Telegram founder Pavel Durov has been charged with facilitating terrorist activity, as the messaging app’s operators do not remove channels and bots used to coordinate terrorist attacks and acts of sabotage in Russia. The Federal Security Service (FSB) made the announcement, Interfax reported.
Meduza has obtained the ”brand book” governing how United Russia’s regional branches design campaign materials for local candidates. The document also shows the design intended for the party’s federal-level campaigns.
The Eksmo-AST publishing group has fired employees who refused to work under the censorship rules it introduced in response to Russia’s new laws, and others who objected resigned, the group’s president, Oleg Novikov, said in an interview on the program Vesti. The independent Russian investigative outlet Agentstvo flagged the interview.
In an article about the trials of participants in the 1825 uprising on St. Petersburg’s Senate Square, the Russian business daily Vedomosti mistakenly labeled the Decembrists an “undesirable” organization — a legal status that bans a group from operating in Russia and criminalizes any involvement with it.
The Investigative Committee’s regional office said it had opened a criminal case in the beating of Nikita Zezin, a 67-year-old scientist in Yekaterinburg who died in a hospital on July 22. The Investigative Committee did not specify which article of the Criminal Code the case falls under.
Authorities have declared a state of emergency in the Russian city of Tyumen and the surrounding district as flooding continues to worsen. The Tura River has overflowed its banks, inundating neighborhoods across the city and nearby communities. Regional Governor Alexander Moor said the flooding was caused by unusually heavy rainfall: June alone saw two and a half times the area’s average monthly precipitation. As of July 28, the Tura had reached a level of 877 centimeters, well above the offi...
A Ukrainian drone struck a civilian bus on a scheduled route in Shebekino, acting Belgorod Governor Alexander Shuvaev said.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has arrived in the United States, he announced on his Telegram channel.
The Yalta administration has begun installing outdoor cooking areas in the courtyards of apartment buildings, the city’s Russian-installed authorities announced. The independent Russian outlet Agentstvo first reported the announcement.
Former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych is now living in Sochi and using documents in the name of “Oleg Nikolayevich Leonov,” according to an investigation by the Ukrainian YouTube channel “Telebachennya Toronto.”
Kazakhstan cut its daily oil production by more than half after the Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC) export terminal in Novorossiysk suspended loading, Reuters reported, citing an industry source.
In recent days, the Ukrainian military has begun deliberately and regularly striking warehouses belonging to Wildberries, Russia’s largest online retailer. These strikes have directly affected tens of thousands of Russians: both employees of the marketplace itself and small business owners who earn money through the service, along with their employees. A few days ago, we asked our readers what they think about these events. Here are some of the responses.
The Moscow-based group of companies “Energoprof” fired its sales director, Yekaterina Remizova, for violating trade secrecy rules. Among other things, the company was unhappy that she had uploaded internal reports to the Chinese chatbot DeepSeek.
Ukraine struck Russia’s Udmurt Republic with drones on the morning of July 27, Governor Alexander Brechalov said, adding that air defense forces were repelling “the most massive attack in recent times.”
Megamarket, the Sberbank-owned online marketplace, has amended its seller agreement to shield itself from liability for failing to meet its obligations during drone attacks, the Telegram channel Mozhem Obyasnit said.
Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev called for the war between Russia and Ukraine to be frozen during talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin, according to video published by propagandist Pavel Zarubin.
St. Petersburg’s election commission has refused to register Yabloko party candidates for the city’s legislative assembly elections, the St. Petersburg-based news outlet Fontanka reported. Officials cited an error in the party’s paperwork as the formal reason.
July 18. Elektrostal, Moscow region. One person died and 57 were injured. A fire burned for four days at the warehouse. The facility is now closed, and Wildberries said it is “assessing the aftermath.”
Electricity consumption in occupied Crimea fell 42% year over year in the first 20 days of July 2026, and dropped 28% compared with the first 20 days of June, according to a study by the independent Russian media outlet The Bell.
