News of the Week

Week-ending 18 September 2026

Russia’s War against Ukraine

The one-and-a-half-year-old daughter of Alexandra Strilets, a Crimean woman convicted by Russia of treason a year ago, has died. (Meduza, 11/9/26)

Irkutsk region has introduced a record-high commission of 1.5m roubles for recruiters who enlist foreign nationals and stateless persons into the Russian military. (The Moscow Times, 11/9/26)

Russian law enforcement authorities have pressed criminal charges against the exiled rapper Noize MC for allegedly making statements that “justify” terrorism. (The Moscow Times, 14/9/26)

Culinary historian and former Moscow Times columnist Pavel Syutkin was sentenced to six years in prison on charges of spreading “fake news” about the Russian military. (The Moscow Times, 15/9/26)
Russia’s intelligence services are plotting to carry out targeted killings in the United States and in European nations supporting Ukraine. (The Guardian, 16/9/26)

Pskov Regional Court sentenced Ukrainian citizen Anton Demidenko to eight years and six months in a maximum-security penal colony for donating to the Ukrainian military. (Meduza, 16/9/26)

Dmitry Lyamin has been handed a second sentence amounting to 17 years’ imprisonment for inducing a fellow prisoners to join Ukrainian military units. (Political Prisoners. Memorial, 16/9/26)

Elections will be held in four partially occupied regions of Ukraine. (The Moscow Times, 16/9/26)

Russia and Ukraine exchanged the remains of 275 soldiers killed during the war, officials and Belarusian state media reported Thursday. (The Moscow Times, 17/9/26)

The US Congress passed sweeping legislation targeting Russia and Iran. (RFE/RL, 17/9/26)

Austria’s Raiffeisen Bank International (RBI) is facing renewed scrutiny as the biggest Western bank still operating in Russia. (The Moscow Times, 17/9/26)

Ukrainian pensioner Natalia Nadeiina from Tokmak was sentenced to 12 years on a charge of treason for 39 donations to help Ukraine’s armed forces. (KHPG, 18/9/26) 

Other news

A judge in Tomsk region disqualified the liberal Yabloko party’s list of candidates from the upcoming regional assembly elections. (The Moscow Times, Meduza, 11/9/26) Yabloko representatives serving on election commissions in St. Petersburg’s Krasnogvardeysky District received summonses to report to military enlistment offices. (Meduza, 15/9/26) Nikolai Rybakov, chair of Yabloko, criticized the tactical voting strategy promoted by exiled opposition figures ahead of this weekend’s elections. (The Moscow Times, 16/9/26) Authorities intend there will be no real competition in the State Duma elections. (Meduza, 17/9/26) Many opposition candidates are barred from upcoming elections. (The Moscow Times, 17/9/26) Yulia Kuznetsova, candidate for the Russian Ecological Party, disappeared in Moscow. (Meduza, 18/9/26)

Guards at Moscow’s pretrial detention center No. 4, known as “Medved,” have begun requiring defense attorneys to remove their underwear during searches. (Meduza, 11/9/26)

Moscow’s Cheryomushkinsky District Court has prohibited access to three pages on pirate websites that made American author Rachel Reid’s novel Heated Rivalry available online. (Meduza, 14/9/26)

Chechen activist Mansur Movlayev attempted to take his own life after a year and a half in a pretrial detention center in Almaty. (Meduza, 15/9//26)

Authorities have declared a regional state of emergency in Taymyr after a diesel fuel spill in the settlement of Syndassko, the Krasnoyarsk Krai government reported. (Meduza, 16/9/26)

The Supreme Court of Komi Republic sentenced Russian and Canadian citizen Nikolai Zyuzev to seven years for actions ‘against Russia’s sovereignty and territorial integrity’. (Meduza, 16/9/26)

An arrest warrant has been issued for Zhanna Nemtsova, daughter of Boris Nemtsov, on charges of organizing the activities of an “undesirable” organization. (The Moscow Times, 17/9/26)

Meduza journalist Vladislav Gorin has been put on a wanted list. (Meduza, 17/9/26)

Max can screenshot users’ devices, access all information stored in mini-apps, impersonate users without them knowing and inject code into mini-apps. (The Guardian, 18/9/26)

Aleksei Orleansky, a 62-year-old artist and local historian from Rybinsk, was sentenced to eight years in prison on charges of financing terrorism for donating to Vyacheslav Maltsev. (OVD-Info, 18/9/26)

Quotes of the Week

“I am deeply alarmed by the prevalence of these abhorrent acts documented in our report, and fear that they are almost certainly continuing amid the unceasing violence we are witnessing every day in Ukraine”

– UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk commenting on a 20-page report, entitled Sexual Violence in the Context of the Russian Federation Full-Scale Armed Attack against Ukraine, based on confidential interviews with hundreds of victims and survivors of sexual violence committed by both parties, and other relevant materials, including court documents and official records. Some 1,004 cases of sexual violence were documented from 24 February 2022, when Russia’s attack on Ukraine began, through to the end of July this year. Of these cases, 89 percent were attributed to Russian authorities – including members of the armed forces, the prison service and the national security service. The remaining 11 percent were attributed to Ukrainian authorities.

‘This outrageous case is not only about punishing Sibireva. It sends a chilling message to all critics of the government: we can come after you even when you have done nothing to violate the law. You do not need to cooperate with an “undesirable” organization, communicate with it, or even know that someone connected to it is reading your work. If you are planning to publish or say anything the authorities may dislike – you’ve been warned.’

– Tanya Lokshina, Senior Associate Director, Europe and Central Asia Division at HRW, on the conviction of Olga Sibireva an expert on religious freedom at SOVA Center, on a charge of cooperating with the International Religious Freedom or Belief Alliance (IRFBA), an inter-governmental organization banned in Russia as “undesirable”. (Human Rights Watch, 11/9/26)

‘This decision by the ECtHR is incomprehensible. The guardian of human rights in the Council of Europe region has chosen expediency over redress. In doing so, it has done harm to the thousands of victims of violations of human rights in Russia, and undermined itself and the entire international human rights protection system at a time of arguably its biggest crisis.’

– Ilya Nuzov, the director of Eastern Europe and Central Asia Desk at FIDH on the decision of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) to strike out 879 applications against Russia from its list of pending cases, leaving more than 1,500 individuals and organisations without a judicial examination of their complaints. (FIDH, 15/9/26)