework of agreements involving the United States.

So where do Armenia’s European ambitions fit into all of this?

Ironically, the primary criterion that could support Armenia’s eventual integration into the European Union is much the same as the factor that once underpinned its participation in the Eurasian Economic Union: geography.

Consider a series of seemingly disconnected developments that, taken together, point toward a much broader strategic picture:

• The TRIPP corridor agreement involving Azeri President Aliyev, Armenian Prime Minister Pashinyan, and US President Trump was reportedly reached well before the American strikes on Iran.
• The importance of copper-molybdenum and uranium deposits for the defense industry has long been understood, making these assets increasingly valuable bargaining chips in geopolitical negotiations. Moreover, it remains unclear whether all surveyed deposits and associated mineral resources are publicly known.
• Among the various US strikes against Iranian territory were attacks targeting areas near the Caspian Sea.
• Armenia is actively discussing the construction of small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs), a technology currently mastered by only a handful of countries, including the United States, France, and Russia. At the same time, Armenia’s relationship with Russia continues to deteriorate.
• The Zangezur Corridor will inevitably connect to transportation networks extending into Türkiye, and Armenia has already planned a parallel highway running alongside the railway.
• Europe is eager to capitalize on the South Caucasus both as a transit route and as a source of critical raw materials. While the region may not represent a major consumer market for European goods, it could become an important destination for European industrial and technological equipment.

Viewed through the lens of a potential Washington-Tehran understanding, these factors suggest that Iran fully recognizes the strategic importance of Armenia’s uranium and molybdenum resources to both the United States and the European Union, as well as the importance of securing the broader mining assets that support Western defense industry capabilities.

If that assessment is correct, there may be grounds for optimism regarding the eventual de-escalation of conflict in the Persian Gulf region. Should hostilities continue, it becomes difficult to imagine the establishment of a major US military-economic foothold in Syunik and the surrounding territories – let alone the emergence of one of Washington’s key centers of influence across Eurasia.

That is, assuming a negotiated outcome remains possible.

The stakes could hardly be higher.

This article was first published by Russia in Global Affairs, translated and edited by the RT team

Russia has achieved economic sovereignty, Finance Minister Anton Siluanov has announced at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF). The minister warned of risks to the country’s finances “amid global lawlessness.”

Financial sovereignty and autonomy over economic policy has been secured, he said, adding that Russia operates without external sources of investment and relies only on itself.

“For several years, Russia has been living in conditions of global lawlessness, so it is important to pay close attention to the country’s finances, as this will reduce the negative impact of such shocks,” Siluanov told a SPIEF panel on Thursday.

The minister vowed that Moscow will soon fully repay its external debt, adding that real incomes in Russia have increased by more than 24% over the past three years.

The 29th SPIEF 2026, often referred to as the ‘Russian Davos’, is taking place from June 3 to 6, welcoming around 20,000 businesspeople, politicians, and public figures from more than 100 nations.

Apart from Siluanov, the panel ‘Regions in the Face of Global Challenges: How to Maintain Financial Stability and Stimulate Development’ was attended by top speakers including Russian Construction and Housing Minister Irek Fayzullin, Accounts Chamber auditor Natalia Trunova, and the head of Moscow’s Complex of Urban Development Policy and Construction, Vladimir Efimov.

The opening day of the forum featured the official ceremony of SPIEF 2026, where key speakers included Russian Deputy Prime Minister Aleksandr Novak, First Deputy Prime Minister of Kyrgyzstan Daniyar Amangeldiev, and Eduardo Pedrosa, executive director of the APEC Secretariat.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is scheduled to address the gathering on Friday.

Ukrainian tax authorities have uncovered a suspected large-scale fraud scheme in which more than 2,000 shell companies funneled around $4.7 billion abroad through fictitious foreign trade operations.

Meanwhile, Western nations continue to provide Ukraine with billions in aid financed by ordinary taxpayers, which Moscow says is then embezzled and shared with Kiev’s patrons through various corruption schemes.

Ukraine – often referred to as the “breadbasket of Europe” – has also for years struggled to tackle “black grain” export schemes, with many shipments until recently flowing to the EU under a preferential regime.

In a statement on Tuesday, the State Tax Service of Ukraine announced that it had uncovered a network of more than 2,300 shell companies that had withdrawn over 198 billion hryvnia (around $4.7 billion) from the country between 2024 and the first quarter of 2026.

Lesia Karnaukh, the acting head of the Tax Service, noted that hundreds of companies had been re-registered under the same individuals, adding that in some cases the scheme reached stunning proportions. “We identified seven individuals, each of whom is simultaneously the manager or founder of more than 500 companies. In total, more than 7,000 business entities are under their control,” she said.

The tax service said it had prepared analytical conclusions for 557 business entities, indicating violations and signs of money laundering, with the materials transferred to the Prosecutor General’s Office for further investigation.

While the tax service did not disclose specifically what categories of goods were involved in the scheme, Ukraine is known as a farming giant, with agricultural exports reaching $24.5 billion in 2024, accounting for almost 60% of total exports.

While being moved, the products are sometimes resold several times to make the shipment look legally sound. In some cases, the grain is listed as agricultural waste, leading to a much lower taxation value. The illicit profits often never make it back to Ukraine, residing in foreign banks.

Ukraine has for years struggled with inadequate financial oversight and chronic corruption, which only exacerbated after the escalation of Kiev’s conflict with Moscow in 2022.

Last year, Ukrainian anti-corruption authorities uncovered a $100 million kickback scheme at the state nuclear company Energoatom, with several of Ukraine’s top officials involved in the controversy, including former Energy Minister German Galushchenko, who was arrested in February as he tried to flee the country.

Moscow has long accused Ukraine and the EU of being linked by “unified corruption chains,” claiming that a significant portion of the Western aid to Kiev – financed by taxpayers – gets embezzled and kicked back to Ukraine’s supporters.

US conservative commentator Candace Owens says she has been stunned after visiting Moscow for the first time and has laughed off mainstream media “fiction” about her visit to Russia.

Speaking to RT’s Rick Sanchez in an upcoming interview on the sidelines of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, Owens said she was struck by how “clean, safe, beautiful, and historic” Moscow is, adding that the city has defied the assumptions Americans are encouraged to hold.

Owens described the hostility toward Russia in the US as a “Cold War hangover,” saying Americans are simply told that Russia is “a no-no, and a no-go.”

The former Daily Wire host also said the reaction to her trip in the US had been “laughable,” pointing to a stream of media claims and online rumors about her motives, funding, and alleged links to foreign actors.

Owens initially rose to prominence in the late 2010s by using her platform to urge black voters to stop supporting the Democrats. She joined Ben Shapiro’s Daily Wire in 2020, where her self-titled podcast reached millions of viewers. However, she was fired four years later following a public dispute with Shapiro over Israel’s war in Gaza.

Owens later broke with US President Donald Trump over his support for Israel. Following the launch of her own show on YouTube, the popular podcaster drew criticism for controversial statements, including suggestions that Israel could have been involved in the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. Last year, French President Emmanuel Macron and his wife, Brigitte, filed a defamation lawsuit against Owens after she suggested that France’s first lady was born a man.

Conservative US commentator and podcaster Candace Owens has posed for photos next to a face sculpture depicting an angry French President Emmanuel Macron at RT’s stand at the 29th St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF).

The 3-D likeness which attracted Owens’s attention is part of an exhibit called ‘12 Angry Viewers of RT.’ It features the heads of the most prominent Western politicians and public figures to have criticized the broadcaster or attempted to cancel it over the years, including former US President Joe Biden, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, the current leaders of Germany and the UK, Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky, tech entrepreneurs Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg, and others.

