Russian mathematician Mikhail Verbitsky has been detained at the Yerevan airport, writer Roman Leibov and the independent Russian broadcaster TV Rain reported.

A courier delivered a package to the home of Andrei Pinchuk in New Moscow, triggering an explosion, the Russian state news agency TASS said, citing law enforcement. Pinchuk served as security minister of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (“DNR”) from 2014 to 2015.

Russia’s Foreign Ministry has warned citizens against traveling to Thailand, saying they risk detention or arrest at Washington’s request.

Russian opposition politician Ilya Yashin’s new political party is holding its founding congress in Berlin on June 12 and 13, bringing together opposition-minded Russians from exile.

Ukrainian drones struck the Republic of Tatarstan overnight, hitting industrial facilities and at least one apartment building, regional head Rustam Minnikhanov said. The republic’s prime minister traveled to the scene, he added.

Russia has scrapped the 2026 MAKS International Aviation and Space Salon. The government posted the cancellation order on its official legal information portal.

In an interview with Russia 24‘s local affiliate, Acting Belgorod Governor Alexander Shuvaev said 541 people have been killed in the region since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Another 3,928 people have been wounded, Shuvaev added, noting that the region has come under more than 55,000 attacks by Ukrainian forces.

Beginning June 15, anyone in Russia seeking a Cypriot visa must apply at the embassy’s consular section in Moscow or at a consulate general in St. Petersburg, Yekaterinburg, or Krasnodar, the Embassy of Cyprus in Russia said.

Russia’s Rosselkhoznadzor is banning imports of all products subject to quarantine controls from Armenia starting June 12 and blocking their transit to other Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) member states.

Yuri Petukhov, the former first deputy governor of the Novosibirsk region, has been arrested on drug charges, the Russian business daily Kommersant reported, citing sources.

Ukraine’s drone attack on Samara on June 10 forced the Kuibyshev oil refinery to halt crude processing, two industry sources told Reuters.

Debris from Ukrainian drones struck an apartment building in Krasnodar overnight on June 11, Krasnodar Governor Veniamin Kondratyev said. The falling debris sparked a fire in the building, injuring two people.

Russia’s State Duma approved, on second and third readings, a bill sharply raising fees for immigration-related services.

Moscow has named Colonel General Alexander Chayko as the new commander in chief of Russia’s Aerospace Forces. Chayko’s biographical entry on the Defense Ministry’s website shows the appointment took effect in May.

Russia’s Digital Development Ministry announced that Roblox is no longer blocked in the country.

Kazakhstan’s Interior Ministry will assign female investigators to handle sexual violence cases, Deputy Minister Sanzhar Adilov said, according to Kazinform.

Russia’s Communist Party (KPRF) will not field former deputy Valery Rashkin as a candidate in the upcoming State Duma elections, sources told the Russian business daily Vedomosti. Rashkin’s candidacy was blocked both in a single-member district and on the party list.

A car bomb killed a senior Russian defense official outside Moscow early Tuesday, June 9. Around 5:30 a.m., a BMW X3 exploded near Koldunova Street in Balashikha’s Aviatorov neighborhood as the driver pulled out of a parking space. Bystanders reached the driver while he was still alive, but he died at the scene.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he achieved his goal by publishing an open letter to Vladimir Putin.

Russia’s State Duma passed, on second and third readings, legislation that will fine website owners who allow users to log in using foreign services such as Google and Apple.

Ukraine has received information from the United States that Russia may launch an Oreshnik medium-range ballistic missile before June 14, the Ukrainian news outlets Zerkalo Nedeli and RBC-Ukraine reported, citing a source in the Ukrainian government.

President Vladimir Putin vowed to intensify Russian strikes on Ukraine in response to Ukrainian drone attacks on targets across Russian territory, making the announcement at a meeting with war veterans held to mark Russia Day.

Several airports in Russia have begun warning of restrictions on aircraft refueling, the Telegram channel “Aviation Mezzanine” reported.

At least 200 Russian servicemembers who were no older than 18 have died since the start of the full-scale war with Ukraine, BBC News Russian reported. The outlet, working alongside the independent Russian news outlet Mediazona and a team of volunteers, is compiling a named list of the dead.

