In recent decades, debate over the political consequences of the world’s digital transformation has only intensified.

The camp of technological optimists has included thinkers from a wide range of fields. Cyberlibertarian John Perry Barlow declared the internet a sovereign space without borders or governments. Silicon Valley pioneer Jaron Lanier saw open coordination among people online as a tool for developing global democracy. Sociologist Nicholas Negroponte believed censorship in the digital space was technically impossible. Sociologist Manuel Castells argued that networked structures would undermine the hierarchies of authoritarian states.

They were opposed by an equally eclectic collection of pessimists. Gilles Deleuze warned of the emergence of a flexible “society of control” through digital networks. Roger Clarke introduced the concept of “dataveillance” — surveillance through digital traces. And David Lyon argued that a total “surveillance society” was nothing short of inevitable.

It is still too early to draw any final conclusions, but so far authoritarian regimes have been largely successful in suppressing freedom of speech online by combining technical censorship with physical measures. In addition to tracking of online activity and user location, citywide video surveillance systems leave nowhere for real-world dissidents to hide. And with the emergence of generative AI, the world’s largest autocracies — China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, Turkey, and Belarus — have made a qualitative leap, integrating cutting-edge technologies into their existing systems of control while testing new methods of suppressing citizens’ rights.

Traditional authoritarian methods — censorship, espionage, propaganda, and force — required significant human and financial resources. AI has changed that, allowing the world’s most powerful tyranny, China, to scale up control while minimizing costs. Beijing has accumulated an enormous body of information that, with the help of modern language models, will allow the authorities to identify patterns in large datasets quickly, detecting new markers of social discontent faster and suppressing protests before Chinese citizens can take to the streets. Soon, a person detained on the basis of a neural network’s decision will face the continuous monitoring of their emotional state while in custody — carried out by AI-powered cameras that are already being tested in Chinese prisons.

“Catching-up” autocracies such as North Korea or Russia are not yet using AI to its full potential. Due to sanctions, they are forced to import the necessary chips through semi-legal schemes — and paying a premium for the privilege. Even so, they continue to actively develop their own surveillance programs using AI.

Importantly, authoritarian regimes are willing to sell and exchange technologies, accelerating their adoption and increasing their impact. Russia, for example, shared technology with the Iranian mobile operator Ariantel in order to help Tehran build its own equivalent of Russia’s SORM, the FSB surveillance system. SORM, which appeared in the mid-1990s, tracks a user’s browsing history and session times, records every call and text message, and stores intercepted data for years.

SORM has advanced significantly thanks to machine learning. Phone conversations are now transcribed by programs similar to the audiogram feature of Russian telecoms giant MTS, turning speech into text in real time, making it available for instant contextual analysis by the regime.

Data from SORM, such as a phone’s location (as determined through cell towers), is compared with footage from city surveillance cameras connected to facial recognition systems. Those systems are built on AI training and can identify people by analyzing their facial features, silhouettes, and movements. One such facial recognition technology, FindFace, developed by Russia’s NtechLab, has also appeared in Iran.

The free world faces an existential challenge: technologies created to unite humanity have become effective weapons for dividing and controlling it. To continue suppressing civil liberties with AI technologies, authoritarian regimes critically need access to powerful microchips — occasionally obtained through legal import exceptions, but more often delivered via gray supply chains for Western equipment or made at home thanks to investments in production capacity. 

Authoritarian regimes critically need access to powerful microchips

In addition to computing power, successful surveillance depends on the use of well-trained AI models capable of effectively processing large datasets for targeted monitoring.

China: How AI helps the world’s biggest Big Brother suppress dissent

Among today’s nondemocratic states, only China possesses the full set of necessary resources to build a surveillance system on its own. It has accumulated sufficient computing capacity — in part thanks to the successful domestic development of Huawei computing chips — and gathered vast datasets. allowing Beijing to truly compete with the free world when it comes to building a sovereign artificial intelligence system.

The main change brought by AI is the shift from simply accumulating information to processing it automatically in real time. Previously, Chinese state bodies collected terabytes of video footage and text logs that they physically could not analyze in full. Now, however, modern neural networks have made it possible to merge fragmented databases — biometric data, geolocation data, and financial transaction data — into a single system that can instantly identify patterns in citizens’ behavior.

Previously, censorship and online surveillance in China consisted of a system in which a user’s activity was compared with a list of stop words and phrases, a database of banned images, and an identification system based on financial transactions. Mobile operators also continuously tracked geolocation, internet browsing behavior, and other indirect indicators.