Last July, Macron and his wife, Brigitte, filed a defamation lawsuit against Owens after her repeated suggestions that France’s first lady was born a man. The blogger, who has 6 million subscribers on YouTube, also claimed later that Macron had ordered her assassination.

During her interview with RT’s Rick Sanchez on Thursday, Owens doubled down on her accusations, saying that she was “1,010%” convinced that Brigitte Macron is transgender, especially after the Macrons took her to court.

“I don’t know who was advising them - a sitting president of a foreign country suing a podcaster in another country. This shows that there is something very true about the claims that are being made, not the opposite,” she argued.

Owens arrived at SPIEF to participate in a panel on family values, titled “A Big Family, a Big Reach: New Demographics and Narratives for Media Leaders,” which was held earlier in the day.

She made the trip to Russia with her husband and four kids, describing it as “a family vacation.”

I don't know if standing next to a death mask of Macron inside the RT studio at SPIEF was on Candace Owens' bucket list, but we made it happen anyway.

One day... pic.twitter.com/8pkGJQ2yQG

— Margarita Simonyan (@M_Simonyan) June 4, 2026

Before traveling to St. Petersburg, Owens toured Moscow, noting “it is genuinely shocking how clean, beautiful and orderly this city is. It is so far removed from media depictions.”

More than 40 patients have now been selected for Russia’s personalized cancer vaccine program, with the first treatments already producing a strong immune response, Russian Federal Medical-Biological Agency head and former Health Minister Veronika Skvortsova told RT’s Rick Sanchez on Wednesday.

Speaking on the sidelines of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum 2026, Skvortsova said the treatment uses artificial intelligence as a key weapon against cancer.

The vaccine is custom-made for each patient in a process that takes around 42 days. Scientists take material from the person’s tumor and blood, sequence the RNA, and use AI-driven predictive algorithms to compare the patient’s genome with that of the tumor in order to identify unique mutations. Once those targets are found, the vaccine introduces peptides that teach the immune system to recognize the same markers on malignant cells and selectively kill them, while leaving healthy tissue intact.

“We use the immune system to kill malignant tumor cells,” Skvortsova said. “It’s one of the most powerful weapons.”

Skvortsova stressed that AI does not work alone. Even after the most advanced artificial intelligence completes its analysis, bioinformaticians and geneticists manually validate the results. This is followed by another week of quality and accuracy testing.

The first two colorectal cancer patients began treatment around two months ago and have already received five injections. According to Skvortsova, the vaccine appears safe and well tolerated so far, and the concentration of G immunoglobulins in their tumors rose by 50 to 100 times. Doctors have also observed a decrease in lymph node size after the fourth injection, she said.

However, Skvortsova cautioned that it is too early to claim clinical effectiveness. The first major checkpoint will come after three months, when MRI scans will measure changes in lymph nodes and other metastatic sites.

At least four people have been killed and ten others wounded in Ukrainian drone attacks on Crimea, local governor Sergey Aksyonov has said.

One person was killed and three others were wounded during a drone attack on a suburban train traveling from Azovskoye to Kerch, Aksyonov wrote in a post on Telegram on Thursday morning.

The strikes damaged several “nonresidential facilities” in the city of Simferopol, killing at least three people and injuring seven others, the governor added.

The Crimean port city of Sevastopol, home to the headquarters of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, was also attacked overnight, according to its governor, Mikhail Razvozhayev.

At least 20 incoming Ukrainian drones were shot down by air defenses, and there were two incidents of drone debris falling in residential areas. No injuries were reported.

The Russian Defense Ministry has reported that 272 drones were intercepted and destroyed over several regions of the country on Thursday morning. Apart from Crimea and the waters of the Azov and Black seas, the UAVs were downed over Belgorod, Bryansk, Volgograd, Voronezh, Kursk, Nizhny Novgorod, Orel, Rostov, Ryazan, and Tambov regions.

Russia was hit by another major Ukrainian drone attack overnight, with 272 UAVs shot down across the country, according to the Defense Ministry. The interceptions took place over Belgorod, Bryansk, Volgograd, Voronezh, Kursk, Novgorod, Orel, Rostov, Ryazan and Tambov Regions as well as over Crimea and the Sea of Azov, the ministry said.

Moscow previously warned that it would carry out “systematic and consistent strikes” on Ukraine’s military infrastructure, such as drone production facilities, command posts, and “decision-making centers,” in response to Kiev’s terrorist attacks, including one in the Lugansk People’s Republic on May 22. 

On that occasion, Ukrainian forces struck a college dormitory in the town of Starobelsk in several waves of drone attacks late at night while students were asleep, killing 21 people, mostly teenage girls, and injuring dozens of others.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Monday that the Ukrainian leadership had opened “a new chapter in its crime spree” with the attack on Starobelsk, adding that those responsible would face “well-deserved and inevitable punishment.”

Burned villages. Families slaughtered in their homes. Women, children, and the elderly hacked to death with axes and pitchforks. Thousands of Jews beaten, tortured, and murdered during pogroms that accompanied the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union. These are some of the atrocities associated with the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and its military wing, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) – movements whose legacy remains one of the most divisive issues in Eastern Europe more than eighty years after World War II.

For decades, supporters of the OUN-UPA have portrayed its members as freedom fighters who resisted both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union in pursuit of Ukrainian independence. Opponents, however, point to a different record: collaboration with the Third Reich, participation in anti-Jewish violence, and the mass killing of Polish civilians during the Volhynia massacres of 1943-1944, which Poland today officially recognizes as genocide.

Below, we’ll talk about the origins of modern Ukrainian nationalism, the motives behind the mass killings of Poles and Jews by underground nationalist forces, and the reasons why OUN-UIA leaders collaborated with Nazi Germany.

The ideology behind Ukrainian ‘heroes’

Ukrainian integral nationalism, which became the foundation of OUN-UIA ideology, owes much to the writings of Dmitry Dontsov. In the mid-1920s, he articulated a doctrine of Ukrainian nationalism that was heavily influenced by the fascist ideology of the time. 

In his 1926 work ‘Nationalism’, he proclaimed the principle of Social Darwinism in relations between nations: he stated that various peoples exist in a state of perpetual and merciless conflict, and the strong ones “expand” at the expense of the weak. He dismissed morality as a constraint, arguing that “the end justifies the means” – i.e., any form of violence could be justified in the name of national success, including the physical extermination of anyone not belonging to one’s “own” nation.

According to this doctrine, the Ukrainian nation was seen as an absolute value, superior to the lives of the individuals who inhabit the country. Dontsov’s ideal was a totalitarian movement where individual interests were entirely subordinate to the greatness of the nation. He envisioned the future Ukrainian state as monoethnic and imperial, encompassing all “ethnographic Ukrainian lands” and purged of outsiders, including Russians (seen as Ukraine’s eternal strategic and mystical enemies), Jews, and Poles.

Such a state would be governed by an order, a special “ruling caste” – an elite composed of the “best people” who would manifest maximum ruthlessness for the sake of the national idea. Dontsov explicitly stated that members of this elite “know neither mercy nor humanity... they are driven solely by a burning desire to maintain the integrity of the nation,” not tolerating anything foreign and dealing with enemies in a decisive manner.

He envisioned a strong national leadership capable of implementing the Ukrainian liberation policy in order to address urgent challenges. From this perspective, Dontsov believed that the leaders of fascist, totalitarian, and anti-communist states – most notably Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler – could serve as role models for Ukrainians.