Vladimir Putin paid an unannounced visit to an aviation plant in Irkutsk. State media, including TASS, did not report on the trip until the afternoon of July 24.
Lithuanian border guards discovered an underground tunnel running from Belarus into the southeastern part of the country, the Lithuanian broadcaster LRT reported, citing Lithuania’s State Border Guard Service.
Demand for electric and hybrid vehicles has surged in Russia, leaving some models in short supply, the Russian business daily Kommersant reported, citing dealers and distributors.
Senate Republicans and Democrats have struck a deal on a new Russia sanctions bill co-authored by the late Lindsey Graham, Bloomberg reports.
The SK SOS crisis group has been designated an “extremist” organization, according to a letter received by its director, David Isteev.
U.S. President Donald Trump met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the White House. The talks lasted just over an hour. No press statements were planned before or after the meeting.
Marina Gorshkova, an entrepreneur and founder of a cosmetics brand with 1.3 million Instagram followers, has recorded a video appealing to Russia’s leadership over the fallout from Ukrainian strikes on Wildberries warehouses.
Foreigners made 2.99 million tourist trips to Russia between January and June 2026, the Russian business daily Kommersant reported, citing Rosstat data.
For more than a week, residents of Tyumen have been posting on social media about the state of the Tura River, which runs through the city. They complain of a strong, foul smell near the river, and they have posted photographs of dead fish heaped along the banks. Residents also describe a foul smell coming from the tap water in their apartments, and some say the water has given them conjunctivitis, cystitis, and intestinal infections. On July 24, after a woman in the city raised the issue on ...
The Republic of Altai has barred drivers from refueling the same car more than once every 24 hours, the regional government said.
Romania’s Foreign Ministry summoned Russia’s ambassador to Romania after Romanian armed forces shot down three drones that had entered the country’s territory “without authorization” between July 24 and 26.
Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree raising the army’s authorized size to 2,426,130 personnel, with service members now numbering 1,535,000, up from 1,510,000.
A new section devoted to an exhibition called “Protecting the Sovereignty of the Russian State: History and the Present Day” has appeared on the website of Russia’s Justice Ministry. The project has several parts: an attractively designed registry of “foreign agents” and sections containing the country’s history, photographs, and documentary films. Among the latter, unexpectedly, is a propaganda film about Hitler, presented with no context whatsoever. After the launch, many people noticed tha...
State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin closed the chamber’s eighth session, delivering a speech at the final meeting that summarized the deputies’ work.
Lithuania’s Foreign Ministry is proposing to tighten the country’s law on national sanctions, requiring Russian and Belarusian cultural figures who travel there for public performances to sign an anti-war declaration.
Wildberries has stopped displaying military-related goods in search results for the terms “everything for the SVO” and “SVO,” Ukrainian Telegram channels have reported.
Early on the morning of July 24, Ukrainian forces attacked more Wildberries logistics centers — this time in Crimea, the Leningrad region, and St. Petersburg. In Russia’s northwest, drones damaged two separate warehouse complexes, in Shushary and Utkina Zavod. Authorities did not report any injuries. Nikolai (name changed), a St. Petersburg resident who was near the site of the drone strike in Shushary, told Meduza what happened after the attack.
Montenegro’s government has published draft amendments to its visa regulations. The organization Kovcheg flagged the document.
The head of Russia’s central bank, Elvira Nabiullina, acknowledged that the country’s fuel crisis has driven up inflation.
Russia launched a missile strike on Kyiv and the surrounding region on the afternoon of July 24. Ukrainian media, citing Valerii Borovyk, the founder of the defense manufacturer First Contact, reported that the attack hit a training ground in Kyiv region’s Bucha district.
Russia’s central bank cut its key rate by 25 basis points, to 14%.
Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, dismissed rumors of a possible mobilization in Russia this fall as untrue, the Russian state news agency TASS reported. The Security Council advises the president on national security matters. He called news reports and social media posts on the subject “paid for.” Medvedev added:
In recent years, Russian authorities have pushed ninth graders ever harder to enroll in vocational colleges instead of staying in school through 11th grade and going on to university, the BBC’s Russian service reports.
