Sofia Chepik, a member of the Alyi Lebed (“Scarlet Swan”) Telegram chat, walked out of a Moscow detention facility on May 3 after serving a 15-day administrative detention sentence on a hooliganism charge, the Russian news outlet RusNews reported.

Tuapse will be ready for the resort season, the head of the municipal district, Sergei Boyko, said, promising the city beach — contaminated by an oil spill following Ukrainian drone strikes — will be cleaned up by June 1.

Russian courts have received at least eight administrative complaints against major foreign video game studios over violations of personal data storage rules since December 2025, the independent Russian investigative outlet Verstka reports.

Russian drone strikes overnight on May 1 set fire to two apartment buildings in Odesa, the city’s military administration head, Serhiy Lysak, said.

Cloudflare Radar has removed a “spyware” label from the domains of Russia’s state-backed messaging app Max, according to the service’s data.

Russia has banned imports of foreign satellite terminals.

Sitting in prison with nothing to do is a grim business. Better to have some action, even unpleasant action — an arrest, a holding cell, a court hearing. Poland had no use for me; they simply wanted to hand me over to Ukraine. They treated me as a formality — just sit there and wait. The negative interest in my work began as early as 2019. Archaeologists are not looters — they do science. I believe the response of the European scientific community was inadequate. Individual people wrote lette...

Russia will halt hostilities for Victory Day whether or not Ukraine agrees to a temporary ceasefire, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said at a press briefing on April 30.

Russia’s Digital Development Ministry spent 39.5 billion rubles in 2025 to develop a “national video platform” and another four billion rubles to create and develop a “multifunctional information exchange service,” the Russian business daily Kommersant reported, citing an appendix to the law on the execution of the federal budget for the year.

Ukrainian drones struck Perm overnight, sending smoke rising over the city in what appeared to be a repeat attack on a Transneft linear production and dispatch station.

The Kremlin announced that Russian President Vladimir Putin met with Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov at the Kremlin and expressed support for Kadyrov’s bid for another term as the region’s head.

Firefighters have fully extinguished the blaze at the Tuapse oil refinery, the Emergency Situations Ministry’s press service said.

A member of the Russian opposition platform at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) has been suspended after effectively defending “honor killings” in the North Caucasus. Journalist Alexander Plyushchev published a statement to that effect from PACE President Petra Bayr.

St. Petersburg’s city administration plans to sharply cut the number of spectators at the May 9 military parade at Palace Square, the St. Petersburg-based news outlet Fontanka reported, without citing a source.

Russians barred from leaving the country after receiving military draft notices will not be able to exit through Belarus, the State Border Committee of Belarus told the news outlet Belsat.

Russia has contained the spill of burning oil that spread through Tuapse after Ukrainian drone strikes on an oil refinery there, Emergency Situations Ministry head Alexander Kurenkov said at an operational headquarters meeting in the city.

Statements by Ruslan Kutayev — president of the Assembly of Peoples of the Caucasus and a member of the PACE platform representing Russia’s indigenous peoples — are generating widespread debate in the Russian opposition. In an interview with a Ukrainian YouTube channel, he said that when the time comes, Chechens will “return to Moscow” and control the Russian capital so that it “doesn’t get uppity with the surrounding peoples.” Journalist Alexander Plushev later invited Kutayev onto his progr...

Vladimir Putin broke his silence on Ukrainian drone strikes against oil infrastructure in Tuapse, addressing the issue during a meeting on election security. Pavel Zarubin, host of the program Moskva. Kreml. Putin (“Moscow. Kremlin. Putin”), published a clip of his remarks on his Telegram channel.

Russia’s Investigative Committee announced that Ratmir Mavliyev, the head of Ufa’s city administration, has been detained on suspicion of abuse of office and corruption.

Drone debris struck an oil refinery in Tuapse in the early hours of April 28, setting it on fire, the operational headquarters of Krasnodar Krai reported.

Eighteen Peruvian citizens who were deceived into traveling to Russia and forced to fight against Ukraine have returned home over the past two weeks, radio RPP reported, citing Peru’s Foreign Ministry.

Russia’s Labor Ministry has expanded the list of professions eligible for alternative civilian service, adding nearly 100 positions to bring the total from 271 to 363.

Robert Brovdi, the commander of Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces and known by the call sign “Magyar,” is a former businessman and grain trader who volunteered for the front at the start of the war. He was among the first in the Ukrainian military to deploy drones for reconnaissance and strike operations, and was eventually appointed to lead the new branch of the armed forces. In a recent interview with the BBC, Magyar said that the territory of Russia up to 1,500 to 2,000 kilometers deep is ...

