Week-ending 5 December 2025
Russia’s War against Ukraine
President Putin’s former deputy chief of staff, Dmitry Kozak, wrote a letter criticizing Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine and presented it to the president before stepping down earlier this year, Agentstvo reported Friday, citing people close to him. (The Moscow Times, 28/11/25)
Verified Russian military deaths in Ukraine have risen to at least 152,142 since the full-scale invasion, according to a joint count by BBC Russian and Mediazona. (The Moscow Times, 29/11/25)
Serhiy Akhmetov a 50-year-old civilian resident of Bucha spent more than 3 1/2 years locked up in a series of facilities in Russia and Belarus after Russian soldiers swept through his town arresting people. (RFE/RL, 29/11/25)
Like other Ukrainian soldiers held at Corrective Colony No. 10 in Russia’s Mordovia region, Pavlo Afisov said he was subjected to excruciating physical and mental abuse. (RFE/RL, 30/11/25)
Ukrainian ex-prisoners of war say they endured sadistic beatings and torture with electric shocks at the hands of a medic they called “Dr. Evil,” identified as Ilya Sorokin. (RFE/RL, 30/11/25)
Russian authorities have pressed charges against rapper Face, who left Russia shortly after the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, for violating the country’s “foreign agent” law. (The Moscow Times, 1/12/25)
A judge has placed Leonid Katz, a 22-year-old graduate of Moscow’s Higher School of Economics (HSE), in pre-trial detention on charges of state treason after two months of being rotated in and out of detention. (The Moscow Times, 2/12/25)
Russia has seen a sharp rise in aviation incidents in the fourth year of Western sanctions that cut off access to spare parts for foreign-made aircraft has found. (The Moscow Times, 2/12/25)
Russian authorities blocked access to Snapchat and imposed restrictions on Apple’s video calling service, FaceTime. (The Guardian, 4/12/25)
Mikhail Loshchinin, a 48-year-old man with dual Russian and Belgian citizenship, was charged with treason following an attempt to visit his father, who suffered a heart attack. (Meduza, 4/12/25)
A Moscow region judge sentenced physicist Artyom Khoroshilov to 21 years in a maximum-security prison for treason for actions in support of the Ukraine military. (The Moscow Times, 4/12/25)
Russia has returned seven Ukrainian children to their families with the help of U.S. First Lady Melania Trump, the White House said Thursday. (The Moscow Times, 4/12/25)
Authorities in Pskov filed a new criminal charge against opposition politician Lev Shlosberg, accusing him of spreading “false information” about the Russian military. (The Moscow Times, 5/12/25)
Other news
Russia’s Justice Ministry on Friday designated Human Rights Watch as an “undesirable” organization. (The Moscow Times, 28/11/25)
Former RFE/RL contributor Nika Novak, sentenced to prison last year by a Russian court for carrying out her professional duties, has disappeared from a Siberian correctional colony. (RFE/RL, 1/12/25)
A judge in the Irkutsk region sentenced Igor Mokeev, a former detention center warden, to five years in prison for abusing inmates. (The Moscow Times, 1/12/25)
A St. Petersburg court sentenced Igor Andreev, VP of Bank Rossiya (allegedly “Putin’s personal cashbox”), to eight and a half years in prison on charges of bribery. (The Moscow Times, 1/12/25)
Robert Gilman, a US citizen jailed for assaulting a police officer, has been sentenced to a further eight years in prison for attacking guards at the correctional facility. (The Moscow Times, 3/12/25)
A Moscow judge sentenced former Khabarovsk region Governor Sergei Furgal to a new 23-year prison term, adding to the 22-year sentence he is already serving. (The Moscow Times, 3/12/25)
Nearly 500 endangered Caspian seals have washed up dead along Russia’s Caspian Sea coast in the republic of Dagestan. (The Moscow Times, 3/12/25)
The U.K. on Thursday sanctioned Russia’s intelligence service and summoned Moscow’s ambassador after an inquiry found President Vladimir Putin bore “moral responsibility” for the death of a British woman in a 2018 nerve agent attack. (The Moscow Times, 4/12/25)