For example, if a WeChat user sent a nefarious sentence — “The Dalai Lama is right about everything,” for example, or “What happened in Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989?” —  the message either would not be delivered or would be sent in an “invisible” mode, meaning its sender could see it but the recipient could not.

A message saying “What happened in Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989?” either would not be delivered or would be sent as an “invisible” message

Under Chinese law, responsibility for content lies with IT companies themselves — Tencent, Sina, and ByteDance, to name a few major players — which can be punished for improper content that, for whatever reason, makes it through the automatic censorship barrier. As a result, companies employed so-called online public opinion analysts — in effect, censors — thousands of specialists who manually moderated content that automatic filters deemed suspicious.

Such measures were necessary, for example, when people used sarcasm, memes, hints, and homophones. In Chinese, some characters sound the same but are written differently, and to get around an automatic ban on the word “censorship,” or hexie, meaning “harmonization,” users wrote “river crab,” he xie, which sounds exactly the same. The automatic stop-word filter let the “crab” through, and only a human moderator could understand the context well enough to catch the subversive content and delete it.

Users could also turn text criticizing the authorities into an image, then flip it upside down or add noise. Before the development of modern computer vision, older optical character recognition (OCR) algorithms could not cope with such tricks. As a result, companies had to employ people who literally reviewed terabytes worth of graphic information.

The introduction of modern AI has removed the need to maintain large numbers of manual moderators. Instead, China has trained neural networks to instantly read context, understand sarcasm, recognize upside-down text in noisy images, and transcribe voice messages. Humans are now needed only as “supervisors” to train these systems and to make decisions on the most complex political cases.

Online censorship is supplemented by a dense street surveillance network of more than 600 million cameras. With AI integration, cameras have learned to identify individuals by their gait — useful when a person tries to hide their face with a hood, sunglasses, or medical mask, which reduce the accuracy of facial identification.

China’s Watrix has introduced gait-recognition algorithms that cut a person’s silhouette from a video stream and analyze their movements: stride length, body angle, arm movement dynamics, and the way joints work while walking. Based on these parameters, it creates a unique 3D model of movement. The system only needs to see a person from behind at a distance of up to 50 meters to identify them with more than 90% accuracy.

Neural networks have also been trained to recognize specific markers suggesting the start of a protest or unrest, detecting deviations from the normal rhythm of city life, such as a sudden acceleration by a group of people, chaotic movement, or an unusual gathering in a place where people usually do not linger.

Cameras also send an alert to a censor if they recognize a person unfolding a poster or banner, even before the writing on it has been read. The surveillance system is supplemented by the tracking of phone movement patterns through cell towers. For example, if several previously flagged citizens are observed to be following matching routes, the program alerts law enforcement to behavior it considers suspicious.

China is introducing AI into every part of the law enforcement and judicial systems, up to and including court decisions. Some provinces are testing prison cameras used for the continuous analysis of the emotions, facial expressions, stress levels, and mood of inmates.

The government actively subsidizes Chinese IT companies that develop new censorship algorithms and surveillance systems. This approach allows the state to develop innovative repression technologies almost for free thanks to the commercial competition among developers, allowing the companies to scale their AI products for export to other authoritarian countries.

As a result, citizens develop the feeling that they are constantly being watched. The knowledge that an algorithm monitors every step, transaction, and message pushes people to voluntarily adjust their behavior. In short, AI-enhanced systems successfully perform the task of normalizing obedience. Society enters a state of permanent self-censorship, trying to meet the criteria of “trustworthiness” dictated by the state system.

Society enters a state of permanent self-censorship, trying to meet the criteria of “trustworthiness”

In foreign policy, China uses AI to automate propaganda campaigns aimed against political rivals. In February 2026, OpenAI blocked a Chinese hacker who had tried to use ChatGPT to launch a campaign discrediting China’s international critics, including Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi.

OpenAI investigated users’ prompts and found that both Chinese models such as DeepSeek and Qwen and international models including OpenAI itself were being used in the disinformation campaigns against the Japanese prime minister. OpenAI noted that its models had not generated offensive images of Takaichi; instead, users had asked the system to create templates for negative comments and send fake complaints to Japanese politicians.

The incident exposed a large secret Chinese network involving hundreds of employees and thousands of bots. Using the smear campaign hashtag included in the chatbot prompt, investigators were able to find other materials already published online, including AI-generated memes mocking Takaichi that had been posted on Pixiv, a Japanese online community for artists.

