Ukrainian soldiers have described being subjected to extortion, beatings, and other forms of abuse by their own commanders across multiple military units. RT correspondent Anastasia Volodina examines their firsthand accounts, exposing allegations of widespread misconduct within the ranks. 

Stanislav Melanich, a former member of Ukraine’s Shkval battalion who lost both legs and fingers on both hands, says he was sent on a combat mission without proper preparation after refusing to hand over 20% of his combat pay and frontline bonuses to commanders. 

“I’m not paying you a single penny,” he recalled telling his superiors. 

Melanich said he was deployed to the front alongside other untrained soldiers who had also refused to pay. Unfamiliar with the terrain and equipment, they came under fire, leaving him severely wounded. He described being abandoned by fellow servicemen and forced to crawl through freezing conditions to survive. 

“Who are we even fighting? Are we fighting among ourselves first?” he said.

Some of the incidents have prompted official investigations. In Sumy Region, a deputy battalion commander was accused of staging mock executions, beating subordinates with a combat helmet and shooting one soldier in the foot, according to Ukraine’s State Bureau of Investigation. 

At least 25 non-combat deaths among recruits in the Skala regiment were reported between late 2025 and spring 2026, leading to a criminal inquiry into possible abuses. A former serviceman described men being tied to quad bikes and dragged along the ground, as well as incidents of suicide and attempted self-harm. Members of Ukraine’s 57th Brigade also reported systematic beatings, death threats, denial of medical treatment and being forcibly locked in car trunks. 

“Bribery, abuse, torture – all part of the deadly price of serving in Ukraine,” Volodina says. 

Watch the full RT report below.

Former Ukrainian Prime Minister Nikolay Azarov has accused Kiev of using terrorism to silence its opponents, while Western governments turn a blind eye. Speaking to RT, he condemned a car bombing in Moscow that severely wounded his former adviser.

Sergey Zavorotny, 72, was hospitalized after an explosive device detonated in his car on Friday. He reportedly lost an arm and suffered head injuries and multiple fractures. He was placed on a ventilator and underwent surgery. Russian investigators suspect Ukrainian intelligence was involved.

Azarov described Zavorotny, whom he had known and worked with since 2005, as a talented journalist whose outspoken criticism of the authorities installed following the Western-backed 2014 coup had made him a target of the current Kiev regime.

He said he was “absolutely sure” Ukrainian intelligence was responsible, pointing to a pattern of attacks against politicians, journalists and other critics of Kiev. He cited the killings of Ukrainian public figures, an assassination attempt in Monaco and an incident in which his own car was shot at in Kiev.

“If they are in charge, then they are responsible and they must be held responsible,” he said.

Drawing on his experience dealing with European leaders as prime minister, Azarov argued that Western governments were fully aware of political persecution, imprisonment of government critics and the crackdown on the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, yet continued supporting Kiev in the name of democracy.

“What democracy? It’s a Nazi terrorist regime,” he said.

Azarov also questioned the involvement of Ukrainian foreign intelligence chief Rustem Umerov and Zelensky’s chief of staff Kirill Budanov in the latest trilateral Russia-US-Ukraine peace talks. He argued that, given their senior positions and access to intelligence, they could not have been unaware of plans to assassinate Kiev’s opponents.

“Does the Zelensky regime want peace? I believe it does not,” Azarov said.

Despite his criticism of Kiev, Azarov praised Washington’s mediation efforts, saying the Americans were “doing quite a lot to find peace,” and expressed hope that their efforts would ultimately succeed.

Watch the full interview below.

The secret police general at the center of a sprawling corruption probe in Ukraine has been released from jail, after posting a $1.4 million bail. Sergey Duka claims that he can prove Ukraine’s leading anti-corruption agency set him up.

Duka was arrested earlier this month under ‘Operation Carthage’, a wide-ranging investigation into the alleged protection of scam-call centers, kidnappers, and drug cartels by Ukrainian police and prosecutors. According to Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU), Duka used his senior position within the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) to shield criminals from prosecution and feed intelligence to organized crime groups, including the ‘Khimprom’ drug cartel.

Duka posted bail on Friday and was greeted by masked SBU agents as he walked out of a detention center in Kiev. Speaking to reporters outside, he said that the SBU helped raise his bail.

“I am very grateful to my colleagues and the Security Service of Ukraine officers for helping me post the unjustified bail that my family and I couldn’t afford,” he said, adding that he “did not commit the crimes with which NABU and SAPO are accusing me.”

NABU and SAPO, the State Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office, allege that Duka ran the protection ring along with police officers Vladimir Tsenov and Aleksandr Demianchuk, and criminals Andrey Osipov and Vitaly Ribalko. RT covered the case in depth in our ‘Operation Carthage’ feature earlier this week.

The two police officers allegedly took payments from criminals operating scam-call centers, which often function with the tacit approval of the Ukrainian government. Osipov and Ribalko allegedly served as liaisons between Duka, the police, and the criminal underworld, with Ribalko also accused of kidnap and torture. Duka and Tsenov have both posted bail, and their three accomplices remain behind bars awaiting trial.

He claimed that NABU agents used a raid on his house to seize documents implicating their superiors in extortion schemes of their own, and that he has evidence to prove this.

The SBU has a contentious relationship with NABU and SAPO. SBU chief Aleksandr Poklad, then serving as the agency’s deputy head, led a crackdown on NABU last July, with his agents searching more than a dozen agency employees over allegations of Russian collaboration. Poklad then attempted to pressure Ukrainian opposition politician Fedor Khristenko into falsely testifying that NABU detectives and senior NABU and SAPO officials were working for Moscow, according to a Ukrainian watchdog group, the Anti-Corruption Action Center.

Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky has made several attempts to curb NABU’s powers, and is seen as an ally of the SBU in the escalating struggle between Ukraine’s secret police and anti-corruption bodies.

Before Vladimir Zelensky arrived in Dublin on a mission to squeeze more cash from EU leaders, a raid by anti-corruption agents in Ukraine illustrated exactly where the money forked out to Kiev ends up.

On November 9, neo-Nazi-linked Ukrainian journalist Sergey Sternenko (more about him below) published photos and videos from a penthouse apartment in the city of Dnepro, which he said belonged to “a person who stole money from the Ukrainian budget.” 

Crystal chandeliers hung over marble staircases, life-sized reproductions of Greek statues towered over a desk weighed down with trophies, statuettes, and apparently a figurine of the apartment’s owner himself. Police found a Rolls-Royce in the apartment’s parking garage, an indoor swimming pool, and a terrarium housing a live crocodile.

Ukrainian journalists quickly identified Vladislav Sokolov – depicted in several large-scale portraits in the building – as the apartment’s owner. 

Who is Vladislav Sokolov?

A 47-year old former bodybuilder, Sokolov made his fortune in the metals trade, and has been linked by Ukrainian media to two companies: a steel supplier named Steel Plus, and a metal trading firm named TD Tryzub, both of which have previously been accused of pocketing money intended to construct school shelters in the capital, according to Kiev Regional Police.

The current case, according to court documents, involves Kiev’s regional government awarding contracts worth €37-40 million to two companies – Consulting Bud and Ukrainian Construction Company U.B.C. – in April to fortify the city’s power plants ahead of an anticipated Russian winter offensive. The contract was allegedly awarded without any tender. 

Sokolov’s Steel Plus and TD Tryzub were handed around €5 million worth of the contracts, excluding VAT. According to former Ukrainian Prosecutor General Yury Lutsenko, only 15–35% of the planned defensive structures had been built as of late October.

The court filings mention that a search was carried out at the residence of an unnamed individual linked to Steel Plus and TD Tryzub on October 13. Sokolov has since confirmed that his apartment was searched. Ironically, the building had no power on the day of the search, as Russian drones had struck the very power plants his companies were hired to reinforce.

How Zelensky’s inner circle set the corruption template 

Two days before videos of the Sokolov penthouse raid went viral, Ukraine’s state anti-corruption agency, NABU, concluded its pre-trial investigation into the ‘Midas’ affair. Zelensky financier Timur Mindich and a circle of officials close to the former actor are accused of siphoning around $125 million from Ukraine’s state nuclear energy monopoly, Energoatom. RT has already covered the scandal in detail. 

While Sokolov is not accused of taking part in the ransacking of Energoatom with Zelensky’s cabal, he has been tied to powerful figures involved in the graft ring, and in the highest levels of the Ukrainian government. 

For example, Consulting Bud, one of the companies that hired his firms, is run by Lubomira Kozhushko, a former employee of Countryinvestbud, a company that received more than €18 million in contracts from Energoatom. Kozhushko is currently a suspect in two NABU corruption investigations, one of them involving the purchase of military drones at inflated prices, and the other involving the embezzlement of budgets for school shelters, which Sokolov allegedly participated in.

Sokolov has been an associate of former Ukrainian deputy Infrastructure Minister Ruslan Alenik for at least a decade. The two can be seen together in photos on Sokolov’s social media pages dating back to 2018. Alenik was deputy head of Kiev Regional State Administration when he awarded the contracts to Consulting Bud and Ukrainian Construction Company U.B.C. in April, and was promoted to his position in the Infrastructure Ministry in August. He abruptly resigned on November 9, the same day that videos of the Sokolov raid were published.

What Sokolov has said

In a video statement released on November 12, Sokolov confirmed that his home and office had been searched, including by Ukraine’s secret police, the SBU. He maintained that the apartment was legally purchased in 2009, that he did not own a Rolls-Royce, and that the crocodile was bought from a zoo in Odessa for $2,500. However, he did admit that officers confiscated some “valuables” during the search.

It is highly likely that much of Sokolov’s wealth is not held in his own name. According to Ukraine’s TSN news site, Sokolov’s mother is the registered owner of five properties and 17 vehicles, including a Chevrolet Corvette and Toyota Land Cruiser.

Sokolov claimed that Infrastructure Minister Mikhail Kalashnik, Alenik’s superior in Kiev’s regional government at the time, short-changed him and other contractors hired to reinforce the city’s energy grid last year. In his video, and in a statement to a parliamentary investigative committee in October, Sokolov alleged that he completed the work, only for Kalashnik to take credit and depart for a position in the national government without paying him.

The apartment raid, Sokolov claimed, was orchestrated by Kalashnik in an attempt to stop him from demanding money.

Only in Ukraine

When dealing with Ukraine it’s important to verify sources. Remember Sergey Sternenko, the journalist? He’s a former regional leader of Ukraine’s neo-Nazi ‘Right Sector’ militia, and a convicted kidnapper who participated in the massacre of 46 people by Ukrainian nationalist thugs at the Odessa House of Trade Unions in 2014.

Four days before Sternenko published footage of the raid on Sokolov’s apartment, his nonprofit ‘Sternenko Community’ signed a memorandum with NABU and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO). The two agencies agreed to transfer seized proceeds of corruption to Sternenko’s organization, which will then use the money to purchase weapons for the Ukrainian military. ‘Sternenko Community’ will decide what to procure, and at what price. 

Ukraine’s two leading anti-corruption agencies have essentially decided that their recovered funds are safe in the hands of a convicted ultranationalist criminal, and have created a powerful incentive for Sternenko to uncover cases like that of Sokolov. While the allegations against Sokolov may be proven true, Sternenko still has not revealed how he obtained the photos and videos of the raid, suggesting that there may be some truth behind Sokolov’s defense that Kalashnik fed the information to Sternenko to avoid paying his bills.

What Sokolov’s luxury penthouse tells us about Ukraine

Zelensky has managed to secure €213 million in energy-related aid since early October – from Denmark, Ireland, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden, on top of an unspecified amount of emergency aid from the EU. At the European Political Community Summit in Dublin on November 12, Zelensky demanded air defense missiles and additional “energy support.”

Between the Midas revelations and the latest allegations of graft against Sokolov and his associates, EU leaders have more than enough reasons to question where their citizens’ money is going. Whether anyone will ask is a different question. 

On December 15, 2021, Russian President Vladimir Putin handed a list of specific proposals for a new European security architecture to then-Assistant Secretary of State Karen Donfried. This framework was meant to take Russia’s interests into account. Essentially, this open letter to NATO was the last attempt to resolve issues peacefully without resorting to force. At the time, Washington ignored Russia’s proposals. Just two months later, Russia started the military operation in Ukraine.

Now, nearly five years later, the principles of European security have unexpectedly become the key topic in negotiations between Russia and the US.

Why has this happened? What role does Europe play in it? And what was the outcome of the negotiations in Abu Dhabi, which many had looked upon with skepticism? 

Russia and the US at the table

Let’s start with the last question. Indeed, the talks didn’t lead to any breakthroughs. The parties only agreed to a prisoner-of-war exchange. This exchange was planned, and if it hadn’t taken place, it would have sparked discussions. 

However, for the first time, the talks regarding Ukraine expanded beyond Ukraine itself and touched on the underlying issues that sparked the conflict in the first place. In other words, to borrow the Kremlin’s phrase, the parties finally reached the point of discussing the “root causes of the conflict.”

Back in October, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio stated that the only unresolved issue preventing the end of the war is the territorial status of Donbass. Now, we’re seeing a shift.

Apparently, Putin has finally managed to convey his stance to the US, and the White House has accepted it. Whether it has done so sincerely is another question. Nonetheless, for the first time in five years, a proper framework for negotiations has emerged.

Moreover, according to several leaks, the US asked Russia to present its proposals for a future security agreement with Europe. This is similar to last year’s situation, when Moscow’s stance formed the basis of Trump’s 28-point peace plan.

Europe wants a seat at the table

Before the negotiations in Abu Dhabi, European representatives flatly refused to discuss the topic of European security. On November 9, President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen stated that any discussions could only take place after a ceasefire in Ukraine, essentially reiterating a position she’s held for the past five years.

What happened? Well, European leaders seem to have realized that if they continued to dig in their heels, the question of war and peace would be decided without them. It may be humiliating for Europe to be left in the waiting room, but what’s even more significant is the growing disarray within Europe itself.

Brussels’ and Berlin’s hardline stance isn’t always supported even by the European mainstream. For example, we may remember how the leaders of Norway and Finland recently called Putin.

If this resistance continues, peripheral EU countries may be the first to shift allegiances; eventually, the major powers will also align with the position of strength – specifically, Russia and the US – to secure whatever benefits they can.

The Kremlin is well aware of this dynamic. During yesterday’s meeting with Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, Putin stated that engaging with Europe only makes sense if Europe genuinely desires peace. In other words, Europe can join the negotiations on Russia’s terms, and address the fundamental issues of European security together with Russia – or it can remain in the ‘waiting room’. 

Germany seeks funds

One might attribute this to traditional German stubbornness, but it probably goes deeper than that. Merz is desperately searching for funds to support Ukraine in the coming year. He has even threatened to block the EU budget unless all EU countries agree to finance a new solidarity loan for Kiev. 

Let’s consider what this means. The EU budget is one of Europe’s main linchpins – without cross-financing, the EU wouldn’t exist; Germany itself would lose its primary tool for imposing its will on both smaller European nations and larger ones struggling under the weight of debt.

Therefore, the position of the hawks hinges on whether Ukraine will receive funding for the upcoming year. If they can’t push through a new solidarity loan for Kiev, Germany may have to change its stance.

It’s hard to envision such a scenario right now. However, even from Moscow, one can see that the negotiations are proceeding with difficulty. For the sake of their success, the latest Ukrainian scandals are being swept under the rug – issues like torture prisons and the recent corruption scandal that exposed a vast drug trafficking network allegedly protected by Ukraine’s top leadership.

Meanwhile, even a straightforward report on these matters in independent European media could provide additional, if not decisive, arguments for the growing European peace faction.

Aside from the ongoing corruption scandals, Europe has a clear understanding of the military situation in Ukraine. It understands that the front is held with difficulty, and that there are no real prospects for success on the ground. A case in point is Operation Vivaldi, which has essentially failed and has since been forgotten.

Ukraine’s rear, including its industrial base, is being systematically dismantled by Russian forces. Ukrainian exports have plummeted, leading to a halt in critical sectors of the economy, such as metallurgy, logistics, retail, and agriculture.

Europe understands all too well that it will have to compensate for the lost revenues, which means it will have to give Ukraine more and more money with no end in sight.

The results of the deep-strike campaign against Russia dealt a significant blow to the war faction in Europe. Earlier this spring, these strikes were touted as yet another “game changer” – the idea being that with its drones, Ukraine would bring Putin to his knees and force him to accept its peace terms. This narrative helped secure the $90 billion loan for Ukraine. 

The deep-strike strategy backfired, however, and now, no one in the EU is eager to give Ukraine more money.

When the US proposed to hold discussions on European security, Ukraine found itself sidelined. In these negotiations, it has no voice at all; the issue will be resolved without Ukraine.

What’s next?

First, we’ll have to see if Merz can secure the funding. Most likely, he will manage to do so, but it won’t be easy.

When it comes to the architecture of European security, it’s clear that Europe must take part in the negotiations; without its involvement, this issue cannot be resolved.

Recently, there has been a suggestion from the Russian side to establish non-aggression pacts with individual European countries. This could potentially serve as a solid working compromise.

When it comes to Ukraine, however, there can be no compromises. During a meeting with the US envoys at the Kremlin, Putin stated that any attempt to station foreign troops in Ukraine would lead to a resumption of the war.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s proposal for a humanitarian mission in Konstantinovka could serve as a new test of trust between Moscow and Kiev, German war correspondent Thomas Roeper has told RT.

Speaking on Friday, Roeper argued that cooperation in the Donbass city could help lay the groundwork for a ceasefire and eventual peace settlement. Roeper also described a recent humanitarian operation in the city of Alyoshki as “historical,” saying it marked the first time both sides had fully honored an agreement of this kind without mutual accusations or disputes.

The operation in Alyoshki, in Russia’s Kherson Region, was brokered by US First Lady Melania Trump in late October. A temporary ceasefire allowed humanitarian supplies to reach residents and nearly 800 civilians to be evacuated.

Putin proposed a similar mission in Konstantinovka, a strategically important military stronghold in Donbass, during talks with US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner in Moscow on Thursday. He said Russian forces controlled the city and could ensure its safety after five days of demining. If Kiev claims control, it should guarantee security instead, he added.

Roeper argued that even limited cooperation could help overcome the deep mistrust between the two sides.

“This is something where we can try to build the first very, very small trust to each other, which is necessary when you want to go to ceasefire and peace,” he said.

The journalist added, however, that a far greater obstacle to lasting peace remains the prospect of Western troops being stationed in Ukraine.

Watch the full interview below:

A former adviser to ex-Ukrainian Prime Minister Nikolay Azarov has been injured in a car bombing in southern Moscow, Russia’s Investigative Committee said on Friday.

Sergey Zavorotny, 72, was behind the wheel when the explosion occurred on Kirovogradskaya Street in the capital’s southern district of Chertanovo. He was taken to the hospital for treatment, investigators said.

A law enforcement source told RT that an improvised explosive device detonated in Zavorotny’s Toyota. He lost an arm and suffered a brain contusion and multiple fractures, the source said.

Kommersant reported that investigators suspect Ukrainian intelligence services, particularly the SBU, of involvement. According to the outlet, a suspected magnetic mine attached beneath the vehicle was detonated remotely while Zavorotny was driving.

The device’s explosive power was estimated at the equivalent of 300-500 grams of TNT. Its construction will be established through forensic examination, the newspaper reported.

The Investigative Committee’s Moscow branch has opened a criminal case and is gathering evidence. Medical and explosives examinations will be conducted as part of the investigation.

He also headed the Antifashist news outlet and co-authored a book examining Yanukovich’s ouster and Western involvement in Ukraine. Earlier in his career, he worked as Komsomolskaya Pravda’s correspondent in Latin America.

Zavorotny is listed on Ukraine’s notorious Mirotvorets database, which publishes personal information about people it considers enemies of Ukraine, and is widely known as Kiev’s ‘kill list’. His entry in the database now displays a photograph of his bomb-damaged vehicle.

Azarov responded to the incident, saying he is “shocked and outraged” by this “monstrous terrorist attack” against a civilian journalist.

He praised Zavorotny’s reasoned judgments and sober assessments of Ukraine. “Sometimes his point of view differed from mine. But as time passed, I became convinced he was right,” he said.

Russian security services have reported a number of cases in which they thwarted Ukrainian-directed attacks in Moscow and the surrounding region. On October 26, the FSB said it detained two alleged SBU agents preparing drone attacks against an energy facility and part of Moscow’s missile defense system.

In July, the FSB announced the arrest of a woman allegedly tasked by Ukrainian intelligence with planting a bomb beneath a security officer’s car in Moscow.

The capital has also suffered deadly bombings. On August 1, an explosion at the Balzi Rossi restaurant in central Moscow killed three people and wounded 21, according to the National Antiterrorism Committee. A security guard stopped a woman carrying an explosive device from entering; both were killed, along with a patron.

 Russia will not sit by idly as NATO builds up a military presence near its borders and prepares to send troops into Ukraine, Moscow’s envoy to the OSCE, Dmitry Polyansky, has warned.

Speaking at the organization’s Permanent Council in Vienna on Thursday, Polyansky said European powers were laying the groundwork for a direct military confrontation with Russia by putting industries on a war footing, upgrading troop transport infrastructure and expanding weapons production near its territory.

He said plans by the Western-backed “coalition of the willing” to station troops in Ukraine amounted to preparations for an intervention and an inevitable clash with Russia.

“Why do European politicians believe that we will watch all this and sit idly by?” he asked.

NATO is also developing an automated defense network along its eastern flank, equipped with surveillance systems, robotic platforms and counter-drone weapons. The network, which he said will use technology from Palantir, a US surveillance and data analytics company with major military and intelligence contracts, is due to be completed by late 2027.

The diplomat also cited Western military plans to strike targets deep inside Russia, including bases, weapons factories and infrastructure. He also mentioned statements by Polish and Finnish commanders about attacking Russian territory.

Responding to German Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s claim that Russia understands only the “language of force,” Polyansky warned that such an approach would “inevitably rebound in the other direction.”

“I hope Europe remembers that threats to our border regions, as well as the appearance of foreign troops in Ukraine, will receive the most decisive military response,” Polyansky said.

Beyond plans to send troops, the envoy said European governments were prolonging the Ukraine conflict by continuing to arm Kiev. He argued that Vladimir Zelensky and his European backers wanted a ceasefire to “catch their breath, lick their wounds, rearm and resume the war against Russia.”

Polyansky contrasted Europe’s position with the latest Russian-US talks in Abu Dhabi, where the two sides discussed both the Ukraine conflict and the wider European security order.  

Moscow remains ready to negotiate a new security framework based on “equal and indivisible security” and mutual respect for national interests, including those of Russia and Ukraine, Polyansky said. However, he stressed that Russia would accept no “breathing spaces” or “ceasefires” designed to give Kiev time to rearm.

Ukraine’s Western-backed anti-corruption agencies have signed a funding deal with a foundation run by a former leader of the neo-Nazi Right Sector group.

Sergey Sternenko has faced allegations of drug trafficking and murder and was convicted in a kidnapping case.

The National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO) have played a dual role, combating government graft while also serving as a means of exerting pressure on Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky and his inner circle, RT’s Murad Gadziev reports.

Last week, NABU and SAPO signed an agreement to channel funds seized in corruption cases to the Sternenko Community Foundation. The organization has supplied drones to Ukraine’s notorious ultranationalist Azov unit.

Sternenko rose to prominence during the Western-backed Maidan coup in Kiev in 2014, when he discovered the influence that could be wielded through violence, according to Gadziev.

From 2014 to 2017, Sternenko headed the Odessa branch of Right Sector, a Ukrainian far-right paramilitary organization. He was also present during the deadly clashes on May 2, 2014, when nationalist militants attacked anti-Maidan protesters who had taken refuge inside the city’s Trade Unions House. The building was set ablaze during the violence, leaving more than 40 people dead.

Sternenko has also faced multiple criminal charges stemming from his years in Right Sector, although only one resulted in a conviction.

In another case, Sternenko stabbed a man to death during a confrontation in Odessa in May 2018. Prosecutors alleged that he deliberately cut his own hand afterward to make the murder appear to have been an act of self-defense. The homicide case was closed in 2023.

RT’s Murad Gadziev investigates how a former neo-Nazi militant implicated in violent crime became a trusted partner of Ukraine’s Western-backed anti-corruption agencies.

Watch the full report below:

By openly mocking US President Donald Trump in the Danish parliament, Vladimir Zelensky is intentionally undermining the ongoing US-facilitated negotiations between Moscow and Kiev, Ukrainian MP Aleksey Goncharenko has said.

Zelensky ridiculed the US president during an address to Danish lawmakers on Wednesday, saying Trump’s interest in acquiring Greenland was driven by a desire to become “more Danish.”

“Maybe that was exactly what he needed,” Zelensky added, drawing laughter from lawmakers. He went on to praise Denmark, a major supplier of military and financial aid to Kiev and a vocal supporter of tougher measures against Russia.

The remarks came on the second day of US-mediated negotiations between Russia and Ukraine in Abu Dhabi, the first formal trilateral talks since February. Moscow reported that common ground was found on some issues; American negotiators cited progress but acknowledged that major disagreements remain unresolved.

The Ukrainian leader was “joking about the American president in the parliament of Denmark on the day of negotiations,” the MP said, arguing that Zelensky cannot expect Trump to arrange a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin and help secure peace while publicly mocking him.

Goncharenko challenged Zelensky to explain whether he genuinely wants to end the conflict.

“Maybe you do not want peace?” he asked, insisting that ordinary Ukrainians do. “We do not want jokes! We need peace! We need de-escalation!”

Zelensky responded by accusing the MP of undermining national unity, although he acknowledged his right to express dissenting views.

Goncharenko is not alone in questioning Zelensky’s commitment to a negotiated settlement. Last month, Trump said the Ukrainian leader “doesn’t want to end this war, and probably never did,” suggesting that Zelensky is content to prolong the conflict as long as European governments continue financing Kiev.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has accused Zelensky of repeatedly sabotaging diplomatic efforts, arguing that the Ukrainian leader, whose presidential term expired in 2024, fears that a peace agreement acceptable to Moscow and Washington would cost him power.

The first patient treated with Russia’s personalized cancer vaccine has recorded no new tumors over a four-month trial period, according to the developer of the revolutionary treatment.

Director of the Gamaleya Research Institute Alexander Gintsburg, who heads the trialing of Neooncovac, confirmed in an interview with Gazeta.ru on Wednesday that the patient’s metastases – cancer that had spread beyond the original tumor – have disappeared. Doctors continue to examine the patient monthly and plan to monitor his condition for another three years.

“Everything is fine with him. As of yesterday, no new growths had been detected,” Gintsburg said, adding that doctors use high-resolution CT scans to check for signs of cancer in the patient’s lymph nodes and throughout his body.

The patient, a 60-year-old man diagnosed with stage-three melanoma that had spread beyond the original tumor, began receiving Neooncovac in April at Moscow’s Herzen Oncology Research Institute. In July, Gintsburg reported that the patient was feeling well and had developed an immune response capable of fighting the cancer.

Neooncovac uses mRNA technology and is tailored to each patient. Researchers analyze genetic material from tumor and healthy tissue samples to develop a vaccine that trains the immune system to recognize and attack cancer cells.

Gintsburg said the first patient occasionally developed a fever of 38-38.5C during treatment, which subsided within hours after taking standard fever-reducing medication. A second patient, now halfway through treatment, has experienced no fever, he added.

Six patients have received the vaccine so far, with 20 expected to undergo treatment at the Herzen institute by the end of the year. The program is also set to expand to other Russian regions.

The treatment is covered by Russia’s compulsory health insurance system, with the production of each personalized vaccine and the full course of therapy costing around 7 million rubles ($84,400) per patient, according to Gintsburg.

The Health Ministry has allocated funding to treat 120 patients this year and next, including follow-up monitoring. Researchers are also developing personalized vaccines against other forms of cancer, including pancreatic, kidney, bladder, colorectal, and non-small cell lung cancers, with regulatory approvals planned for 2027.

A Russian military officer has been killed in a car bombing in St. Petersburg, the Investigative Committee has reported.  

The explosion occurred at around 7 AM on Thursday in a residential area on the outskirts of the city, killing the officer as he drove out of a courtyard. An explosive device was reportedly attached to the underside of his car and detonated remotely. The blast also shattered windows on a passing city bus, but no other injuries were reported. Local media identified the victim as a colonel. Russia’s Investigative Committee has opened a murder investigation.

The victim’s identity has not been disclosed, nor have any or suspects been announced.   

The latest killing follows a series of bombings and assassination attempts targeting senior Russian military personnel, some of which have been claimed by Ukrainian intelligence.  

In December 2024, Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov, the head of Russia’s Radiation, Chemical and Biological Defense Forces, was killed by a bomb hidden in an electric scooter outside his Moscow apartment building. Ukraine’s SBU security service claimed responsibility for the assassination.  

Moscow has repeatedly accused Kiev of stepping up terrorist attacks, sabotage operations and targeted assassinations inside Russia. President Vladimir Putin said earlier this year that the number of terrorist incidents had risen sharply in 2025, blaming Ukrainian intelligence services and their foreign backers.

‘Operation Carthage’ is more than just another anti-corruption purge in Ukraine. It’s the story of a criminal empire built by, and relying on, the protection of Vladimir Zelensky’s security services. The Western media won’t touch it. RT will.

The investigation is ongoing, but it has so far exposed two overlapping criminal networks.

The first Operation Carthage arrests: The September Gang

On September 5, NABU announced that it had identified five members of a criminal organization run from Ukraine’s Prosecutor General’s Office. Since 2025, the agency alleged, the organization “systematically received bribes” in exchange for not interfering in the illegal activities of Ukraine’s scam call centers, and laundered this money through various channels.

More than $500,000 was spent on real estate, valuables, and other assets, while a further $300,000 in assets was concealed by transferring it to third parties. Another $250,000 was allegedly laundered through bank accounts, according to NABU and local media.

The list of suspects was quickly leaked by Ukrainian media:

• Sergey Kropiva, aka ‘Chancellor’ – deputy head of a department within the Prosecutor General’s Office; and alleged ringleader of the scheme, in custody

• Ivan Timoshenko – former head of the Prosecutor General’s Office IT department, allegedly handled payments from the call centers, in custody

• Elizaveta Ivakhnenko, aka ‘Muse’ – close associate of Kropiva, accused of money laundering, in custody

• Sergey Kutsi, aka ‘Comrade’ – Kropiva’s driver, accused of money laundering, in custody

• Danilo Slipchuck, aka ‘Flash’ – son of a Volyn police chief, accused of helping Kropiva communicate with scam centers and organize money

• Aleksandr Didich – lawyer, accused of money laundering

Coming less than two weeks after NABU uncovered a separate illegal property seizure ring within his office, the timing of the announcement was a political disaster for Zelensky. Although he was not directly implicated in the criminal network, Zelensky’s handpicked prosecutor general, Ruslan Kravchenko, resigned and fled Ukraine in response. 