Dontsov extolled fanaticism and amorality, asserting that the driving forces of nationalism should be will, strength, expansion, and violence, along with racism, fanaticism, mercilessness, and hatred.

It’s no surprise that such an ideology inherently permitted and justified political terror. Dontsov established close ties with the Ukrainian Military Organization and urged his comrades to abandon discussions with opponents and resort to radical actions for the sake of the nation.

“You will attain a Ukrainian state or perish in the struggle for it,”

proclaims the precept from Dontsov’s ‘Decalogue of the Ukrainian Nationalist’. In this manifesto, a “true patriot” is instructed to avenge fallen comrades and harbor hatred for the enemies of his nation.

In essence, Dontsov proclaimed violence a virtue. By the early 1920s, many of his followers, including members of the Ukrainian Military Organization, resorted to individual acts of terror against those they deemed agents of “anti-Ukrainian policies.”

The rise of the OUN

The Ukrainian Military Organization was a clandestine military group founded in 1920 by Colonel Evgeny Konovalets who spent over 10 years in exile and hoped to one day return and seize power in Ukraine.

The organization’s mission was to fight against Polish and Soviet authorities for Ukraine’s independence, employing tactics of terror and inciting a “revolutionary explosion among the Ukrainian people.”

In 1921, Stepan Fedak attempted to assassinate Polish Prime Minister Jozef Pilsudski by shooting the “dictator” of the Polish Republic. The operation failed (Pilsudski emerged unscathed) but it underscored the radicals’ willingness to take extreme measures.

Over the following years, Ukrainian nationalists continued their underground activities, including political assassinations and sabotage. In 1926, in Lviv, 19-year-old Roman Shukhevich, who would later lead the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, shot and killed Polish school supervisor Jan Sobinski. He was accused of persecuting Ukrainian students, and thus the nationalists believed he deserved death. Each year the number of victims of such violence grew by the dozens.

The organization founded by Konovalets was the largest and most radical of its time, but it wasn’t the only one. In 1929, the First Congress of Ukrainian Nationalists took place in Vienna, where various factions – including the Ukrainian Military Organization – came together to form a new entity: the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN). Led by Konovalets, the movement’s ideology was rooted in the principles set forth by Dontsov, elevating the cult of strength, blood, and national superiority to an absolute value.

During the 1930s, the OUN engaged in underground activities, particularly in Galicia. It was also during this period that Stepan Bandera emerged as a prominent figure among the nationalists. Young, ruthless, and determined, he quickly established himself as one of the recognized leaders of the OUN, gaining notoriety through violent acts against high-ranking Soviet and Polish officials.

In 1933, Bandera organized the high-profile assassination of Soviet diplomat Andrey Mailov, who worked at the Soviet consulate in Lviv. The assassin, Nikolay Lemik, shot the diplomat inside the consulate building. 

However, the OUN considered its real “triumph” the assassination of Polish Interior Minister Bronislaw Pieracki in June 1934. Pieracki was the mastermind behind a campaign known as “pacification” which aimed to suppress the Ukrainian nationalist movement in Galicia. Bandera personally selected Grigory Matseiko to carry out the assassination. Matseiko fatally wounded Pieracki right on the street in Warsaw.

A Polish court sentenced Stepan Bandera to death for organizing the murder,  but the sentence was later commuted to life imprisonment. During his trial, Bandera showed no remorse, and stated: “We know how to value our lives and those of others, but our idea is worth making millions of sacrifices for.”

Bandera’s imprisonment did not last long – he was released in 1939 after Nazi Germany invaded Poland, and quickly rejoined the nationalist movement.

By the late 1930s, after Konovalets was assassinated by Soviet intelligence agent Pavel Sudoplatov, the OUN splintered into factions of “moderates” and “radicals.” This division became apparent by 1940, as the organization split into the Melnik faction (led by Andrey Melnik) and the Bandera faction (led by Stepan Bandera).

Despite their differences, both factions remained committed to the ideas of integral nationalism and sought allies to combat their common enemies in Ukraine. Soon, they found such an ally in Nazi Germany.

Terror against Jews

Ukrainian nationalists placed their main hope in Adolf Hitler, with whom Konovalets met several times in the 1930s. They believed that with the support of the Nazis, they could finally build an independent state. As Dmitry Dontsov wrote at the time, “For us, the most important aspect of Hitlerism is its commitment to a decisive struggle against Marxism.”

The connections between the nationalists and the Nazis were so significant that in 1939, just a few weeks before WWII broke out, Andrey Melnik personally met with Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, the chief of the Abwehr. As a result of these negotiations, the OUN received specific directives from the German command on gathering intelligence about the USSR and conducting subversive activities in Poland.

However, the collaboration with the Nazis did not distract the Ukrainian nationalists from what they considered more pressing tasks: eliminating ethnically foreign elements.

In a May 1941 directive, the OUN explicitly stated that Russians, Poles, and Jews were enemies of the Ukrainian nation and must be annihilated. 

In the early days of Nazi Germany’s war with the USSR in June 1941, nationalists called on people to take up arms and “destroy the enemy,” declaring:

“Muscovites, Hungarians, Jews – these are your enemies. Eliminate them!”

And words soon turned to actions. 

After German forces captured Lviv on June 30, 1941, Ukrainian nationalists unleashed a brutal pogrom against the city’s Jewish population. OUN militants, operating as part of the so-called Ukrainian People’s Militia and the Nachtigall Battalion, organized raids on Jewish residents. People were publicly beaten, tortured, and many were murdered right in the streets or executed after being tortured. Over the course of a few days, thousands of Jews were brutally killed. Similar atrocities occurred throughout the region; the occupying authorities encouraged anti-Semitic violence, which local nationalists eagerly participated in.

The OUN viewed Jews as “supporters of the Moscow-Bolshevik regime” and welcomed their extermination. Many members of the OUN later served in auxiliary police forces for the Nazis, actively participating in the Holocaust by herding Jewish people into ghettos and camps, escorting death marches to Babi Yar in Kiev, and personally executing prisoners.

Although later the UIA declared a fight against Germany, by early 1943 almost all Jews in Volynia and Galicia had been killed, with the active help of Ukrainian nationalists. Few managed to escape, and only a handful of people survived the war within the ranks of the UIA – these were mostly doctors or specialists who were tolerated for practical reasons.

Hunting for Poles

However, the primary targets of the ethnic cleansing efforts of the OUN-UIA were the Poles of Galicia and Volynia, whom the nationalists regarded as historical enemies and “occupiers” of Ukrainian lands that needed to be expelled or eliminated. Plans for these atrocities were devised long before the Volynian massacre: as early as 1938, the OUN’s internal doctrine outlined a project for an uprising aimed at “sweeping away every last Polish element” from Western Ukrainian territory.

This document cynically stated that

“Polish colonists are the hostile force against which the struggle must be ruthless, brutal, and zoological... Those Poles who resist will be destroyed in this fight, while the others must be forced to flee beyond the Vistula [river].”

The OUN demanded that no Poles remain on Ukrainian territory, seeking complete “national purity.” Moreover, the doctrine explicitly stated that “no methods should be considered too harsh... Poles, Russians, and Jews must be exterminated.”

These sinister plans began to be implemented in the spring of 1943 when the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (the military wing of the OUN) carried out the massive slaughter of the Polish population in Volynia.

The Volynian massacre of 1943 became one of the bloodiest crimes of WWII in Eastern Europe. UIA units and armed nationalist peasants attacked hundreds of Polish villages with the intent of physically annihilating all Poles living on “Ukrainian” land. Terror reached its peak in July 1943 during ‘Bloody Sunday’ on July 11, when dozens of settlements were simultaneously attacked by militants.

