Week-ending 14 August 2026
Russia’s War against Ukraine
Russian military-linked accounts promoted far-right messages about Ceuta. (The Guardian, 7/8/26)
Ukraine hit refineries in Krasnodar and Samara regions overnight. (The Moscow Times, 8/8/26)
Russians Nikita and Olga Belov face deportation from Finland after repeatedly being denied asylum – despite dangers they would face in Russia for their pro-Ukrainian activism. (The Guardian, 9/8/26)
Kyiv said it hit the Taneco refinery in the city of Nizhnekamsk. (The Guardian, 10/8/26)
Up to 50,000 North Korean soldiers will be deployed in Russia, Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said, while calling on South Korea to provide support for Ukraine’s air defence. (The Guardian, 10/8/26)
People are being detained for photographing soldiers’ graves at cemeteries. (Meduza, 10/8/26)
Ukrainian drones have attacked Russia’s largest petrochemical plant in western Siberia’s Tyumen region, local authorities said Monday afternoon. (The Moscow Times, 10/8/26)
The Supreme Court has banned Yabloko’s entire list of federal election candidates from standing for the State Duma of Russia’s parliament. (The Guardian, 11/8/26)
Russian authorities plan to resettle nearly 114,000 Russians in occupied Ukraine. (Meduza, 11/8/26)
Wildberries confirmed that its logistics center in Voronezh region was struck; in Orenburg region a Ukrainian drone attack sparked a fire at an “industrial enterprise”; the Orsknefteorgsintez oil refinery, attacked by Ukrainian drones, has closed for six months. (The Moscow Times, 11/8/26, 13/8/26)
President Putin said Russia would seize ships belonging to European countries if they tried to sell cargo confiscated from Russia-linked vessels. (RFE/RL, 12/8/26)
A new wave of the fuel crisis has followed Ukrainian strikes on oil refineries. (Meduza, 12/8/26)
A Russian plan to kill a Ukrainian American citizen in Warsaw was thwarted by Poland before it could be carried out, the Polish prime minister has said. (The Guardian, 13/8/26)
A Moscow judge upheld pre-trial detention of Oleg Varyukhin, arrested in May after flying to Russia to visit relatives, charged with treason for paying taxes in Ukraine. (The Moscow Times, 13/8/26)
Russia and Ukraine have exchanged the bodies of fallen soldiers. (Meduza, 13/8/26)
State prosecutors in Pskov requested a sentence of 12 years and one month for Lev Shlosberg for “discrediting” and spreading “fake news” about the military. (The Moscow Times, 14/8/26)
Georgy Pirogov was sentenced to 23 years in prison and a fine of 800,000 roubles on a charge of treason for allegedly spying for Poland. (The Moscow Times, 14/8/26)
A fire broke out Friday at Russia’s Baltic Sea port of Ust-Luga, a major hub for oil exports, following a Ukrainian drone attack on Friday, regional authorities said. (The Moscow Times, 14/8/26)
The FSB is dismantling the border between Russia and Russian-occupied Ukraine. (Meduza, 14/8/26)
Other news
Dmitry Protopopov, former head of Popcorn Books and Individuum, was sentenced to a four-year suspended sentence on a charge of LGBTQ+ “extremism.” (The Moscow Times, 7/8/26)
Ozon users complained about censorship removing a reference to Hitler and Stalin and the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact in The Rat,a novel by Günter Grass. (The Moscow Times, 10/8/26)
Russia has freed a former US marine who had been in jail since 2022, after Vladimir Putin granted the ailing American a pardon on humanitarian grounds. (The Guardian, 11/8/26)
Moscow police beat a schoolboy. (Meduza, 11/8/26)
The writer and screenwriter Pavel Tetersky has left Russia. (Meduza, 12/8/26)
A professor was detained for donating to Navalny-affiliated groups. (The Moscow Times, 12/8/26)
Memorial’s exhibition The Other Russia will open in Amsterdam. (The Moscow Times, 12/8/26)
Apple’s App Store removed the Yandex Pay app. (The Moscow Times, 12/8/26)
Vladimir Putin visited the disputed Kuril Islands, claimed by Tokyo. (The Guardian, 13/8/26)
Larisa Mikhailova, an activist who documented local farmer protests this year, has been arrested on charges of calling for terrorism online, her supporters said Thursday. (The Moscow Times, 13/8/26)
A Moscow court has remanded the comedian Sasha Dolgopolov in custody in absentia on charges of rehabilitating Nazism. (Meduza, 13/8/26)