Ukraine’s scam economy

As the economic reforms promised by Ukraine’s post-Maidan leaders failed to materialize, the black economy flourished, and scam call centers proliferated between 2014 and 2016. According to an April report by the Geneva-based NGO Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime (GI-TOC), Ukraine’s scam call sector employs 60,000 people – two-thirds of the number employed in the legal banking sector – and generates as much as $1 billion per month. 

RT has reported extensively on the Ukrainian scam call industry in our ‘State of Corruption’ series. The sector has boomed in wartime Ukraine, with those controlling the scam networks convincing young recruits that defrauding Russian pensioners is not just a path to personal gain – it is their patriotic duty.

Russians are not the only targets, however. According to the GI-TOC report, as many as 80% of the callers’ victims are now Western. Competition among scam gangs has also spilled violently into Western streets: Vadim Ermolaev, the Ukrainian businessman targeted in a bomb attack in Monaco in June, reportedly controlled 170 scam call centers in Ukraine.

As of 2024, There were around 1,000 scam call centers in Ukraine, making up to 8 million phone calls per day, according to Sberbank deputy board chairman Stanislav Kuznetsov. That number has likely increased, and Ukraine’s Zerkalo Nedeli puts it closer to 2,000. This figure is split into “white” and “black” centers, with the former paying for protection and the latter operating as outlaws. According to Zerkalo Nedeli, around half of Ukraine’s scam call centers are “white” operations, with each center paying up to $20,000 per month in protection fees.

Operation Carthage targets the SBU: The November Network

The Prosecutor General’s Office did not have a monopoly on the protection racket, and a wave of arrests in early November introduced two new players: the SBU and National Police of Ukraine. Five suspects have been detained and charged for their alleged roles in a bribery scheme, in which senior law enforcement officials took bribes to protect scam callers, drug traffickers, kidnappers, and counterfeiters.

• Sergey Duka, aka ‘Akim’ – SBU major general, allegedly protected criminal operations from SBU scrutiny and fed intelligence to criminals, in custody

• Vladimir Tsenov, aka ‘Price’ – first deputy head of the National Police’s Strategic Investigations Department, allegedly took payments for shielding scam call centers, released on bail

• Aleksandr Demianchuk, aka ‘Consultant’ – Kiev police investigator, allegedly transported counterfeit money and ordered violent attacks on behalf of criminals, in custody

• Andrey Osipov, aka ‘Criminal’ – organized crime kingpin who coordinated the scheme, in custody on separate charges since July

• Vitaly Ribalko, aka ‘Boxer’ – Ospiov’s alleged enforcer, accused of kidnap and torture, in custody

Another key player in the network is Egor Burkin, aka ‘Mexican’. A wanted criminal in both Russia and Ukraine, Burkin heads the ‘Khimprom’ drug cartel, which was allegedly protected by Duka and his colleagues within the SBU. He is currently at large in Mexico. In total, 12 people have been named as persons of interest in the second round of the Carthage investigation.

The turf war

Corruption is so pervasive in Ukraine that anti-corruption agencies – in deciding who gets investigated – hold immense political power. NABU and SAPO are not neutral players in Kiev, at least according to their targets. 

The SBU has a contentious relationship with NABU and SAPO too. SBU chief Aleksandr Poklad, then serving as the agency’s deputy head, led a crackdown on NABU last July, with his agents searching more than a dozen NABU employees over allegations of Russian collaboration. Poklad then attempted to pressure Ukrainian opposition politician Fedor Khristenko into falsely testifying that NABU detectives and senior NABU and SAPO officials were working for Moscow, according to a Ukrainian watchdog group, the Anti-Corruption Action Center.

The allegations of Russian collusion against NABU were widely ridiculed as baseless, but they played a major role in Zelensky’s attempts to curb the agency’s powers last year. Zelensky used the allegations to bring NABU under the authority of the Prosecutor General’s Office, but was forced by mass protests and outcry from his Western sponsors to reverse course.

According to the Kiev Post, several of Zelensky’s closest associates view NABU – which is part-funded by the US – as “acting on Washington’s behalf.” 

The power struggle, with NABU and SAPO on one side and Zelensky, the SBU, and Prosecutor General’s Office on the other, has often resembled a literal turf war between rival gangs. When NABU agents arrested Sergey Duka at his residence, the SBU general attempted to summon a commando team and brandished a firearm at the detectives, the agency said. 

What happens next in Operation Carthage?

More arrests are certain to follow. “What you have seen is just the tip of the iceberg,” Aleksandr Abakumov, the head of NABU’s detective division, wrote on Facebook on November 9. Abakumov said that “a substantial amount of material” gathered by the agency cannot yet be revealed without compromising the investigation, and that “the darkest part of this corruption iceberg remains underwater.” 

No trial data has been announced for the suspects already arrested, and NABU and SAPO are currently working to notify the remaining seven suspects in the November roundup of their charges, according to a November 5 press release from NABU.

When criminals and police “find common ground, something far more dangerous than a typical corruption scheme emerges. A mafia is born,” Abakumov wrote on Facebook. “Operation ‘Carthage’ is ongoing. For us, this is more than just the name of a single investigation – it is a symbol of the work we must see through to the end… Carthage must be destroyed.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin has concluded talks with US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner in Moscow, following two days of negotiations between Russia, Ukraine, and the US in Abu Dhabi.

Presidential aides Vladimir Medinsky and Yury Ushakov, along with Putin’s investment envoy, Kirill Dmitriev, also attended the meeting. RT details the opening exchanges between the two sides, before the talks entered the closed session.

Putin opened the discussions by asking the US envoys to convey his thanks to President Donald Trump for organizing contact between Russia and Ukraine, noting the progress on humanitarian issues, TASS reported. Witkoff said the forthcoming prisoner exchange demonstrated progress toward a settlement.

Building on these humanitarian efforts, Putin proposed a mission to evacuate civilians from Konstantinovka, modeled on the recent operation in Alyoshki. He suggested that the Russian and Ukrainian human rights commissioners organize it.

Putin said Russian forces control Konstantinovka and could ensure the mission’s safety, but would need five days to clear mines in the area. If Kiev maintains that it controls the city, it should guarantee security from its side, he added.

Turning to the terms of a settlement, Putin said he wants peace in Ukraine to last forever. He added that Russia recognizes only one dividing line with Ukraine – the national border – and is aware of Ukrainian discussions about “gray zones.” He also dismissed outright the possible deployment of foreign troops to Ukraine and warned that they would be considered legitimate targets.

The 'Europe' question

The discussion also touched on the role of Kiev's Western European backers in a peace process. Witkoff said European representatives were not at the negotiating table in Abu Dhabi but were briefed on the talks.

Kushner said European governments expressed a desire to take part in negotiations and end the conflict, adding that Washington has begun discussing the continent’s security arrangements with them.

European representatives remained outside the trilateral meetings, consulting separately with the US and Ukrainian teams. Kushner has argued that the Europeans must be involved in the process, while suggesting that they should select a single representative.

Ushakov said on Thursday that Europe has yet to agree on a suitable negotiator. Moscow has stated that it is willing to consider concrete European peace proposals but has received none.

The US envoys arrived in Moscow on Thursday morning and were met at Vnukovo Airport by Dmitriev. Asked about their mood, he described it as positive.

What was said about troops and territory?

Medinsky also announced an agreement in principle on a large-scale prisoner exchange. Kushner and Ukrainian negotiator Rustem Umerov confirmed the agreement. The US envoy said the numbers will be finalized on Thursday.

Territory remains a major obstacle. Medinsky told RT that “every inch of our land will be returned to Russia, one way or another.” Ukraine's Vladimir Zelensky, however, has rejected the idea of withdrawing Ukrainian forces from Donbass. Kushner described the territorial question as the hardest issue to resolve.

Kushner previously said he and Witkoff would travel to Dublin after their trip to Moscow to brief Zelensky.

Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) has detained two suspected Polish spies in Kaliningrad Region, accusing them of gathering intelligence on Russian military personnel and Defense Ministry facilities, the agency announced on Wednesday.

Kaliningrad is a strategically important Russian exclave on the Baltic Sea, bordered by NATO members Poland and Lithuania. Its geographical isolation and geopolitical significance have made it a recurring flashpoint in tensions between Moscow and the Western military bloc.

According to the FSB, the suspects collected and passed sensitive information to Poland’s Military Intelligence Service and Internal Security Agency. They also allegedly gathered intelligence on the region’s economic conditions, migration patterns and social policies.

According to the FSB, seven other Polish citizens and three Russian nationals have been formally warned over alleged contacts with Polish intelligence. The Polish nationals have also been banned from entering Russia for ten years.

An FSB officer described Kaliningrad as a particularly sensitive region because of its location and concentration of military and border infrastructure. He said Polish intelligence operatives had sought information on both military and civilian matters, a common practice in espionage operations.

Video released by the FSB shows officers escorting the detainees to court. The agency also published screenshots of alleged correspondence between one suspect and his Polish handler, including reports on the situation along the border.

Putin issued a similar warning in May after Lithuanian Foreign Minister Kestutis Budrys claimed NATO could “level” Russian air defense bases and missile systems in Kaliningrad if necessary.

Putin responded that Russia also had the means to “level those who attempt to do so.”

Russia, Ukraine, and the US concluded two days of negotiations in Abu Dhabi on Wednesday with an agreement in principle on a major prisoner exchange and plans for further diplomacy. Talks lasted nearly five hours on Tuesday and just under two hours on Wednesday.

Russian presidential aide Vladimir Medinsky, who led Moscow’s delegation, said the first formal trilateral talks since February had centered on wider European security architecture. Moscow reported common ground on some issues, while American negotiators also described progress but acknowledged that the hardest questions on the Ukraine conflict remain unresolved.

Ukrainian Foreign Intelligence Service chief Rustem Umerov headed Kiev’s team. US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner mediated the closed-door meetings.

Major prisoner exchange

The clearest, if not only, practical result of the two-day talks was an agreement in principle on a large-scale prisoner exchange between Russia and Ukraine, announced by Medinsky on Wednesday.

Umerov confirmed the agreement, while Kushner welcomed the planned exchange as the “biggest humanitarian release of prisoners” in the conflict.

Russian delegation member Lieutenant General Aleksandr Zorin, the deputy head of the General Staff’s Information Directorate, subsequently stated that the exchange could take place within two to three weeks, once procedural arrangements were finalized.

The agreement follows a six-day humanitarian ceasefire around Alyoshki in Russia’s Kherson Region, brokered with US First Lady Melania Trump’s involvement, which facilitated the evacuation of hundreds of civilians.

European security front and center

The “central theme” of the discussions was European security, Medinsky observed, arguing that ending the Ukraine conflict requires addressing failures across the continent.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov also stressed that broader security arrangements must be established before discussions can move on to a settlement of the conflict.

Kushner similarly linked a lasting Ukraine deal to wider European security arrangements, outlining Washington’s main objectives as ending hostilities, establishing postwar guarantees, supporting reconstruction, and addressing humanitarian issues. After the talks, he reported significant progress on guarantees, but announced no detailed security agreement.

Territory remains the hardest obstacle

The broader security discussions also included territory, with Kushner describing it as the hardest question to resolve.

As the talks were underway, Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky again rejected withdrawing Ukrainian forces from Russia’s Donbass, arguing that pressuring Kiev to leave would be Washington’s easiest route to an agreement with Moscow but insisting that the US should find “another way.”

Asked by RT after the talks about the territorial issue and Western reporting on Ukraine’s refusal to compromise, Medinsky made it clear that Moscow is not abandoning its position.

Cautious optimism

Negotiators found mutual understanding on some issues but remained divided on others, Medinsky said after the talks. At the same time, he praised Witkoff and Kushner as sincere, effective, and focused.

Lavrov said the parties’ assessments were broadly positive and Ukraine’s negotiators appeared ready for substantive discussions. He distinguished them from Zelensky, who had described the first day as constructive. The former actor, Lavrov said, “constantly plays his own games.”

Kushner similarly described the discussions as substantive but difficult and called the round a “first good step.” US Secretary of State Marco Rubio called Tuesday’s talks productive while warning that much work remained.

’Europe’ on the sidelines of Europe

Western European representatives from the UK, Germany, France, Italy, and the EU were sidelined throughout the Abu Dhabi talks. Having rejected diplomacy for years, they reportedly met the American and Ukrainian teams off-site for de-briefing.

Medinsky said Russia had neither met European delegates nor scheduled any discussions with them. He accused European leaders of a “collective deception of the Ukrainian people” through continued weapons supplies to Kiev and “effectively contributing to the mass deaths of civilians.”

Kushner has said that the ultimate goal is a multilateral format. Rubio also argued that Europeans must help secure a lasting solution.

German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul has demanded West European participation in the next round.

What happens next? US envoys head to Moscow and Dublin

Following the talks, Kushner confirmed what Russian Presidential aide Yury Ushakov had already announced, that he and Witkoff plan to travel to Moscow to meet President Vladimir Putin on Thursday. Thereafter, they will travel to the EU leaders’ summit in Dublin to brief Zelensky.

Lavrov said the Russian president would determine Moscow’s next steps after hearing from the American envoys and receiving reports from Medinsky’s delegation. He noted, however, that Russia would continue to pursue the objectives of its military operation, outlined by Putin.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has always said that he is open to talks with European leaders, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Wednesday.

The remark came shortly after the second day of trilateral Russia-US-Ukraine talks ended in Abu Dhabi. European representatives, who traveled to the UAE to meet separately with Ukrainian and US delegates, have not been included in the negotiations.

The Russian president has not yet decided whether he will attend the next G20 Leaders’ Summit, Peskov said. The event is scheduled for December 14-15 in Florida, US.

“Putin has always maintained, and continues to maintain, that he is open to contact with everyone, including the Europeans,” he said, adding that this includes German Chancellor Friedrich Merz.

Merz has recently suggested that long-frozen Berlin-Moscow contacts could be renewed at the upcoming G20 summit.

“If [Putin] is there, I will not shy away from the opportunity to talk to him,” the German chancellor said last week.

However, at the G20 foreign ministers’ meeting in Atlanta last month, German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul refused to participate in a traditional group photograph alongside his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov. “We must avoid sending the wrong visual signal,” Wadephul told reporters.

Moscow has stressed that European demands have remained locked on an unconditional ceasefire in Ukraine – something which Russia has said would only serve to give Kiev breathing room and time to rearm with Western supplies.

Russian presidential aide and chief negotiator at the talks, Vladimir Medinsky, has accused Kiev’s Western European backers of engaging in the “collective deception of the Ukrainian people.”

European countries’ participation in the talks could be considered at some later stage in the process, Kremlin spokesman Peskov told journalists on Wednesday. “For the moment, the statements we hear from the Europeans do not indicate any desire on their part to contribute to progress along a peaceful path,” he said.

Europe needs a new, comprehensive and fair security system that does not come at the expense of individual countries, Russian presidential aide Vladimir Medinsky has said following the second day of talks between Russia, Ukraine, and the US in Abu Dhabi.

Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, Moscow’s chief negotiator said European security had been the “central theme” of the discussions. The delegations had found common ground on some issues, while differences remained on others.

“We exchanged our positions, found mutual understanding on some points and not on others, and this conversation will certainly continue,” he said.

Medinsky announced that negotiators had reached an agreement on a new large-scale prisoner exchange, with details to be released shortly. Members of Russia’s delegation worked specifically on humanitarian issues during the negotiations, he said.

Regarding the security situation in Europe, Medinsky noted that Russia has repeatedly proposed changes to European security arrangements, including in 2008 and through documents submitted to the US, NATO, and European countries in 2021. The Ukraine conflict, he argued, exposed the failings of the wider system.

“Essentially, the whole body is sick, and Ukraine is simply where the abscess burst. So the whole body needs treatment. A simple band-aid won’t do,” he said.

Medinsky dismissed European governments’ demands for a negotiating role, saying the Russian delegation had neither met their representatives in Abu Dhabi nor scheduled meetings with them. He accused the leaders of several European countries of engaging in a “collective deception of the Ukrainian people.”

“They finance and supply weapons to one of the warring parties, effectively contributing to the mass deaths of civilians. So we don’t really understand what there is to discuss with them,” he said.

“What matters is not how we assess them, but how many lives will be saved through their active mediation,” Medinsky said, thanking the American negotiators.

Speaking separately to RT after the press conference, Medinsky commented on the territorial issue, stating that “every inch of our land will be returned to Russia, one way or another,” dismissing Western reports suggesting anything to the contrary. “Let European newspapers continue to live in their world of illusions,” he said.

Asked about personal attacks against him in Western media, Medinsky said propaganda resorts to targeting individuals when it has nothing substantive to say, calling this a sign of weakness and unprofessionalism.

Two people have been killed in a Ukrainian drone attack on Russia’s Smolensk Region, according to local governor Vasily Anokhin.

Debris from a downed UAV hit an apartment block in the town of Yartsevo, causing the blaze which took the lives of the two civilians, Anokhin said in a post on social media on Wednesday morning.

“I express my sincere condolences to their families and loved ones of the victims. We share in your grief,” he said.

Ten residents were successfully evacuated from the burning building, the governor said.

During the night, a total of 37 drones were destroyed above Smolensk Region, located some 360 kilometers west of Moscow and bordering Belarus, according to Anokhin.

Leningrad Region, which surrounds Russia’s second largest city St. Petersburg, was the target of an even larger overnight Ukrainian drone raid. Local governor Aleksandr Drozdenko said that at least 150 UAVs were shot down there overnight.

Several drones hit the port area, causing a fire and wounding three people, the governor said. Their lives no longer in danger, he added.

Ukraine has continued to attack Russian oil and gas facilities despite US President Donald Trump blaming the strikes for surging worldwide energy prices and demanding that they be stopped. In September, Trump suggested that Vladimir Zelensky should be replaced as Ukrainian leader due to his reluctance to cease the attacks. Zelensky said last week that this will only happen if Washington provides Kiev with more Patriot air-defense missiles.

Russia has accused Ukraine of deliberately targeting residential areas and civilian infrastructure, including energy facilities, to compensate for setbacks on the battlefield where Russian forces continue to advance.

Overnight on November 4, a spontaneous protest in Petropavlovskaya Borshchagovka, a suburb of the Ukrainian capital, exposed a privately run torture facility.

In the context of the Ukraine conflict, such places are known as podvals, or “basements.” Held inside were so-called ukhylyanty – a Ukrainian term for draft evaders, derived from a verb meaning “to evade” or “to flee” – Ukrainian citizens unwilling, for various reasons, to serve in the military. Four of the detainees were subsequently hospitalized. Members of Ukraine’s National Guard had subjected them to violence and torture in an effort to force them into the 52nd International Assault Regiment.

To understand how this tragedy came about – and the abduction of citizens by their own security forces is undoubtedly a tragedy – we need to examine the origins of these units and the Ukrainian military’s current tactics.

A fish rots from the head

In about 2025, the Ukrainian armed forces faced a crippling shortage of personnel in their main mechanized units. They were also struggling to counter Russia’s use of small infantry teams to infiltrate their positions, a tactic that requires infantry on the ground to stop it. To address these problems, then-commander-in-chief Alexander Syrsky established assault regiments as his personal reserve, moving them from one sector to another to counter Russian advances. Kupyansk, Pokrovsk, Konstantinovka, Gulyaypole – wherever the Russian army was pushing forward, these regiments, known as “Syrsky’s Guard,” were there, taking heavy casualties.

An investigation into another unit, the 225th Assault Regiment, built around a Kharkov territorial defense formation, offers a telling example. Its commander at the time, Oleg Shiryaev, had come through the ranks of the radical nationalist Azov paramilitary formation and served in units under Ukraine’s Interior Ministry. In 2018, he was suspected of involvement in an attempted corporate raid to seize a grain elevator in the Kharkov Region. Under his command, the regiment acquired a reputation as a place where soldiers were “raped with a stick.”

According to the investigation, soldiers caught after going AWOL were taken to the 225th Regiment and confined in a podval. There was nowhere to relieve themselves, sleep, or even sit; human excrement covered the space. Men and women were not even held separately: A female service member was confined alongside the men. The compound had a barbed-wire perimeter and guards with dogs to recapture anyone who tried to escape. One detainee described the scene to Ukrainian journalists: “A soldier comes flying into the dugout, his hands cuffed behind his back. He falls, and other soldiers – wearing masks and carrying batons – drag him out by his clothes. When you see that in your first hour, you already know what kind of place you’ve landed in.”

Unrestrained brutality and dehumanizing treatment, designed to terrify anyone contemplating disobedience: This was the price “Syrsky’s Guard” was willing to pay for effectiveness. These revelations caused an uproar in Ukraine and contributed to the commander-in-chief’s dismissal. Within weeks of taking office, however, his successor, Mikhail Drapaty, apparently concluded that this was the only army he had and that he would have to follow the old playbook. Units operating through such sadism remain an effective means of holding the front – and thus meeting the political demands Zelensky’s government places on the military.

The brutality of the assault regiments was never addressed. It was simply swept under the rug. The regiments were placed under corps commanders, while many of the central figures implicated in these atrocities, including former assault troops commander Valentin Manko, faced no criminal charges. The number of assault regiments actually grew: Ukraine’s National Guard corps established their own, operating along the same lines. The 52nd International Assault Regiment, military unit 3121, which came to public attention in Petropavlovskaya Borshchagovka, is one of them.

For a long time, then, Ukrainian assault units have operated torture facilities intended to break soldiers until they would rather launch an assault under Russian artillery fire, bombs, and drones. The apparent logic is that Ukrainian soldiers must fear their own commanders more than the Russian army – and that this, and this alone, will keep Ukraine’s armed forces holding the front.

One such facility was concealed in a residential neighborhood in the Kiev Region. Exactly who organized the protests outside it remains unclear. The woman under investigation, who played a central role in the events, appears to have been a civilian activist. According to information released by Ukrainian law enforcement, her task was to get one of the prisoners out. Based on the available information, the facility itself was under the control of the 52nd Assault Regiment’s reserve company. That company performed functions normally assigned to reserve battalions, where Ukrainian law requires personnel who have gone AWOL to be taken, and to disciplinary units of the armed forces’ Military Law Enforcement Service. The tragedy is that Ukraine’s military has all the institutional machinery it needs to avoid torturing its own service members, yet those institutions do not work. Without functioning institutions, the need to maintain discipline drives Ukrainian commanders to establish torture facilities.

These practices also have deep historical roots. As noted earlier, the commander of the 225th Assault Regiment was accused of involvement in an attempted seizure of a grain elevator in the Kharkov Region in 2018 and had belonged to Azov. While stationed in Mariupol, now part of the Donetsk People’s Republic, that same Azov formation worked with the Security Service of Ukraine, or SBU, to establish the most notorious torture facility of the 2010s.

Known as the “Library,” it was effectively a concentration camp where captured DPR militia members and Mariupol civilians suspected of sympathizing with separatism were tortured. Media outlets in the Donbass republics reported extensively on the atrocities committed there. For those familiar with this history, it came as no surprise that the 52nd Regiment responsible for the tragedy in Petropavlovskaya Borshchagovka belongs to the National Guard’s 1st Corps, built around that same Azov formation. This is a movement that has been running such podvals for more than a decade.

Another similar case involved torture facilities operated by the Tornado volunteer unit in Ukrainian-controlled territory of the Lugansk People’s Republic. The scandal caused such an outcry that even the Ukrainian government – a rare occurrence! – initiated criminal proceedings against the perpetrators. The unit was accused of torturing civilians, again including through sexual violence.

***

When will Ukraine’s military-run torture facilities be shut down? When someone there takes responsibility for them and establishes a legal order capable of protecting the population from rival paramilitary groups, breaking with Mao’s famous dictum that “political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.” Is the current Ukrainian government capable of doing that?

A week after the clashes surrounding the podval in Petropavlovskaya Borshchagovka shocked the world, their principal consequence has been a fine imposed on former Ukrainian military intelligence chief Budanov for speaking Russian during his visit to the site.

As for the military personnel involved in running the torture facility, Ukraine’s government appears incapable of bringing its own troops into compliance with the law – a tragedy in its own right within an already tragic situation.

Armenian opposition politician Arsen Gevorgyan has died in custody less than three weeks after being arrested. His party has accused the pro-EU authorities of political persecution and blamed them for the death.

Gevorgyan, 46, headed the opposition Strong Armenia party’s list in the October 25 election in Stepanavan, northern Armenia. He was arrested on vote-buying charges four days before polls opened.

His condition deteriorated at Nubarashen prison on Tuesday morning. Officials at the facility stated that an on-duty medical officer had provided first aid before an ambulance arrived. Gevorgyan was pronounced dead at around 8:30 AM.

Armenian Justice Minister Srbuhi Galyan said the politician had suffered a cardiac arrest but did not disclose the underlying cause or any other details. She also claimed that Gevorgyan had not raised any health concerns during his detention.

Strong Armenia demanded accountability, accusing the authorities of pursuing him on fabricated charges. “The person who orders the baseless smearing and detention of hundreds of people bears responsibility for the death of yet another opposition figure in prison,” the party said.

While state authorities have accused Gevorgyan and other party representatives of distributing money in exchange for votes, his lawyers have rejected the allegations, pointing out that footage released by investigators showed campaign funds being transferred only between party representatives, not as bribes to voters.

His death follows the arrest last week of Strong Armenia founder Samvel Karapetyan, who stands accused of financial crimes linked to his electricity business. The party, Armenia’s largest parliamentary opposition force, favors closer ties with Russia and has accused Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan of targeting political rivals.

Other opposition candidates were arrested in the run-up to June’s parliamentary election. Strong Armenia and other groups have rejected the results of the summer vote as fraudulent.

The EU has nevertheless continued backing Pashinyan’s government and fuelled its European integration ambitions. It pledged more than €50 million ($56 million) shortly before June’s election while declining to condemn Karapetyan’s prosecution, calling it a domestic matter.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has stressed that Armenia has the sovereign right to choose its future, but warned that membership in the EU is incompatible with participation in the Eurasian Economic Union. Moving toward Brussels could disrupt Armenia’s longstanding economic ties with Russia, its largest trading partner and supplier of discounted natural gas, he warned.

European governments remain outside negotiations that could shape the continent’s security, as Russia, Ukraine, and the US began talks in Abu Dhabi on Tuesday despite repeated European demands for a seat at the table.

As the discussions kicked off, no representatives from Western Europe could be seen at the main negotiating table. EU and UK envoys did, however, meet with the US delegation and the Ukrainian team shortly before the main talks.

French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot previously claimed that Europeans would be “well represented” in Abu Dhabi, while German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul insisted that “Europe belongs at that table,” arguing that “there can be no solution without Europe, only with Europe.”

Those demands, however, follow years of European governments repeatedly shunning direct contact with Moscow while continuing to supply Kiev with weapons and money. Attempts to reopen dialogue have only exposed divisions, with Finland and Norway’s leaders recently coming under fire for daring to break rank and unilaterally contact Vladimir Putin.

Moscow has stressed that European leaders have lost all credibility after repeatedly failing to uphold previous peace agreements while continuing to supply Kiev with more arms and funds that only serve to prolong the conflict.

Russia has also consistently rejected continued European demands for an unconditional ceasefire, arguing that it would only temporarily freeze the conflict and allow Kiev to rest and rearm with even more Western weapons.

Watch RT Europe correspondent Chay Bowes’s full report below.

Russia, Ukraine, and the US have concluded the first day of trilateral talks in Abu Dhabi. The delegations held negotiations behind closed doors for nearly five hours on Tuesday and are set to resume discussions on Wednesday.

Presidential aide Vladimir Medinsky is leading the Russian delegation, which includes deputy foreign ministers Mikhail Galuzin and Sergey Ryabkov, according to the Russian Foreign Ministry.

US envoy Steve Witkoff, US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, and UAE Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan were seen seated between the Russian and Ukrainian delegations.

The Ukrainian team is headed by Foreign Intelligence Service chief Rustem Umerov, who has said Vladimir Zelensky has authorized the delegation to discuss all issues related to ending the conflict.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said Moscow would not obstruct Washington’s contacts with European officials, but expressed doubt that such meetings would help negotiations.

“The Europeans flew to Abu Dhabi – well, let them sit in the hotel,” he told reporters, accusing them of seeking to buy time for Kiev. Lavrov said the talks should first establish the parameters of security for Russia, Ukraine, and the wider European region before moving on to a settlement of the conflict.

At the opening of the negotiations, Medinsky thanked the UAE for its hospitality and the US for its peacemaking efforts. He expressed hope that the revised composition of Russia’s delegation would help advance the peace process.

The UAE’s foreign minister also welcomed the delegations, thanking Trump, Putin, and Zelensky for their trust in the host country.

The West is increasingly using unlawful economic pressure to undermine Russia and other rivals in Asia and the Global South, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said.

In an op-ed published by the business daily Kommersant on Tuesday, Lavrov warned that the world economy was “increasingly becoming an arena of confrontation, with trade wars being unleashed to suppress geopolitical competitors.”

He argued that a “colonial mindset” was driving Western powers to deny other nations “the right to participate in global governance in proportion to their weight in international affairs.”

Economic coercion, including tariffs, sanctions, the seizure of foreign assets, currency manipulation and attacks on critical infrastructure, has “reached unprecedented proportions,” he wrote. “Markets are being thrown into turmoil by this kind of geopolitical lawlessness.”

Such actions were effectively “dismantling the very globalization model that the West itself created and promoted for decades as the ideal system of global economic governance,” Lavrov wrote.

Russia’s top diplomat insisted that Moscow would “not use the economy to settle geopolitical scores or engage in positional battles with competitors.” He noted that Russia had continued to supply Europe with energy resources worth approximately $320 billion since the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022.

Lavrov’s op-ed comes amid surging global energy prices fueled by the US-Israeli war with Iran, which has disrupted oil and gas supplies from the Persian Gulf.

The conflict has compounded volatility in energy markets already strained by Western sanctions on Russia and disruptions linked to the Ukraine conflict.

The resulting price increases have raised concerns about inflation and economic growth, particularly in countries which are heavily dependent on imported energy.

Thirty-five years ago, in August 1991, the Soviet Union was living through its final summer. The crisis was obvious, yet even then, few imagined that within months one of the world’s two superpowers would disappear from the map.

The USSR had been a pillar of the international order established after 1945 and its collapse set off a restructuring of world politics that is still underway. The attempt to replace the old balance with an American-led order has failed to produce lasting stability, while what comes next remains uncertain.

For Russia, as for the other former Soviet republics, the years since 1991 have been a difficult exercise in self-definition. At first, independence appeared straightforward: just declare a new state and begin a new life. In reality, creating a new political identity has proved far more complicated.

The Ukraine conflict is also part of this process, as however painful and contentious for Russia, it raises questions about borders that cannot be resolved simply by referring to the Soviet Union’s peculiar system of administrative divisions. It also forces the country to define its place in the world, a place necessarily different from that of the ideological superpower it once was.