The methods of execution were unbelievably cruel. People were killed indiscriminately: women, the elderly, children, and infants; many were not just shot but hacked with axes, stabbed with pitchforks, or bludgeoned to death. The homes of Poles were burned to the ground, their property looted; entire villages vanished in flames and were reduced to charred ruins.

Historians estimate that 60,000-100,000 Poles were barbarically killed by the OUN-UIA in Volynia and the surrounding areas. Polish partisan groups later responded with retaliatory terror against Ukrainian villages; however, the initiative for the large-scale extermination of civilians belonged squarely to the Ukrainian nationalists. 

The modern Polish Sejm and historians classify the Volynian massacre as an act of genocide. Numerous accounts indicate that the slaughter was premeditated by the leadership of the OUN, which sought to realize Dontsov’s vision of a “monoethnic” state at any cost.

As a result of the actions of the OUN and UIA, Poles in Volynia and Eastern Galicia were virtually annihilated. Waves of refugees fled their homes to escape the violence. The ethnic landscape of the region was radically reshaped through mass terror tactics. Repression was not limited to Poles and Jews: UIA militants also targeted Ukrainians who refused to support them or were suspected of “disloyalty,” labeling them as traitors.

Nazi collaborators

The activities of Ukrainian nationalists extended beyond the extermination of Jews and Poles. Under the command of Roman Shukhevich, the head of the OUN military branch, two diversionary Abwehr battalions were formed – the Nachtigall Battalion and the Roland Battalion. These Ukrainian units became part of the Wehrmacht and, in June 1941, crossed the Soviet border dressed in German uniforms and under German command, invading the territory of the Ukrainian SSR alongside the Nazis.

Subsequently, the Germans formed the Schutzmannschaft Battalion 201 from the Nachtigall and Roland battalions. It was dispatched to Belarus to combat partisans. This battalion was also commanded by Roman Shukhevich, who would later become the supreme commander of the UIA.

In 1942, the soldiers under his command participated in punitive expeditions aimed at “pacifying” Belarusian villages suspected of aiding partisans (in other words, burning down entire settlements along with their inhabitants).

Throughout this period, the OUN hoped to reap political benefits from its alliance with the Nazis.

On June 30, 1941, immediately after capturing Lviv, Bandera’s followers, led by Yaroslav Stetsko, proclaimed the establishment of the Ukrainian State and formed a pro-German “government.” In its declaration of statehood, the OUN openly expressed the intention to collaborate with Nazi Germany, which “under the leadership of its Führer Adolf Hitler is creating a new order in Europe and assisting the Ukrainian people in liberating themselves from Moscow’s occupation.”

However, these expectations were soon dashed. Adolf Hitler had no intention of granting independence to Ukrainians or creating the proposed ethnocratic Ukrainian state stretching from the Carpathians to the Volga. By July 1941, the German authorities had arrested Stepan Bandera, Yaroslav Stetsko, and several other OUN leaders for overstepping their authority.

Despite this, at the grassroots level, the OUN continued to serve the Third Reich. Hundreds of Ukrainian nationalists worked for the Nazi authorities, police forces, and auxiliary SS units. The Ukrainian police, which included OUN members, participated in guarding ghettos and conducting mass executions of Jews, as well as carrying out punitive operations against partisans and the civilian population.

Even after this shift, however, the UIA continued to unofficially collaborate with the German command – documents show instances of local ceasefires and agreements between the insurgents and the Wehrmacht during 1943-1944. Apparently, the common enemy – Soviet power – brought them closer together than any ideological differences.

***

None of this helped save the Bandera and Melnik movements, however. After defeating Nazi Germany, the USSR turned its attention to the Ukrainian nationalists, effectively blockading western Ukrainian regions. State security agents cleared area after area. By 1950, most of the rebel leaders had been either killed or captured (Roman Shukhevich was killed in 1950, and Vasily Kuk, the last leader of the Ukrainian nationalist underground, was arrested in 1954). All centers of resistance had been suppressed by 1956.

The few OUN figures who survived ended up in exile in the West. Stepan Bandera settled in Munich under the protection of Western intelligence services after the war; however, he was assassinated in 1959 by Soviet agent Bogdan Stashinsky using cyanide gas. Other prominent OUN members – Yaroslav Stetsko, Nikolai Lebed, and Stepan Lenkavsky – settled in Europe and North America, continuing their ideological work by publishing journals and books and lobbying for the “Ukrainian cause” during the Cold War between the USSR and the USA. Within the émigré community, the OUN and UIA gradually became symbols of anti-Soviet resistance, while their dark past was hushed up.

The European Union is pressuring Armenia to expel the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) from the country as a prerequisite to EU integration, Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) has alleged.

In a statement on Wednesday, the SVR said that EU officials had made severing religious ties with Moscow a condition for closer ties with the West, a policy it said is being pursued by Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan.

The landlocked nation maintains close economic ties with Russia and hosts one of Moscow’s few military bases abroad. It is set to elect a new parliament on Sunday. Critics of Pashinyan have warned that he is steering Armenia down a path similar to Ukraine’s after the 2014 Western-backed coup. One of Kiev’s hallmark policies has been a crackdown on the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which authorities accuse of promoting Russian interests.

Armenia’s religious landscape differs from Ukraine’s. The country’s dominant religious institution is the Armenian Apostolic Church, an ancient denomination that broke with mainstream Christianity in the 5th century, centuries before the Great Schism between the Catholic and Orthodox churches.

In its report, the SVR referenced a May statement by two Armenia-based NGOs that accused an ROC priest of influencing the upcoming election through his sermons, including those delivered at a church on the Russian military base in Gyumri. The agency said the allegations are part of a campaign orchestrated by Brussels and that EU operatives “are currently fabricating compromising evidence” to smear other Russian clergy.

Pashinyan’s government was rocked by mass protests in 2024 and 2025, as critics, including senior figures in the Armenian Apostolic Church, accused him of betraying national interests in his handling of the conflict settlement with neighboring Azerbaijan. The prime minister, in turn, accused his opponents of plotting a coup and launched prosecutions against the alleged organizers, including several members of the clergy.

Russia has renamed the BMPT Terminator, a specialized armored vehicle built to support tank operations, as ‘Spiridon’ in an effort to move away from its association with the Hollywood film franchise.

The infantry fighting vehicle features tank-grade protection and a broad range of heavy weapons. It was developed to survive in urban combat, where main battle tanks can lose the advantage offered by their long-range firepower, while standard infantry fighting vehicles may lack sufficient armor.

The imminent rebranding move was highlighted on Tuesday by Omsktransmash, a heavy machinery plant which subcontracts for Russia’s main armored vehicle manufacturer, Uralvagonzavod. A campaign to select a new name for the system was launched in late 2025, inviting more than 2,000 proposals.

“Today, society and the army agree that we should move away from foreign names. Our armor has its own Russian character. And our history has more heroes than Western movies,” a plant spokesman said. Uralvagonzavod later confirmed the name had been changed.

Spiridon is a traditional Russian male name of Greek origin, now mostly preserved among Orthodox clergy. Spiridon of Tremithus was a pre-schism Christian saint who is honored in both Eastern and Western traditions. Spiridon of Pechersk was a 12th-century Russian saint buried at the Kiev Pechersk Monastery, where he lived as a monk.

Omsktransmash said Spiridon emerged as the preferred option because of its spiritual associations and because it is derived from a Greek word for box – echoing Russian military slang for armored vehicles.