Ukrainian drones struck several Su-57 fighter jets and an Su-34 fighter-bomber at the Shagol airfield in Russia’s Chelyabinsk Region, Ukraine’s General Staff said on May 1.

An Oscar statuette belonging to Pavel Talankin, one of the creators of the film Mr. Nobody Against Putin, has been found at Frankfurt am Main airport, the German airline Lufthansa’s press service told Deutsche Welle.

Russia launched the Soyuz-5 expendable two-stage rocket for the first time on the evening of April 30, lifting off from a pad at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, Roscosmos said.

Police in Karachay-Cherkessia have arrested at least 16 men on criminal charges of organizing the activities of an extremist organization, the human rights group SK SOS reported April 30, citing a source.

Volodymyr Zelensky said he had directed his team to reach out to the U.S. president’s staff to learn the details of Russia’s Victory Day ceasefire proposal.

The Kremlin’s political bloc and United Russia’s leadership want more than 10% of Russian voters to turn out for the party’s primaries — membership is not required. Regional administrations have already been given turnout targets. The Kremlin is using the exercise to test the so-called “corporate mobilization” of state company and public-sector workers ahead of the State Duma campaign. Russians have already begun complaining on social media about being coerced into voting. Meduza corresponden...

According to data from the human rights organization Memorial, which a Russian court recently banned permanently, more than 5,000 people in Russia are victims of political repression. At least 68 of them have died in custody over the past decade and a half, including at least six since the start of 2026. For many people who have spoken out against the authorities or against the war in Ukraine, imprisonment has effectively become a death sentence. Meduza offers a brief account of each of these...

Federation Council Speaker Valentina Matvienko has called on Alexei Mordashov, a co-owner of the Russian steelmaker Severstal, to repatriate money from offshore accounts to Russia.

Vladimir Putin proposed a ceasefire for the Victory Day holiday period during a phone call with Donald Trump, Putin’s aide Yuri Ushakov said.

An assassination attempt targeting Major General Azatbek Omurbekov was reported at a military garrison in Khabarovsk Krai, according to the Telegram channel VChK-OGPU. An explosive device planted in a mailbox detonated on April 28, killing one person and wounding several others.

Russian billionaires Roman Abramovich and Viktor Kharitonin may be tied to A7, a payment platform created in 2024 to help Russia move money across borders in defiance of Western sanctions — and which has itself been placed under sanctions. That is the finding of an investigation by the independent Russian investigative outlet Proekt, whose sources describe A7 as the dominant player in the cross-border payments market.

A Ukrainian drone struck “one of the industrial sites” in the Perm municipal district and started a fire, Perm Krai Governor Dmitry Makhonin said.

On April 21, Moscow State University (MSU) held a presentation for its new artificial intelligence (AI) school. The new program is part of an infrastructure that Russian state news agencies describe as the “unified AI ecosystem of MSU.” It also includes an AI research center at the university, a supercomputer called “MSU-270,” and the MSU Institute of Artificial Intelligence. That last organization is officially headed by Vladimir Putin’s daughter Katerina Tikhonova, who sources familiar with...

Russia’s Digital Development Ministry is developing a mechanism to impose additional charges on international internet traffic, according to a written .pdf response the ministry sent to the Association of Telecommunications Companies.

In the early hours of April 28, Ukrainian forces struck the oil infrastructure in Tuapse for the third time in two weeks. The first fire at the oil terminal burned for four days before it was extinguished. The second took five days to put out; local authorities said one person was killed and another was injured. The third wave of strikes hit a section of the Tuapse oil refinery that had not previously been targeted, as well as the marine terminal. Correspondents from the independent journalis...

TV host Vladimir Solovyov apologized on air to blogger Victoria Bonya after she publicly addressed him, telling her he had been too careless with his words.

Journalist Ksenia Sobchak sat down for a two-hour interview with pro-Kremlin blogger and informant Ilya Remeslo. He is known as someone who spent years fighting Alexei Navalny and was behind one of the criminal cases against the opposition leader. In mid-March, Remeslo unexpectedly published a post criticizing Vladimir Putin on his Telegram channel, and two days later ended up in a psychiatric hospital, where he spent a month. After his discharge, Remeslo told Sobchak about his hospitalizatio...