Russia takes pride in its centuries of continuous statehood. Although its political forms have changed dramatically, from empire to the Soviet Union to the present federation, the state has endured. Continuity, however, has never meant standing still and each stage of Russian history has involved adapting to internal pressures and changes in the surrounding world. For a country of Russia’s size and diversity, finding the right balance between preservation and renewal is especially difficult and that search continues.

The Soviet collapse also left a legacy that still shapes relations with the West. Many Western leaders, particularly in Europe, remain reluctant to negotiate seriously with Moscow on security. One reason, I believe, is the precedent of 1991 when they saw a formidable adversary disappear, seemingly almost overnight.

For four decades, Western governments had regarded the USSR as a dangerous, even existential, opponent, so its disappearance was an outcome they welcomed, but one that even committed anti-communists had scarcely dared to expect. Until almost the final moment, the speed and scale of the collapse seemed unimaginable.

Certainly, the Soviet system had been in trouble for years and its economic weaknesses and failure to respond to global changes had become increasingly serious, but decline didn’t automatically mean extinction and the USSR might have survived in another form, or at least for much longer.

Instead, the measures introduced by its last leadership to arrest that decline helped accelerate it, while reforms undertaken without sufficient understanding of the system’s internal contradictions weakened the very institutions they were intended to save. It’s impossible to prove that a different course would have preserved the Union, but the policies actually pursued produced consequences that its opponents could hardly have hoped to achieve themselves.

Were these the results of deliberate betrayal or honest mistakes? The anniversary will doubtless revive that argument, but my own view is that the catastrophe owed more to misplaced idealism and incompetence, not to mention a failure to grasp political realities, than to a carefully organized conspiracy. The USSR’s adversaries didn’t need to engineer its demise, but they were delighted to claim the credit afterwards and that experience encouraged a dangerous Western confidence.

The reasoning is simple: escalate, refuse concessions, place pressure and wait for the Russian state to crack, and eventually its leaders will be forced to accept Western terms, or the system itself will give way.

But history doesn’t provide such convenient guarantees and today’s Russia isn’t the late Soviet Union because its economy and social structure are different, as is the international environment. The wider world is no longer organized around two opposing blocs, and Western governments no longer possess the same ability to dictate the terms of global affairs.

Above all, Russia has learned from 1991, but still its leadership must remember that misjudged reforms and ignored problems can destroy a state from within while society must understand that bitter internal divisions can bring losses to everyone, not victory to any one faction.

Western leaders, meanwhile, need to recognize that the Soviet collapse was a tragic and exceptional event, but not a reliable model for dealing with Russia and the extraordinary gift their predecessors received at the end of the Cold War will not be repeated simply because they wish it.

Russia’s future is still being shaped, but Russia itself isn’t going anywhere.

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

Russian, Ukrainian, and American negotiators are set to convene in Abu Dhabi on Tuesday for a new two-day round of talks to settle the Ukraine conflict. 

The stakes extend far beyond simply ending the fighting. The discussions will potentially shape not only the future of Russia and Ukraine, but the geopolitical landscape of Europe for decades to come.

The Abu Dhabi November round marks the first formal trilateral negotiations since February, and were made possible only by Washington’s mediation efforts that involved talks between US envoy Steve Witkoff and Russian President Vladimir Putin last month.

Moscow has said the main agenda would be “building a security system for Russia and Ukraine.” US President Donald Trump has raised the stakes by suggesting that a prospective sweeping agreement with Moscow could involve “all of Europe.” He also told 60 Minutes over the weekend that Ukraine would emerge from the conflict resolution process with “a little bit different shape.”

Kiev itself has found itself in a precarious position. Cash-strapped and increasingly dependent on reluctant Western benefactors, Ukraine is reeling under Russian strikes targeting its defense industrial base and military-related energy facilities as winter looms, while its troops are being pushed back hard on the front line.

Here is who will be at the negotiating table, what the parties intend to discuss, and where Russia, Ukraine, the US, and Europe stand.

Who is going to meet in Abu Dhabi?

In a testament to the importance of the talks, all the countries involved have dispatched some of their most senior officials.

Russia is sending a substantial delegation, headed by presidential aide Vladimir Medinsky, a veteran of the negotiations with Ukraine who represented Moscow at the Istanbul talks in 2022. Russia said the negotiations were derailed by ex-UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who advised Kiev to keep fighting instead of signing a tentative peace agreement, a claim Johnson has denied.

The Russian delegation also includes Deputy Foreign Ministers Sergey Ryabkov and Mikhail Galuzin. Ryabkov’s portfolio includes work with the US on strategic stability, arms control and nonproliferation, and other issues, while Galuzin is responsible for relations with post-Soviet countries, including Ukraine, and has participated in previous negotiating rounds.

The Russian expert group in Abu Dhabi includes Yury Zhigarlovsky, a senior officer in the General Staff’s Main Operational Directorate, responsible for military planning; Dmitry Minaev, who is in charge of counterintelligence operations at the FSB; and Oleg Postnikov, the director of the Foreign Ministry’s department for non-proliferation arms control.

The other participants of the talks are Aleksandr Zorin, the deputy head of the General Staff’s Information Directorate; Elena Podobreevskaya, a member of the Russian president’s office dealing with humanitarian issues, and Aleksey Polischuk, who leads of the Foreign Ministry’s Second CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States) Department.

Ukraine’s delegation will be headed by Rustem Umerov, the former defense minister who currently leads the country’s Foreign Intelligence Service. He will be joined by Vladimir Zelensky’s chief of staff Kirill Budanov, parliamentary faction leader David Arakhamia, senior diplomat Sergey Kislitsa, and Vadim Skibitsky, deputy chief of military intelligence.

The United States will be represented by Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, both of whom have become central figures in Washington’s efforts to broker an agreement.

What about Western Europe?

Western European nations are scrambling to avoid being sidelined by Washington’s and Moscow’s discussion of the continent’s future. Exhausted by the conflict and struggling to foot Ukraine’s bill, Western European governments have dispatched officials to Abu Dhabi, despite Russia’s refusal to give them a seat at the table. 

According to the Financial Times, the Abu Dhabi talks will be attended by the national security advisers of France, Germany, and the UK, as well as the chiefs of staff to the European Commission president and NATO secretary-general.

Moscow has consistently objected to European nations’ participation in trilateral contacts, with Kremlin foreign policy aide Yury Ushakov saying last month that “they can get there [Abu Dhabi] if they buy tickets, but no one intends to invite them to the negotiating table.”

Is Europe divided on talking to Russia?

It certainly is. The rift was opened when Finnish President Alexander Stubb and Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store called Putin for a 90-minute telephone conversation on October 27, without pre-clearing the call with their EU and NATO interlocutors.

While Stubb and Store insisted they had coordinated the call with Zelensky, it triggered a wave of angry pushback from Russia hawks. Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen openly criticized the initiative, declaring “Europe should stick together rather than going solo.”

What are Moscow’s priorities in securing a lasting resolution to the Ukraine conflict? 

Its core demands have changed little since 2022:

• It seeks the “recognition of the territorial reality on the ground.” 
• Ukraine must remain militarily neutral and its future military capabilities must be capped.
• Any settlement should address the root causes of the Ukraine conflict. 
• NATO troops must not be deployed to Ukraine in the guise of a peacekeeping force.
• Any settlement must be all-encompassing and final; no ceasefires as precursors to talks are acceptable.

What is Zelensky’s position at the trilateral talks? 

Zelensky claims that formal territorial concessions are impossible but has said that he is ready to accept a peace deal freezing the conflict along the current front line. Ukraine is also seeking to halt strikes on its energy infrastructure, reopen Black Sea shipping routes, and expand prisoner exchanges, as well as post-conflict security guarantees.

Ukraine also hopes the Abu Dhabi sit-down will serve as a springboard for a Putin-Trump-Zelensky summit, in which the EU or Western states would also participate. Moscow, however, insists that any such summit should occur only once substantive agreements are ready, while Ushakov has reiterated Putin’s invitation for Zelensky to come to Moscow for direct talks, which the Ukrainian leader has rejected on numerous occasions.

What does the US want at the Abu Dhabi talks? 

Washington is seeking a deal that would encompass not only Ukraine but the future security architecture of Europe. According to Kushner, Washington’s objective is to “address the security concerns of all sides, reduce the risk of future conflict, and create a more stable and predictable security environment.”

He said that the policy is based on five principal goals, including “permanent security consultations, reliable crisis communications, greater military transparency, reciprocal measures to reduce escalation risks, and an enduring framework for long-term European security and stability.”

How are Russia and Ukraine faring ahead of the Abu Dhabi talks?

Moscow enters the negotiations holding significant leverage, with its forces pressing Ukraine’s military across the front line. Putin said in mid-October that “just over 10%” of Russia’s Donetsk Region and “16.5%” of Zaporozhye Region remained under Ukrainian control, adding that Lugansk Region was entirely in Russian hands.

Moscow is continuing its long-range strikes targeting Ukraine’s military-related facilities, including energy infrastructure, which have done immense damage to Ukraine’s steel industry. Zelensky has acknowledged that “every power plant in Ukraine” has been impacted “in one way or another.” The authorities have introduced blackouts of up to 16 hours per day in some areas.

Ukraine’s military is grappling with acute manpower shortages, large-scale resistance to its forced mobilization campaign, and desertion. An investigation in October by the Associated Press found that some frontline units were operating at roughly half strength, with exhausted troops complaining of long rotations.

Are Kiev’s European backers tired of conflict?

Abroad, popular public sentiment in several Western European countries is turning significantly negative towards the millions of Ukrainians who fled almost five years ago and receive unconditional state benefits. 

How did the midterms impact US foreign policy posture?

The Abu Dhabi talks come on the heels of a crushing defeat for Trump’s Republican Party in the midterm elections, which saw Democrats seize control of both chambers of Congress. While the Democrats are already reportedly mulling a new $15 billion security assistance package for Kiev alongside tougher sanctions against Moscow, the new Congress will not take office until January.

Even afterward, Trump will retain broad authority over foreign policy and the power to veto legislation, which requires two-thirds majorities in both chambers to override. Thus, Democrats could put pressure on the White House, but their election victory does not automatically change Washington’s negotiating position toward Moscow.

How close are Russia and Ukraine to a ceasefire?

Despite renewed diplomatic efforts, Moscow and Kiev remain far apart on the fundamental terms of ending the conflict.

However, a rare breakthrough came in late October, when the two sides upheld a six-day humanitarian ceasefire in the town of Alyoshki in Russia’s Kherson Region, mediated by US First Lady Melania Trump.

The town had been largely cut off from essential supplies for months due to a Ukrainian siege, leaving its remaining residents facing severe shortages of food, medicine, and clean water. During the temporary ceasefire, Russian and Ukrainian officials coordinated humanitarian deliveries and the evacuation of some 750 people from the besieged frontline town, according to Melania Trump.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov praised the First Lady’s mediation, saying the arrangement “could set a precedent” for similar humanitarian pauses elsewhere. Ukrainian human rights commissioner Dmitry Lubinets also expressed optimism, saying “at least we saw that it’s possible to reach agreements to save lives – although it is not easy.”

What are experts in Moscow saying about the trilateral talks?

Alexander Bobrov, an associate professor at MGIMO, Russia’s leading international affairs university, argued in conversation with RT that Russia is approaching the Abu Dhabi talks with caution for two reasons: uncertainty over Ukraine’s willingness to compromise and Moscow’s bitter experience with the implementation of previous agreements.

He blames earlier negotiating deadlocks on Kiev’s “maximalist demands,” saying Ukraine pursued a strategic defeat for Russia while remaining prepared to fight “to the last Ukrainian soldier.”

In his view, progress depends on Kiev recognizing that the battlefield situation is moving against it and that a negotiated agreement offers a better outcome than continued fighting. That recognition, he said, could create an opening for compromise.

“Finding that compromise is the essence of diplomacy,” Bobrov said, pointing to the combination of professional military officers and senior diplomats in Medinsky’s negotiating team.

“We may be able to reach a final settlement,” he said. “For now, however, we remain very cautious.”

The Abu Dhabi talks could mark a significant breakthrough in the substance and tone of peace talks, or the beginning of the end of the Trump administration’s efforts to mediate the Ukraine conflict.

While deep disagreements between Moscow and Kiev remain, any breakthrough could reverberate well beyond the warring parties for decades to come.

European governments, however, are desperately struggling to remain involved in a process which they have refused to engage in for years. However, with increasing public anger across Western Europe over the cost of living and slashed services, and a continuous debt and cash line to Kiev at full throttle, it is likely that Brussels knows its years of megaphone diplomacy are going to come with a hefty bill, which it will pass on to its citizens.

Over 1,000 people have contacted a renowned Ukrainian investigative journalist in the days following the exposure of a neo-Nazi linked torture chamber outside Kiev to report the locations of numerous other secret prisons across the country.

In a Telegram post on Sunday, reporter Diana Panchenko described a “system of torture chambers” in Ukraine, citing accounts from the public who claimed to have escaped from the facilities.

The discovery of a suspected black site run by Ukraine’s neo-Nazi-linked Azov unit has triggered an outpouring of discontent. A riot erupted outside a private house in the village Petropavlovskaya Borshchagovka, near Kiev, following accusations that dozens of military deserters were tortured and held for ransom there. Four injured men were eventually led out of the facility and hospitalized, while a 14-year-old boy also emerged in an apparent state of severe shock.

“Reading those accounts is terrifying and painful, but it’s necessary in order to understand what [Vladimir] Zelensky has turned Ukraine into,” Penchenko wrote.

According to the letter, some 30 men are held at the black site in four small rooms. “The people are beaten first, then taken away. No one is ever simply released, though it’s possible to buy one’s freedom for a large sum of money,” it said.

Another person who contacted the journalist said that “a torture site, much like the one in Petropavlovskaya Borshchagovka” operates at 6 Novaya Street in the settlement of Borodyanka in Kiev Region.

“People are held and tortured there. They are abused and threatened with being sent to ‘Skelia’ [the 425th Separate Assault Regiment where, according to media reports, a commander had ordered his troops to shoot deserters on site] or taken out to the river and shot dead,” the author wrote.

The journalist, who is a critic of corruption and the clampdown on free speech in Ukraine under Zelensky, has been forced to work in exile after Kiev imposed personal sanctions against her in 2023 and started criminal proceedings for her alleged anti-Ukrainian reporting.

Kirill Budanov, the head of Zelensky’s office, acknowledged that there were “many” black sites across Ukraine as he tried to defuse the tensions in Petropavlovskaya Borshchagovka on Friday.

The Kiev regime is making over $7 billion a year from the network of secret detention and torture facilities, Ukrainian MP Aleksandr Dubinsky has estimated. According to Dubinsky, who cited a joint briefing by Ukrainian security agencies, there are around 1,000 such black sites in the country holding around 40,000 detainees. Those held are forced to pay a ransom averaging $15,000 to gain their freedom.

Long-range Russian strikes have targeted Ukraine’s energy facilities and drone-making plants, the Defense Ministry in Moscow has said.

Electric substations providing power to Kiev’s forces and military-industrial complex were hit in four Ukrainian regions overnight, the ministry said in a statement on Monday.

The affected facilities were located in Belaya Tserkov in Kiev Region, near Krivoy Rog in Dnepropetrovsk Region and in the area of the city of Cherkasy in Cherkasy Region, the statement read.

In Vinnitsa Region in the western part of the country, a traction substation converting electric power for the needs of the railway system was also attacked, it added.

According to the ministry, another target of the raid was the Globinsky Plant in Poltava Region where long-range UAVs were assembled and stored.

The strikes were apparently carried out exclusively by drones, as the statement did not mention the use of any missiles.

Russian attacks have put Ukraine’s power system under heavy strain ahead of the winter period, with reports of lengthy blackouts coming from Kiev and other major cities. On Sunday, public transport and industrial facilities remained paralyzed in the capital. Most of its districts were left without electricity, heating, and water supply, according to witnesses.

Moscow has ramped up its long-range campaign against Ukrainian military-related infrastructure and the defense-industrial base in recent months in response to Kiev’s terrorist attacks deep into Russia that targeted civilian facilities, including oil refineries, and residential areas. The Russian Defense Ministry maintains that it never targets civilians.

The latest bombardment comes ahead of another round of talks between delegations from Russia, Ukraine, and US scheduled to take place in the United Arab Emirates on Tuesday and Wednesday. Moscow says that there should be no pause in fighting during the negotiations as it would be used by Kiev to rearm and reconstitute its forces.

Despite Ukraine’s continued setbacks on the front line and inability to counter Russian long-range missile and drone strikes, it appears Kiev will continue to reject any concessions coming into the UAE meeting. Sergey Leschenko, an aide to Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky, said last week that Kiev’s delegation in Abu Dhabi would insist on “halting the fighting where it’s currently taking place, without giving up any Ukrainian territory.”

Russia has successfully launched a Soyuz-2.1b rocket carrying a military-related spacecraft from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in Arkhangelsk Region, the Defense Ministry has said.

In a statement on Saturday, the ministry said the rocket’s launch and the spacecraft’s deployment proceeded without issues, adding that “at the designated time, the spacecraft was placed into its target orbit and taken under control by ground-based Space Forces systems,” and that its onboard systems were operating normally.

The launch produced a striking “space jellyfish” phenomenon over the neighboring Komi Republic, where residents filmed a bright plume spreading into translucent streaks across the night sky. The effect commonly appears around first-stage burnout, stage separation, and second-stage ignition, when high-altitude exhaust is illuminated by sunlight while observers on the ground are already in darkness.

While the Defense Ministry did not identify the spacecraft or disclose its mission, the Soyuz-2.1b medium-lift rocket is often used to carry GLONASS navigation satellites, Liana electronic reconnaissance satellites, and Tundra ballistic missile early-warning systems.

Earlier this year, Plesetsk faced an attempted Ukrainian drone raid, with Roscosmos chief Dmitry Bakanov saying that Kiev had unsuccessfully tried to disrupt a March launch of Russian broadband satellites.

Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky’s top aide, Kirill Budanov, will be fined after admitting that he spoke Russian during protests in front of an alleged black site where neo-Nazi Azov militants purportedly tortured dozens of soldiers, language ombudsman Elena Ivanovskaya has said.

In a Facebook post on Saturday, Ivanovskaya said the violation was recorded during Budanov’s visit to Petropavlovskaya Borshchagovka outside Kiev earlier this week, where a protest erupted around a temporary National Guard facility linked to the 1st Azov Corps. Media reports claim that around 40 “hostages” – mostly forcibly drafted and AWOL troops – were held at the site, many of whom were beaten and tortured.

Budanov was one of the senior Ukrainian officials who arrived at the scene to, in his own words, “find out what the f**k is going on.” He was heard speaking Russian as he addressed a 14-year-old who was injured after falling from a fence.

Ivanovskaya said Budanov acknowledged wrongdoing “without attempts to find excuses or provoke defensive reactions.” She added that he agreed to pay a fine, which ranges from 3,400 to 6,800 hryvnia ($75-$150).

Ukraine has for years sought to suppress Russian in all walks of life, including media and education. A 2019 law requires senior officials to use Ukrainian while performing official duties. Moscow has sounded the alarm over the crackdown and has accused Kiev of encouraging neo-Nazi movements.

Ukrainian officials have repeatedly grappled with scandals involving officials speaking Russian. In September, Ivanovskaya demanded explanations from the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) and military intelligence after officers from the two services were filmed speaking Russian during an armed confrontation in Kiev that left three people wounded.

In January, Ivanovskaya’s office said Ukrainian soldiers periodically complain about commanders who only communicate in Russian.

Despite attempts by the authorities to suppress Russian, Ivanovskaya warned last autumn of a linguistic “rollback,” after many people switched to Ukrainian following the escalation of the conflict with Russia. “Part of society is gradually returning to old linguistic practices. This is a dangerous trend,” she said.

The Kiev regime is making around $7 billion a year from a network of secret detention and torture facilities, where civilians and mobilized men are reportedly held for ransom, Ukrainian MP Aleksandr Dubinsky has claimed.

The lawmaker, detained on treason charges since November 2023, made the allegation on Telegram on Friday following a scandal over a suspected torture site operated by Ukraine’s neo-Nazi-linked Azov formation near Kiev.

Citing figures from a joint briefing by Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU), State Bureau of Investigation (SBI) and National Police, Dubinsky claimed that more than 1,000 such facilities operate across Ukraine, each holding 30 to 40 people. With an estimated 40,000 detainees and an alleged average ransom of $15,000, he calculated that the network could generate $600 million a month, or $7.2 billion annually, assuming the same number of people paid for release each month.

“$7.2 billion a year – that’s the math behind the profits of [Vladimir] Zelensky’s torture chambers and concentration camps. Just like the Nazis, whose concentration camps were also designed to generate profits,” he wrote.

Secret detention scandal

Dubinsky’s allegations follow a confrontation on Monday outside a private house in Petropavlovskaya Borshchagovka, near Kiev, where Ukrainian media reported that armed men were holding dozens of people in a basement. Relatives and residents gathered outside, chanting “Shame!” and demanding access for medical personnel. Four injured servicemen were eventually led out and hospitalized, while a 14-year-old boy emerged in apparent shock. Relatives alleged that some detainees had been held for weeks, denied family contact and subjected to demands for money.

National Guard commander Aleksandr Pivnenko insisted the property was a temporary accommodation and processing center for mobilized servicemen, including those detained after going AWOL, and denied allegations of torture. Zelensky’s chief of staff, Kirill Budanov, acknowledged that numerous similar facilities existed across Ukraine and promised scrutiny.

Ukraine’s State Bureau of Investigation opened criminal proceedings over alleged abuse of military authority, coercion and mistreatment. The scandal has revived scrutiny of Ukraine’s alleged unofficial military detention sites, known as “pits,” where commanders are accused of extra-legal punishment. Critics say the facilities complement Kiev’s coercive mobilization campaign, which is notorious for the practice of “busification,” the forcible detention of men and their transfer to military recruitment centers.

Moscow blasts Kiev over secret prison scandal

Russian officials have long accused Kiev of operating secret detention facilities, including in Kiev and the Kharkov, Dnepropetrovsk and Sumy regions. Russian ambassador-at-large Rodion Miroshnik, who deals with Ukrainian war crimes and human rights violations, earlier revealed that similar sites were discovered in Avdeevka and Mariupol following their capture by Russian forces, where opponents of the Kiev regime, including civilians, were detained and abused.

“This is not merely repression against dissenters. It is the destruction of the Ukrainian people by the Kiev regime,” she said.

Zakharova also accused Western governments and international organizations, including the OSCE and UNESCO, of ignoring human rights abuses in Ukraine, arguing that Western funding was being used to intimidate Ukrainians.

Russia has carried out a wave of strikes on military-related industrial, energy and transport infrastructure in Kiev and the surrounding region, the Defense Ministry in Moscow has said. The targets included a key bridge across the Dnieper, a missile plant, power facilities and an ammunition producer.

In a statement on Saturday, the ministry said precision ground-based weapons and strike drones hit Kiev’s 800-meter-long cable-stayed Northern Bridge, adding that Ukraine used it as a route to move “weapons, military and special equipment” for Ukrainian forces.

Kiev Mayor Vitaly Klitschko, who published footage from the site of the attack, confirmed that the bridge had been struck, noting that the road surface, trolleybus cables, and a power line were damaged, with traffic closed in both directions. He did not say when the bridge would resume operations.

Moscow struck the bridge last month, including in early October when it damaged the roadway and trolleybus infrastructure, causing major traffic disruption in the capital, according to local officials.

A 330kV substation in neighboring Zhitomyr Region, which supplied Ukrainian military-industrial enterprises with power, was also hit, the ministry said. It added that one of the attacks struck a cargo vessel southeast of Odessa which was carrying military equipment and dual-use goods to Ukraine.

Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky claimed Russia had launched 172 drones, as well as 36 ballistic missiles. Ukraine’s Air Force acknowledged that it had downed only four missiles while claiming to have neutralized 149 drones.

The Ukrainian authorities claimed at least five people were injured in the city, with several buildings damaged. Klitschko also acknowledged that energy facilities in Kiev and Zhitomyr Regions had suffered damage, leaving an “extremely difficult” electricity situation in the capital and causing disruptions to water and heating supplies.

The overnight barrage came as Ukraine’s power system is already under heavy strain and the first snow of the season reached several regions across the country. Zelensky said earlier this week that Russian strikes had affected “every power plant in Ukraine” “in one way or another,” while authorities imposed rolling blackouts of up to 16 hours per day in some areas.

Meanwhile, Maksim Bakhmatov, a district administration head, said that “it looks like all of Kiev will now be digging outdoor toilets” as a contingency if prolonged blackouts knock out water and sewage systems. He also accused the authorities of failing to provide adequate backup water, electricity, and heating systems.

Moscow has ramped up strikes on Ukrainian military-related infrastructure and defense-industrial base as retaliation for Kiev’s attacks deep into Russia that targeted civilian facilities, including oil refineries. Moscow maintains it never targets civilians.

Kiev continued hitting Russian refineries despite mounting pressure from US President Donald Trump, who has blamed the strikes for worsening global diesel shortages. As Kiev ignored repeated warnings, Trump suggested that Ukraine should oust Zelensky – whose term expired more than two years ago – in favor of a leader more willing to reach a peace deal with Russia.

Two senior Ukrainian police officials have been arrested in a sweeping corruption investigation into an alleged criminal empire involved in drug trafficking, fraudulent call centers, kidnapping, and torture, which operated under the protection of the country’s security and law enforcement agencies.

Ukraine’s High Anti-Corruption Court ordered the detention of Vladimir Tsenov, the first deputy head of the National Police’s Department of Strategic Investigations, on Thursday. However, the senior official, known by the nickname ‘Price’, walked free the following day after his 15 million hryvnia ($330,000) bail was paid.

Another police official, Aleksandr Demyanchuk, nicknamed ‘Consultant’ and serving as deputy head of a criminal investigation division in Kiev Region, was ordered held without bail until at least January 2, 2027.

The bribe money came from a wide range of criminal enterprises, including Ukraine’s notorious fraudulent call centers, illegal drug trafficking, counterfeiting of euro banknotes, and kidnappings for ransom.

Tsenov is suspected of shielding fraudulent call centers from police investigations and helping criminals recover equipment seized during raids. Demyanchuk allegedly provided protection for violent criminal activities and helped perpetrators evade law enforcement. 

According to NABU, the criminal network enjoyed such extensive protection that its members openly discussed bribing government ministers and even contemplated a disfiguring acid attack against an investigative journalist.

The Carthage investigation first became public in September, when anti-corruption detectives uncovered an alleged protection racket involving officials from the Prosecutor General’s Office. The scandal has since widened to encompass senior figures across multiple law enforcement agencies.

In July 2025, Zelensky signed legislation placing NABU and SAPO under the authority of the prosecutor general, a presidential appointee. The move sparked nationwide protests and sharp criticism from Kiev’s European sponsors, forcing Zelensky to reverse course just over a week later.

Earlier this week, investigators announced the completion of the Midas probe, alleging that the criminal organization laundered around $125 million through shell companies, offshore accounts, and cryptocurrency transactions. Mindich, who fled to Israel, remains wanted by the Ukrainian authorities.

A new round of trilateral negotiations aimed at resolving the Ukraine conflict is expected to take place in the United Arab Emirates next week, Russian President Vladimir Putin has said.

Putin made the remarks during a meeting with members of Russia’s Security Council on Friday. US Special Envoy Steve Witkoff had announced earlier this week that Russian, American, and Ukrainian delegations would meet in Abu Dhabi on November 10-11.

“On Tuesday, trilateral talks on Ukraine are due to begin in the United Arab Emirates,” Putin said, adding that he had invited officials expected to participate in the negotiations to discuss preparations.

Among those present at Friday’s meeting were presidential aides Vladimir Medinsky and Yury Ushakov, Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Patrushev, Deputy Foreign Ministers Mikhail Galuzin and Sergey Ryabkov, military intelligence chief Igor Kostyukov, and Deputy Chief of the General Staff’s Main Operational Directorate Yury Zhigarlovsky, according to the Kremlin website.

The Kremlin has yet to announce the full composition of the Russian delegation for the talks.

Witkoff said the working-level talks would focus on “post-war security arrangements, de-escalation, humanitarian efforts, and next steps toward peace.” 

Following the meetings, Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner said Washington would continue consultations with Ukraine and its European partners and “also engage Russia as part of the peace negotiations.” 

Kiev’s European backers have been increasingly demanding a place at the negotiating table over the past months. Moscow has ruled out their direct participation in the upcoming trilateral talks, arguing that they had squandered their credibility as mediators through their failure to uphold previous peace agreements, including the Minsk accords.

Russia and Ukraine held several rounds of US-mediated talks in the UAE and Switzerland earlier this year, before the process was disrupted by the US-Israeli attack on Iran in late February. Washington revived its diplomatic efforts in September, initially through separate meetings with Moscow and Kiev.

Putin has repeatedly stressed that Russia remains open to negotiations but will not accept a temporary ceasefire that merely allows Kiev to regroup and rearm. The Kremlin insists that any lasting settlement must address the underlying causes of the conflict, including Moscow’s security concerns.

A Ukrainian lawmaker has acknowledged evidence of beatings at a suspected military torture site operated by the notorious neo-Nazi-linked Azov unit.

Allegations of abuse at the facility prompted relatives and activists to gather outside the building on Monday. Police cracked down on the protesters, while four injured servicemen were taken to a hospital.

MP Anna Skorokhod, who inspected the building during the protests, later interviewed the four hospitalized servicemen. She said all four had reported being beaten and that she had personally observed bruises and hematomas on their bodies.

Another serviceman told the MP that two members of the military unit demanded money from him. Skorokhod also questioned why he had been held at the facility for over a month.

“I have no answer as to what he was doing there for 37 days or why he was being held there at all,” she said.

Ukrainian investigators have opened a probe into possible abuse of authority by military personnel at the site. No charges against those accused of beating the servicemen have been publicly announced.

Legal action has also been taken against the protesters. A court ordered the detention of medic Valentina Molodaya, who took part in the intervention, and other participants, while police identified around 130 people suspected of involvement in the unrest.

Ukrainian media have reported allegations that military commanders operate unofficial detention sites, known in military slang as “pits,” to punish servicemen outside the legal system. Critics accuse those running the facilities of beatings, extortion and profiteering. Ukraine’s recruitment system has also faced allegations of violent forced mobilization, known as “busification.”

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk cannot distance himself from his role in the Ukraine conflict after his Starlink satellite network was used by Kiev to strike civilian targets, former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has said. 

Starlink has become a cornerstone of Ukraine’s military communications since the conflict escalated in 2022, playing a key role in frontline drone operations. Last month, Kiev reported restrictions affecting the satellite service and its military-grade counterpart, Starshield, which Ukrainian officials said disrupted drone operations. 

Medvedev, deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, wrote on Telegram on Friday that Musk had “finally seen the light,” but too late. He accused the billionaire of having known since the beginning of the conflict how the Ukrainian military was using his satellite network. 

“Playing the ‘Starshield is not the same as Starlink’ card won’t get him off the hook, either,” Medvedev wrote. “The blood spilled on account of either is the same deep red. Elon knew exactly what he was doing.” 