On the night of September 26, 2022, explosions ruptured three of the four pipelines that make up the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline systems in the Baltic Sea, near the Danish island of Bornholm. German investigators pursued theories ranging from a Russian provocation to the involvement of Western intelligence services. Not until 2024 did they conclude that a Ukrainian sabotage group had destroyed the pipelines.
Russian officials are considering installing machine guns and mobile missile launchers on cargo ships that carry grain through the Sea of Azov to shield the vessels from Ukrainian drone attacks, sources told Bloomberg.
In the first half of 2026, Russia intensified its air strikes on Ukraine. And since early summer, when Ukraine’s armed forces stepped up attacks even on Russian regions far from the border — as far as Sverdlovsk, Tyumen, and Omsk regions — the Russian military has been striking Ukrainian cities even harder. Kyiv remains one of Russia’s main targets, so, just as in the early years of the full-scale war, city residents are once again taking shelter from attacks in the capital’s metro. On the ev...
Tyumen Governor Alexander Moor has declared a state of emergency in the city of Tyumen and the Tyumen municipal district because of flooding on the Tura River.
A Ukrainian drone struck an apartment building on Zemskaya Street in Chekhov, outside Moscow, Moscow region Governor Andrey Vorobyov said. Chekhov Mayor Mikhail Sobakin said no one was injured, though two apartments were damaged.
The independent Russian data project “To Be Precise” has published an article explaining how Russia’s “Red Book” is compiled, why it exists, and why it periodically touches off scandals. We’re retelling it here, with a few examples and details of our own.
Denis Shtilerman, the owner and chief designer of Fire Point, told journalist Dmitry Gordon that Ukraine could carry out its first ballistic missile strikes on Moscow as early as this fall.
Kirill Cheplygin, a resident of Achinsk in Krasnoyarsk Krai, was sentenced to 19 years for murdering his ex-wife and her boyfriend. He has since signed a contract with Russia’s Defense Ministry and left for the war in Ukraine, his ex-wife’s mother told the newspaper Gorod A.
Montenegro will introduce a visa requirement for Russian citizens, the government announced in a press release published on its website July 27.
At least 400,000 Russian troops have returned from the front to civilian life, according to journalists at the independent Russian news outlet Novaya Gazeta Europe, who reached that conclusion by comparing limited official data with their own calculations.
On July 25, a powerful storm with heavy rain and thunderstorms swept through Russia’s Rostov region. One person died in the storm, and 28 more were injured, according to the latest data cited by Rostov-on-Don Mayor Alexander Skryabin on July 26. Due to the bad weather, 15 cities and districts in the region were left without electricity, and Rostov and several other towns had water supply problems (restored by the morning of July 26). The storm damaged buildings and toppled hundreds of trees: ...
A Ukrainian drone strike on Rostov-on-Don overnight on July 27 killed a husband and wife and injured five other people, including a teenager, Rostov Governor Yuri Slyusar said.
Russia will extend its ban on gasoline exports until the end of 2026, Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak said, according to the Russian state news agency TASS.
A French security source told AFP that the Russian disinformation network “Storm-1516” targeted former Prime Minister Édouard Philippe, one of the declared candidates for the French presidency, as part of an effort to interfere in France’s presidential election.
.
Russian forces dropped two air bombs on Sloviansk, in Ukraine’s Donetsk region, on the afternoon of July 24, the head of the region’s administration, Vadym Filashkin, reported.
The combined audience of foreign messaging apps that remain unblocked in Russia grew 26% in the second quarter of 2026, the Russian business daily Kommersant reported, citing a study by the Russian mobile operator MTS AdTech.
Russia had 995 registered companies and individual entrepreneurs whose main line of business is funeral services as of mid-2026, the Russian business daily Kommersant reported, citing data from the Russian corporate database service Rusprofile. That’s up 22.5% from a year earlier: the fastest growth in the number of funeral companies in Russia over the past five years.