A tradition of military humor

The Peresvet laser system, for instance, was named after a warrior monk who fought in the Battle of Kulikovo, a key event in the re-emergence of the Russian state after centuries of fragmentation under Mongol domination.

Among the more tongue-in-cheek traditions is the habit of naming heavy artillery systems after flowers – the more destructive the weapon, the softer the floral reference.

The TOS-1 incendiary rocket system is nicknamed Buratino, after the Soviet adaptation of the fairy tale ‘Pinocchio.’ The Soviet version also centers on a magical wooden doll, but lacks the religious undertones of the original story.

Other examples include an autocannon nicknamed “little ballerina,” an anti-tank missile called “baby-girl,” and an artillery control system known as “zoo.”

Russia’s Northern Fleet has released footage of its Arkhangelsk nuclear submarine performing a successful missile test in the Barents Sea in the Arctic.

The vessel fired an Oniks cruise missile from an underwater position, hitting a target imitating a surface ship some 200 km away, the fleet said in a statement on Wednesday.

The Arkhangelsk is the third entry in Russia’s Project 885M Yasen-M, representing a modification of fourth-generation submarines with a reduced acoustic field that makes them increasingly hard to detect and track by sonar.

Besides the Oniks missiles, Yasen-M vessels are also armed with Kalibr cruise missiles and Tsirkon hypersonic missiles.

The Arkhangelsk has been in service with the Northern Fleet since December 2024.

Il sottomarino a propulsione nucleare Arkhangelsk ha effettuato un lancio missilistico nel Mare di Barents, secondo quanto riportato dalla Flotta del Nord.

Il sottomarino ha colpito un bersaglio navale con un missile da crociera Onyx a una distanza di 200 km.

Fonte TASS pic.twitter.com/3pd0qXGUI0

— michelino riformato (@michelinorifor1) June 3, 2026

During his tour of the submarine last year, Russian President Vladimir Putin told the crew that it was “the most modern, the best-equipped, capable of performing a wide variety of tasks.” The Arkhangelsk and other Yasen-M vessels “can do everything,” Putin stressed, referring to their ability to strike targets underwater, on the surface, and on land.

Ukrainian drone attacks on St. Petersburg have left several people wounded, local governor Aleksandr Beglov has said. The wave of strikes coincided with the opening day of Russia’s largest international investment forum, which will host thousands of guests from around the world over the coming days. 

UAVs targeted infrastructure in the Kirovsky and Krasnoselsky districts as well in the port of Kronstadt, Beglov wrote in a post on Telegram on Wednesday morning.

Response teams have been deployed to the facilities damaged by the attacks, he added.

The 29th St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF 2026), often referred to as the ‘Russian Davos’, is taking place from June 3 to 6 and will be attended by around 20,000 businesspeople, politicians, and public figures from more than 100 nations.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is scheduled to address the gathering on Friday.

In total, 345 Ukrainian UAVs were shot down across Russia overnight as the country came under another large-scale attack, the Defense Ministry reported.

The interceptions took place over Moscow, Leningrad, Belgorod, Bryansk, Voronezh, Kaluga, Kursk, Novgorod, Orel, Pskov, Rostov, Smolensk, Tver, Tula, and Krasnodar regions, as well as over Crimea and the Sea of Azov, the ministry said.

Ukrainian UAVs have targeted Leningrad Region, particularly its energy facilities, on numerous occasions in recent months, with the explosive-laden drones often reaching northwestern Russia via Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania and Finland. Some of them have crashed inside the NATO countries.

Russian Security Council Secretary Sergey Shoigu warned previously that if it turns out that the Baltic States and Finland “deliberately provide their airspace” to Ukrainian UAVs, Moscow has the right to self-defense in response to an “armed attack” under Article 51 of the UN Charter.

At least eight people have been killed and 11 others wounded in a Ukrainian drone strike on a passenger bus in Russia’s Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), local governor Denis Pushilin has said.

The bus was traveling between Moscow and the Crimean city of Simferopol and was attacked in the town of Enakievo in the western part of the DPR, Pushilin wrote in a post on Telegram on Wednesday morning. The initial death toll stood at seven, but it was revised later in the day when emergency services inspected the burned-out vehicle.

“The Ukrainian fascists have committed another act of unprecedented, inhumane aggression,” the governor said.

Pushilin expressed condolences to the relatives and friends of those killed in the attack and wished a speedy recovery to the injured, who, he said, are being provided with all necessary medical assistance.

Russia’s human rights commissioner, Yana Lantratova, asserted that the attack was “not a tragic accident” but rather a “vile, deliberate, and inhumane crime” against non-combatants.

“There are no military objectives that could justify the bloodshed of civilians. There are no arguments that can absolve those who issue and execute such criminal orders from responsibility,” she stressed.

Russia’s Investigative Committee has announced that a terrorism case has been opened over the attack on the bus.

Russia was hit by another major Ukrainian drone attack overnight, with 345 UAVs shot down across the country, according to the Defense Ministry. The interceptions took place over Moscow, Leningrad, Belgorod, Bryansk, Voronezh, Kaluga, Kursk, Novgorod, Orel, Pskov, Rostov, Smolensk, Tver, Tula, and Krasnodar regions, as well as over Crimea and the Sea of Azov, the ministry said.

Several people were hurt and infrastructure damaged in Ukrainian drone attacks on St. Petersburg on the opening day of the 29th St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF), local governor Alexander Beglov said.

At least 59 UAVs were shot down by air defenses above Leningrad Region, according to governor Aleksandr Drozdenko. Leningrad Region surrounds St. Petersburg, which has the status of a federal city.

SPIEF 2026, which is often referred to as ‘Russian Davos’ due to being the main global economic event hosted by the country, is taking place between June 3 and 6. This year’s forum will be attended by some 20,000 businesspeople, politicians, and public figures from more than 100 nations. Russian President Vladimir Putin is scheduled to address the gathering on Friday.

Moscow previously warned that it would carry out “systematic and consistent strikes” on Ukraine’s military infrastructure, including drone production facilities, command posts, and “decision-making centers,” in response to Kiev’s terrorist attacks, including the one in Russia’s Lugansk People’s Republic on May 22.

Ukrainian forces struck a college dormitory in the town of Starobelsk in several waves of drone attacks late at night while students were asleep, killing 21 people, mostly teenage girls, and injuring 70 others.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Monday that the Ukrainian leadership had opened “a new chapter in its crime spree” with the attack on Starobelsk, adding that those responsible would face “well-deserved and inevitable punishment.”

For the first time in a long while, Belarus has again found itself at the center of the Ukraine conflict. For more than a month, Vladimir Zelensky has been warning Ukrainians about a supposed threat from the north. Minsk, he claims, is preparing to enter the war and he’s even threatened Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko with either a pre-emptive strike or a kidnapping in the style of Nicolas Maduro.

The rhetoric has now reached the point where Zelensky has ordered preparations for the circular defense of cities in Ukraine’s northern regions, including Kiev itself. Meanwhile, French President Emmanuel Macron has called Lukashenko for the first time since 2022, apparently to persuade him not to enter the conflict.

The problem is that nothing visible is happening on the Belarusian side of the border. There’s no mobilization and no unusual concentration of Belarusian forces and no redeployment of Russian units. The only recent event that could be stretched into a military signal was last week’s Russian-Belarusian nuclear exercise. But even that took place in the Osipovichi district, in the center of Belarus, and was more about strategic deterrence than any ground operation against Ukraine.