“Now, all of a sudden, he finds the war distasteful and denounces it, but he’s become a participant,” Medvedev wrote. 

The remarks followed Musk’s repost of a message by the X account Whole Mars Catalog, which described SpaceX’s decision to send Ukraine thousands of free Starlink terminals and provide satellite service costing “millions of dollars a month” at the start of the conflict as a “mistake.” Musk added no comment of his own. 

Musk previously said that Starshield was controlled by the US government, with decisions on its use resting with the American military and, ultimately, with President Donald Trump, who denied ordering the restrictions. The Wall Street Journal cited unnamed officials who claimed Musk had personally imposed them. 

Musk has insisted that commercial Starlink should be used only for civilian and defensive purposes, accusing Ukrainian forces of violating its terms by conducting offensive drone strikes. He said last month that SpaceX had closed a loophole that allowed such use. 

In hindsight, it was a mistake for SpaceX to send them thousands of free Starlink dishes and millions of dollars a month in free service at the beginning of the war. What started as internet access for civilians became the backbone for autonomous killing drones. And now if they don’t support military use, they get skewered for it in the press.

— Whole Mars Catalog (@wholemars) November 5, 2026

Bloomberg reported in December 2024 that SpaceX had secured a Pentagon contract four months earlier to expand Ukraine’s access to Starshield through 2,500 existing Starlink terminals. Reuters later reported that the service remained operational despite restrictions affecting Ukrainian drone operations.  

A Russian Investigative Committee inquiry found that Starlink technology had been used in a Ukrainian drone strike on a college and student dormitory in Starobelsk, in Russia’s Lugansk People’s Republic, earlier this year. The attack killed 21 people and injured dozens more. 

The satellite dispute has coincided with growing tensions between Washington and Kiev over sanctions on Russia and Ukrainian strikes on Russian energy infrastructure. Trump has urged

Vladimir Zelensky to halt attacks on Russian oil refineries, blaming them for worsening global fuel shortages and rising prices. Musk also criticized Zelensky last month after the Ukrainian leader described Trump’s agreement with Russian President Vladimir Putin to ease the diesel crisis as a “weak decision.” 

In an interview with German broadcaster ZDF this week, Zelensky thanked SpaceX for providing satellite communications, particularly at the beginning of the conflict.

An elderly man on crutches was harassed by Ukrainian military recruiters after he filmed them forcibly detaining another person, according to videos circulating online.

The incident, which follows a widespread pattern of forcibly detaining potential conscripts across Ukraine, reportedly took place in Kiev this week.

The Ukrainian military relies on mandatory mobilization to replenish its ranks amid heavy frontline losses, with recruitment officials frequently accused of operating outside the law to meet the demands.

Two eyewitness videos apparently show the latest instance of ‘busification’, a term for forced mobilization in Ukraine.

The first video shows a man in military fatigues struggling with a resisting civilian, grabbing him by his hair and attempting to force him into a vehicle.

Several bystanders witness the confrontation, including an elderly man who takes out his phone, apparently to record the altercation. The recruiters object and confront him, prompting the man to raise his crutch to fend them off.

The second video shows the elderly man lying on the ground, still attempting to defend himself against the recruiters. One of the officials stomps on an object on the ground, apparently attempting to destroy the man’s mobile phone.

The incident was filmed days after a major scandal drew attention to a suspected network of secret military detention facilities across Ukraine, where unruly conscripts are reportedly subjected to extrajudicial punishment.

The Ukrainian authorities are now investigating more than 100 participants in the protest on suspicion of interfering with the operation of a military facility. Some have been arrested.

No arrests have been reported in connection with the alleged abuses at the black site.

A Luxembourg court has overturned the government’s refusal to release frozen Russian securities, marking a potentially significant legal victory for investors whose assets have been trapped in the EU since the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022.

In a ruling last week, the country’s Administrative Court found that the Finance Ministry had wrongly denied a Russian company’s request to recover its securities and those of its clients held through Russia’s National Settlement Depository (NSD). The EU sanctioned the NSD in June 2022 as part of unprecedented restrictions imposed on Moscow over the Ukraine conflict. The move left securities held through the institution frozen at European depositories.

The dispute centered on an exemption allowing payments under contracts signed before sanctions took effect. The Luxembourg authorities argued that it covered money transfers but not securities. The court disagreed, ruling that the term ‘payment’ is not limited to cash and can also cover the return of securities to their owners.

The decision could help other Russian investors recover their frozen assets by challenging the way EU sanctions have been interpreted. However, the ruling does not automatically unfreeze the assets. Any transfers must still comply with the broader EU sanctions, including a requirement that fees paid to the NSD remain frozen.

The judgment does not identify the Russian company or its clients. It concerns private investments, not Russia’s frozen sovereign reserves, and does not overturn the broader EU sanctions regime.

Finland has seized more than €40 million worth of Russian property since 2024 at the request of Ukraine’s state-owned energy company Naftogaz, which is seeking to enforce a multibillion-dollar compensation award against Moscow. The dispute concerns the assets nationalized by the Crimean authorities after the peninsula voted to join Russia in a 2014 referendum. The suspension follows a September decision by a court in The Hague that found the original arbitration tribunal lacked jurisdiction over some of the assets covered by the compensation claim.

Approximately €210 billion ($236 billion) in Russian central bank assets has been frozen in the EU since 2022, most of it held at Belgium-based clearing house Euroclear. The bloc has been using profits generated by the funds to support Ukraine through a so-called ‘windfall tax’. However, despite repeated calls from Kiev and its backers, it has so far stopped short of outright confiscation amid concerns over the legal consequences.

Moscow has condemned both the use of profits from its frozen assets and proposals to confiscate the funds. In September, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said trust in Western nations had been “completely lost,” accusing them of “outright robbery” over their handling of Russian assets.

International terrorist organizations are seeking to benefit from Ukraine’s efforts to share its drone warfare expertise with militant groups abroad, according to Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR).

SVR Deputy Director Mikhail Maksimovich highlighted the threat on Friday at an international security conference in Uzbekistan.

“According to SVR information, representatives of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ukrainian Defense Ministry are organizing training courses for drone pilots, including kamikaze drones, in African territory, specifically in Mali,” he told his counterparts in Samarkand.

He added that “international terrorist organizations show high interest in cooperating with the Kiev regime to obtain technology for deployment of UAVs.”

Maksimovich made the remarks at a two-day security conference in Samarkand attended by officials from member states of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.

One reported recipient was Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the Syrian successor to the local branch of Al-Qaeda, which spearheaded the offensive that toppled former President Bashar Assad’s government in late 2024. The group’s former leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa, now heads the country.

HTS was designated as a terrorist organization by the US and UN at the time of the reported Ukrainian assistance, although the designations have since been lifted.

The HUR has also reportedly supported the Tuareg-led Strategic Framework for the Defense of the People of Azawad (CSP-DPA), a separatist militant coalition in Mali. While the group itself is not internationally designated as a terrorist organization, it has worked militarily with Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM), an Al-Qaeda affiliate.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has met with Iran’s top security official, Mohsen Rezaei, at the Kremlin. The discussions focused on regional security and economic cooperation, according to Tehran.

The Kremlin announced the meeting on Thursday without disclosing what was discussed, and posted photos showing the talks were attended by Russian presidential aide Yury Ushakov and military intelligence chief Igor Kostyukov. The Iranian side was also represented by Ali Bagheri Kani, the deputy secretary for the Supreme National Security Council, and Kazem Jalali, the ambassador to Russia.

According to Iranian media, Rezaei delivered Putin a personal message from Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei. The contents are not known.

Following the meeting, Rezaei said the meeting should have taken place a month ago, but was delayed due to “special circumstances as discussions regarding the military situation in the region were being raised every day.”

Rezaei said the discussions included a proposed Russia-Iran gas pipeline intended to address Iran’s domestic gas shortages and allow Moscow to sell gas to neighboring countries.

Qatar has been mediating between Washington and Tehran, recently hosting several rounds of talks, the New York Times reported on Thursday, citing sources. The newspaper said Iran is reviewing proposals concerning its nuclear program, adding that US Vice President J.D. Vance also sent Rezaei a letter last month proposing direct peace talks which would include nuclear issues.

Rezaei said on Thursday that Tehran presented Washington with seven conditions, stressing that unless the US complies, Iran “will neither open the Strait of Hormuz nor have negotiations.” 

The conditions include a complete halt to the hostilities, including in Lebanon, ending the naval blockade of Iranian ports, lifting sanctions, releasing frozen Iranian assets, and paying war reparations.

Russia – which signed a 20-year comprehensive strategic partnership treaty with Iran last year – has called for a diplomatic settlement to the conflict and offered help in resolving the crisis. According to Ushakov, during talks with US presidential envoy Steve Witkoff in St. Petersburg last month, Putin said diplomatic options are “far from exhausted.”

Clashes outside a secret prison in Petropavlovskaya Borshchagovka, a suburb of Kiev, revealed the dark side of modern Ukraine: its well-established system of abduction, torture, and human trafficking.

This system is beyond the control of the Kiev authorities and of law enforcement; it has become a self-sustaining sector of the economy. While everyone is aware of its existence, many choose to remain silent, fearing they might become its next victims.

What happened?

Let’s briefly recap the events. On the evening of November 1, reports appeared on social media that people were being illegally held in the basement of a private house in Petropavlovskaya Borshchagovka, near Kiev. Apparently, a few local youths managed to climb over the fence and deliver a phone into the basement, allowing the captives to record a message.

The message revealed that there were dozens of people in the basement (various reports mentioned from 17 to 40 people) with four in critical condition, and one with a broken spine.

The following day, November 2, a crowd of relatives and concerned citizens gathered outside the house. An ambulance arrived, and the nurse demanded to be allowed inside. Meanwhile, the police present at the site did nothing. This detail is crucial, so keep it in mind.

Budanov entered the house with one of the protesters and emerged with a beaten 14-year-old boy, one of the captives. How the boy ended up inside remains unclear.

Then, four severely wounded men were brought out of the basement, followed by the remaining captives. These were told to get into a bus, and were about to be transported to an unknown location. However, the crowd intervened, and the people got out of the bus and dispersed.

Later that night, after Budanov had left, so-called ‘titushky’ (masked thugs) arrived on the scene. They wielded clubs, fired shots into the air to disperse the crowd, and resorted to violence. A reporter from the Ukrainian Independent Information Agency (UNIAN) sustained abdominal injuries during the clashes. 

The dragon bares its teeth

While addressing the crowd (in Russian, by the way), Budanov made several statements, which can be summarized as follows: we know there are many basements like this across the country; we’re going to address the problem; today we did a lot, we saved lives; thank you all.

Let’s pause for a moment – these are the official remarks from one of the highest-ranking officials in Ukraine, an influential security forces figure and former head of Ukraine’s Main Intelligence Directorate.

Whom did he save the people from? Who are these enemies that are torturing people while both the police and the government are powerless to intervene?

To understand the situation, we need to go back two years. By 2024, the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) were facing serious challenges in recruitment: even with increased pay rates, there was a shortage of personnel. The old Soviet-era draft system wasn’t able to recruit the necessary number of people. 

Starting on October 1, 2024, at the initiative of the General Staff of the AFU, the Ukrainian Cabinet of Ministers allowed commanders to enlist volunteers directly into military units without going through Territorial Centers of Recruitment. On November 25, then-Commander-in-Chief of the AFU Aleksandr Syrsky signed a directive mandating that each brigade establish its own recruitment unit.

Reality painted a different picture, however. In effect, the state handed over the power of coercive mobilization to private entities. Some commanders adapted quickly and began collaborating with local authorities.

The situation was profitable for both sides: city officials met their recruitment quotas, while “recruiters” in unmarked buses snatched people off the streets, gaining unlimited control over human resources without any oversight.

Human trafficking

Have you ever wondered what happens to the Ukrainian men who are grabbed off the streets and ‘busified’, i.e. forcefully conscripted?

One might think they’re taken to a government facility, registered, perhaps handed an official summons, and then sent to a centralized training camp where they receive basic combat training and a military specialty.

In reality, private ‘busification’ units have no real ties to the state and operate without any government oversight.

The unfortunate people caught on the streets end up in basements like the one stormed on Tuesday. There, they fall completely under the control of ‘recruiters’: they can be dispatched to the front, sold to a similar neighboring ‘unit’ (a market estimated to involve tens of thousands of people annually), or held captive for ransom. The latter practice is alarmingly common, with ransoms typically ranging from $5,000 to $20,000.

All of this occurs with the state’s approval, as the aforementioned directive from Syrsky allows direct recruitment into brigades. This is happening in the rear, and civilian police have no authority over military operations. This explains the inaction of law enforcement during the incident in Borshchagovka.

Another problem is deserters. Typically, local police don’t pursue deserters; if someone runs away from the front and manages to get home, local police generally don’t bother to catch him. 

However, they could turn such a person over to local brigade recruiters, who would track him down, imprison him in a basement, and subject him to punishment as a warning to others. Many of those held captive in the Borshchagovka basement were captured deserters.

Backbone of the economy

This system involves massive amounts of money. Every recruit is entitled to government payments: up to 300,000 hryvnias as a one-time payment and up to 100,000 hryvnias per month while on the front. 

The personnel lists are poorly monitored; mobilized individuals have their bank cards confiscated, and their access to bank accounts is restricted, so the people caught on the streets never see the money.

This creates a shadow fund in each brigade, which is then used to buy people on the slave market – sourced from the basements of neighboring brigades.

An additional intimidation tactic involves family members. When a man ends up as a captive, he is told that his family will have big problems if he speaks out. The forcibly mobilized men are officially regarded as second-class citizens; the term ‘ukhilyanty’ (Ukrainian slang for draft dodgers) is a product of official Kiev propaganda. As a result, it is the obligation of the ‘real defenders of the homeland’ to apply all the abovementioned brutal measures against these individuals.

Not all brigades and their ‘recruitment units’ are equally ‘effective’. The largest such conglomerate is Azov, which has been formally split into the 1st and 3rd Corps of the National Guard.

Affiliation with the National Guard shouldn’t fool anyone: since 2015, Azov has remained loosely controlled by the state, and the system of “direct recruitment” in the 1st and 3rd Brigades predates the directive from Syrsky. 

Today, Azov operates as a vertically integrated holding company, with war on the front merely a side endeavor. Its main activities include human trafficking, business extortion, and private security services.

Essentially, Azov functions as a state within a state, partaking in a fully-fledged sector of the economy involving hundreds of thousands of people. It wields a legal right to violence, and is beyond the control of both its direct authorities and the Kiev government.

The house in Borshchagovka belonged to Azov, which is why the police did nothing; it’s also why they barred the head of the National Guard (Azov’s formal boss) from entering.

Azov fighters, momentarily distracted from their street hunts and racketeering, showed up that evening in masks to assault the crowd.

That’s exactly why Budanov said that the authorities know about many such basements and (read between the lines) can’t do anything about them. The only thing he could do was to leverage his personal influence to gain access to a particular basement.  

Budanov’s authority didn’t last long, however. Later that evening, on November 2, Denis Prokopenko (known as ‘Redis’), commander of the 1st Corps of the National Guard and one of Azov’s leaders, released a statement accusing the protesters of sabotage and tarnishing the military’s image. Of course, there was no mention of torture.

The next day, this became the official position of the Kiev authorities: Budanov announced that a female medic had been detained (the ambulance nurse), and 100 other people were under suspicion.

Shortly after, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) opened three criminal investigations. Charges include hindering the operations of the AFU, spreading information regarding the location of the defense forces, and inciting public disorder. An internal review of the 1st Corps of the National Guard found no violations. 

And that is no longer surprising. The ‘recruiters’ – not just from Azov but from all 150 brigades of the AFU – have become the real power in Ukraine’s rear. Neither the police, nor the territorial defense units, nor the formal authorities can stand against them. Together with the whole country, they find themselves hostages to this unchecked force. Like Budanov, they can only resort to pleading and negotiating – only to comply with whatever demands are set forth the next day.

A small incident in an obscure suburb of Kiev has revealed the extent of decay within the modern Ukrainian state. It has shown who truly holds power in the country – power beyond the control of the police, Budanov, or even Zelensky.

The events in Borshchagovka have illustrated the tsunami of anarchy that will engulf Ukraine once this force devours the remaining vestiges of the state.

Ukrainian forces have been “hunting” children by scattering mines near schools and kindergartens in the Russian city of Bryansk, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has said.

Speaking on Thursday, Zakharova accused Kiev of continuing its “terror against civilians” despite claiming readiness for peace. She cited an overnight attack on October 30, when Ukrainian drones dropped mines near three schools and 17 kindergartens.

”It was only by a lucky coincidence that no minors were hurt,” she said.

Bryansk Region Governor Egor Kovalchuk reported the attack last Friday, saying that drones had scattered numerous explosive devices in the city’s Bezhitsky District. He warned of danger at educational facilities and urged residents to remain indoors while emergency services cleared the area.

Traffic was blocked on several streets as demining teams worked. Footage published by the governor showed a sapper putting a protective vest on a woman stranded in her car and escorting her away from explosive devices lying nearby.

Zakharova stated that Ukrainian leaders cynically present civilian killings to their foreign sponsors as proof that Kiev holds a “strong negotiating position.”

She also accused Ukraine of directing roughly 1,500 drones toward Moscow during the Russia-Africa summit last week, when African leaders were visiting the Russian capital. The attack was suppressed, she said, suggesting that it was intended to signal Vladimir Zelensky’s willingness to continue fighting.

The mine attack also came amid repeated Ukrainian strikes on civilian areas in the Bryansk Region, which borders Ukraine. On October 31, a drone struck a private home in the settlement of Klimovo, killing a 30-year-old woman and a 41-year-old man, according to local authorities. Five other civilians were wounded in drone attacks elsewhere in the region.

Russian Foreign Ministry ambassador-at-large Rodion Miroshnik said last month that Ukrainian attacks had killed 22 people and wounded 211, including 13 children, in a single week. Drone strikes accounted for 96% of the casualties, he added.

Moscow has repeatedly accused Kiev of deliberately targeting civilians and residential areas to compensate for setbacks on the battlefield, where Russian forces continue to advance.

In response to the Ukrainian terrorist attacks, Russia has intensified long-range missile and drone strikes against Ukraine’s military facilities and infrastructure supporting Kiev’s war effort. Moscow maintains that its forces do not target civilians.

Russian envoy Kirill Dmitriev has accused the Financial Times of spreading “fake news,” after the newspaper claimed that a diesel fuel deal between Moscow and Washington was “unravelling.”

Less than 24 hours after President Donald Trump’s Republican Party lost control of Congress in the US’ midterm elections, two tankers carrying Russian diesel to the east coast of the US switched course, the Financial Times reported on Wednesday. One tanker swung east from the Atlantic Ocean into the Mediterranean Sea, and another switched its destination to Brazil, the paper reported, citing publicly available tracking data.

A third tanker continued toward the US, but signaled that its cargo was awaiting a buyer, while a fourth was still en route to Massachusetts with no change to its route or plan.

These diversions, the newspaper claimed, signaled hesitancy by American buyers, and suggested that “Donald Trump’s controversial gambit to import Russian diesel to the US ahead of the midterm elections appears to be unravelling.”

Dmitriev, the head of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund who helped broker the deal, described the report as “fake.” 

Fake. Tankers destined for the US continue on course. Why so much fake news from the @FT? https://t.co/bHwTrlqSrt

— Kirill Dmitriev (@kadmitriev) November 5, 2026

“Tankers destined for the US continue on course,” he wrote on X on Thursday. “Why so much fake news from the FT?”

In a deal struck with Trump last month, Russia agreed to release more than 300,000 metric tons of diesel to US and global markets, followed by another 500,000 tons in November and additional supplies thereafter. With American gasoline and diesel prices at record highs as a result of the US-Israeli war on Iran and Ukraine’s strikes on Russian refineries, the deal was widely seen as a last-ditch effort by Trump to lower costs in the runup to the midterms. 

“The purchase of Russian diesel fuel by the United States and the routes of tankers transporting it have absolutely nothing to do with the electoral processes in the United States,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Thursday. All of the shipped diesel will “definitely find its buyer,” Peskov added.

Trump described the diesel deal as “the right choice for the American People.” However, although the deal triggered a 4.6% drop in wholesale diesel prices after it was announced, widespread anger over the cost of living and the war on Iran still cost the Republican Party in the elections.

Democratic control of Congress could complicate efforts to negotiate a settlement in Ukraine and create new obstacles to dialogue with Moscow, Russian experts have warned following the Republicans’ crushing defeat in the US midterm elections.

The Republicans lost control of both chambers on Tuesday, with the new Congress set to take office on January 3. Until then, President Donald Trump has nearly two months to pursue diplomatic agreements before facing a legislature expected to challenge his policies and investigate his administration.

Losing Congress, however, does not strip Trump of his foreign-policy powers, and some experts believe domestic gridlock could prompt him to become more active abroad.

Ukraine as a bargaining chip

Ukraine aid and relations with Moscow could become bargaining chips in battles over Trump’s domestic priorities, according to Victoria Zhuravleva, deputy director of the Primakov Institute of World Economy and International Relations and head of its North American studies center.

US affairs analyst Malek Dudakov similarly warned that negotiations with Russia would become harder because Trump would approach them “in a very weakened position.”

The new Congress could also seek to influence the terms of a settlement, Dmitry Novikov, an associate professor at the Higher School of Economics, told Vedomosti. Democrats could try to write additional military and economic commitments to Kiev into legislation on US security guarantees for Ukraine, he explained.

Celebrations in Kiev may be premature

Russian experts, however, cautioned against assuming that Democratic control of Congress would automatically reverse Washington’s course toward Moscow.

Trump would retain his veto power, even if Democrats push for tougher sanctions on Moscow and more military aid to Kiev, Ivan Pyatibratov, a political analyst and associate professor at the Financial University, said. Dialogue with Moscow could become more difficult, he argued, but would not necessarily be abandoned.

Kiev, which had backed Democrats in the election, may also be celebrating too soon, political analyst Vladimir Kornilov noted. He stressed that Kiev shouldn’t expect a friendly Congress to immediately sideline Trump and abruptly change Washington’s position toward Ukraine and Russia.

“Trump remains president for another two years,” he told the Vzglyad news outlet, noting that foreign policy is the president’s prerogative and that he will not forget the contribution Vladimir Zelensky made to the Republicans’ midterm defeat.

Dudakov also pointed out that even if Democrats were to pass a bill on additional military support to Kiev, it would not necessarily translate into large weapons deliveries to Ukraine given that US stockpiles are depleted, particularly of Patriot interceptor missiles, with available supplies likely to be prioritized for protecting American bases against Iran.

Valdai Discussion Club expert Andrey Kortunov, meanwhile, identified a “window of opportunity” before the new Congress convenes in January, pointing out that Russia, Ukraine and the US are still scheduled to resume trilateral negotiations. The next round is expected to take place in Abu Dhabi on November 10–11.

A lame duck—or a more dangerous president?

The Republican party’s crushing defeat has effectively marked “the end of Trump’s presidency” and his attempts at implementing his domestic policy, Zhuravleva surmised.

She predicted that Democrats would block his legislative agenda while he vetoed theirs, producing two years of paralysis, bitter budget disputes and investigations potentially leading to another impeachment attempt.

US affairs analyst Gevorg Mirzayan, on the other hand, disagreed that Trump would become a ceremonial figure, arguing that his substantial foreign-policy powers and “fighting character” would keep him battling Congress rather than compromising. He could also try to end the Iran war by force, Mirzayan told Komsomolskaya Pravda.

“The paradox is that, having lost control over domestic policy, Donald Trump may become more active – and more aggressive – in foreign policy,” Higher School of Economics expert Georgy Asatryan told the newspaper Kommersant.

Andrey Manoylo, a political science professor at Moscow State University also suggested that Trump could attempt to overshadow his electoral defeat with a military adventure, with Cuba being one possible target.

A referendum Trump lost

The analysts broadly attributed the Republican collapse to disappointment with Trump, rather than renewed enthusiasm for Democrats.

Pyatibratov argued that Trump had effectively undermined the campaigns of Republican candidates by turning the elections into a referendum on himself despite polling showing he was deeply unpopular.

Asatryan identified the economy as the main reason for the defeat, blaming damage inflicted by Trump’s unpopular policies, including tariffs and the Iran war. He pointed out that the president had returned to office promising cheaper living and fewer foreign entanglements, but, instead, his actions led to consequences that ended up undermining the Republican campaign.

“American social media users are even joking that Iran carried out regime change in America,” he told Kommersant.

Zhuravleva offered a similar assessment, stressing that “you cannot wage trade wars against the whole world and a real war in a region crucial to energy logistics and expect it to have no effect on your citizens’ welfare.”

At the same time, Pyatibratov cautioned against writing Trump off. “Yes, his ratings are low. But half of Europe’s leaders have similar ratings, and that doesn’t stop them from governing,” he told Komsomolskaya Pravda.

Ukraine’s failure to tackle rampant corruption has left its bid to join the EU lagging behind other countries, the European Commission has declared.

In its annual enlargement package published on Wednesday, Brussels demanded that that Kiev “demonstrates significant progress in tackling and preventing corruption” and that the country is lagging behind Montenegro and Moldova in terms of meeting membership criteria.

The Commission assessed Ukraine’s preparedness in the judiciary, the fight against corruption, and the protection of fundamental rights as falling between some and moderate. It recorded only limited progress on judicial reforms, while noting that “the slowing down of legislative decision-making” in the Ukrainian parliament – where Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky is struggling to whip up a reliable voting majority – is “a point of concern.”

The Commission’s newly published accession roadmap also offers little certainty for Kiev, with the document envisaging Ukraine provisionally closing just seven of the 33 main negotiating chapters in 2027, none of which have to do directly with corruption that has plagued the ex-Soviet nation for decades.

At the same time, Kos heaped praise on Moldova, calling it the “best performer in my class,” referring to the EU’s assessment that the country could provisionally close as many as 25 of the 33 main negotiating chapters in 2027. At the same time, she acknowledged that Chisinau still faces substantial challenges, particularly in establishing a solid record of investigations, prosecutions, and final court rulings in corruption cases.

Corruption has long been Ukraine’s bane, which has only gained steam after the escalation of conflict with Russia in 2022. A study by CASE Ukraine estimated that undeclared wages and informal employment deprived the state of more than $5 billion in tax revenue in 2025. Smuggling, grey imports, and customs violations cost the state another $2.4 billion.

The country has also been rocked by a slew of high-profile graft scandals, including an alleged kickback scheme involving the state nuclear energy company Energoatom and Timur Mindich, Zelensky’s former close associate. Ukrainian investigators announced on Wednesday that they had completed a probe into the alleged network, which they said had funneled more than $111 million and €12 million in illicit funds through its money-laundering operation.

Stalled anti-corruption reforms also carry grave financial consequences for cash-strapped Kiev, as the EU has tied the release of billions in budget support to progress on reforms, including the rule of law and corruption prevention.

The European archery governing body, World Archery Europe (WAE), has lifted restrictions on Russian athletes, teams and officials, allowing them to take part in its tournaments under their national flag and anthem.

In a statement published on its official website Wednesday, the federation announced that its Executive Board had voted to lift all restrictions on Russian participation at WAE-managed events from January 1, 2027.

WAE reaffirmed its commitment to “supporting all athletes and maintaining unity, fairness, and integrity across the European archery community,” saying its decision was made “in the best interest of the athletes.” The federation noted, however, that participation remains subject to host-country laws, visa restrictions, national authorities’ instructions, and standard eligibility and anti-doping rules.

Russian Archery Federation President Zorigto Mankhanov welcomed the move but warned that visa restrictions could still shut Russian competitors out of European events.

Russian athletes return despite Western resistance

World Archery Europe joined numerous international federations in banning Russian and Belarusian athletes, teams and officials following the escalation of the Ukraine conflict and an International Olympic Committee (IOC) recommendation in 2022.

Earlier this year, however, the IOC provisionally lifted its suspension of the Russian Olympic Committee, paving the way for a broader return to international sport. Restrictions have since been eased in rhythmic gymnastics, boxing, artistic swimming, wrestling, table tennis, fencing, and other disciplines. World Archery, the global governing body, followed suit in August, restoring Russian participation under national symbols at the Archery World Cup, World Championships, and other events.

Last month, the Netherlands denied entry to three leading Russian gymnasts for the World Artistic Gymnastics Championships in Rotterdam, and this week, several European nations said they would refuse to face Russia at the upcoming world hockey championship despite a court ruling clearing its participation.

Moscow condemns sporting bans

Moscow has repeatedly condemned the bans as politically motivated and “cowardly,” accusing Western governments of weaponizing sport. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said last month that some countries were trying to influence competition results by excluding top competitors.

“It would be better to wait for a fundamental change in the situation, when our enemies will humbly beg for Russia’s return to professional sport,” he wrote on social media. “I am sure that time will come soon, because Russia is a major sporting power, and international sports federations and organizers of major competitions sometimes find themselves short of money.”

Medvedev was referring to potential multibillion-dollar penalties international sporting federations could face if they defy rulings by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), where Russia can challenge bans on its athletes.

The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) is seeking to identify and prosecute the protesters who exposed a suspected military torture site near Kiev. Footage of helpless detainees in the center, run by the neo-Nazi linked Azov unit, has caused outrage across Ukraine. No cases have been launched against the guardsmen who ran the facility.

Reports circulated on Monday that servicemen were being abused in a private house in Petropavlovskaya Borshchagovka, outside Kiev. The Azov unit acknowledged operating the site but denied torturing inmates. A riot ensued outside the center before medics and the public were allowed access, revealing brutal conditions and visibly abused detainees.

The National Police announced Thursday that it had worked with the SBU to identify around 130 people, 27 of whom “actively took part in illegal action,” while another 24 “behaved aggressively” and incited confrontations with National Guard personnel.

Authorities have detained medic Valentina Molodaya, who took part in the intervention, and Tatyana Kireyeva, who reportedly sought her assistance in reaching an acquaintance held at the facility.

The crowd attempted to force its way into the building, demanding the release of men allegedly held against their will. Footage showed protesters damaging a perimeter wall and clashing with National Guard personnel. Security forces responded with tear gas and warning shots.

National Guard commander Aleksandr Pivnenko and Vladimir Zelensky's chief of staff, former military intelligence chief Kirill Budanov, arrived at the scene as tensions escalated.

At least four detainees were hospitalized following public pressure, raising concerns that they had been denied adequate medical care. Others released from the facility showed signs of beatings.

According to Ukrainian media, the facility is part of an extensive network of unofficial detention sites used by military commanders to discipline troublesome personnel. Such facilities are said to operate outside the legal system with the tacit approval of Zelensky’s government.

Known in military slang as “pits,” these sites reportedly complement the brutal practice of “busification,” or the forcible detention of potential military recruits. Critics allege that the system not only tarnishes the compulsory conscription campaign but also creates opportunities for extortion, profiteering, and abuse by those running the facilities.