City officials in Tuapse and representatives of the Emergency Situations Ministry barred female volunteers from helping clean petroleum products from the shoreline, a Kommersant correspondent reported after attending a meeting between officials and volunteers.

On April 29, the Krasnodar-based outlet Anapa Region published an article headlined “Exclusive interview with the governor of Krasnodar Krai on the situation in Tuapse.” The article was quickly deleted — though a copy was preserved in a web archive — and the outlet reported that its website had been hacked and the interview planted. The article contained the following statements:

Russia’s Prosecutor General’s Office has filed a lawsuit in a Moscow court to seize the assets of Vadim Moshkovich, founder of Rusagro, the Russian business news outlet RBC reported, citing the case file.

Vladimir Putin’s approval rating has fallen to its lowest point since the first days of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, with 73 percent of respondents telling the Public Opinion Foundation (FOM) that Putin is performing “rather well” as president.

President Volodymyr Zelensky said Ukraine will launch a military reform in 2026 that includes a phased demobilization of some soldiers.

Denis Butsayev, Russia’s former deputy minister of natural resources and ecology, has left the country, the Russian business daily Vedomosti reported, citing sources. He resigned a week ago.

The Kremlin has been fighting VPNs for nearly a decade: a law banning circumvention of blocked websites appeared in 2017, authorities began mass-banning VPN services from 2021, and in 2024 their advertising was banned. Authorities launched a new “crusade” against VPNs a month ago, against the backdrop of Telegram’s blocking. The Digital Development Ministry, acting on orders from either Putin or the FSB, devised several new restrictions. Some have already taken effect, while others officials ...

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have detained Baldan Bazarov, a Russian Buddhist lama and former abbot of the Kyrensky datsan in the Tunkinsky District of Buryatia, the Russian news outlet People of Baikal reports. The detention took place on April 29. Bazarov may face deportation, the outlet said.

Russian forces struck Odesa with a series of drones overnight, injuring at least 16 people, including a 17-year-old, according to Serhiy Lysak, head of the Odesa city military administration.

Amendments to Latvia’s immigration law took effect April 29, allowing authorities to revoke temporary residency permits for repeated administrative offenses.

A strike on the village of Voznesenovka in the Shebekino district of Russia’s Belgorod region killed three people and wounded eight on April 29, according to preliminary reports.

Russia’s media regulator, Roskomnadzor, has demanded that Apple and Google remove the mobile app of iStories, an independent Russian investigative outlet, from their stores, iStories reported.

A Russian disinformation network known as Storm-1516 has been operating in the West since 2023, actively spreading fabricated stories and interfering in the political processes of foreign states. The group is believed to include former employees of Yevgeny Prigozhin’s troll factory and has been linked to the GRU. Storm-1516 has been accused of interfering in elections in the United States, Germany, and Hungary. One of the group’s most recent operations involved publishing a fake BBC report cl...

Russia’s Federal Tax Service and central bank are jointly developing criteria to automatically flag income Russians earn from undeclared business activity, the Russian business news outlet RBC reported, citing two sources (the article is behind a paywall; a summary is available from Frank Media).

The head of a department at the Novosibirsk regional veterinary authority has been found dead, the Novosibirsk-based news outlet “Sibirsky Express” reported, citing a source. His wife, Yelena Tur, confirmed the death.

Ukrainian drones struck the oil-loading infrastructure at the port of Tuapse overnight, sparking a large fire after debris fell at the site. The Krasnodar Krai operational headquarters said no one was injured. Within a few hours, satellite images showed smoke had spread at least 140 kilometers (87 miles).

Boiling oil spilled onto a street outside an oil refinery in Tuapse, Krasnodar Krai, after a storage tank boiled over during a fire there on April 28. Alexei Klushin, head of the regional Emergency Situations Ministry office, described the incident to Governor Veniamin Kondratyev in a conversation posted to the governor’s Telegram channel.

Russians who use VPNs are not looking for an alternative perspective online — they are looking for “what the enemy is saying,” Valery Fadeyev, the head of the Presidential Council for Civil Society and Human Rights, said. He called it “something unnatural” to use services that circumvent internet restrictions.

Russian users downloaded VPN apps from Google Play 9.2 million times in March 2026 — 14 times more than in the same month a year earlier — the Russian business daily Kommersant reported, citing data from the service Digital Budget.

Estonia’s Internal Affairs Ministry has drafted legislation that would bar Russian and Belarusian citizens from buying real estate in the country, ERR reported.