On June 3, the opening day of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, Ukrainian drones struck the city. On June 4, Volodymyr Zelensky published an open letter to Vladimir Putin calling for a face-to-face meeting and an end to the war. The letter’s tone, however, was more combative than conciliatory. Putin declined to meet.

A court in Moscow received 12 administrative reports on a single day — June 8 — alleging press freedom violations, the independent Russian news outlet Mediazona reported.

Russian users of Roblox — the gaming platform unblocked in Russia on June 10 — have lost access to in-game chat.

Elvira Nabiullina, Russia’s central bank governor, has not been seen in public in more than a week. She missed the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) on June 4, a National Association of Securities Market Participants (NAUFOR) conference on June 9, and a June 10 meeting with Vladimir Putin where the president discussed inflation and the key interest rate — the Central Bank’s core areas of responsibility.

On June 10, Russia’s State Duma amended the Budget Code, giving the government the power to exceed federal spending caps and borrow beyond the limits set by the approved budget.

Ukrainian forces struck bridges connecting occupied Crimea with the Kherson region in the early hours of June 11, according to Vladimir Saldo, the Russia-appointed governor of the occupied part of the Kherson region.

Officials in occupied Sevastopol failed to issue a new batch of QR codes for fuel purchases on the evening of June 10, Russian-installed governor Mikhail Razvozhayev said. He blamed the disruption on fuel supply problems: “Fuel trucks were unable to reach the city last night.”

Russia’s internet regulator, Roskomnadzor, has been blocking Telegram for several months. The app remains accessible via VPN and proxy servers, but users have been abandoning it regardless — the restrictions have made the messaging service too cumbersome for everyday use. According to the news outlet Agentstvo, a fresh round of “throttling” in late April and early May caused Russian Telegram channels to lose roughly half their audiences. Meduza spoke with the operators of three channels that ...

Russia has been expanding its military infrastructure along its entire western border throughout the winter of 2025–2026, including along the borders with Finland and Norway, according to a joint investigation by Norwegian broadcaster NRK, Swedish broadcaster SVT, Danish broadcaster DR, and the Estonian news website Delfi. The journalists based their findings on satellite imagery from Planet Labs.

Ukraine launched a massive overnight drone and missile strike against targets across Russia on June 10. Russia’s Defense Ministry said drones were shot down over 19 regions and occupied Crimea. Authorities declared air alerts across all six regions of the Ural Federal District and, for the first time since the war began, in the Omsk region.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed a law exposing Russians living abroad to administrative prosecution for “offenses against the interests” of the state.

At the start of 2026, Russia’s war in Ukraine surpassed World War II in length. As of June 10, the war in Ukraine has lasted as long as World War I — 1,568 days. Of course, a regional war of the 21st century has little in common with a global conflict of the 20th. But is there anything to be gained from comparing them? And what lessons might the participants in today’s war draw from World War I? Meduza looks back at why the deadliest conflict of a century ago lasted so long, what it cost the ...

Franz Roubaud’s panoramic painting The Siege of Sevastopol has been “virtually destroyed” in a Ukrainian drone strike, said Mikhail Razvozhaev, the Russian-appointed governor of Sevastopol.

Last month, four Russian military satellites — Kosmos-2610, Kosmos-2611, Kosmos-2612, and Kosmos-2613 — altered their orbits and moved toward ICEYE-X36, a radar satellite that has been supplying data to Ukraine’s military since 2022, according to a May 22 report by the analytics firm Integrity ISR.

A district court in St. Petersburg banned three films: “Love, Simon,” “Kill Your Darlings,” and “Call Me by Your Name.”

He won — with a caveat. Pashinyan’s Civil Contract party took 49.8% of the vote, enough to secure a parliamentary majority and form a government without coalition partners, but short of the supermajority needed to call a referendum on constitutional amendments. Pashinyan needs that referendum to sign a peace treaty with Azerbaijan: Baku is demanding that Yerevan strip its Constitution of all references to reunification with Nagorno-Karabakh. At 65% or above, Civil Contract could have called t...