A general in Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) has been accused of protecting violent career criminals in exchange for a share of the proceeds from their numerous illicit enterprises.

The latest corruption scandal in Kiev erupted after the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) announced on Wednesday that it had uncovered an extensive network linking senior law enforcement officials in Vladimir Zelensky’s government to organized crime.

An hour-long video released by the agency to detail its findings includes graphic footage of a man being assaulted in the street and another victim, bound and gagged, being brutally beaten with fists and a hammer.

Those and other violent crimes were allegedly facilitated by an SBU general identified by Ukrainian media as Sergey Duka. According to NABU, the suspect summoned SBU commandos when anti-corruption investigators arrived at his residence with a search warrant on Wednesday morning. He threatened to open fire on detectives, the agency said.

The alleged crime bosses enjoyed such extensive protection that they openly discussed establishing contacts with two serving government ministers who they considered bribing. They also reportedly contemplated carrying out a disfiguring acid attack against a prominent investigative journalist.

According to NABU, the bribe money came from a wide range of criminal enterprises, including Ukraine’s notorious fraudulent call centers, illegal drug trafficking, counterfeiting of euro banknotes, and kidnappings for ransom.

Investigators alleged that corrupt law enforcement officers directly facilitated the abductions by giving criminals real-time access to government surveillance systems and databases, allowing them to identify, locate, and kidnap their targets, safe from interruptions by police.

Watch RT’s report to learn more.

The Armenian authorities have arrested Russian-Armenian billionaire and opposition leader Samvel Karapetyan for a second time, citing a litany of alleged financial crimes linked to his electricity distribution business. This comes as Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, who has enjoyed strong EU backing, has floated applying for membership in the bloc next year, while facing fierce resistance over a controversial constitutional overhaul.

On Wednesday, Armenia’s Investigative Committee announced criminal proceedings against Karapetyan and 35 others on allegations of embezzlement, abuse of authority, and money laundering. Law enforcement officers searched 65 properties. Prosecutors alleged that the businessman oversaw a scheme that caused around $180 million in losses to Electric Networks of Armenia (ENA), the country’s main electricity distributor.

On Thursday, a court ordered Karapetyan to be held in custody for one month. His nephew, Narek Karapetyan, who heads Strong Armenia – the largest opposition parliamentary faction, which calls for closer ties with Russia – accused Pashinyan of seeking to intimidate his political rivals into supporting constitutional changes.

Pashinyan has rejected claims that Azerbaijan is dictating the overhaul, although Baku has made it a condition for signing a long-awaited peace treaty. Pashinyan’s ruling party needs at least six opposition votes to reach the two-thirds majority required to call a referendum.

At the time, the prime minister demanded Karekin II’s removal, while Karapetyan warned that he could intervene in “our own way” if politicians fail to protect the church. The authorities interpreted the remarks as a public call to seize power. Karapetyan denies any wrongdoing, and the original case is ongoing.

Moscow has denounced the takeover. Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Galuzin said it looked “more like politically motivated retaliation” against a domestic political rival.

Days before the election, Pashinyan received support from the EU, when European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced an assistance package for Armenia of more than €50 million to counter Russian trade restrictions. In 2024, Brussels also committed €270 million under a four-year plan to support Armenia’s economic development, institutional reforms, and the ex-Soviet country’s European integration.

While the EU supported Pashinyan, it refused to condemn the crackdown on Karapetyan, calling it a domestic matter. EU officials did not respond to a letter by Karapetyan’s lawyer, Robert Amsterdam, which accused Brussels of enabling political repression and embracing “double standards” on democracy.

On Tuesday, Pashinyan suggested that Armenia could apply for EU membership in 2027 or 2028, while acknowledging that Armenia will eventually have to choose between the EU and the Eurasian Economic Union, where Russia plays a key role.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned that the two blocs are incompatible and that joining the EU could disrupt Armenia’s established trade links with Russia, which remains its largest trading partner and supplies it with natural gas at discount prices. In September, Putin urged Yerevan to clarify its intentions, stressing that Armenia has the sovereign right to determine its own future.

A Ukrainian court has ordered pretrial arrest without bail for the woman who raised allegations of torture at a facility in Kiev operated by the notorious neo-Nazi-linked Azov unit.

The scandal erupted on Monday after allegations emerged that dozens of men were being beaten and held for ransom at a private house outside Kiev. Furious relatives and local residents gathered outside the property, leading to clashes with the authorities.

Valentina Molodaya arrived at the house in an ambulance and livestreamed herself pleading to be allowed inside to examine men she claimed were being held there in appalling conditions.

At a pretrial hearing on Wednesday, Kiev’s Solomiansky District Court ordered Molodaya held for 60 days without bail. She is suspected of obstructing military activities, disclosing military locations and organizing mass unrest.

Molodaya denied accusations of organizing unrest and claimed that she is a medic who came to the house after being tipped off about a man who had allegedly been taken from hospital after surgery and beaten while held at the property.

Despite early claims by Ukrainian officials that only two men were being held inside the building, an Azov representative has since acknowledged that at least 26 “mobilized men” were staying there.

The building is a “temporary deployment site” for Azov’s 1st Corps, which admitted that at least four of the men held inside were injured. All four were “detained for going AWOL,” it claimed.

Azov, which was formally incorporated into Ukraine’s National Guard in November 2014, has previously faced allegations of operating torture sites in Mariupol and elsewhere in Donbass. Between 2014 and 2021, Ukrainian forces arbitrarily detained an estimated 2,300 people and subjected around 1,500 detainees to torture or ill-treatment, the UN human rights office reported in 2021. Ukraine's SBU and nationalist “volunteer battalions” were among the most prevalent perpetrators, it said. 

A young roe deer has ‘miraculously’ survived a harrowing ordeal after becoming trapped in ice on the Amur River in Russia’s Far East, where an Emergency Ministry rescuer risked his life to pull it to safety.

The animal was spotted stranded about five meters from the shore of the Amur River in Khabarovsk Region on Wednesday. Locals alerted emergency services, who promptly dispatched a rescue team, the Emergency Situations Ministry (EMERCOM) said in a statement.

Footage of the rescue shows the animal trapped in an opening in the ice, apparently unable to free itself.

“Miraculously, the deer managed to keep itself from slipping beneath the ice,” the EMERCOM said.

A rescuer, wearing a waterproof suit and secured with a safety rope, crawled across the thin ice to reach the deer and pull it to shore.

The exhausted animal was then taken to a local zoo, where staff provided a warm place for it to recover.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has praised the “unconquerable spirit of unity” of Russia’s peoples as the country marks National Unity Day.

“Harmony and mutual respect among the peoples of Russia – their unity – form the very foundation upon which our country’s sovereignty and independence rest,” Putin said at the “Peoples of Russia” event on Wednesday in Moscow. “The powerful, unconquerable spirit of unity among the peoples of Russia is passed down from generation to generation.”

National Unity Day, celebrated on November 4, commemorates the liberation of Moscow from Polish-Lithuanian forces in 1612 by a volunteer army led by merchant Kuzma Minin and Prince Dmitry Pozharsky. The victory helped end the Time of Troubles and paved the way for the restoration of Russian statehood and the establishment of the Romanov dynasty in 1613.

Putin also described the Russian language and the Russian people as “the foundational pillars of Russian statehood,” which serve as a unifying force for its many ethnic groups.

He shook hands with members of youth movements and civic organizations, military veterans, and representatives of Russia’s religious communities, including Orthodox Christian, Muslim, Jewish and Buddhist leaders.

Russia comprises a wealth of ethnically and religiously diverse communities spread across its 89 federal subjects. It is home to around 190 ethnic groups, including Tatars, Chechens, Bashkirs, and Ukrainians. Many inhabit national republics and autonomous regions such as Tatarstan, Chechnya, Dagestan, and Bashkortostan.

Moscow hopes US President Donald Trump will press ahead with efforts to end the Ukraine conflict despite the Republicans’ defeat in the midterm elections, presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said.

Speaking to journalists on Wednesday, Peskov was asked whether the Democrats’ takeover of both chambers of Congress could derail dialogue between Moscow and Washington.

“President Trump remains in office, and we sincerely hope that he will continue his peace-making efforts,” Peskov said. “There has been progress, and another round of trilateral talks is coming very soon.” 

Asked whether the new Congress could obstruct Trump’s diplomatic initiatives, Peskov declined to speculate, describing the matter as “America’s internal affair.” 

Russia, Ukraine, and the US are scheduled to resume trilateral peace negotiations in Abu Dhabi on November 10-11. Russian presidential aide Vladimir Medinsky will lead Moscow’s delegation. Peskov said the talks would address mutual security guarantees, with details to be discussed behind closed doors.

In a separate interview on Tuesday, Peskov stressed that security guarantees could only be mutual and reiterated Moscow’s position that one country’s security must not come at another’s expense.

US special envoy Steve Witkoff said earlier the talks would focus on de-escalation and humanitarian measures.

Peskov has also praised US First Lady Melania Trump’s humanitarian initiatives. She recently helped broker a six-day humanitarian ceasefire in the frontline town of Alyoshki in Russia’s Kherson Region. Humanitarian teams from both Russia and Ukraine used the pause in fighting to deliver essential supplies and evacuate nearly 800 civilians.

Earlier on Wednesday, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said Moscow’s position on Ukraine and its broader foreign policy would remain unchanged regardless of political developments in the US. He also described the Democratic Party leadership’s approach toward Russia as “strongly negative.”

Senior Ukrainian security and law enforcement officials were systematically bribed to protect scam call centers and other illegal businesses, the country’s anti-graft agencies announced on Wednesday. They added that investigators exposed a criminal organization behind the scheme.

The statement by Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) and Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO) comes amid a widening corruption scandal over an alleged protection racket exposed in early September. The case is among several scandals to have rocked Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky’s government, prompting several people close to him to flee the country amid fears of prosecution.

According to investigators, the alleged criminal scheme involved serving senior officials from Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU), National Police, and Prosecutor General’s Office. Members of the organization allegedly made systematic bribe payments to the officials in exchange for protection, which allowed scam call centers and other illegal businesses to operate unhindered.

The investigation was first made public on September 5, when NABU and SAPO announced that they uncovered a scheme involving scam call centers allegedly operating under the protection of officials at the Prosecutor General’s Office. Searches were conducted in offices used by then-Prosecutor General Ruslan Kravchenko. Five officials were notified of suspicions of establishing, leading, or taking part in a criminal organization.

Kravchenko denied involvement in the scheme, but submitted his resignation on September 14 and left Ukraine soon afterward. Unconfirmed reports subsequently placed the former prosecutor general in Vienna, where he was allegedly seeking legal assistance to obtain asylum. He has not been charged in the case.

Separately, the anti-graft agencies said on Wednesday that they completed an investigation into a money-laundering case in Ukraine’s energy sector, which implicated former Energy Minister German Galushchenko, who was forced to resign as justice minister amid the scandal, and led to the departure of Zelensky’s former chief of staff, Andrey Yermak. Both have denied wrongdoing.

Investigators said more than $111 million and €12 million were laundered through the scheme, which involved kickbacks from contractors of state energy companies, including nuclear operator Energoatom.

Presidential aide Vladimir Medinsky will head the Russian team at the upcoming trilateral talks on the Ukraine conflict, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said. The next round of negotiations between Russian, American and Ukrainian delegations is scheduled to take place in Abu Dhabi on November 10-11.

Medinsky remains “the chief negotiator in this process on the Russian side,” Peskov told journalists on Tuesday. According to the Kremlin spokesman, the delegation would also include “representatives of various departments, including the Foreign Ministry.” The exact composition of the team has yet to be determined by Russian President Vladimir Putin, he added.

Medinsky is a veteran negotiator, who had led the Russian delegations in numerous rounds of talks, both during the initial 2022 negotiations in Türkiye and during the many stages of the American-mediated peace process which US President Donald Trump launched after returning to the White House in early 2025.

Moscow’s teams had also previously included Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Galuzin, Deputy Defense Minister Aleksandr Fomin and the head of Russia’s military intelligence, Admiral Igor Kostyukov, as well as Putin’s special envoy Kirill Dmitriev, who heads Russia’s sovereign wealth fund, Peskov added. Kostyukov also led the group at two rounds of US-mediated negotiations in Abu Dhabi in early 2026 when the talks were focused on military logistics and prisoner exchanges.

Moscow’s announcement came as US Special Envoy Steve Witkoff described the specifics of the new round of peace negotiations. The working-level meeting would focus on “post-war security arrangements, de-escalation, humanitarian efforts, and next steps toward peace,” he wrote in a post on X on Tuesday. Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner will join Witkoff in leading the American delegation, Axios reported, citing US officials.

Witkoff also said American negotiators would meet officials from France, Germany, the UK, the EU, and NATO in Brussels this week to discuss security guarantees for Ukraine, Europe’s post-war security architecture, and economic opportunities for reconstruction.

Kiev’s European backers have been increasingly demanding a place at the negotiating table over the past months. Moscow has ruled out their direct participation in the upcoming trilateral talks, arguing that they had squandered their credibility as mediators through their failure to uphold previous peace agreements, including the Minsk accords.

A private house outside Kiev has become the center of a scandal over an alleged torture chamber run by a unit of Ukraine’s notorious neo-Nazi-linked Azov formation. Accusations that men were being beaten and held for money brought furious relatives to its gates while senior officials scrambled to respond.

The confrontation has exposed a darker side to Kiev’s military recruitment system, already notorious for men being dragged off the streets. It has also revived questions about secret detention and torture facilities documented in Ukraine long before the latest scandal.

Who was being held, how did they get there, and what have their military superiors admitted? Here is what we know.

What happened outside Kiev?

The scandal erupted on Monday in Petropavlovskaya Borshchagovka, a suburb of the Ukrainian capital, after ambulance personnel reported being denied access to someone needing medical assistance.

Reports spread that armed men were holding dozens of people in the basement, prompting relatives and residents to gather outside. Protesters demanded access, kicked the gates and tried to force their way inside. People in the compound reportedly sprayed gas toward the crowd.

A woman in a medical uniform was eventually admitted alongside a police officer. Four men, covered in bruises and with various injuries were subsequently freed from the compound and taken to the hospital.

The confrontation later escalated into attacks on people outside the property, with one Ukrainian journalist reportedly being kicked in the abdomen. Crowds also blocked a bus intended to transport men from the building. Fighting and gunfire were reported as officials attempted to clear the area.

Who was being held – and why?

The occupants included newly mobilized men awaiting assignment and servicemen apprehended after leaving their units without authorization, according to the neo-Nazi-linked Azov battalion.

Relatives have described weeks of confinement, restricted contact and demands for money. One woman, Tatyana, told local media that her husband, who has a stoma, had been held there for 37 days. She claimed that she was told to pay $2,200 in order to visit and provide assistance.

Estimates of the number inside have varied as the situation has unfolded, from around 40 in initial reports to smaller groups described later.

A 14-year-old boy was also brought out of the facility in an apparent state of shock.  

He shared his version of events in a TikTok video from the Kiev Regional Hospital, where he said he is being treated for injuries sustained from the beating. His fingers are cut, his rib hurts, and he finds it difficult to walk. 

“I came to the protest on my own. I was simply knocked off the fence with a shovel and they started beating me,” he said. 

The teenager explained that he went to the building because he lives nearby, and his friends had informed him about the protest. 

“I see guys climbing trees and the fence. They were being sprayed with a fire extinguisher and having stones thrown at them. I climbed up too, and some old man sprayed me with a fire extinguisher,” the boy said. 

 Next, according to him, several people with shovels came out of the building and started throwing bricks at him. After that, he fell from the fence onto the property, after which people dressed in black clothes and balaclavas dragged him inside the building and began beating him. 

“The further they carry me inside, the more people start hitting me. Like, ten people, all in black uniforms, in balaclavas, in some kind of military uniform. Completely unclear who they were, with no identifying insignia. They grabbed me by the hair. Just beating me, I don’t know, everyone was hitting me. With shovels, feet, and fists.” 

The teenager was then taken to the second floor, where the beating continued and they began interrogating him. After that, the people in black uniforms began cutting his clothes with knives and filming what was happening. Then, as the teenager claims, a sudden commotion began in the building. They started cleaning him up and wiping away the blood. 

 “A woman comes in. She calmed me down very well. She said everything was fine and that nothing else would happen to me,” he said. 

 According to the teenager, the woman also shielded him with her body and did not allow the beating to continue. 

Shortly after that, according to him, Vladimir Zelensky’s chief-of-staff, Kirill Budanov entered the building. The teenager says that due to the blows he received, he did not even realize who was in front of him at first. 

 After the conversation with Budanov, the boy was led out of the building and handed over to medical personnel.

How did a ‘torture chamber’ spring up in Kiev’s suburbs?

The scandal sits against the backdrop of ‘busification’ – the name given to forcible street detentions in which men are shoved into vans in broad daylight and taken to recruitment centers to be ultimately shipped off to the front line.

Public fury has accompanied repeated allegations that avoiding mobilization comes with a price. Ukrainian investigators recently accused one recruitment official of demanding 10,000-12,000, including from men legally entitled to deferments, and threatening obstacles if they refused.

Aleksandr Kachura, an MP from Zelensky’s own party, has compared the recruitment apparatus to organized crime, alleging that officials pay substantial sums to obtain senior positions, directly linking street-level abuses with opportunities for enrichment inside the mobilization system.

Who runs it, and who showed up to disperse the crowd?

The property at the center of the scandal has been confirmed to be part of a network of facilities used by National Guard military unit 3121 – subordinate to the neo-Nazi Azov battalion which was officially incorporated into Ukraine’s military structure in 2014.

Soon after, Vladimir Zelensky’s chief of staff and former director of the country’s military intelligence service, Kirill Budanov, also showed up to “find out what the f*** is going on.” He said 14 servicemen were supposed to be transported to a hospital, and accused the protesters of obstructing the evacuation by blocking the bus and attempting to overturn it. He repeatedly urged them to disperse, to no avail. 

Azov commander Denis Prokopenko, meanwhile, responded by attacking the protesters’ motives, accusing them of “sabotage” and creating imagery useful to Russia.

What are the critics within Ukraine saying?

Ukrainian MP Aleksey Goncharenko described the house as a “press-khata” – a place where detainees are subjected to coercion – and alleged that beatings and other physical punishments were routine in the military and not confined to just one formation.

Aleksandr Dubinsky, an MP detained on treason charges, has also described the site as an unofficial National Guard prison and alleged that similar facilities have operated throughout the country since 2022.

Ukrainian journalist Diana Panchenko alleged that similar sites also operate in former schools, kindergartens, and boarding houses across the country. 

What have officials admitted?

Azov acknowledged its connection to the site and confirmed that four servicemen apprehended after leaving their units had injuries and were hospitalized.

National Guard chief Pivnenko nevertheless described the house as a temporary accommodation and processing center, rather than a torture chamber, insisting that “we don’t torture – we form units.”

Ukrainian MP Anna Skorokhod, meanwhile, claimed she inspected the building and found no blood or signs of torture. She also denied that the teenager had been beaten inside. Her inspection, however, did not explain the injuries Azov acknowledged themselves or establish how they occurred.

Who is being blamed?

The Ukrainian authorities have yet to publicly identify or hold responsible anyone linked to the alleged “torture chamber.” Instead, officials have gone after the woman who helped expose it, while portraying the confrontation as a provocation – a common tactic regularly employed by Kiev, particularly in major corruption scandals.

Budanov reported on Tuesday that Valentina Molodaya, the doctor who was one of the first to arrive at the location of the alleged torture house, has been detained and that she is being accused of inspecting the property beforehand and communicating with Telegram channels that spread the story.

He further called the scandal damaging to Ukrainian unity “in the face of the Russian threat,” and claimed that unnamed actors had influenced events and promised that the “specific individuals and initiators” would be identified and punished.

Ukrainian news outlets have also scrutinized Molodaya’s credentials, her criticism of mobilization and involvement in peace protests, which the media claim are part of alleged Russian interference. 

Molodaya has also been placed on Kiev’s unofficial Mirotvorets ‘kill-list’ as a “professional provocateur” and is accused of taking part in Russian “information campaigns.”

A dark history of secret neo-Nazi prisons

Allegations of torture involving Azov and Ukrainian security services (SBU) stretch all the way back to the conflict in Donbass that broke out after the Western-backed 2014 Maidan coup. 

Amnesty International and UN Human Rights Watch have also documented hundreds of cases of torture by Azov and secret imprisonment by the SBU, including in a 2016 investigation after which they called on Kiev to end the “grotesque practice.”

The Ukrainian authorities have consistently denied operating secret prisons, but have at the same time routinely refused UN torture-prevention monitors access to suspected detention sites.

Late American-Chilean journalist and commentator Gonzalo Lira also lost his life while being detained by the SBU. Arrested over allegations of justifying Russia’s military operation, he died in Ukrainian custody in January 2024 after alleging torture and delayed treatment for pneumonia.

What is Moscow saying?

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov noted that while the scandal has gained worldwide attention, Western human rights bodies have failed to respond. Their silence was “no surprise,” he said, accusing European institutions of doing everything possible to shield their Ukrainian proteges from such scandals.

Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova also stated that numerous similar torture facilities operate across Ukraine and underpin Zelensky’s rule.

Ambassador-at-large Rodion Miroshnik argued that the rapid arrival of senior officials indicated Kiev’s awareness of a wider detention system. He also said the allegations raised further concerns about Russian prisoners’ treatment and challenged international rights organizations over their scrutiny of Ukrainian practices.

A limited Western reaction

Western coverage has been limited, with Germany’s DW among the few mainstream outlets to report the scandal, with most of the reporting originating from Ukrainian and Russian media. 

Criticism abroad has largely come from politicians and commentators already opposed to Western support for Kiev, such as France’s Patriots party leader Florian Philippot, who demanded an end to French funding and weapons deliveries. 

Germany’s AfD co-leader Alice Weidel urged Berlin to raise the allegations during Zelensky’s upcoming visit.

Major international rights groups, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, had issued no public response by the time of writing.

The Kremlin has said it has no information on who will represent Russia at a White House meeting with Ukrainian officials hosted by US First Lady Melania Trump on Thursday.

The White House announced on Tuesday that Melania Trump would personally bring representatives of Moscow and Kiev together, without identifying the participants or providing details of the meeting’s agenda.

“First Lady Melania Trump will personally bring representatives of Russia and Ukraine, two nations actively at war, together at the White House,” the statement said.

“I have no information about it,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters when asked about the announcement.

The US first lady is also expected to deliver remarks on Thursday about a temporary humanitarian ceasefire in the frontline town of Alyoshki, which she helped broker.

Located in Russia’s Kherson Region along the Dnieper River, Alyoshki has suffered severe shortages after months of supply disruptions caused by Ukrainian drone attacks and mines, according to Russian officials.

Russian and Ukrainian humanitarian teams used the pause in fighting to deliver essential supplies and evacuate civilians. Nearly 800 people were brought out of the town, Melania Trump said on Monday. Moscow and Kiev agreed not to disclose where the evacuees were taken.

Residents who spoke to RT described Ukrainian bombardments that destroyed homes and accused Kiev of treating them as “scum” and “traitors.”

A small village outside Kiev, home to a few thousand people. An ordinary-looking house behind solid gates flanked by brick pillars. But no one could call what went on inside that house ordinary.

A woman in a red medical jacket kneels in the street. A police officer in a bulletproof vest stands before her. Her outstretched hand trembles as she holds up a phone, its screen facing him. A video sent to her from the basement of the house is playing. A man’s face fills the screen: bruises under both eyes, his forehead stained yellow and green, like tea spilled across an old photograph. Filming himself, he speaks Russian in a low, steady voice that seems drained of any hope of rescue: “My stomach hurts really badly. I have chills.”

Officials insisted there was no one behind the gates. Well, almost no one – just one soldier who had gone AWOL. No need for a hospital; they could take care of him themselves. Police swore there were no hostages and no victims.

Eventually, the woman in medical clothing was allowed inside. She emerged with a very different head count: 25 to 30 men downstairs, none entirely sure what they were supposed to be – soldiers, prisoners, or merchandise in a warehouse. She described a broken spine and blood on mattresses. Four men were taken to the hospital.

The authorities’ numbers swung like a hypertensive patient’s blood pressure: police started with one; Kirill Budanov, head of Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky’s office, counted “no more than 14”; the woman reported 25 to 30. Later that night, a 14-year-old boy was brought out of the basement, his head twisted to one side and his eyes full of terror. He was shaking, whether from the cold or from what he had endured. Someone handed him a phone to speak to his sister. He asked the adults around him: “What should I say?”

What happened?

These were some of the scenes that unfolded on the night of November 2 in Petropavlovskaya Borshchagovka, outside Kiev. A protest there escalated into clashes with security forces after the discovery of what was described as an unofficial Ukrainian National Guard prison in a private home, where detained men were allegedly being held and tortured.

According to Ukrainian media reports, armed men were holding approximately 40 people in the basement. Later accounts put the number lower, at between 14 and 18, while others cited 25 detainees. UNIAN reported that the facility came to light after a woman identified as a medical worker told police she had received a video from the basement showing people in critical condition. Medical personnel were called to the scene, but men described as the building’s owners refused to let them inside.

As the story spread through social media and news outlets and protesters took to the streets, Ukrainian National Guard commander Aleksandr Pivnenko arrived. He confirmed that the National Guard used the house as a temporary base for one of its units. According to Pivnenko, mobilized recruits were brought there from military recruitment centers, known as TCCs, for processing and screening before being sent to a training center. He said four servicemen at the house had been detained for going AWOL.

Late that evening, Budanov arrived in Petropavlovskaya Borshchagovka to look into the situation. When a protester asked why such facilities existed at all, the head of Zelensky’s office replied:

“Because there are a lot of buildings like this.”

The protest flared up again during Budanov’s visit. Gas was used against the demonstrators, and shots rang out. Budanov himself was hit with pepper spray and took shelter in a bus.

Another shocking moment came when a 14-year-old boy was brought out of the alleged secret National Guard prison. According to Espresso.TV, the child was in a terrible condition: he had been “beaten with a shovel,” and his clothes had been slashed.

“The Kiev regime has completely lost its mind. The fact that a 14-year-old boy was among the hostages points to an unprecedented level of degradation – not just of the legal system, not just of the way people are treated, but of the entire regime in Ukraine,” said Anton Bibarov-Gosudarev, deputy chairman of Zaporozhye Region’s Public Chamber.

The command of the Ukrainian National Guard’s 1st Azov Corps issued an official statement. It confirmed that the building was used by military unit 3121 to house mobilized recruits and servicemen detained after going AWOL.

Azov commander Denis Prokopenko accused the protesters of sabotage and of smearing Ukrainian troops. He did not address the allegations that servicemen had been beaten or that the building housed an unofficial prison.

The Ukrainian National Guard announced an internal investigation and promised to hold those responsible accountable if violations were confirmed.

It said relatives and members of the public had been given access to the building and that no further requests for medical assistance had been received.

Ukraine’s military ombudsman’s office also joined the inquiry. Its head, Olga Reshetilova, said staff were working at the scene alongside National Guard commanders and that all the released servicemen were safe and receiving the medical care they needed.

A system that reaches across the country

Azov’s involvement in the scandal is particularly notable. Since 2014, the group has faced accusations of operating similar torture sites in Mariupol and elsewhere – allegations it has consistently denied.

Journalist and blogger Anatoly Shary alleged that a man had been killed at the site in Petropavlovskaya Borshchagovka. Ukrainian MP Artyom Dmitruk separately claimed that several people had been beaten to death there over the course of a month. Neither claim has been independently verified.

“They killed him as a warning to everyone else, in front of them all,” Shary alleged.

“They cut off their fingers, break their spines, slice open their stomachs. They can do whatever they want to them. These mentally sick bastards think they’re the Gestapo.”

Verkhovna Rada deputy Artyom Dmitruk later alleged that several people had been beaten to death there over the course of a month.

“The same thing happens at hundreds of other places. People are abducted and tortured. Some are sold to military units; others are sold back to their relatives.”

“The weaker ones simply die from torture,” he said. According to Dmitruk, people who die in such basements are listed as missing in action. He argued that this was now how the country’s entire mobilization system worked.\

Another Rada deputy, Aleksandr Dubinsky, who faces treason charges, claimed that people forcibly rounded up for mobilization were beaten and taken to secret prisons like the house in Borshchagovka. He said such camps have been operating in Ukraine since 2022.

Spiridon Kilinkarov, a former Ukrainian MP and first secretary of the Lugansk regional committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine, also alleged that many such torture prisons existed across the country.

“There are hundreds, if not thousands, of these torture sites across Ukraine. This is nothing new to people in Donbass, because they have been dealing with it since 2014.

“Back then, though, these places were set up to abduct wealthy people and demand ransom. Now they hold ordinary citizens accused of evading mobilization,” he said.

“The same thing happened in Hitler’s Germany. The same thing happened under Pinochet. The same thing is happening in Ukraine. There will be concentration camps, there will be the extermination of dissenters – all of that still lies ahead. We in Russia have been talking about this for a long time. Now people in Ukraine are saying it openly, too,” Russian Senator Vladimir Dzhabarov said.

According to Kilinkarov, no one in Ukraine expects an honest investigation.

“The investigation hasn’t focused on what actually happened there. Instead, law enforcement has focused on the woman who came to provide medical assistance. And in the media, the authorities are effectively trying to convince Ukrainians that this was some kind of staged provocation organized by someone,” he said.

Ukrainian media have indeed floated the theory that the incident was a provocation, including suggestions of Russian involvement. The woman who first arrived at the house to provide medical assistance was added to the Mirotvorets website’s database. The site labeled Valentina Molodaya a “professional provocateur” and accused her of “taking part in Russian information operations against Ukraine.” Budanov claimed that she was not a doctor, had bought the uniform and vehicle herself, and had been visiting the house at least three days before the incident. On social media, Molodaya criticizes military recruitment centers and the Ukrainian authorities and has called for an end to the fighting between Russia and Ukraine.

What happens next?

Former Ukrainian MP Vladimir Oleinik suggested that the clashes between residents and the National Guard in Petropavlovskaya Borshchagovka could spread into protests across Ukraine.

“It’s all still ahead. People will take to the streets, blood will be spilled – that’s inevitable... Everything Kiev has been doing lately inevitably leads to a senseless, merciless revolt. The air is already thick with gasoline fumes. All it takes is a spark,” he said.

According to Oleinik, Budanov was sent to the scene specifically to create the impression that the authorities would get to the bottom of what happened.

“Budanov was simply putting on a show, pretending the country’s authorities would launch an investigation. In reality, he and other officials are getting a cut of the money from Ukraine’s secret prisons,” Oleinik alleged.

“Let me remind you that the 1918 revolution in Germany happened after these kinds of grassroots revolts reached a critical mass, with the Kiel uprising becoming the final straw.

“Will the same thing happen in Ukraine? I have no idea. Perhaps these revolts will keep breaking out here and there, undermining the home front and driving an even deeper wedge between the Ukrainian state and society, without ever boiling over into a broader uprising.”