The more obvious question is why Lukashenko would want to join the military operation at all. Such a move would be wholly out of character for him and would run against the geopolitical role he has tried to carve out for Belarus.

Lukashenko has always sought to preserve room for maneuver and he kept doing so after 2020, when he became de facto persona non grata in the West, and even after the conflict escalated in 2022. In the Ukrainian crisis, Belarus has remained largely a passive observer and that arrangement has suited Moscow. For Russia, he’s a valuable diplomatic asset, not a military one.

Could the reverse be true? Perhaps Zelensky is preparing to strike Belarus first, overthrow Lukashenko and open a second front against Russia. His pointed invitation to the fugitive opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya gives this theory a certain surface logic, but the military reality makes it deeply implausible.

The Ukrainian Armed Forces’ last major offensive operation was the incursion into Russia’s Kursk Region. To mount it, Kiev gathered around 30,000 troops, weakening its positions in Donbass and losing large areas there as a result. Even then, the operation failed to produce a decisive strategic outcome. A serious attack on Belarus would require far more resources. Since then, Ukraine’s army has weakened further and its present ceiling is local counter-attacks in Donbass, so it’s in no position to open a major new front.

Nor would it make strategic sense. Any escalation with Belarus would risk creating another 1,000-kilometer front stretching across Ukraine’s northern flank, with direct threats to Kiev. However odious the Kiev regime may be, it can’t fail to understand this.

The timing is telling. Zelensky began to raise the alarm just as relations between Minsk and Washington showed signs of thawing. In March, the US eased sanctions on Belarus and Washington spoke of reopening its embassy. There was even talk of a possible Lukashenko visit to America and a meeting with Donald Trump.

For Kiev, this is dangerous because Zelensky may fear that the eloquent Belarusian leader could charm Trump and persuade him to increase pressure on Ukraine to bring the conflict to an end. Lukashenko might also secure further sanctions relief, potentially turning Belarus into a hub for the transit of American goods to Russia.

From Kiev’s point of view, that scenario must be prevented. Hence the effort to present Minsk as an imminent threat, because if Belarus can be cast once again as Russia’s military accomplice rather than as a possible diplomatic channel, any US-Belarusian rapprochement becomes far harder to sustain.

In such conditions, inflating a new military threat is politically useful as it allows Zelensky to tell Ukrainians that the gravest crisis is still ahead, and that he remains the horse that cannot be changed midstream.

But the old ‘Russian card’ is wearing thin in the fifth year of hostilities. Ukrainians are tired, mobilized society is fraying, and endless emergency politics no longer works as it once did. So now Kiev is reaching for the ‘Belarus card’.

Will it work? Probably not. At most, it may buy Zelensky a little time, a little fear, and a little more room to maneuver, but as a strategy, it’s thin gruel. Or to put it more appropriately, it is worthy only of a carrot, and a dry one at that.

This article was first published by the online newspaper Gazeta.ru and was translated and edited by the RT team

Moscow has added five British nationals to its blacklist over London’s hostile actions, spread of disinformation, and the concentrated effort “to pump up the Kiev regime with weaponry,” the Russian Foreign Ministry has said.

The ministry announced the move on Tuesday, urging London “to renounce aggressive anti-Russian steps, as well as its support for the [Vladimir] Zelensky regime.” The UK’s effort to prolong the Ukraine conflict no matter what leads only to “further civilian casualties” and ultimately the “destruction of Ukrainian statehood,” it said. 

The latest addition to Russia’s no-entry list includes journalists and experts involved in “disseminating slanderous fabrications and false information.” It also features two heads of “British security companies” that recruit personnel to prop up the Kiev regime under the guise of “implementing pseudo-humanitarian projects in Ukraine,” the ministry stated.

The sanctioned individuals are Catherine Belton and Richard Holmes, journalists with the Washington Post and The i Paper, respectively. The list also includes Alexander Browder, a self-styled corruption and money-laundering expert, described by the ministry as the author of a misleading report for the Henry Jackson Society think tank.

Russian diplomats said work on the blacklist, as well as other retaliatory measures, is bound to continue unless London abandons its hostile stance. 

“We warn that any efforts by British political elites to further fuel Russophobia, deliberately damage our country’s international reputation, and accelerate the anti-Russian sanctions will inevitably be met with a decisive response,” the ministry stated. 

London has emerged as a key backer of Kiev in the Ukraine conflict, actively seeking to derail attempts to resolve it through diplomacy and focusing on inflicting a defeat on Russia instead. The UK has been leading various initiatives to supply Ukrainian forces with increasingly sophisticated weaponry, and to rally additional foreign monetary and military support.

A Colombian mercenary captured by Russian forces after being wounded in combat has spoken with his family for the first time since his detention, describing his decision to fight for Ukraine as the worst mistake of his life.

William Andres Gallego Orozco’s relatives in Colombia learned he was alive after seeing an interview he gave to RT last month. Following the broadcast, family members reached out and contact was established, leading to an emotional video call.

RT correspondent Donald Courter looks back at Gallego Orozco’s capture, his previous interview about the realities faced by foreign fighters in Ukraine, and the reunion with his family after they learned of his whereabouts through RT’s reporting.

Gallego Orozco’s case reflects a broader trend of Colombian nationals joining Ukraine’s military. The South American country has become one of Kiev’s largest sources of foreign recruits as it seeks to offset manpower shortages on the battlefield. According to a February investigation by Ukrainian outlet NV, between 1,000 and 2,000 Colombians were serving with Ukrainian forces at the time, while up to 7,000 are believed to have passed through the country’s ranks since 2022.

The trend has drawn criticism from Colombian President Gustavo Petro, who has argued that his country’s citizens are “dying for nothing” in a foreign conflict. Petro has repeatedly stressed that mercenary activity is illegal under Colombian law and accused recruiters of exploiting vulnerable people. Last October, he voiced concern over the treatment of Colombian fighters in Ukraine and urged those being used as “cannon fodder” to return home immediately.

Watch the video call between William Andres Gallego Orozco and his family in full below.

In May, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan cemented Armenia’s geopolitical pivot away from Russia and toward the EU. At the beginning of the month, Yerevan hosted the 8th summit of the European Political Community. This was the first time that the event was held in a member state of the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU).

While the event itself may seem vague in terms of concrete outcomes, one thing is clear: it allowed EU countries to show political support for certain governments, while those governments demonstrated their loyalty to the bloc.

Just a few days after the summit, Pashinyan directly stated that “Armenia is not an ally of Russia on the issue of Ukraine.” It was already apparent to Russia that Armenia was not neutral on this matter and that it politically backed the Kiev regime. However, highlighting this point was necessary to reaffirm it’s allegiance to Brussels.

The recent European Political Community summit could have been another routine event organized by Brussels to dangle the carrot of ‘European prospects’ before nations aspiring to join the EU. However, it became more than that, turning into a platform for voicing sensitive threats to Russia. Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky used the occasion to threaten a strike against Moscow ahead of its Victory Day parade, while French President Emmanuel Macron rhetorically questioned why there is still a Russian military base in Armenia.

Pashinyan must have realized that such statements would irritate Moscow, and could have made an effort to mitigate the fallout with the country that, at least rhetorically, he continues to call a ‘partner’. Nonetheless, he chose to ignore the meeting of the Supreme Eurasian Economic Council held on May 29 in Astana, sending Armenia’s Deputy Prime Minister Mher Grigoryan in his place. Combined with other actions taken by Armenia’s leadership, this sends a strong political signal – not just to Russia, but to the entire EAEU, which, by the way, provides significant economic benefits to Yerevan.