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has signed a law removing Russian from the list of languages covered by the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages, Verkhovna Rada Speaker Ruslan Stefanchuk announced.

Adam Kadyrov, 18, has been awarded the title of Hero of the Chechen Republic, with his father, Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, presenting him with the medal.

Ukrainian drones struck two oil refineries in Nizhnekamsk on June 12. The Ukrainian Armed Forces General Staff said the targets were the TANEKO refinery (Tatneft) and TAIF-NK. Ukrainian monitoring Telegram channels were among the first to report the strikes, though they initially wrote that one of the targets was the Nizhnekamskneftekhim refinery, a Sibur subsidiary. The confusion likely stemmed from the fact that the TAIF-NK plant was part of Nizhnekamskneftekhim until the late 1990s.

A State Duma deputy from Russia’s Communist Party (KPRF), Vyacheslav Markhayev, has warned that Russia is “on the brink of a social explosion,” for which “the entrenched leadership will bear full responsibility.”

The commander of the 5th Separate Motorized Rifle Brigade (formerly the Oplot Battalion), Colonel Ramil Faskhutdinov, has been named a Hero of Russia, the Defense Ministry announced.

Iran scholar Nikita Smagin has been fined 15,000 rubles on an administrative charge of cooperating with an “undesirable organization,” he announced in his Telegram channel.

A concert planned for Russia Day on June 12 at Red Square in Moscow has been canceled, the Russian news outlet Msk1 reported on June 11.

Russian servicemembers from the 143rd Guards Motor Rifle Regiment spent nearly a year posting personnel rosters, command orders, video conference links, and drone stream login credentials in a public Telegram chat — one they called “Blyadskaya Organizatsiya” (“Fucking Organization”). The Telegram news channel Astra drew attention to it.

A district court in Rostov-on-Don has fined a local resident for a comment he left on VK under a post about the Taliban, citing an administrative statute on inciting hatred, the Telegram news channel Ostorozhno Novosti reported.

Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) said it has detained a foreigner in the Moscow region on suspicion of plotting to kill a serviceman in one of the Defense Ministry’s units.

The International Chess Federation (FIDE) has temporarily suspended the membership of the Chess Federation of Russia. The decision was announced on FIDE’s website.

Latvia canceled a Riga concert by rapper Xzibit after authorities learned of his recent performances in Russia, the Baltic news website Delfi reported. The show had been scheduled for September 19. Latvian authorities notified the organizers that the concert would not be permitted to go forward once they learned of Xzibit’s concerts in Russia.

Ukrainian arms maker Fire Point has completed its first flight test of a new interceptor missile, the FP-7.x, which it developed as a lower-cost alternative to Patriot interceptor missiles, the Financial Times reported. Denis Shtilerman, Fire Point’s chief designer, described the test as “pretty successful.”

Vladimir Putin met with senior ministers to discuss economic issues, including declining inflation and a possible cut in the key interest rate. Neither Russian Central Bank Governor Elvira Nabiullina nor any of her deputies attended, the independent Russian investigative outlet Agentstvo reported.

A spa hotel in the occupied Crimean city of Saky offered guests between 10 and 20 liters of gasoline as a booking incentive, then canceled the promotion after four days when the fuel ran out, the Russian Telegram news channel Ostorozhno Novosti reported.

A car that exploded in Moscow’s Konkovo district on June 9 belonged to an employee of a scientific and industrial enterprise, the Russian Investigative Committee said.

Ukrainian drones and missiles struck Russian regions and occupied Crimea overnight on June 10. Russia’s Defense Ministry said air defense forces shot down 326 drones.

Oleg Terlyakov, a senior official at Roskomnadzor, Russia’s federal media regulator, said at a meeting with IT industry representatives that his agency had successfully blocked Telegram. When challenged, he dismissed the concern.

Damir Davydov, head of the Main Missile and Artillery Directorate of Russia’s Defense Ministry, was killed by a car bomb in Balashikha, near Moscow, the Telegram channel VChK-OGPU and Ukrainian blogger Anatoly Shariy reported, without providing specific sources.

Russia’s Digital Development Ministry said in early June it had reached an agreement with Roblox on the conditions required to protect Russian users’ rights and interests.