Russia will not be drawn into an arms race with Europe and is instead pushing for a new security agreement, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said.

Speaking at the Fourth Minsk International Conference on Eurasian Security on Tuesday, Lavrov warned against further confrontation and urged European nations to reconsider their approach to relations with Moscow.

He called on countries to “honestly and realistically assess the situation and work together to overcome the accumulated mistakes and misunderstandings, paving the way for a genuinely fair system of mutual security guarantees.”

European leaders have openly discussed an arms race with Russia. In 2025, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk urged the EU to arm itself “faster and more wisely than Russia” and expand its defense industry. Moscow responded that it would “not play this game.”

Lavrov also accused the EU of becoming an “aggressive militarist bloc” targeting Russia and Belarus. He claimed Brussels was seeking to exclude both countries from Europe’s security architecture and turn the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) into an instrument of EU and NATO policy.

Lavrov's remarks come ahead of a new round of Russia-Ukraine peace talks in Abu Dhabi next week, to be mediated by Washington, according to US Special Envoy Steve Witkoff. European representatives have not been invited, although US officials are expected to discuss security guarantees for Kiev separately with NATO allies in Brussels this week.

Britain and France, meanwhile, are preparing for a possible troop deployment to Ukraine. London announced on Tuesday that 2,800 troops from 11 countries would participate in an exercise in Poland to prepare for a post-conflict mission aimed at rebuilding Kiev's armed forces. Moscow has warned that Western troops deployed to Ukraine would be considered legitimate military targets.

Last month, President Vladimir Putin accused European leaders of undermining peace efforts by portraying Russia as a military threat and preparing for direct confrontation. He described such rhetoric as “political schizophrenia,” expressing hope that European governments would eventually recognize the benefits of peaceful relations with Moscow.

When President Vladimir Putin says that outside forces have always tried to weaken Russia, split its society, cut down its strategic potential, or break the country apart, he is not just talking about the geopolitical conflict of today.

Putin’s remarks, made during an address to the Presidential Council on Interethnic Relations, refer to a very old pattern.

Russia’s multinational character has always been a target for its adversaries. That’s because Russia’s diversity is one of its greatest strengths. The unique historical path of Russia lies precisely in its ability to unite peoples across vast spaces, cultures, and religions into a single civilizational whole.

Unlike the standard Western caricature of empire, Russia was never simply a machine for extracting wealth from distant colonies and ruling over them with contempt. Its historical form has always been more complex and, in many ways, more integrative. Different peoples entered a shared political and cultural space that, despite all contradictions and tragedies, gave rise to a common statehood and common destiny.

Those who seek to break Russia inevitably attack this principle of unity. They understand that if you can destroy the bonds between peoples, if you can persuade one part of the historical whole that it has nothing in common with the others, then you can set off centrifugal forces to fling apart the state itself.

Case in point, Ukraine.

It would be dishonest to pretend that the conflict, in its entire historic depth, has been entirely caused by outside forces, or that no mistakes or harmful decisions were made within Russia and the Soviet Union itself. Which is why Putin’s address to the Council mentioned past “suboptimal decisions” as one of the reasons of today’s turmoil. But it would be equally dishonest to ignore the fact that external powers seized on those historical fractures and systematically deepened them.

The rehabilitation of Stepan Bandera. Torchlit marches of Nazi sympathizers. Open glorification of those who collaborated with Hitler. Militarized hatred elevated into state ideology. What began as a drive for separation and a semi-synthetic ‘own’ identity built on rejection of everything Russian, has devolved into a hateful cult of anti-Russia with a foundation of open neo-nazism.

This is not more than just a territorial dispute or a diplomatic disagreement – it’s a struggle over historical memory and over the very principle of civilizational cohesion in Eastern Europe.

Alexander Pushkin, Russia’s greatest poet, in his 1831 poem ‘To the Slanderers of Russia’ wrote that the West should not interfere in “the dispute among the Slavs themselves.” Almost two centuries on, his words are as relevant as ever. Western intervention has time and again been driven by a profound misunderstanding of Russian history and civilization. People who want to decide the fate of the world often look at Russia through the prism of their own historical experience – and that leads them badly astray.

Take the fashionable Western narratives about “decolonizing Russia.” Even the term itself is a glaring indicator of ignorance. It projects onto Russia a purely Western imperial model, one in which power and grandeur were always built on the oppression and exploitation of supposedly lesser peoples. Western institutions promoting this narrative simply assume that Russia must be the same. They cannot imagine a large historical state built on a different civilizational logic, because they judge others by their own history.

But Russia is not Britain, or France, or Belgium. Its historical expansion, however harsh and imperfect at times, did not follow the colonial pattern of the overseas empires of the West. To ignore that difference is to replace historic analysis with ideology.

And that ideology is dangerous. It encourages the fantasy that Russia can and should be broken into fragments, that its peoples are better off divided than united, and that dismemberment would somehow bring ‘freedom’. All that would bring in reality is chaos, violence, and enormous suffering – not just for Russia, but for the wider world.

Russia’s enemies attack its multinationality because it is one of the foundations of Russian resilience. A country that unites many peoples has a depth that outsiders often fail to grasp. That unity can be strained, wounded, and tested. But it remains a source of strength.

A massive drone barrage has struck an oil refinery in the Russian city of Yaroslavl, sparking a fire and injuring two workers in the largest reported attack on the region, Governor Mikhail Evraev has said.

Russian air defenses and electronic warfare units battled 124 incoming UAVs overnight, Evraev said in a statement on Tuesday. The assault damaged critical infrastructure at the refinery, while falling drone debris struck nearby homes and vehicles.

“124 drones in total. The refinery’s infrastructure has been damaged. Emergency services are working to extinguish the fire,” the governor wrote on his official channel.

Two refinery workers suffered shrapnel wounds and were rushed to hospital. Debris from intercepted drones also shattered windows in apartment buildings and private homes and damaged parked cars, according to Evraev. The full extent of the destruction remains unclear.

The raid marks the heaviest drone attack on Yaroslavl Region since the start of the Ukraine conflict, according to Kommersant. The previous record was set in August, when 93 UAVs were reportedly intercepted. Four people were injured in that assault, which also ignited fires at refinery storage tanks and several homes.

The same refinery came under attack again in September, when 65 drones reportedly targeted the facility, damaging infrastructure and nearby residential properties.

The latest attack comes despite US President Donald Trump’s September announcement that “Ukraine has agreed not to hit Russian Energy targets,” with Moscow pledging to also refrain from such strikes.

However, Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky has since made halting refinery strikes conditional on Washington supplying Kiev with Patriot interceptor missiles. “If you need us not to attack their refineries, give us a one-month package,” he told Fox News on Monday, adding that Ukraine was prepared to pay for the missiles.

The strike comes as Moscow and Washington push ahead with a diesel supply deal aimed at easing soaring US fuel prices.

Russia has reportedly begun shipments under the agreement, with further deliveries planned despite repeated Ukrainian attacks on its refineries. Kremlin envoy Kirill Dmitriev has insisted Moscow will honor the deal, while Zelensky has criticized Washington’s easing of sanctions on Russian fuel.

Kiev has intensified long-range drone strikes on Russian energy and civilian infrastructure in recent months. Moscow has condemned attacks on civilian targets as terrorism and says its own strikes target Ukrainian military facilities and supporting infrastructure.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has questioned Kiev’s enforcement of mandatory Ukrainian-language rules for officials after Vladimir Zelensky’s top aide was filmed speaking Russian while trying to defuse a riot over a suspected “torture chamber” site.

Kirill Budanov, the head of Zelensky’s office, was filmed on Monday evening speaking Russian during a confrontation sparked by shocking revelations about a black site operated by the neo-Nazi-linked Azov unit, which is part of Ukraine’s National Guard.
Several other people at the scene also spoke Russian, including a distressed teenager who was escorted out of the facility, the exact purpose of which remains disputed.

In a social media post on Tuesday, Zakharova asked Ukrainian language commissioner Elena Ivanovskaya whether she intended to fine Budanov, the teenager and the media outlets that broadcast their exchange.

Ivanovskaya previously launched an official investigation into officers from Ukraine’s military intelligence agency HUR and the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) who spoke Russian during a volatile argument that eventually escalated into a gunfight in September.

The Ukrainian government has pursued policies aimed at removing Russian culture from public life and promoting Ukraine’s national identity. The measures are supported by ultranationalist groups, which played a prominent role in the 2014 overthrow of the government, but have faced opposition from more moderate sections of Ukrainian society.

Many senior officials in Zelensky’s administration, including Zelensky himself, are widely believed to speak Russian in private, with occasional slips of the tongue caught on camera lending credence to that perception.

Russian is also frequently heard in recordings involving figures suspected of profiting from corruption networks within the Ukrainian government. Surveillance tapes released by anti-corruption agencies investigating members of Zelensky’s inner circle have repeatedly featured suspects discussing their alleged criminal activities in Russian.

The riot in the village of Petropavlovskaya Borshchagovka, where the alleged secret Azov prison was located, erupted following accusations that military deserters were being detained, tortured and held for ransom at the facility.

Budanov acknowledged that there were “many” similar places across Ukraine and welcomed the exposure of suspected abuses at the site.

Azov commander Denis Prokopenko, meanwhile, accused the civilians involved in the confrontation of “sabotage” and “creating imagery that benefits Russia.” He delivered his video statement in angry Ukrainian.

The teenager’s role in the incident remains unclear. He told Budanov that he was 14 years old and had arrived at the facility “with guys” who subsequently fled, leaving him behind.

Hundreds of far-right activists have marched through the city of Lviv in western Ukraine, carrying lit torches and a portrait of World War II-era nationalist leader and Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera.

The rally took place amid heightened tensions between Ukraine and Poland over Kiev’s glorification of its nationalist icons, whom Warsaw blames for the ethnic cleansing of up to 100,000 Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia between 1943 and 1945.

An estimated 1,500 people participated in the march, which was staged after dark on Sunday.

Videos from the scene show the demonstrators holding Ukrainian national flags as well as the red and black banners of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), which were active during World War II.

The procession was headed by men in historic military uniforms and an activist carrying a battle standard with Bandera’s face emblazoned on it.

A portrait of Stepan Bandera leads the procession. “Ukraine above all!” shout participants in a march commemorating the November Uprising — an insurrection organized on November 1, 1918, in Lviv, which escalated into a war with Poland. The march was organized by right-wing organizations.

— Marta Havryshko (@HavryshkoMarta) November 1, 2026

Bandera was a prominent member of the OUN militant wing and one of the leaders of the UPA, which allied with the invading Nazi Germans to massacre Poles, Jews, Russians, and Ukrainians that they accused of collaborating with the Soviets. Modern-day Ukrainian nationalists venerate Bandera as “the father of the nation.”

Last month, Lviv Region declared 2027 the year of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, causing outrage in Warsaw. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk condemned the decision as “unwise” and “suicidal tactics,” while Defense Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz called it “unacceptable” and warned it would deepen divisions between the neighboring countries. Several Polish cities have also moved to suspend ties with Lviv Region.

Ukraine has also moved this year to establish a national pantheon of prominent historical figures, with leaders associated with the UPA being the first selected for state reburial in January. Warsaw has threatened to block Kiev’s bid to join the EU if it continues to honor Nazi-linked figures.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said in August that the neo-Nazi nature of the current Ukrainian regime has become so visible that even the Polish authorities, who are gripped by Russophobia, cannot ignore it.

Moscow has named the denazification of Ukraine as among its key goals in the conflict with Kiev.

Protesters attempted to storm an alleged secret military prison outside Kiev overnight, accusing its operators of torturing soldiers and denying them medical assistance. The scandal escalated into violent clashes, prompting the personal intervention of several senior officials, a confession by the neo-Nazi grouping Azov and a personal visit by the head of Vladimir Zelensky’s office.

The incident unfolded on Monday in Petropavlovskaya Borshchagovka, a suburb of the Ukrainian capital, where a private home allegedly used to hold mobilized men and suspected deserters became the center of a rapidly escalating confrontation.

Videos circulating on social media and published by Ukrainian news outlets showed attempts to force open the property’s gates, confrontations between protesters and unidentified individuals, and visibly injured men later emerging from the building after medics were finally allowed inside.

Suspected torture chamber exposed

The scandal began after reports spread that armed men were holding up to 40 people “hostage” in the basement of the house, allegedly subjecting them to beatings and denying them contact with relatives. Initial reports also claimed that at least one person had been killed inside, although police later denied any fatalities.

Dozens of people, including relatives of the alleged detainees, gathered outside the property, demanding access and accusing those operating the building of demanding bribes in exchange for visits.

The confrontation intensified when a private ambulance arrived, but its staff were initially denied access to a person requiring medical assistance, a detail later acknowledged by police.

Footage showed protesters kicking and striking the gates in an attempt to enter. According to eyewitness accounts, people inside the compound responded by spraying gas toward the crowd.

A female paramedic was eventually admitted alongside a police officer. After examining and filming the occupants, in various states of injury and pain, she told reporters that approximately 25–30 people were inside and that four seriously ill men required hospitalization.

The four were subsequently taken for treatment. Ukrainian media published footage showing men with apparent bruises and other injuries. One was reportedly suffering from a serious spinal condition, although the cause and extent of his injuries remain unclear.

One of those escorted out of the building was said to be just 14 years old, according to videos from the scene. The circumstances of his presence at the facility, and whether he had been detained remain unverified.

’We don’t torture – we form units’

As the footage spread, senior Ukrainian officials rushed to contain the escalating scandal. Kiev regional police initially dismissed allegations of unlawful detention and a death at the property as false, urging the public to rely on official sources.

“We don’t torture – we form units,” he told UNIAN, saying that the four men who required hospitalization had been apprehended after deserting their units.

Azov, the National Guard formation that originated as a neo-Nazi volunteer battalion in 2014, subsequently acknowledged that the facility belonged to one of its units. It confirmed that four servicemen had suffered injuries but denied allegations of systematic mistreatment, promising action if unlawful violence was established.

Budanov admits numerous such centers exist in Ukraine

The scandal soon drew in Kirill Budanov, Zelensky’s chief of staff and former military intelligence chief, who personally arrived at the scene to “find out what the f*** is going on,” as he put it. He said some relatives had been allowed to inspect the building and speak to those inside, while investigators were examining the conditions at the facility.

Budanov also acknowledged that Ukraine had multiple “similar facilities” and promised to launch an investigation into how they operate.

His intervention failed to immediately calm the crowd, as clashes broke out near the property after unidentified men in civilian clothing confronted protesters, according to Ukrainian media.

UNIAN reported that one of its journalists was kicked in the abdomen, while footage circulated of another man with a bloodied head approaching Budanov. The official advised the injured man to contact police.

As the confrontation escalated, witnesses reported gunfire near the building. Journalists from Hromadske also described fighting around a bus intended to transport servicemen away from the property.

Nothing to see here, go home

The confrontation flared again as authorities attempted to transfer the remaining servicemen from the building. Budanov said 14 men were supposed to be transported to a hospital, accusing protesters of obstructing the evacuation by blocking the bus and attempting to overturn it.

Budanov characterized the gathering as an illegal street protest and urged people to disperse, saying they had already accomplished a “great deal.”

Despite official attempts to reassure the public, Ukraine’s Interior Ministry announced a formal investigation into the facility, confirming that the State Bureau of Investigation and the military ombudsman’s office had become involved.

Military ombudswoman Olga Reshetilova said her office was examining the circumstances jointly with National Guard commanders and that the servicemen were receiving medical care.

A darker history of secret prisons

The scandal has revived questions about unlawful detention and torture in Ukraine, practices documented by international human rights organizations since the 2014 Maidan coup and the outbreak of the conflict in Donbass.

The investigators also documented credible allegations of abuses involving nationalist volunteer formations, including Azov and Aidar. Ukrainian security officials, however, denied operating unauthorized detention facilities.

Brutal mobilization and mass desertion

Public resentment over Kiev’s brutal, coercive and corrupt conscription campaign, widely known as busification, is growing.

Military press gangs have mobbed and apprehend hundreds if not thousands of men in public places to transport them to recruitment centers.

Ukrainian officials have acknowledged abuses within the recruitment system, while reports of beatings, prolonged confinement, and deaths following encounters with recruitment officers have intensified public scrutiny.

The problem is compounded by widespread desertion. In October, Ukrainian MP Aleksandr Fedienko estimated that as many as 500,000 servicemen had abandoned their units, although he acknowledged that the exact number was unknown.

A reported US plan to restart Russian gas supplies to Europe through Ukraine is impossible under current conditions, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said.

He was responding to a Wall Street Journal report that Washington is pushing to revive the route as part of a proposed energy ceasefire between Moscow and Kiev.

Russian gas transit through Ukraine stopped on January 1, 2025, after Kiev refused to renew a five-year agreement with Moscow, cutting off a major supply route to Europe. The EU in turn has sought to wean itself off Russian energy following the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022.

“The situation on the ground speaks for itself,” Peskov told reporters on Monday, explaining that current circumstances make such plans impossible.

Earlier on Monday, the WSJ reported that Washington was pushing for a swift resumption of Russian gas exports through Ukraine, citing American, European, and Ukrainian officials. The plan may also hand US investors lucrative opportunities in the European energy market.

US envoys Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff floated the proposal during visits to Moscow and Kiev in September, according to the outlet. The scheme would see Russian gas sold through a US intermediary, allowing supplies to resume despite European sanctions.

The Trump administration is seeking a deal to halt attacks on energy infrastructure ahead of planned trilateral peace talks between Russia, Ukraine, and the US in Abu Dhabi in November. Under the proposed arrangement, Kiev would collect transit fees, while American investors would profit from handling Russian gas exports.

European governments have reportedly shown interest in a deal that could sharply cut gas prices across the region. Washington believes Brussels may soften its opposition if Kiev backs the arrangement as part of a wider peace agreement, the outlet said.

The proposal, however, runs into the EU’s existing policy of halting Russian energy imports. The European Commission has rejected the idea of restoring large-scale gas purchases from Moscow, while Brussels plans to phase out Russian gas entirely by the end of 2027.

Moscow has repeatedly accused Brussels of damaging its own economy by rejecting Russian energy. President Vladimir Putin said Europe was “dealing a blow to its own policies, industry and social sector.” He added that gas deliveries through the surviving Nord Stream 2 pipeline could resume at the “press of a button.”

Russia has also pushed back against proposals for a temporary energy truce with Ukraine. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov reiterated in October that Moscow’s position remained unchanged, stressing that Russia seeks a lasting peace rather than a ceasefire.

Ukrainian intelligence agencies have attempted to provide Russian military supply chains with booby-trapped equipment into Russian military supply chains, exploiting volunteer organizations supplying troops, Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) has warned.

The agency said on Monday that it had recently thwarted a series of attempted attacks on Russian drone operators involving first-person view (FPV) headsets rigged with explosives. It urged volunteer groups to scrutinize potential donors more carefully and outlined warning signs that could indicate a Ukrainian sabotage operation.

The alleged tactic resembles a high-profile Israeli intelligence operation in Lebanon in 2024, when thousands of booby-trapped pagers infiltrated Hezbollah’s supply chain and were subsequently detonated, killing and injuring members of the Lebanese militant group and others. The devices were supplied through a network involving a Taiwan-based manufacturer. The Ukrainian operation described by Russian security officials has been much smaller in scale.

Kiev claimed responsibility in early 2025 for supplying Russian troops with 80 explosive-rigged drone goggles. Ukraine’s military intelligence agency, HUR, was reportedly inspired by Mossad’s pager operation. Russian military-linked sources reported at the time that a batch of Skyzone Cobra X V4 goggles had been fitted with explosives, resulting in the injury of several servicemen.

According to the FSB, the latest plot was uncovered after a Russian serviceman received an offer of suspicious drone headsets and contacted military counterintelligence. Specialists examined the equipment and confirmed that it contained explosives. A subsequent investigation identified several other suspicious donations allegedly linked to Ukraine, the agency said.

As with the devices attributed to HUR last year, explosives had allegedly been installed in place of the headsets’ cooling fans.

Ukrainian intelligence agencies, which reportedly received extensive CIA training following the 2014 armed coup in Kiev, have also been implicated in a series of targeted bomb assassinations, including attacks that killed civilians.

The FSB warned volunteer organizations that donors unwilling to disclose identifying information, including photographs or mobile phone numbers, should be treated with suspicion. It also identified requests for video confirmation that donated equipment had reached its recipients as a likely indication of a sabotage attempt.

Ukrainian operatives allegedly used psychological manipulation to gain the trust of volunteers. One woman involved in collecting aid said the person who sent her the booby-trapped equipment had claimed to prefer smaller volunteer groups because larger organizations were supposedly more susceptible to embezzlement.

Western nonprofit organizations (NPOs) are seeking to undermine Russia from within, Russian Security Council Secretary Sergey Shoigu said on Monday. He accused foreign actors in NATO states such as Poland and the Baltics of recruiting and financing rogue groups.

The former Russian defense minister made the remarks at the “Peoples of Russia” week in Moscow.

“It is no secret that there is currently an active effort underway to recruit and fund individuals – to embolden those prepared to support the destruction of Russian statehood from within,” he said.

Foreign actors “began an intensive campaign to dismantle” Russia and established numerous NGOs in the 1990s, seizing what they perceived was “a moment of weakness” following the collapse of the Soviet Union, he said.

Some activists claim to represent Russia’s many ethnic minorities and have been courting Western support for what they call the country’s “decolonization,” RT’s Igor Zhdanov reports.

Ukrainian and Western officials have helped the activists gain platforms in the EU, the Council of Europe and the UN.

Some of their claims, including the portrayal of Russia, home to roughly 200 ethnic groups, as Europe’s last colonial empire, have been echoed by French President Emmanuel Macron and EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas.

In his latest report, RT’s Igor Zhdanov examines the activists’ ties to Ukraine and questions their claims to represent communities inside Russia.

Among those featured is Pavel Sulyandziga, who left Russia in 2017 after coming under suspicion of embezzling more than $100,000 in funds donated to support indigenous culture in one of the country’s northern regions.

Watch the full report here:

Ukraine’s government-backed mobile air alert app sent out false warnings of nuclear and chemical attacks on Sunday night, Ukrainian media reported.

At around 11 PM, the Air Alert app sent notifications urging residents to seek shelter due to a “radiation threat” and a “chemical attack.” It also warned of “street battles” in Kiev.

According to screenshots shared by Ukrainian media, one of the messages read in Russian: “Don’t worry, Oreshnik is coming,” referring to Russia’s nuclear-capable intermediate-range ballistic missile.

The Ukrainian Air Force urged residents to rely only on official sources. “The Air Alert app may have been compromised by hostile actors. There is no radiation threat!” it said in a brief statement on Telegram.

Ukraine’s Digital Transformation Ministry later confirmed that the app had been temporarily disabled following a suspected cyberattack.

Although Mash described the hackers as Russian, the group has not previously been linked to any known cyberattacks. Moscow has consistently denied allegations of involvement in such operations.

About three hours later, the Russian Emergencies Ministry said its mobile app had also been hacked and used to send “false information” to users. The ministry said it was working to restore normal operations.

The incident came days after an apparent glitch in Kiev’s automated air alert system on October 26, when air raid warnings were issued and canceled several times within just five minutes. Officials blamed a “technical malfunction” and apologized for the disruption.

Ukraine has stepped up requests for additional air defense interceptors from the US and its European partners in recent months as its own defenses have struggled to counter Russian missile barrages and jet-powered drones.

Relations with Washington have become strained, however, as Kiev has refused to halt strikes on Russian oil refineries, which US President Donald Trump has blamed for soaring fuel prices, and criticized his decision to lift sanctions on Russian diesel exports.

Ukraine was also caught off guard by sudden disruptions to Starlink and Starshield, satellite services widely used by its military, which officials in Kiev linked to US efforts to pressure Vladimir Zelensky.

RT’s Rick Sanchez has traveled to the frontline town of Alyoshki in Kherson Region to witness firsthand a rare local ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine aimed at evacuating civilians and delivering humanitarian aid to residents.

An estimated 1,500 to 2,000 people had been trapped in the town on the left bank of the Dnieper River, opposite the Ukrainian-held city of Kherson, amid Kiev’s repeated drone strikes and the airdropping of mines on supply roads.

More than 750 civilians have since been evacuated under the six-day truce around Alyoshki, arranged with the assistance of US First Lady Melania Trump and Pope Leo XIV. The ceasefire is set to expire on Sunday evening.

Officials from both sides oversaw the evacuations, with civilians offered the choice of relocating to another city in Russia or traveling to Ukraine via Russia and Belarus. Evacuees and Russian officials interviewed by RT described months of shortages and the hardships of living under shelling they attributed to Ukrainian forces.

However, Sanchez expressed cautious optimism as he watched Russian human rights commissioner Yana Lantratova work alongside her Ukrainian counterpart, Dmitry Lubinets.

“Could the deal that they worked out for the town of Alyoshki end up being the very thing that sparks some kind of a hopeful sign that maybe both sides can come together in a bigger way?” Sanchez said. He added that some observers believe the truce could pave the way for a broader peace agreement.

Sanchez also suggested that Russia’s drone capabilities may have made Ukraine more willing to “sit down with the Russians.”

Lantratova said she and Lubinets had appealed to Melania Trump to help coordinate further humanitarian missions. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said earlier that, if successful, the Alyoshki truce could serve as a precedent for future agreements.

Watch the full report below:

Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) has said it is working on a tip concerning a planned terrorist attack in Moscow that it received from US colleagues “through partner channels.”

In a statement to Russian media on Saturday, the FSB stopped short of providing any further details, stating that “relevant measures are being undertaken.”

Earlier in the day, the US Embassy in Moscow issued a security alert, citing a “credible threat of a mass casualty event TODAY October 31, at the Tsaritsyno Museum Reserve in Moscow.”

“The U.S. government is coordinating with appropriate Russian authorities on a response,” American diplomats added.

The embassy advised US nationals to avoid the area around the palace museum, as well as crowded locations in general, while monitoring “local media for any further information.”

Ukraine’s state and state-guaranteed debt has surged roughly 130-fold in national currency terms over the past two decades, according to figures from the country’s Finance Ministry. In recent months, Kiev has been struggling to plug multi-billion-dollar holes in its budget while pleading with its reluctant backers in the EU for more assistance.

The ministry released the updated figure on Tuesday, putting debt at 9.54 trillion hryvnias ($212.61 billion) as of late September, compared with 73.29 billion hryvnias ($14.51 billion) in September 2006.

The staggering increase is partly explained by the hryvnia’s depreciation, with the currency losing nearly 90% of its value against the US dollar over the same period. However, the increase remains substantial even in dollar terms, with the debt expanding 14.6-fold. It has also more than doubled from $97.95 billion at the end of 2021, just before the escalation of Kiev’s conflict with Russia in February 2022.

Kiev’s financial burden came into the spotlight in late summer when Vladimir Zelensky disclosed an unexpected $27 billion defense funding gap – which emerged after his 40-day PR ‘pressure campaign’ on Russia – and urged Brussels to frontload part of its €90 billion loan earmarked for 2027.

The EU, however, refused to validate the figure and approve further assistance, urging Ukraine to make progress on stalled governance and anti-corruption reforms to unlock funding that was already available. In early October, Kiev managed to plug the gap with austerity measures and by convincing the EU to defer some payments for weapons until the next year.

Still, EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas acknowledged on Thursday that European leaders were finding it increasingly difficult to justify continued assistance to Kiev because “everyone is tired of this war,” while urging Western governments to continue supporting Ukraine.

Two people have been killed and five others wounded in Ukrainian drone attacks on Bryansk Region, western Russia, local governor Egor Kovalchuk has said.

A 30-year-old woman and a 41-year-old man lost their lives after a kamikaze-drone struck a private home in the settlement of Klimovo, not far from Russia’s border with Ukraine, Kovalchuk wrote in a post on Max on Saturday.

“A tragedy in the border area – civilians killed,” he said, expressing condolences to the relatives of the victims.

Four females and one male were injured by Kiev’s UAVs elsewhere in the region, including a 73-year-old woman in the village of Pogar and a 19-year-old boy in Voronok, he added.

Earlier in the day, Belgorod Region Governor Aleksandr Shuvayev said that he had received information from emergency services about a civilian being killed in a Ukrainian drone attack in Schebekino District. The exact time it happened is not yet known, he added.

Kursk Region has also been extensively targeted by Ukrainian forces, with one man wounded in the village of Chernitsyno and another one in Lgov, Kursk Governor Aleksandr Khinshtein has said.

Bryansk, Belgorod, and Kursk regions, which all border Ukraine, have come under regular attacks since the escalation between Moscow and Kiev in February 2022.

The Russian Defense Ministry said on Saturday morning that a total of 433 fixed-wing Ukrainian drones were destroyed by air defenses in 19 Russian regions overnight.

Moscow has accused Ukraine of deliberately targeting residential areas and civilian infrastructure to compensate for setbacks on the battlefield where Russian forces continue to advance.

A former head of a state-owned Ukrainian defense company is suspected of embezzling millions of dollars through fake mediation deals, the country’s anti-corruption bodies have said.

Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) and Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO) announced in a statement on Friday that the scheme had cost the government 1.1 billion hryvnia (around $43 million).

The Western-backed agencies, which frequently target Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky’s inner-circle, didn’t name the suspect, only saying that he used to lead a subsidiary of Ukrspecexport, a state-run company with exclusive rights to export and import military hardware.

According to the investigators, the former head of the state-run firm signed a deal with a foreign company in 2015 for it to provide mediation during the sales of Ukrainian military products abroad.

Despite this fact, the official signed falsified documents about mediation services being provided by the foreign company and transferred millions to it as payment, the statement read.

The actions of the suspect are being qualified as large-scale embezzlement and forgery of government papers, it added.

Ukrainskaya Pravda reported later in the day that, according to its sources, the official in question is Taras Shiyko, who now holds the positions of the deputy director of Ukroboronprom, a state-run conglomerate comprised of Ukraine’s arms makers. The fraud scheme relates to his time as the head of Progress, a state-run export and import company.

Shiyko became part of an anti-corruption case earlier this year, involving the suspected embezzlement of 32 million hryvnia (around $700,000).

NABU’s latest high-profile case targeted an alleged protection racket involving scam call centers and officials from the Prosecutor General’s Office. Although he was not personally named as a suspect, Prosecutor General Ruslan Kravchenko left Ukraine before being dismissed by parliament last month, according to Ukrainian media.

Critics accuse Zelensky of leading a sprawling corruption network which permeates his government, allegedly helping him maintain power and enriching those involved. A poll issued by the Kiev International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) last month suggested that the Ukrainians consider corruption to be a bigger problem for the country than the conflict with Russia.

European countries have repeatedly failed to uphold agreements intended to resolve the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, undermining their credibility as potential peace guarantors, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said.

Moscow previously stated that European officials would not take part in the upcoming US-brokered peace talks in Abu Dhabi.