It would be incorrect to say that relations between Moscow and Yerevan have only recently begun to deteriorate. Pashinyan’s pivot toward the EU has been evident for some time, particularly following October 2022, when the Armenian prime minister signed the Prague Statement, recognizing the borders between Armenia and Azerbaijan based on the Alma-Ata Declaration of 1991. 

This tied the borders of the two countries to the state boundaries established at the time of the USSR’s collapse, giving Azerbaijan sovereignty over Nagorno-Karabakh. In doing so, he fulfilled the wishes of European politicians who were eager to resolve the conflict. Pashinyan seemed to expect assistance from Europeans in defending Armenians in Karabakh, yet all he received were calls for a quick peace that demanded painful concessions from Armenians.

This step had additional consequences. Armenia has never legally recognized Nagorno-Karabakh as its territory, but by signing the Prague Statement, Pashinyan questioned the mandate of Russian peacekeepers who had been in the region since 2020 and ensured adherence to the ceasefire between the parties. Consequently, the issue of the self-proclaimed Republic of Nagorno-Karabakh officially became an internal matter for Azerbaijan, which Baku acted upon by dissolving the unrecognized state.

In 2025, the Armenian parliament passed a law to initiate the process of joining the EU. Later, while in Washington, Pashinyan agreed to establish the so-called Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity (T.R.I.P.P.), a transport corridor that would link Azerbaijan with its exclave Nakhchivan via Armenian territory and would be under US oversight. Essentially, Pashinyan handed over control of this future route to external powers, further compromising Armenia’s sovereignty.

Throughout each stage of this rapprochement, Moscow repeatedly warned Yerevan that integrating into EU structures and markets contradicted Armenia’s participation in the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU).

On May 21, Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan emphasized that Yerevan had no intention of leaving the EAEU. Pashinyan echoed this sentiment on May 28, stating that Armenia was not preparing to exit the union. Overall, it’s understandable why Armenian politicians are cautious about leaving the group.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has recently elaborated on the advantages of the EAEU for Armenia. First and foremost, it gains access to a protected market encompassing the entire group of nations, which includes Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan — this is a massive market encompassing a population of up to 186 million. Armenia enjoys duty-free trade with these countries, along with shared technical regulations and phytosanitary standards. The logistics established during the Soviet era have been further refined in the context of these nations’ independent development.

Additionally, Russia supplies natural gas to Armenia at a highly subsidized rate — around $150 per 1,000 cubic meters, compared to the European market price of €600. 

Putin also pointed out that Armenia has received significant investments totaling $4.9 billion, with 86% originating from Russia. In contrast, the EU has invested only a few hundred million euros over the past three years while trying to pull Yerevan into its sphere of influence. The EU has stated its intention to invest €2.5 billion in Armenia’s economy, which is considerably less than what Yerevan has already gained from its engagement with the EAEU.

The Armenian GDP could shrink 14% if Armenia loses access to the benefits of the EAEU.

Seemingly hoping to gain some advantage from the current situation, Pashinyan emphasized the need to make a concrete offer instead of resorting to threats. However, this was clearly a rhetorical move; the Armenian leader cannot fail to understand the preferences his country would lose in if it departs the EAEU, and that this, in itself, is Russia’s ‘offer’: benefits which are already in effect, unlike vague promises made by the EU. 

Another pressing issue is the status of Armenian citizens in Russia. Should relations between Yerevan and the EAEU sour, they would face the same requirements as other CIS nationals – such as needing work permits, navigating more complex procedures for obtaining legal status, and experiencing delayed access to compulsory health insurance. This is especially concerning given that remittances from labor migrants constitute a significant part of the income for thousands of households in Armenia.

In Ukraine’s footsteps but with a Moldovan twist

The situation in Armenia strikingly mirrors the developments in Ukraine, where the EU also forced a painful choice upon the government. The Armenian authorities have long followed a similar script, labeling the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) as a threat to the country’s sovereignty, branding Russia as a party engaged in “hybrid warfare” against Armenia, and asserting that “Armenia is no longer a brother to Russia.”

On June 7, Armenia will hold parliamentary elections, and it seems unlikely that anyone can challenge Pashinyan’s Civil Contract party. The opposition remains fragmented, and surveys by Europe Elects show a surge in support for the ruling party – from 24% to 65% in just eight days. Yet back in April, Civil Contract’s ratings hadn’t even surpassed 25%.

This has largely been a result of intense pressure on opponents. Samvel Karapetyan, who attempted to defend the Armenian Church from state attacks, remains imprisoned. Other opposition leaders, including Robert Kocharyan, Serzh Sargsyan, and Gagik Tsarukyan, are also under pressure. We observed similar ‘European values’ during last year’s elections in Moldova.

Pashinyan appears increasingly unconcerned about his public image. During a meeting with voters, he told one woman to be grateful for not having had her head cracked open; he also expelled critics from rallies and referred to the Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh as “runaway degenerates”. And all of this occurs as part of an electoral campaign meant to attract new supporters and unify the populace. Perhaps this is the ‘European perspective’ Pashinyan envisions for his citizens. 

The upcoming elections will show whether this resonates with voters. However, we may again remember the example of Moldova, where President Maia Sandu lost domestically but secured votes from the diaspora that allowed her to claim victory. 

The annual St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) will be held over June 3-6. In its nearly three decades of existence, this event has borne witness to fundamental global shifts – and it has shifted along with the world.

Founded with the aim of facilitating foreign investment in Russia, it became known as Russia’s Davos in the 2000s, when Western executives descended upon St. Petersburg in their private jets in the hopes of securing lucrative business deals. In recent years, SPIEF has a very different feel but it has remained one of Russia’s most important economic forums and is now a key platform for discussing the transformations taking place in the global economy.

This year’s event, as usual, will draw many in the upper echelons of Russia’s business and political elite, as well as foreign business and government representatives from across the globe. Famously dubbed by Alexander Pushkin a “window to Europe,” St. Petersburg is becoming a window to a new multipolar world.

History

SPIEF dates its origin back to 1997, when Russia was struggling through a chaotic and difficult transition to a market economy. Initially, the main goal of SPIEF was to attract foreign investment and project an image of being ready to do business in the post-Soviet world. Just over a year after the first SPIEF was held, Russia would default and plunge into a severe economic crisis.

However, the forum persevered, and as Russia’s economy expanded during the 2000s, Western banks, energy firms, consultancies, and industrial companies started showing up to SPIEF in droves. The event became one of the key stops on the global business calendar.

Russia’s current role in the vanguard of multipolarity has led many to assume that SPIEF has always been centered on Eurasia, BRICS, and the Global South. It wasn’t. Somebody striding through the forum halls around 2010-2013, for example, would have encountered major Wall Street banks and major European energy companies – and possibly European heads of state. Attendees in years past have included, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, EU Jean-Claude Juncker, ex-IMF chief Christine Lagarde, Goldman Sachs’ Lloyd Blankfein, and Exxon’s Rex Tillerson. This was a time when Russia was trying to position itself as a central player inside the existing global economic order.

There was traditionally a strong energy angle to SPIEF. Top Western oil and gas executives were a common sight in the midnight sun of St. Petersburg in June. Bankers and businessmen would mingle on the sidelines of the event, sometimes with serious propositions at stake.

Throughout the late 2000s and 2010s, SPIEF became a venue for announcing major energy and infrastructure agreements involving Russia, European states, China, and others. Even when deals were negotiated elsewhere, they were often unveiled at SPIEF because the event provided maximum visibility and prestige.