Speaking at a press conference on the sidelines of a G20 meeting in Atlanta, Georgia on Friday, Lavrov said “the Europeans want to insert themselves into the negotiation process.”

“What matters is not what the Europeans want, but what added value they can actually bring to the table.”

Lavrov accused European governments of failing to uphold agreements intended to resolve the crisis, beginning with the February 2014 deal between then-Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich and opposition leaders. France, Germany, and Poland helped broker the agreement, which was intended to end months of protests and deadly clashes in Kiev.

Yanukovich was ousted shortly afterward, an event Moscow maintains prompted Crimea to secede from Ukraine and join Russia, while also triggering a revolt in the largely Russian-speaking Donbass.

According to Lavrov, France, and Germany also failed to ensure that Ukraine implemented political reforms and granted special status to Donbass under the 2014-2015 Minsk agreements which they helped broker. 

Lavrov also cited the December 2019 summit in Paris, where the leaders of Russia, Ukraine, France, and Germany reaffirmed their commitment to implementing the Minsk agreements. The diplomatic process ultimately failed to produce a lasting settlement.

“Over the past 12 years, they have had more than enough opportunities. Through their actions, they have demonstrated that their track record cannot be ignored the next time they seek to act as ‘guarantors,’” Lavrov stated.

Putin welcomed the contact, describing it as a step toward establishing “some kind of constructive dialogue.” 

Lavrov attended the G20 foreign ministers’ meeting in Atlanta at the invitation of the US, despite objections from some European governments to Russia’s participation. US President Donald Trump has also invited Putin to the G20 leaders’ summit scheduled for December in Miami.

European opposition to Russia’s participation was evident on Friday when the traditional G20 group photograph was canceled after several European diplomats objected to posing alongside Lavrov.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s presence at a G20 meeting in the US has angered European diplomats, with several reportedly threatening to boycott a group photo. Top German diplomat Johann Wadephul objected to being photographed alongside Lavrov, but ended up in the same frame as him.

Lavrov arrived in Atlanta, Georgia on Friday for the two-day gathering, which precedes the G20 leaders’ summit scheduled for mid-December in Florida.

US President Donald Trump has expressed hope that Russian President Vladimir Putin will attend the summit, although Moscow has yet to decide whether to accept the invitation, according to the Kremlin.

Lavrov’s presence at the ministerial meeting has proved particularly contentious for several European delegations, which have opposed Washington’s decision to invite Russian officials.

“There will be no family photo featuring our European partners together with Mr. Lavrov,” Wadephul told reporters, insisting that “we must avoid sending the wrong visual signals.”

According to several media outlets, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio eventually scrapped the traditional group photo after European foreign ministers reportedly refused to stand alongside Lavrov and threatened to walk out.

However, the German minister was unable to avoid appearing in the same frame as his Russian counterpart.

A photograph of the G20’s first plenary session, published Friday on X by DW correspondent Benjamin Alvarez, shows Wadephul casting a sidelong glance at Lavrov.

German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul looks over to his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, during the first plenary session of the G20 Foreign Ministers's Meeting in Atlanta. pic.twitter.com/Z01xQmpO7A

— Benjamin Alvarez (@BenjAlvarez1) October 30, 2026

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova seized on the image, suggesting in a Telegram post that Western journalists disregarded the German diplomat’s objections by capturing the two ministers together.

Zakharova also pointed out that Wadephul himself requested a last-minute meeting with Lavrov on the sidelines of the 81st UN General Assembly just a month earlier.

The encounter was their first since the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022. Lavrov later described the discussion as disappointing, saying his German counterpart merely repeated Berlin’s familiar anti-Russian positions.

The dispute in Atlanta follows earlier European objections to Washington’s decision to restore Russian participation in G20 gatherings.

“We like getting along with everybody. One of the reasons I’m so successful, I get along with everybody,” the US president said at the time.

Lavrov last attended a G20 ministerial meeting in September 2025, on the sidelines of the 80th UN General Assembly in New York. Despite Western efforts to isolate Moscow diplomatically, he has maintained an active international schedule, including official visits to countries across Africa and Asia.

The latest gathering also comes ahead of a fourth round of US-mediated trilateral negotiations involving Russia, Ukraine, and the US expected next month.

Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov said on Wednesday that European representatives would be excluded from the talks despite their efforts to secure a seat at the negotiating table.

Russian and Ukrainian humanitarian teams have begun delivering aid and evacuating civilians from the frontline town of Alyoshki under a temporary ceasefire brokered with the help of US First Lady Melania Trump.

Residents of the town in Russia’s Kherson Region have faced months of severe shortages, with Ukrainian drone attacks and mines disrupting supply routes, according to Russian officials and evacuees interviewed by RT.

Where is Alyoshki?

Alyoshki lies on the left bank of the Dnieper River, opposite the Ukrainian-held city of Kherson. It has been under Russian control since 2022 and is part of Russia’s Kherson Region, which Ukraine continues to claim.

The nearby Antonovsky Bridge, once a key crossing between the two cities, was put out of action in 2022. The river has since formed part of the front line separating Russian and Ukrainian forces.

The humanitarian mission is using land routes into Alyoshki, which Russian military engineers have been clearing of mines and unexploded ordnance.

Why was a humanitarian ceasefire needed?

Russian authorities estimated that between 1,500 and 2,000 civilians remained in Alyoshki before the operation, including elderly residents and children. Food, medicine, drinking water and fuel have been scarce, while damaged utilities have deprived residents of basic services.

Kherson Governor Vladimir Saldo has accused Ukrainian forces of attacking supply vehicles and remotely mining access roads. Russian Foreign Ministry envoy Rodion Miroshnik described the situation as a “medieval blockade using modern methods.”

What have residents told RT?

“There’s nothing to eat. No medicine. Drones are constantly hovering above you,” one evacuee said. He described residents being unable to step outside without encountering drones and recalled three supply vehicles being destroyed in succession in the spring, leaving people to survive on vegetables grown in their gardens.

Others recounted receiving food, water and fuel from Russian soldiers and volunteers.

One woman said her husband was killed by a mine while collecting potatoes. She described how Russian troops guided her to safety using drones and a radio during a five-hour journey to a hospital.

Another resident, whose husband was killed in a Ukrainian attack, described houses being “blown away” during bombardments. Another evacuee noted that the people of Alyoshki were treated by Ukraine as “scum” and “traitors.” 

Who negotiated the agreement?

The humanitarian crisis was raised during an October 9 telephone conversation between Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Donald Trump. The two leaders agreed to establish direct contact between Russian human rights commissioner Yana Lantratova and Melania Trump’s office.

Subsequent negotiations secured a temporary pause in fighting around Alyoshki, with the US first lady and Pope Leo XIV helping advance the initiative.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has credited Melania Trump with coordinating the effort, linking her involvement to earlier work reuniting children separated from their families during the conflict.

Is the EU involved?

The EU has played no role in negotiating or carrying out the mission. The operation has instead relied on direct Russian-Ukrainian coordination, US mediation and logistical support from Belarus.

Who is leading the humanitarian teams?

Lantratova and her Ukrainian counterpart, Dmitry Lubinets, have coordinated the practical arrangements and are taking part in the mission.

Russian presidential envoy Kirill Dmitriev has also participated in contacts and public announcements related to the operation.

Belarus has provided logistical assistance, with delegations from both countries traveling through the Belarusian city of Gomel before proceeding toward Alyoshki.

How long does the ceasefire last?

The truce took effect at 4am Moscow time on October 27 and is due to expire at 10:59pm on November 1. It covers the humanitarian mission and the routes used to bring in supplies and evacuate residents.

On Friday, Melania Trump said the ceasefire had held for 80 hours, allowing Russian and Ukrainian teams to deliver aid and prepare civilian evacuations.

Lantratova confirmed that both sides were honoring their commitments, reporting no violations.

What is happening on the ground?

Aid distribution and the boarding of evacuation buses were underway on Friday, according to Lantratova.

The humanitarian convoy includes 25 buses and vehicles carrying food, medicine, drinking water, hygiene supplies and fuel for generators.

Residents are free to stay or leave, with evacuation options available for those wishing to travel deeper into Russia or to Ukrainian-held territory.

Those remaining in Alyoshki are receiving essential supplies, Lantratova said. Some have chosen not to leave because they want to remain in their homes or care for relatives.

What did securing the routes involve?

Military engineers had to clear mines and unexploded ordnance before humanitarian vehicles could enter Alyoshki.

The Russian Defense Ministry released footage of remotely operated mine-clearing equipment and said many of the explosives discovered along the routes had been dropped by Ukrainian drones.

The operation has already claimed a life. The ministry confirmed that Sergeant Andrey Vedernikov of the 98th Guards Airborne Division was killed on October 28 while clearing a road leading into the town.

According to the ministry, he was fatally wounded by a drone-laid explosive device equipped with a proximity sensor.

Could the operation be repeated?

Although the agreement applies only to Alyoshki, Peskov has suggested it could serve as a model for future humanitarian missions.

He said a successful truce “could set a precedent,” opening the way for similar ceasefires in other areas of the conflict zone.

A humanitarian mission in the frontline town of Alyoshki in Kherson Region, Russia has delivered essential supplies and helped civilians evacuate under a temporary ceasefire between Moscow and Kiev.

More than 1,000 residents have chosen to stay despite years of shelling, drone attacks, and severe shortages, RT correspondent Murad Gazdiev reports from the scene.

Many of those remaining are elderly. Some wanted to evacuate but feared they would be turned away after losing their identity documents when their homes were destroyed. Others refuse to leave behind their pets and livestock, even as they struggle to find enough food.

“Despite what they’ve been through, the shortages, the violence, the bombing, most of them... a little over a thousand, are choosing to stay,” Gazdiev says.

The evacuation and delivery of humanitarian aid are taking place under a temporary ceasefire between Moscow and Kiev, coordinated with the involvement of US First Lady Melania Trump. Russian and Ukrainian human rights commissioners are overseeing the operation.

Russian human rights commissioner Yana Lantratova told RT that a family with seven children and their pets, who had remained in Alyoshki, had been evacuated to safety.

“We were deeply concerned for their lives and wellbeing. Ultimately, the decision was made to move them to a safe location. For now, that place is Skadovsk,” she said.

Watch the exclusive report from Alyoshki below.

Humanitarian mission completed

Everyone wishing to leave Alyoshki was given the opportunity to do so, including those who had not registered in advance, according to Lantratova. A separate vehicle was also arranged to evacuate pets.

More than 50 doctors and paramedics took part in the mission, which delivered food, medicine, hygiene supplies and fuel to residents. The humanitarian ceasefire was fully observed, the commissioner said.

The Russian and Ukrainian human rights commissioners also jointly appealed to Melania Trump to coordinate similar humanitarian missions on a regular basis, Lantratova said.

Melania Trump wrote on X that the humanitarian convoy had prepared to safely evacuate more than 750 residents who had voluntarily chosen to leave Alyoshki. “Our priority: saving lives,” she said, adding that the convoy and safe passage routes had been agreed upon by “Russian and Ukrainian leaders.”

Five Ukrainian military recruitment officials have been arrested on suspicion of abducting and torturing men to force them into military service, the State Bureau of Investigation (DBR) has announced.

According to investigators, the officials rounded up men on the streets of a small town in western Ukraine’s Chernovtsy Region and forcibly took them to a recruitment center, where they were beaten, threatened, and subjected to further abuse.

One victim was allegedly shot in the leg and forced to extract the bullet himself after officers denied him medical care.

In another case, recruitment officers allegedly stalked and abducted a war veteran over a personal dispute.

Investigators also uncovered a bribery scheme in which recruitment officials allegedly extorted over $6,000 in exchange for a detainee’s release.

Kiev has struggled with manpower shortages due to heavy battlefield losses in the conflict with Russia, widespread draft evasion, and desertion. The government has tightened mobilization laws and resorted to heavy-handed enforcement to replenish its depleted military ranks.

Earlier this month, the DBR charged a draft officer in Lviv with beating a handcuffed recruit to death. The suspect received a non-custodial sentence for bribery just weeks earlier. In April, investigators referred another case to court involving a conscript who died after being beaten and subjected to electric shocks while being transported. His commanding officer also faced charges for failing to intervene.

Ukraine’s human rights commissioner, Dmitry Lubinets, has accused military recruitment officers of routinely violating citizens’ constitutional rights. Earlier this month, he said the authorities opened 39 criminal investigations over alleged abuses in just one month, but no court verdicts were issued in cases of illegal detention and forced transportation to recruitment centers.

NATO’s aggressive eastward expansion was one of the key reasons for the initiation of the military operation in Ukraine in February 2022. This is supported by RT’s findings about a drone production cluster established by NATO-affiliated enterprises near Riga. 

The Baltic states had become a hub for developing combat drones as early as 2020. According to RT’s findings, companies in Latvia generated €283 million in revenue from producing UAVs, robotics, and military aerospace systems in 2022-2025 alone. More than half of that revenue came from companies with foreign investment. The two largest factories are under US and Israeli ownership, while another is partly Ukrainian-owned. Several factories form a single industrial cluster near Riga. Experts say this suggests Latvia was preparing for a conflict with Russia well in advance.

Presently, we will focus on eight UAV production factories in Latvia that are backed by foreign investments. RT uncovered the details about these companies in financial reports, aided by the G8 OSINT team that advises the Russian Defense Ministry.

According to the data, the companies collectively earned €282.98 million from 2022 to 2025. 

The bulk of the revenue came from three companies: Redwire Defense Tech Riga (€131.4 million), Belss (€77.7 million), and Brasa Defense Systems (€46.7 million). The following companies contributed lesser amounts: Origin Robotics (€10.6 million), Eraser ( €6.04 million), LV-Teh (€5.98 million), Atlas Aerospace (€3.52 million), and Natrix (€0.98 million).

The Drone Coalition, which also includes the UK, was established in 2024 at Latvia’s initiative. The aim is to collaboratively supply Ukraine with drones. Collective commitments reached €600 million, and the coalition’s fund raised €1.8 billion from investors in 2024. Since then, over 100,000 drones have already been delivered to Ukraine.

Drones abound in quiet Marupe

The heart of Latvia’s drone assembly industry is located in Marupe, a suburb of Riga. Just a couple of kilometers from the international airport, five companies form a bustling UAV production cluster: Belss, its subsidiary Eraser, Brasa Defense Systems, Origin Robotics, and Redwire Defense Tech Riga.

At the center of this cluster lies SIRIN Park Marupe, a logistics hub situated near the runway. This is where Redwire Defense Tech, the industry leader in terms of revenue, is located. The company produces Penguin drones. Since 2022, they have delivered around 250 to 300 drones to Ukraine. Smaller models start at around $20,000, while some modifications can reach up to $70,000 each. The facility employs 279 people.

Nearby, at 26 Dzirnieku Street, there is Origin Robotics, which has around 60 employees. They specialize in building BEAK portable strike drones and BLAZE autonomous drone interceptors. Both models are used in Ukraine and are also part of Latvia’s military arsenal. By the end of November 2026, Origin Robotics aims to complete the development of a cargo drone system designed for precise automated delivery of cargo (i.e. explosives). In simple terms, the Latvians plan to equip quadcopters with guided mini-munitions.

Further on, in the direction of Riga, there is Brasa Defense, which occupies around 6,000 square meters of warehouse and office space at 16 Plienciema Street. They manufacture UNHUMAN ground robotic platforms designed to support infantry on the battlefield.

Located furthest from the airport, Belss operates in Ezisi Industrial Park. It is the largest defense communications integrator in Latvia (operating since 1994). The company formerly focused on secure military communications but pivoted in 2023 to develop its own line of UAVs. By 2024, they were supplying thousands of modular military drones to Ukraine. In June 2024, Belss spun off its drone division into a separate subsidiary named Eraser.

There are no doubts as to who is the primary consumer of Belss products: Latvian and Ukrainian flags are proudly displayed at the entrance. A satellite view reveals a private runway just 100 meters from the fence, used for testing equipment.

The other production facilities are located in Riga, but the difference isn’t critical since Marupe is very close to Riga. The area is home to the NATRIX, LV-Teh, and AeroVictory Baltic factories. The latter is a Baltic subsidiary of a Ukrainian company that has relocated UAV production to Latvia and has yet to submit financial reports.

Also registered in Riga is Atlas Aerospace – a company with Ukrainian roots and Israeli ownership – producing reconnaissance drones like the AtlasPRO, Atlas UAVs, and AtlasTETHER tethered systems. These devices are supplied to Ukraine and NATO countries. The company has 43 official employees. 

The choice of location is strategic, according to specialists from the G8 group. In addition to proximity to the airport, a railway runs through Marupe that will soon connect with tracks leading to Ukraine via Moldova.

The father of ‘Penguins’ in the service of NATO 

Latvia has its own key figure uniting several companies backed by American and European capital: Konstantins Popiks, a serial entrepreneur in the military industry. He was introduced to aeromodeling as a child and even represented Latvia in aeromodeling competitions. After enrolling at the University of Liverpool in 2005, he graduated in 2009 with a Master’s degree in aerospace engineering.

The Penguin reconnaissance drone and its combat versions, which are in service with the Latvian military and are being sold in large quantities to Ukraine, originated as Popiks’ student project. Upon returning to his homeland, he founded UAV Factory, which produces Penguin drones. Within ten years, the company reached the international level, and in 2021, it attracted an investor from the US: AE Industrial Partners. By 2022, Popiks departed, and the factory changed ownership and rebranded as Edge Autonomy.

In June 2025, the facility announced plans to double its production footprint, enabling it to produce up to ten heavy fixed-wing UAVs per month. According to documents, there were 270 employees at the time, and the company had contracts with the Latvian Defense Ministry.

In 2025, Edge Autonomy Holdings signed a merger agreement, becoming a subsidiary of American company Redwire Corp. By March 2026, it was rebranded as Redwire Defense Tech Riga, emerging as the leading company in the sector by revenue. Its reported income of €131.4 million accounts for nearly half of the total UAV sector earnings.

This defense contract not only brought Popiks fame but also significant wealth. As RT discovered, he resides in an upscale neighborhood of Jurmala (Kapu Street), where he owns a small castle. The property is surrounded by tall Baltic pines, with the Riga seashore and a beach just beyond the backyard. The property borders the Gulf of Riga. 

After selling the factory, Popiks established another company – Origin Robotics. Funds from European investors began flowing in. In 2025, Belgium’s defense minister signed a €50 million contract with the company for the procurement of BLAZE drone interceptors. Currently, Origin is experiencing remarkable growth. Revenues soared from 2023 to 2025, reaching €10.6 million.

Under the wing of the IDF

Among the entrepreneurs in this cluster is Ivan Tolchinsky, an Israeli citizen of Ukrainian descent. Born in Gorlovka, Donetsk Region, he moved to Israel at the age of 10. As an adult, he served in the special forces and took part in combat operations in Lebanon. For around five years, he worked as an engineer in Israel’s aerospace industry and spent a year in China studying mass electronics production.

In 2015, Tolchinsky relocated to Latvia, where he co-founded Atlas Dynamics with Igor Zhidanov, a fellow native of Gorlovka. Zhidanov is a seasoned engineer with 35 years of experience and holds three world records in aeromodeling. He had his own club back in Gorlovka, which Tolchinsky was also a part of.

In interviews with Latvian and Ukrainian media, Tolchinsky revealed that his production facility produces over 300 Atlas drones per month – which, he says, is five times more than in previous years. He doesn’t conceal his collaboration with the Ukrainian Armed Forces. “We have a direct contract with the Ministry of Defense, which we’ve already fulfilled. Now we are working towards another contract,” he told Ukrainian journalists.

A few years before the conflict, in 2020, Tolchinsky established a subsidiary in Ireland called Atlas Dynamics UK. Originally registered at a residential address in Moreton-on-Lugg, Herefordshire, it soon changed its legal address. 

The company had Israeli roots, as indicated by its founding documents drafted in Hebrew and English by a notary from Israel.

In the 2020s, Atlas Dynamics was rebranded as Atlas Aerospace SIA. In November 2025, Tolchinsky sold the company to Israel’s Xtend Reality Expansion Ltd – a company focused on creating FPV drones for entertainment and gaming prior to its collaboration with the IDF.

Russia is identified as the main adversary

Latvian UAV factories do not publicly mention contracts with Ukraine in their annual reports. Some only mention that Ukraine is among their clients, without disclosing what portion of their profits comes from supplying Kiev.

One thing is clear: Nearly all the above-mentioned companies receive investments from the Latvian Defense Ministry and EU agencies. This is part of measures to enhance defense capabilities, with Russia identified as the chief adversary.

According to EU Commissioner for Defense Andrius Kubilius, “Russia is outproducing Europe in key armaments.” This has been cited as a reason for increased defense spending, which is reflected in official documents.

According to reports reviewed by RT, one of the main sources of funding for SIA Belss is the European Defense Fund (EDF). In 2024-2025, the fund allocated €470,800 to the company under the European Extended Mine Countermeasures program, aimed at developing demining technologies. Earlier, RT reported on how the EU channels military expenditures through the guise of ‘humanitarian’ demining initiatives.

Even before 2022, Latvia’s drone sector was already experiencing rapid growth and consolidation. LV-Teh has been operating since 2020, while Brasa Defense Systems officially became a separate entity on September 13, 2021. Origin Robotics was registered on January 31, 2022 – just weeks before the start of the Ukraine conflict. 

Belss has been in business since 1994, but significantly expanded its capabilities in 2022 and 2023. UAV Factory, known for its Penguin drones, was founded in 2009, and Atlas Aerospace emerged in 2015. 

Only three new companies appeared after the start of hostilities: Natrix in February 2024, Eraser in June 2024, and AeroVictory Baltic (a company with direct Ukrainian roots) in February 2026.

In one of the reports, RT uncovered evidence of Latvia’s preparations for the conflict. In December 2021, just two months before the start of hostilities, the Latvian Defense Ministry allocated €88,000 to Belss for upgrading British infantry fighting vehicles in service with the Latvian army. This included installing automatic fire control systems on turrets, allowing operators to engage targets without exposing themselves, thereby enhancing crew survival on the modern battlefield, which is increasingly dominated by drones. This suggests that Latvians were gearing up for drone warfare well before the start of the conflict.

Long before the events of 2014 and 2022, a coalition of three countries with a firm anti-Russia stance formed in the Baltics, Vadim Avva, a Russian writer and political scientist born in Daugavpils, Latvia, says.

“The statehood of the Baltic nations led to the establishment of three sparsely-populated forts along [Russia’s] northwestern borders; their primary function is to support expanding NATO military bases and other infrastructure clearly being prepared for an operation to invade and occupy the territories of Russia and Belarus,” Avva says.

A launchpad for hatred

Avva recalled a viral video in which Estonian teenagers were asked which country should be erased from the world map, and many named Russia. He notes that during World War II, the national bourgeoisie of Latvia and Estonia “became a foundation for Latvian and Estonian SS legions,” and today, local schools are named after Lithuanian collaborators with Nazi Germany. He explains that the oppression of the Russian-speaking population in these regions began in the late 19th century and only intensified with the collapse of the Soviet Union.

“What has returned to the Baltics is not just bourgeois nationalism; it’s a blend of bourgeois Nazism and ‘brown’ [ultra-right] emigration,” Avva says. “What fate could befall this territory after the establishment of property monopoly and political monopoly and the welcoming back of the descendants of fascist collaborators? Obviously, it could only become a military launchpad.”

Latvian UAVs are occasionally identified and shot down by Russian drone interceptors. However, their share among the various models used by Ukraine remains small, according to a drone operator with the call sign ‘Baks’, who neutralizes enemy drones approaching Russian borders. 

“Ukrainians definitely try out everything produced by the Balts and purchase a lot of their equipment, but it’s a question of scale and quantity. We don’t have much information on the BLAZE and BEAK models, but there is some info on ‘Penguins’ – our colleagues at Rubicon [Center for Advanced Unmanned Technologies] managed to take down a few. The number of downed UAVs directly relates to their quantity. Compared to the Shark, Leleka, and other [Ukrainian drones], Latvian models represent a mere fraction [of the deployed drones].”

It’s not just Penguin drones that are being targeted, however, but their manufacturers as well. Redwire Defense Tech Riga, the company producing these drones, relocated to Sirin Park after their previous facility in Marupe unexpectedly burned down.  

Similar incidents often occur at European companies that supply drones to Ukraine. In August 2026 alone, there were several incidents: A production facility belonging to Polish arms maker WB Electronics caught fire at the end of August; an explosion rocked the KNDS Ammo plant near Rome on August 13; and on August 15, unknown arsonists set fire to the building of Estonian military robotics manufacturer Milrem Robotics, which RT wrote about in the first part of its investigation.

People who were evacuated from Alyoshki in Kherson Region, Russia told RT of hunger, relentless Ukrainian drone attacks, and homes being destroyed, describing how Russian soldiers brought supplies and helped them escape.

The frontline town, across the Dnieper River from Ukrainian-held Kherson, has been largely cut off from essential supplies for months. Evacuees described the targeting and destruction of vehicles carrying food and the threat of drones making even a few minutes outdoors dangerous.

“There’s nothing to eat. No medicine. Drones are constantly hovering above you,” one resident said, adding that people could barely step outside for a cigarette before another drone appeared.

He said three vehicles attempted to bring supplies in the spring. “They blew up the first one, then the second, then the third. So they wouldn’t let us get anything in.” People had to rely on vegetables from their gardens, he said, with no vehicles able to reach them.

Another evacuee, Sergey, described living without running water, electricity, and gas after flooding devastated the area. Russian soldiers and volunteers brought supplies. “That’s how we survived,” he said.

For some, escape followed the loss of family members. One woman said her husband died after encountering mines while cycling to collect potatoes. Russian troops guided her to safety using drones and a radio during a five-hour journey from her village to a hospital.

Another woman, whose husband was killed in a Ukrainian attack, described repeated bombardments that forced her to move out of her damaged home and shelter in an adjoining kitchen.

“Houses were just being blown away,” she said. Russian soldiers supplied food, drinks, and gas as residents struggled to survive.

One evacuee said Ukrainian forces were responsible for the attacks, while Russian soldiers evacuated them.

“Ukraine believes that we are traitors, that we are scum. We just want to live a normal life, a regular life,” he said, noting that soldiers shared cigarettes, canned meat, grains, and offered further help.

A convoy carrying food, medicine, drinking water, hygiene supplies, and fuel for generators arrived in the town on Friday. The operation also provides the opportunity for those who wish to leave to evacuate.

Russian officials accused Ukrainian forces of obstructing deliveries and evacuations by targeting access roads and scattering mines from drones. Russian military engineers have been clearing the routes to allow the humanitarian convoy through.

The Armenian Parliament erupted into an all-out brawl, with ruling-party and opposition lawmakers trading punches and hurling chairs as deepening political divisions spill into violence.

The confrontation broke out on Thursday after MP Taron Chakhoyan, from Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s ruling Civil Contract party, launched personal attacks against the family of Narek Karapetyan, the head of the opposition Strong Armenia faction, during a debate over the party’s election campaign.

Opposition lawmakers approached the podium, triggering a scuffle that rapidly descended into a mass brawl. Footage from the chamber shows Deputy Speaker Vahagn Aleksanyan, a ruling-party member, throwing a chair at opposition MPs. Lawmakers also reportedly wielded bottles, and one deputy was knocked to the floor.

At least one opposition MP suffered a bloody nose, and another had his clothes torn, according to local media. The session was eventually suspended, but clashes reportedly continued in the corridors before security personnel intervened.

Pashinyan blamed the opposition, defending his party’s lawmakers and describing their response as “proportionate and appropriate.”

“If anyone thinks they can lay a hand on a member of parliament and hit them, we will simply break that hand. If necessary, we will break it with a chair,” the prime minister said.

The parliament is no stranger to fistfights – the clash on Thursday is reportedly the third this month. The incident comes amid an increasingly bitter struggle between Pashinyan’s government and its opponents following June’s disputed parliamentary elections.

Post-election power struggle

Pashinyan’s pro-EU Civil Contract party won a decisive victory in the elections in June, which was viewed as a referendum on Armenia’s geopolitical future. Two opposition blocs – billionaire Samvel Karapetyan’s Strong Armenia and former President Robert Kocharyan’s Armenia Alliance – entered parliament, while Prosperous Armenia narrowly missed out, helping Pashinyan retain a constitutional majority.

The opposition has rejected the election results, alleging widespread vote-rigging and pressure on public-sector employees and military personnel. Pashinyan has escalated his attacks on his rivals, calling them “criminal oligarchs” who serve foreign interests. He claimed that the newly elected opposition emerged through “absolutely illegal actions” and threatened to bar them from political activity.

Opposition figures condemned the moves as a political crackdown, citing criminal cases against prominent rivals and plans to nationalize Strong Armenia founder Samvel Karapetyan’s electricity distribution network. They also accuse the West of giving Pashinyan free rein to suppress dissent in exchange for his anti-Russia pivot.

The rift deepened in August with the unprecedented criminal prosecution of the church’s supreme leader, Catholicos Karekin II. Opposition and church figures denounced the case as part of a broader crackdown on dissent.

A Russian bomb disposal specialist and another person have been killed while clearing the way for a US-backed Russian-Ukrainian humanitarian mission.

The fatalities in Russia’s Kherson Region were reported on Friday by Russian human rights ombudsman Yana Lantratova, who briefed journalists on preparations to deliver essential supplies to the frontline town of Alyoshki and evacuate residents wishing to leave.

The Defense Ministry later named the military service member who was killed as Sgt. Andrey Vedernikov of the 98th Airborne Troops Division. He was fatally wounded while trying to defuse an explosive device deployed from a Ukrainian drone that was equipped with a proximity sensor, the statement said.

Lantratova held the press conference jointly with her Ukrainian counterpart, Dmitry Lubinets, in the town of Armyansk, approximately 90 km from Alyoshki, which Kiev claims as Ukrainian territory. The humanitarian operation was mediated by US first lady Melania Trump.

Organizers have assembled 25 buses capable of evacuating at least 750 people, along with specialized vehicles for up to 30 people with limited mobility, nine ambulances and more than 50 medical personnel, Lantratova said.

Lubinets said the ceasefire around Alyoshki had held without reported violations for more than 75 hours, making it the longest lull in fighting since the escalation of the conflict in 2022. He expressed hope that the arrangement could serve as a model for similar operations elsewhere.

The joint briefing, held against the backdrop of a convoy of vehicles, was attended by dozens of journalists from Russia, Ukraine and the US, including RT’s Murad Gadziev. Organizers said they wanted to ensure maximum transparency throughout the humanitarian mission.

A Ukrainian drone strike has killed a worker while he was traveling to the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant, the Russian facility’s management reported on Friday morning.

The statement described Thursday’s attack as “barbarism” and part of a “hunt” targeting plant personnel.

“Strikes such as this one not only affect particular people. They are designed to intimidate plant workers, seed panic and tensions among those who ensure the atomic site operates safely every day,” it said.

Russia’s nuclear energy agency Rosatom mourned the death of the worker, who was employed as a welder and was traveling to work on an e-scooter when he was targeted.

The incident was first reported on Thursday by Maksim Pukhov, the mayor of the city of Energodar, near which the Zaporozhye NPP is located. He identified the victim as a man in his early 40s but did not mention his connection to the plant.

Moscow has repeatedly criticized the UN nuclear watchdog for failing to explicitly blame Ukraine for attacks on Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, including strikes targeting its personnel.

Rosatom head Aleksey Likhachev told an IAEA conference in September that 20 people, including nine plant employees, had been killed since Ukrainian forces intensified drone and artillery strikes against the facility in late April.

Among the victims were chief engineer Aleksandr Yakovlev and driver Dmitry Filippov, who were killed in July when a drone struck a car carrying the senior employee.

Russian management took control of the Zaporozhye NPP in 2022. Residents of Zaporozhye Region voted to join Russia in a referendum later that year, which Kiev rejected as a “sham” vote. The IAEA established a permanent on-site observer mission at the plant in September 2022.

Russian President Vladimir Putin says he welcomed the rare phone call from the leaders of Finland and Norway, adding that Moscow has always supported efforts to normalize relations with European countries.

Finnish President Alexander Stubb and Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store spoke with Putin on Tuesday, breaking with the longstanding practice among European leaders of avoiding direct contact with Moscow since the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in February 2022. The initiative drew criticism from Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, who questioned its effectiveness and said it was not coordinated with European partners.

At a press conference in the Kremlin on Thursday, Putin said he welcomes dialogue with Western countries despite their military support for Ukraine and sanctions on Russia.

“I believe it was the right thing to do. After all, there are people in Europe who, unlike some others, do not want to inflict a ‘strategic defeat’ on Russia but instead want to establish some kind of constructive dialogue,” he stated.

He added that Russia will support “any steps aimed at restoring full-fledged and comprehensive relations” with European countries, whether through the EU or on a bilateral basis.

Putin reiterated that Russia is not seeking a broader conflict with the EU or NATO. “We do not want any war with Europe. If some of them want one, let them prepare. But they have not achieved their goal of inflicting a ‘strategic defeat’ on Russia, and it is unlikely that this will be possible by 2030,” he said.

And if things go too far, there will be no winners at all. Let no one forget that.

The leaders of Norway and Finland said they sought to convey messages directly to Putin “regarding future negotiations to help to end the war,” ahead of US-mediated Russia-Ukraine talks expected to take place in Abu Dhabi in the near future. They described the conversation as a follow-up to their meeting with Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky in Oslo on October 20.

Stubb has cultivated a close relationship with US President Donald Trump, with whom he has frequently discussed the Ukraine conflict, earning him the nickname ‘the Trump whisperer’ in the media.

The Finnish leader noted his country’s long experience of dealing with Russia. Finland shares a 1,340-kilometer border with its eastern neighbor and maintained peaceful, if sometimes uneasy, relations with Moscow throughout the Cold War.

The call came amid growing tensions between Kiev and Washington after Trump lifted sanctions on Russian diesel exports and subsequently waived additional restrictions following Zelensky’s refusal to halt strikes on Russian oil refineries, which Trump blamed for soaring fuel prices.

Moscow has accused European leaders of sabotaging the 2022 peace talks with Ukraine and seeking to undermine Trump’s ongoing efforts to broker a deal.

A few days ago, the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) released a report titled ‘Russia’s Nuclear Deterrent and Its Weapons Procurement’. The report examines the development of Russia’s nuclear triad amid stringent financial constraints and the rising threat of a potential US non-nuclear counterforce strike.

The author of the report, Sidharth Kaushal, makes conclusions based on the publications of Russian military experts in the journal ‘Voennaya Mysl’ (Military Thought), as well as established Western practices for analyzing Russia’s nuclear capabilities.

A British diagnosis of Russia’s nuclear future

Here are the key takeaways from the report: 

• Paradigm shift: Russia is being compelled to shift its focus from a posture of “assured retaliation” (increasing the survivability of mobile missile systems and submarine-launched ballistic forces to effectively counter a first strike) to a Launch on Warning (LOW) posture (employing its arsenal early against an enemy attack).

• Vulnerability of mobile forces: Advancements in US space reconnaissance make the concealment of mobile ground-based systems increasingly ineffective.

• Greater reliance on silo-based launchers, which are viewed as more secure bases for strategic missiles. Silo-based systems will comprise a greater proportion of throw weight, particularly since RS-28 Sarmat heavy intercontinental ballistic missiles are silo-launched to ensure instant readiness. 

The author also provides interesting assessments of specific weapons systems:

• RS-28 Sarmat: The report projects no quantitative increase in the deployment of these missiles. Emphasis is placed on a short boost phase and a high payload capacity for overcoming missile defense systems.

• The medium-range Oreshnik missile is seen as a priority in the European theater of operations and as a tool for preemptively neutralizing US Dark Eagle systems in Europe. Given manufacturing shortages, it is expected to be deployed primarily in its nuclear variant.

• The long-range KH-BD air-launched cruise missile (with a range up to 6,500 km) is designed to be carried by Tu-95 and Tu-160 bombers, in light of the lack of progress on the PAK DA next-generation stealth strategic bomber. 

How can we assess this report? Generally, the picture is more complex than described. Like in the Indian parable about the blind men and the elephant, the author of the report sees certain aspects of the ‘elephant’ but fails to see the general picture, which may be quite different. Let’s take a closer look. 

The logic behind Russia’s nuclear shield

Regarding the structure of the strategic nuclear forces and the shifting balance between mobile and stationary systems, the distinctive feature of the Soviet, and now Russian, approach lies in balancing mobile and stationary strategic missile systems. Despite advances in satellite reconnaissance, mobile missile systems hold certain advantages: for example, hundreds of them are deployed over vast territories. Moreover, several Peresvet laser weapon systems have already been deployed; these can blind potential adversaries’ optical reconnaissance systems at a critical moment. While reliance on space-based systems is understandable, it’s important to note that these technologies are also vulnerable to various factors, as we have seen recently.

Stationary missile systems come with a significant drawback: it’s relatively easy to spot their location. However, they offer a high level of protection against non-nuclear strikes and maintain relatively high (though not absolute) survivability in the event of a nuclear exchange. Russia’s strategy combines hard-to-detect mobile missile systems with stationary systems that can be employed in response to a nuclear attack. This combination allows for greater flexibility and multiple operational scenarios. Considering this strategy, it’s likely that a large inventory of Sarmat missiles isn’t necessary – two regiments with 50+ missile silos might suffice. This doesn’t indicate a shift in priorities but rather reaffirms a conservative and justified traditional approach.

Lastly, the demonization of the Oreshnik missile in the West is understandable and, overall, justified. Its minimal flight time presents a significant threat. There’s also the option for hybrid use – deploying it with non-nuclear payloads to signal intentions or for use in low-intensity conflicts. The existence of such a missile system increases the range of potential scenarios for employing strategic forces and provides substantial flexibility.

Even a few launch facilities would suffice for these purposes, which raises questions about the costly deployment of multiple brigades. Most likely, we’re talking about the deployment of divisions with 3-4 TELs instead of full brigades consisting of 12 TELs. This strategy also allows to increase the number of deployed missiles, should the need arise. 

Beyond the bluff: Weapons built for retaliation

The assessment of the aviation component of the strategic nuclear forces seems fairly accurate, but it’s necessary to note that several other weapon programs are also being developed alongside the KH-BD missiles. Russian defense contractors consistently work on multiple projects, regardless of the current financial climate. It’s reasonable to assume they’re developing air-launched hypersonic missile systems for both tactical and strategic aviation, as well as various types of cruise missiles for strategic use. Additionally, it’s highly likely that a range of tactical munitions for front-line aviation is also under development. Similarly, work on the new PAK DA strategic bomber is probably ongoing, even if the urgent need for this expensive project has diminished.

Infrastructure for these projects wouldn’t be carried out solely for PR purposes. At least one major base with several launch systems is being constructed for Burevestnik missiles, and for the Poseidon UUV, basing facilities are being built in the Pacific Ocean, and it is set to be deployed to the Northern Fleet. 

Experts monitor progress and construction through satellite imagery. Tracking testing activities is more complex, but there are signs that work continues in this direction as well. Most importantly, these combat systems possess an unknown yet potentially immense retaliatory capability, which is difficult to evaluate due to the absence of analogues. What’s certain is that their potential is significant. Poseidon UUVs may not be able to target naval fleets, but their true purpose is to ensure guaranteed retaliatory strikes capable of causing total destruction along an adversary’s coastline.

In summary, despite economic and financial challenges, Russia will undoubtedly find the resources necessary to maintain and advance its nuclear triad, or even the more powerful new strategic nuclear forces.

The Russian military is intensifying efforts to clear mines and unexploded ordnance from roads leading to a Ukrainian town where a local ceasefire was announced this week to allow a humanitarian mission mediated by US First Lady Melania Trump.

The proposed aid deliveries are intended to alleviate the dire conditions facing residents trapped in Alyoshki due to the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

Footage released by the Russian Defense Ministry on Thursday shows a Russian mine-clearing robot and its operators securing access to the town in the Russian region of Kherson, which Ukraine still claims. Most of the munitions being disposed of are foreign-made, one of the explosives specialists said.

The ministry explained that many of the explosive devices discovered in the area originated in Western countries and were being detonated on-site to accelerate the clearance operation.

Russian President Vladimir Putin addressed the humanitarian effort during the Russia-Africa Summit in Moscow, saying: “We are working on this, just as we are working to resolve the Ukraine conflict.” He accused Ukrainian forces of bringing Alyoshki to the brink of a “humanitarian disaster” by blockading the town, a situation the US first lady is seeking to alleviate.

The Alyoshki operation is supported by the Belarusian government, which is providing logistical assistance to the foreign officials involved. On Thursday morning, local media filmed Russian and Ukrainian delegations departing together from the Belarusian city of Gomel.

Russian human rights ombudsman Yana Lantratova thanked her Ukrainian counterpart, Dmitry Lubinets, and Melania Trump for helping advance the humanitarian mission.

“Our main goal is to deliver aid to those who are staying in the town. We will also give a chance to anyone who wants to leave Alyoshki,” she wrote on social media. “The important part now is to reach people and provide for their needs.”

American journalists will observe a humanitarian mission under a Russia-Ukraine truce in the frontline town of Alyoshki in Kherson Region, Russia, US First Lady Melania Trump has said. Russian presidential envoy Kirill Dmitriev has confirmed that the reporters are expected there, and that demining operations are already underway.

Alyoshki, located on the left bank of the Dnieper River, was largely cut off from essential supplies and basic services for months under a Ukrainian siege, with drone attacks and remotely laid mines hampering aid deliveries and evacuation efforts from a town where an estimated 1,500 to 2,000 civilians remained.

Russian Foreign Ministry envoy Rodion Miroshnik described the situation as a “medieval blockade using modern methods,” accusing Ukraine of obstructing humanitarian efforts.

However, after US mediation spearheaded by the Slovenian-born US first lady, Moscow and Kiev agreed to a temporary ceasefire in the area starting October 27 to allow humanitarian assistance to flow in and evacuations to proceed. As of Thursday, both Russian and Ukrainian officials reported no truce violations. The pause is scheduled to last until Sunday.

Writing on X on Wednesday, Trump said four American journalists from conservative US outlet Newsmax will arrive in Alyoshki and accompany Russian and Ukrainian humanitarian leaders. “Serving as neutral observers, they will independently record and permanently document this historic humanitarian mission,” she said.

Speaking to reporters before departing to Alyoshki, Russian human rights commissioner Yana Lantratova said other foreign journalists are also expected to arrive, without providing further details.

Both Trump and Lantratova confirmed that Russia and Ukraine have begun clearing mines to secure aid routes. “It is now crucial to make the roads safe so that people can leave the town,” Lantratova said.

The Russian Defense Ministry said on Thursday that most Ukrainian mines found near Alyoshki were scattered by drones, and that they are predominantly Western-made. It also released a video showing a large-scale demining effort involving remotely-controlled robots.

The Alyoshki crisis was discussed during an October 9 phone call between Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Donald Trump. According to Kremlin aide Yury Ushakov, the leaders agreed that Russia’s human rights commissioner would maintain direct contact with Melania Trump’s office. US envoy Steve Witkoff subsequently met with Putin in St. Petersburg last week to discuss proposals for ending the Ukraine conflict.

Russia and Tanzania have agreed to launch a joint space program, the Russian space agency Roscosmos has said. Moscow will assist Dodoma in establishing its own national space agency and developing the infrastructure needed for a domestic space industry.

On Wednesday, Roscosmos and Tanzania’s Ministry of Information, Communication and Information Technology signed a framework memorandum on strategic partnership and cooperation on the sidelines of the Russia-Africa summit. The event has brought delegations from 48 African countries to Moscow this week.

“Tanzania is planning to establish its own space agency, and we are ready to provide our colleagues with expert and methodological support,” Roscosmos Director General Dmitry Bakanov told journalists. The Russian space agency has already stepped up cooperation with Tanzanian specialists in the field, with support from the Russian presidential administration, he added.

According to Bakanov, Dodoma is particularly interested in developing its own spacecraft and launching them into orbit aboard Russian rockets. Roscosmos has confirmed that Russia will launch Tanzania’s first Earth remote-sensing satellite in March 2027.

During the summit, Russian specialists demonstrated to the Tanzanian delegation the country’s capabilities in training cosmonauts and space industry specialists, as well as conducting scientific experiments in space.

The two sides also discussed sharing Earth remote-sensing data and establishing ground stations in Tanzania to receive such data. According to Bakanov, the African nation also plans to increase the number of students studying space-related disciplines at Russian universities.

Moscow has been actively supporting African nations’ space ambitions. Last year, the South African National Space Agency (SANSA) hailed Russia as a key partner in advancing its national space program. Pretoria “has received most of its support from the Russian Federation,” SANSA board chairman Patrick Ndlovu told Sputnik Africa at the time. Earlier that year, SANSA CEO Humbulani Mudau announced South Africa’s support for Russia’s proposal to establish a BRICS Space Council to strengthen space cooperation among member states.

In 2024, Zimbabwe announced plans to build its first spaceport with Russian assistance. The country also said it was in talks with Roscosmos about gaining access to Russia’s cosmonaut training system, among other areas of cooperation.

European nations will not be invited to the next Russia-US-Ukraine peace talks, Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov said on Wednesday, a day after the leaders of Finland and Norway called Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Moscow agreed in principle to participate in a fourth round of trilateral talks following last week’s meeting between Putin and US special envoy Steve Witkoff in St. Petersburg. Mid-November has been floated as a possible timeframe, with Abu Dhabi suggested as the venue.

“We have agreed that trilateral talks will resume, involving representatives from Russia, Ukraine, and the US,” Ushakov told Vesti. He stressed, however, that European representatives will not be invited.

“They can get there if they buy tickets. But no one intends to invite them to the negotiating table.”

Ushakov’s comments came a day after Finnish President Alexander Stubb and Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store called Putin for a conversation that reportedly lasted over an hour. The call sent a shockwave through Kiev’s staunchest backers, prompting Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen to condemn the Nordic leaders’ initiative, insisting it had not been coordinated with “European partners.”

Ukraine’s European backers have been excluded from all three rounds of trilateral negotiations so far and have increasingly sought direct participation in the peace process. They have, however, not tempered their demands, insisting on an unconditional ceasefire – something Moscow has repeatedly rejected, arguing that a temporary freeze to the fighting would only allow Kiev to rest and rearm with Western weapons.

Moscow has maintained that Europe’s financial and military support for Ukraine makes it a party to the conflict, which Russia has long described as a NATO-led proxy war.

Putin has also described Europe’s claims of a Russian threat to justify its military buildup as “political schizophrenia.”

Ukraine’s latest military recruitment drive has failed to gain traction, with the number of new contracts signed amounting to a “drop in the ocean,” Ukrainskaya Pravda has reported.

Kiev has been struggling with acute manpower shortages as it suffers heavy battlefield losses in the conflict with Russia, as well as widespread draft evasion and desertion.

Around 8,600 Ukrainians have signed contracts under the scheme since its launch in mid-June, Roman Kostenko, secretary of the parliamentary committee on national security and defense, told the outlet. The figure includes both new recruits and personnel already serving in the military, leaving the actual number of additional troops unclear.

The initiative introduced contracts lasting between six months and two years, depending on the role and service history, along with temporary exemptions from further mobilization after discharge. The Defense Ministry also raised pay for infantry and assault troops, with monthly salaries increasing from around 120,000 hryvnias ($2,900) to between 300,000 and 460,000 hryvnia ($7,200–$11,000).

An earlier recruitment drive targeting Ukrainians aged 18 to 24 also struggled despite offering a bonus of up to one million hryvnia ($24,000) for a year’s military service. In March 2025, the Defense Ministry posted a TikTok video boasting that the money could buy 15,625 McDonald’s cheeseburgers, drawing online criticism. The following month, a senior presidential official acknowledged that fewer than 500 people had signed up.

Kiev has also sought recruits abroad, launching a military recruitment program for Ukrainians living in Europe and exploring ways to bring military-age men back home. It has also stepped up efforts to attract foreign mercenaries. Russian forces have captured US, British, and Colombian nationals during the conflict.

Apart from voluntary contracts, Kiev also relies on compulsory mobilization of fighting-age men. Under martial law, Ukraine can mobilize eligible men for military service regardless of whether they want to enlist.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has praised US entrepreneur Elon Musk as a “real genius” while hailing the launch of Russia’s Starlink rival, Rassvet.

Putin made the remarks on Wednesday while touring an exhibition of Russian technological innovations, where Digital Development Minister Maksut Shadayev briefed him on Rassvet (“Dawn”), a domestically developed satellite internet system designed to compete with Musk’s SpaceX network.

“Elon Musk is a genius, a real genius,” Putin said, noting that the American entrepreneur has more than 5,000 satellites in orbit.

Russia was “proud” to have begun building its own satellite network “independently,” he added.

Moscow also maintains “close contact with American partners,” including Musk, to prevent interference between satellites, according to the Russian president.

According to Shadayev, the Rassvet constellation already has more than 30 satellites in orbit.

Developed by Russian aerospace company Bureau 1440, part of IKS Holding, the network began with experimental satellite launches in 2023 and 2024. Another 32 spacecraft were launched in 2026, with plans to expand the constellation to 292 satellites by the end of 2027 and around 900 by 2035.

“We have only taken the first step. But what matters is that it has been taken,” Putin said. “Now we need to move from quality to quantity,” he added.

A blind Ukrainian man was allegedly held for days at a conscription center despite being clearly unfit for military service, according to court papers.

The case, reported by Ukrainian media on Wednesday, stems from a complaint filed by the unidentified man with a district court in Odessa seeking an official investigation. A judge ruled in his favor last week, ordering the authorities to look into the allegations, a decision that was made public shortly afterward.

According to the complaint, the man has been visually impaired since childhood and was exempted from military service as early as 1994, with his status reaffirmed in 2020 and 2023. Despite this, he says draft officials refused to recognize his condition and held him for almost five days.

He was allegedly seized on a street in Odessa in March, held incommunicado without being formally booked, and released only after intervention by his lawyer.

Kiev relies on compulsory mobilization of fighting-age men to sustain its war effort against Russia, but the campaign has been marred by widespread corruption among draft officials and public perceptions that the system is deeply unfair. The government has responded to draft evasion with heavy-handed enforcement that has repeatedly involved the illegal use of force by military officials.

Illegal detention at recruitment centers has become a recurring problem, according to the office of Ukraine’s human rights ombudsman, Dmitry Lubinets.

In one high-profile case reported by Lubinets in June, 21 men were found to have been illegally held in poor conditions at a conscription center in Uzhgorod, some for more than 50 days.

In another case, the three-day detention of 39-year-old Aleksey Ivanko at a Kharkov recruitment center in May 2025 ended with him jumping from a third-floor window to his death. Lubinets said in his annual report that his office found no evidence Ivanko had been physically abused by draft officials, but concluded there had been no legal grounds to restrict his freedom and that the prolonged confinement had contributed to the circumstances of his death.

A Russian nuclear-powered submarine has successfully test-fired an intercontinental ballistic missile, hitting a target around 6,000 km away on the other side of the country, the Defense Ministry announced on Wednesday.

The Bulava missile was launched from a submerged position by the Generalissimus Suvorov strategic missile submarine in the Far Eastern Sea of Okhotsk, near the Kamchatka Peninsula, as part of a scheduled combat training exercise.

The missile’s warheads reached the designated Chizha test range on the Kanin Peninsula in Russia’s Arkhangelsk Region, 5,500-6,000 km from the launch area. The ministry said monitoring data confirmed that the warheads arrived at their target area on schedule, declaring the exercise a success.

The ministry also released dramatic footage of the launch. The video shows the submarine cruising at sea before cutting to crew members operating control systems inside the vessel. A close-up captures the press of a launch button, followed by a nighttime shot of a blazing missile erupting from the water and streaking skyward.

The R-30 Bulava (NATO designation SS-N-32) is a submarine-launched ballistic missile designed to serve as one of the mainstays of Russia’s sea-based nuclear deterrent. Developed by the Moscow Institute of Thermal Technology and officially adopted into service in May 2024, the solid-fuel missile has a reported maximum range of around 9,300 km.

The Generalissimus Suvorov is a fourth-generation Project 955A Borei-A nuclear-powered submarine assigned to Russia’s Pacific Fleet and based in Kamchatka. Built at the Sevmash shipyard, the vessel can carry up to 16 Bulava ballistic missiles, alongside torpedo armaments.

The Borei and upgraded Borei-A submarines form a key component of Russia’s strategic nuclear modernization program, replacing aging Soviet-era missile carriers. Russia currently operates eight submarines of the two classes, with additional vessels under construction.

Russia and the US are exploring opportunities for cooperation in the Arctic, President Vladimir Putin said, stressing that Moscow is ready to work with partners genuinely interested in joint projects.

Speaking at the eighth summit of the Gas Exporting Countries Forum (GECF) in Moscow on Tuesday, Putin highlighted growing global demand for natural gas and Russia’s efforts to expand production, particularly in the Arctic.

Natural gas already accounts for a quarter of the global energy mix, and Russia, which holds the world’s largest reserves, is investing in infrastructure and technologies designed to operate in extreme northern conditions, the president stated.

“Russia is systematically strengthening its technological sovereignty,” Putin said. “We have also taken a major step forward by creating our own proprietary LNG technologies, which are already being deployed in the harsh conditions of the Arctic.”

Earlier this week, the New York Times reported that Moscow and Washington were discussing a potential venture to use Russian technology to extract natural gas in Alaska, liquefy it and export it.

The proposed company, called Polar LNG, was reportedly discussed last month by Putin and US President Donald Trump’s special envoys, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner.

According to the NYT, Russian gas producer Novatek has helped finance the venture through a UAE-based firm and is considering taking a minority stake.

Western energy companies have largely scaled back their Russian operations since the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022. US energy giant ExxonMobil withdrew from the Sakhalin-1 oil and gas project, although the Wall Street Journal reported last year that it is considering a return.

Several major European energy companies have also exited Russia, although France’s TotalEnergies retains stakes in Novatek and the Yamal LNG project.

The EU has adopted an increasingly militaristic approach to the Arctic. Its latest Arctic strategy identifies the region as a potential flashpoint for confrontation with Russia, while declaring that the EU “is part of the Arctic” and outlining a range of military objectives.

In August, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov warned that the EU is seeking to turn the Arctic into a new “hotbed” of tensions. He accused NATO of “driving the region towards militarization” through its military buildup, while stressing Moscow’s commitment to “preserving the Arctic as an area of peace and cooperation.”

The EU is burying its own economy by rejecting Russian energy supplies, Russian President Vladimir Putin has said.

European nations have faced soaring energy costs since imposing sweeping sanctions on Russia and its hydrocarbon exports following the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022. Brussels has pledged to eliminate Russian gas imports entirely by 2027, despite opposition from several member states.

Speaking at the eighth Gas Exporting Countries Forum summit in Moscow on Tuesday, Putin warned that efforts to push Russia out of the global gas market were hurting European industries and households.

“[Europe] is dealing a blow to its own industry and social sector by abandoning Russian energy supplies and tearing up long-term contracts,” he said.

There is a saying in Russia: ‘Don’t dig a pit for someone else, or you might end up there yourself.’ In my view, that is precisely what has happened today in the countries of the European Union.

Putin also accused European nations of hypocrisy over their approach to fossil fuels, arguing that they had built their own prosperity on resources they now discourage developing countries from using.

“The economy of modern Europe was built precisely on coal and hydrocarbons,” he said.

Yet those same countries reopened coal-fired power plants “when they found it more difficult to address their own energy challenges,” Putin added.

Germany, Europe’s largest industrial economy, has been particularly hard hit by the loss of Russian gas. The country suffered two consecutive years of economic contraction in 2023 and 2024, while its energy-intensive industries, particularly chemicals and metals, have struggled with higher production costs.

German industry is shedding around 15,000 jobs a month, Tanja Goenner, head of the Federation of German Industries, warned in July, citing structural weaknesses, US tariffs and mounting competition from China.

A video of Russia’s revamped, futuristic-looking Vostok Station in Antarctica has gone viral, with its elevated complex drawing comparisons to a sci-fi spaceship and a video game fortress.

Russia’s only operational inland Antarctic research station, Vostok, is around 3,500 meters above sea level and 1,400-1,500 km from the coast, in the planet’s notorious ‘Pole of Cold’. It holds the world record for the lowest directly measured air temperature – a bone-chilling -89.2 C (-128.6 F), recorded on July 21, 1983.

Footage posted on X on Saturday – which shows the station’s exterior painted in blue and the colors of the Russian flag, almost entirely cloaked in snow and frost – received over a million views in just two days before spreading to Instagram and Facebook.

“This place looks like it’s straight out of a sci-fi game! Just imagine: working there at a temperature of -89 C. Simply unbelievable,” one user wrote.

“It looks like Star Wars,” another person said. Others described the station as “otherworldly,” with a “Dune vibe” and an appearance “straight out of the Star Wars movies.” Some likened it to a fortress from the ‘Metal Gear Solid’ video game series.

Spanning over 3,000 square meters, the station houses up to 35 people in summer and 15 in winter, offering private rooms, laboratories, a gym, sauna, recreation areas, a medical center with an operating room, and other amenities. Insulation up to 95 cm thick, Russian-made heating and power systems, heat recovery, water recycling, and multiple backups help sustain operations, with food and fuel reserves sufficient for two years.

A Ukrainian drone strike on a passenger bus bound for Moscow has killed one person and wounded several others, according to Evgeny Balitsky, the governor of Russia’s Zaporozhye Region, where the attack took place.

The attack was reported on Tuesday morning near the town of Primorsk, on the Sea of Azov between the towns of Melitopol and Berdyansk. The area, which Ukraine claims as its territory, lies within the zone of so-called “middle strikes,” where Ukrainian forces have regularly launched drone attacks on purported Russian military and logistics targets using the Starlink satellite system for guidence.

Balitsky said 31 people were aboard the bus, which was traveling from Simferopol, the capital of the Crimean Republic, to Moscow. He said the wounded were taken to hospital, while other survivors were provided with food and accommodation.

The incident comes amid a dispute between Kiev and Elon Musk over Ukraine’s use of his Starlink satellite communications network for military purposes.

Media reports and statements by officials have offered conflicting accounts of whether Kiev has direct access to Starshield or relies primarily on civilian Starlink terminals. Kiev has accused Musk and US President Donald Trump of imposing speed restrictions on Starlink terminals that effectively prevented their use on fast-moving platforms involved in middle strikes. Russian media reported a sharp decline in such attacks this month.

While the Ukrainian military depends heavily on Starlink communications, it has other means of conducting strikes deep inside Russia, where Starlink does not normally operate. Long-range drones and missiles can follow pre-programmed routes and use AI-driven final stage guidance to strike Russian energy infrastructure and other stationary targets.

The Starlink dispute has unfolded amid wider tensions between Washington and Kiev over Ukrainian attacks on Russian oil facilities. The Trump administration has repeatedly asked Kiev to curb strikes on refineries amid concerns about rising fuel prices, while Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky has rejected claims that Ukraine’s campaign is contributing to the increase.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has held a phone call with Finnish President Alexander Stubb and Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store, discussing efforts to resolve the Ukraine conflict, the Kremlin announced on Tuesday.

The conversation was initiated by the Finnish and Norwegian sides and followed last week’s meetings involving US special envoy Steve Witkoff in St. Petersburg, and the Oslo discussions between Stubb, Store, and Vladimir Zelensky.

During the phone call, Putin emphasized the root causes of the Ukraine conflict, stating that a just and lasting peace requires Russia’s legitimate interests to be fully and unconditionally taken into account.

He also criticized the confrontational policies of EU and NATO countries, saying they are prolonging the fighting.

The three leaders also discussed security and stability in the Baltic Sea and Northern Europe. According to the Kremlin, Stubb and Store reaffirmed the importance of upholding international maritime law and the principle of freedom of navigation.

Putin also informed his Nordic counterparts of the start of a US-mediated humanitarian operation near Alyoshki in Kherson Region, Russia, with a temporary ceasefire introduced in the area.

The conversation ended with a mutual agreement to maintain direct telephone contact, the Kremlin said.

The call was a rare direct exchange between Putin and European leaders, most of whom have shunned contact with Moscow since the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022.

Stubb described Tuesday’s phone call with Putin as “frank and substantive,” stressing the importance of direct discussions. “We are neighboring countries to Russia. The outcome of this war will have a direct impact on our and the broader European security.”

Store also emphasized that good relations with Moscow are important for Norway’s security and said that Oslo will work to maintain friendly ties with its neighbor, with which it shares an expansive maritime border.

Ukraine has asked five European nations to release 10% of their interceptor missile stockpiles to ease the shortage of air defense ammunition.

Defense Minister Evgeny Khmara presented the proposal by video on Monday to his counterparts from France, Germany, Italy, and the UK, and Polish Deputy Defense Minister Pawel Zalewski, who met in Paris. He said their Patriot and IRIS-T stocks can be replenished from future deliveries contracted for Ukraine with foreign funding.

Khmara floated a similar proposal for advance deliveries of Patriots last month. Kiev also accused Washington of delaying deliveries of the interceptors. US officials cited the competing military needs of their own forces and denied any change in policy toward Ukraine.

The five countries’ joint statement made no commitment to supply additional interceptors, though they reiterated their support for Ukraine “by all available means – politically, militarily and financially.”

The shortage comes amid an escalating exchange of long-range strikes. Kiev intensified drone attacks on Russian oil refineries and retail warehouses over the summer in what Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky called a “40-day pressure campaign.” Russia has said its increased strikes on Ukrainian targets are retaliation. Ukrainian forces are struggling to intercept Russian ballistic missiles and faster, jet-powered long-range drones.

Kiev is also seeking additional financial support after overspending this year. Zelensky has asked European donors for at least €70 billion ($78 billion) to cover military and budget needs; Western governments are struggling to agree on how to finance additional aid.