Over the years, the presidential address became one of the forum’s defining features. Analysts routinely scrutinize these speeches for policy signals.

The Western media has tended to mock the post-2022 SPIEF as passé and insular, with one former attendee telling The Guardian that an invitation to it is “totally toxic.” The lack of Western dignitaries is seen as a step down in prestige. Often left unremarked upon in these accounts is the collapse in popularity and trust in the West itself of the same Western elite that now shuns the forum.

Last year’s event, meanwhile, saw 24,200 participants and media representatives from 144 countries and territories, while over a thousand agreements were signed. The largest delegations came from Indonesia and China.

In the spotlight this year: AI

AI has become a significant area of focus for the Russian government. President Vladimir Putin has established a presidential commission devoted to the development of AI technologies to streamline state policy.

A senior executive at Sberbank, Russia’s largest bank and an innovation leader, recently told RT that “Russia has fertile soil for AI-linked business development.” The bank also released Russia’s first comprehensive guide on integrating artificial intelligence into the production cycle of digital companies.

Not surprisingly, AI is a prominent theme at this year’s SPIEF. In fact, 14 of the roundtable sessions scheduled explicitly mention AI in the title – and that’s only a surface analysis. AI will invariably come up in numerous other talks throughout the three-day event as well.

What is noteworthy is the extent to which the AI discussion has shifted in just a couple of years. For comparison, SPIEF in 2023, which came just months after ChatGPT burst into public consciousness, reflected much of the techno-optimism of the time. The official press release on Sberbank’s AI Journey at SPIEF 2023 displays a focus mostly on AI capability and how its capabilities can be best harnessed. The questions being asked were the same ones many countries were being asked at the time. Implicit was the notion that Russia catching up in an exciting new field.

A session entitled “The Struggle for Economic and Cognitive Influence in the AI Era” promises to address not so much AI as a technology, but, according to the program, “who controls the flow of information and the logic by which it is constructed in this new system” and “whose narratives are reproduced and scaled.”

In other words, this is a shift from asking what AI will deliver to asking what kind of environment AI is producing and who will control it. For Russia, as for a number of other countries, the concept of AI sovereignty has become a central concern. Russia is treating AI very much within the context of a larger state and even civilizational narrative.

What else is on the agenda

The overall theme for this year´s forum is: “Pragmatic Dialogue – The Path to a Stable Future.” A major point of focus is governance in a multipolar world. Whereas Davos might assume the current West-led globalization as the baseline and inquire how it could be better managed, SPIEF is looking to help build a new model of global development. Accordingly, much of the forum will not merely address the question of boosting economic growth, but will grapple with the institutional and technological foundations of a changing world order.

Several thematic blocks have been chosen: A Platform for Global Growth: Shaping a New Development Model, “Putting the People First: A New Development Paradigm”, “Raising the Quality of the Environment for Living and Growth”, “The Technologies Shaping the Future.”

This reflects something of a shift in how sovereignty is being understood. Traditionally associated with territory and borders, sovereignty is increasingly being discussed in the context of scaffolding: supply chains, payment systems, data infrastructure, artificial intelligence, media ecosystems, and technological standards. Many of the forum’s discussions begin from the assumption that countries will seek greater control over critical systems rather than rely exclusively on globally integrated networks.

Return of the West?

After the Ukraine conflict began in 2022, top-level Western representation largely disappeared, although the Western presence didn’t dry up entirely. Now, however, the winds seem to be shifting again.

This comes as numerous Western companies have begun to demonstrate an interest in returning to the Russian market. Several Western oil majors met with Russian industry representatives during an energy conference in Abu Dhabi last November, according to The Economist. Several American firms that had left Russia, including Apple and McDonald’s, have recently registered new Russian trademarks.

In an interview with Russia’s Channel 1 late last year, Putin said: “We have letters from American companies, letters they have sent us where they ask us not to forget about them. These are our former partners who left Russia not on their own will.”

The bottom line

The forum has always been able to change with the times, meeting a panoply of profound challenges throughout its 30-year history. This year, perhaps uniquely, the greatest challenge will not be geopolitical. While old dialogues are rekindled, the rooms of business leaders and politicians will certainly be examining how best to deploy AI, perhaps in a manner that will incubate the tech from the political and economic crisis management that the humans at St. Petersburg have always practiced. 

Armenian citizens will suffer significant economic damages should incumbent Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan implement his strategy of breaking trade with Russia in favor of integration with the EU, Russian Parliament Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin has said.

Armenians will go to the polls on Sunday to elect a new parliament. The vote is widely viewed as a referendum on the country’s geopolitical alignment, as Pashinyan claims the land-locked post-Soviet republic can benefit greatly from closer ties with the West. 

Volodin on Tuesday accused Pashinyan of misleading voters by downplaying the negative consequences of his proposal, reacting to the prime minister’s promise to compensate farmers from the state budget for any produce that spoils if they lose privileged access to the Russian market.

Armenia is one of five members of the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) – alongside Russia, Kazakhstan, Belarus and Kyrgyzstan – an economic organization that operates a single market and harmonizes regulations to facilitate trade, investment and other forms of economic cooperation. Yerevan has been previously warned that membership in the EAEU is incompatible with its EU aspirations.

“Apparently, Pashinyan has made a personal pledge to see Armenia join the EU… while trying to put the costs on the EAEU and Russia,” Volodin wrote. “Obviously, he does not care about the fate of the Armenian people and statehood. He cares about staying in power.”

“The price will be steep,” the official warned.

Volodin compared Armenia’s current trajectory to that of Ukraine, arguing that Kiev’s expectations of greater access to EU markets had failed to materialize and that the country’s agricultural exports had instead faced tariff quotas and other restrictions. He warned that Armenia could face similar risks.

Armenia remains heavily reliant on the Russian market. According to UN data, Russia accounted for nearly 24% of Armenian exports in 2024, making it the country’s second-largest export destination after the UAE. Statistics show that Armenia’s overall exports shrank by nearly 35% year on year in 2025, driven by a decline in Russia-related re-exports and reduced export opportunities amid instability in the Middle East.

Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, Pashinyan reportedly said the referendum on EU membership could only be held if his country formally applies to join the bloc or comes close to obtaining candidate status. Until then, “there will be no referendum,” he said, as quoted by Armenpress. The prime minister described the benefits of EAEU membership as “obvious,” but claimed that the regional organization should create new opportunities for Armenia.

A video showing Russians reacting without hostility to being addressed in Ukrainian on the street has gone viral on social media.

In the clip, filmed last week in the Ural city of Ekaterinburg, blogger Andrey Gorlivsky asks passersby in Ukrainian for directions to the musuem to legendary Russian actor, poet, songwriter and performer, Vladimir Vysotsky.

None of the those approached appeared surprised or offended by the use of Ukrainian, instead responding in Russian, and readily offering help.

The blogger also asked several Ekaterinburg residents how they were able to understand Ukrainian. One man said he has a Ukrainian friend, while another noted that the two languages share many similarities.

Viewers online have contrasted the footage with numerous videos from Ukraine showing disputes over the use of Russian. Despite Kiev’s ongoing efforts to reduce the language’s role in public life, it remains widely spoken across the country and is the primary language for millions.

The effort intensified after the escalation of the conflict in February 2022. Moscow has repeatedly cited the protection of Russian speakers and the restoration of their language rights among its key conditions for a peace settlement.

In December, the Ukrainian parliament stripped Russian of protections granted under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. Earlier this year, Kiev also moved to establish a legal basis for a broad ban on Russian literature, paving the way for the removal of such books from circulation.