The spread of Chinese models among U.S. business users may also serve as a kind of “soft propaganda.” Chatbots built on these architectures can quietly give end users a distorted worldview favorable to Beijing by engaging in the soft filtering of topics relevant to China’s domestic and foreign policy — avoiding questions about human rights in Xinjiang or Taiwan’s official status while presenting exclusively positive economic narratives that subtly shape pro-China attitudes among Western audiences.

Products by Chinese developers such as DeepSeek and Moonshot AI have become an important part of the everyday operations of many U.S. startups and large Silicon Valley corporations. They serve as a far cheaper but comparable alternative to Western options and a supplement to expensive models from U.S. market leaders such as OpenAI and Anthropic.

For some businesses, the difference in token costs between Chinese and U.S. models is as much as fivefold: $4.40 versus $25. That helps explain the fivefold increase in sales of tokens for Chinese-origin models as a share of all tokens on the popular U.S. marketplace OpenRouter, from 4% in January 2025 to 21% in June 2026 for DeepSeek and Z.ai combined.

The race for computing power: How independent is China from the U.S., and is it ready to help other autocracies?

To scale up its repressive machinery, China needs to buy powerful U.S. chips capable of efficiently training AI models while also developing its own chips so it no longer depends on the United States. In its quest to win the AI race, the White House has restricted chip exports to China since 2022, forcing Chinese companies to look for gray supply schemes.

Those sanctions, however, have been eased from time to time in order to accommodate tech powerhouse Nvidia’s access to the Chinese market. Nvidia, in turn, has repeatedly adapted its products to the sanctions, releasing reduced versions of its chips that do not possess sanctioned capabilities, meaning they can legally be exported to China. As a result, the flow of computing power has continued in one form or another.

In response to U.S. pressure, China has made a major push toward its own chip sovereignty. The result is Huawei’s Ascend 950PR architecture, unveiled in early 2026, which shows impressive performance. Although it lags behind flagship U.S. analogues such as Nvidia’s B200 when it comes to energy efficiency, memory bandwidth, and overall power, it has already become a full-fledged foundation for building sovereign AI ecosystems.

A striking example of synergy between Chinese hardware and software was the launch of the DeepSeek V4 large language model. Contrary to Western analysts’ forecasts, the highly powerful model was successfully trained exclusively on clusters of Huawei Ascend 950 processors. Its emergence proved that Beijing can create advanced AI without U.S. semiconductors.

Beijing can create advanced AI without U.S. semiconductors

Chinese IT giants such as ByteDance, Alibaba, and Tencent have begun investing heavily in Huawei Ascend 950 chips, seeking to fully protect themselves from sanctions risks. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has said that harsh U.S. sanctions only accelerate China’s forced shift away from American technologies and stimulate the development of strong local competitors. Over time, they will be able to push U.S. companies out of the Asian market, depriving them of a significant share of profits.

But until China achieves AI sovereignty, it will still have to rely on gray supply schemes through Asian intermediaries and shell companies. Singapore, Malaysia, and Japan have become the main hubs for these operations. The scale of the smuggling can be judged from charges brought by the U.S. Justice Department against the co-founder and top executives of Supermicro, a major U.S. maker of server equipment that was accused of helping smuggle advanced AI servers with Nvidia H200 and B200 chips worth more than 2.5 billion euros to Chinese customers through front companies in Southeast Asia.

In addition to the physical import of equipment, Chinese entities actively use “cloud” access schemes to bypass physical borders. Renting computing power in foreign data centers allows Chinese developers to train their repressive models remotely, effectively nullifying customs controls. To contain this flow, U.S. Big Tech companies, including Nvidia, are introducing strict whitelists and compliance checks for end users. In this way, they track suspicious spikes in activity by cloud providers in jurisdictions friendly to Beijing.

In early 2026, the U.S. administration approved limited shipments of H200 chips to China’s largest IT companies under the pretext of strict national security oversight. But Chinese authorities blocked the chips’ import. China’s customs authorities and regulators instructed local companies not to buy U.S. processors and suspended shipment clearance. With that move, Beijing sought to reduce its dependence on U.S. technology and to stimulate development of its own semiconductor production, such as Huawei Ascend.

But because local production capacity remains insufficient, the move only deepened the shortage, increasing demand for illegal supplies and prompting Beijing to ease chip import restrictions six months later. In May, the U.S. Commerce Department again allowed limited sales of Nvidia H200 chips to approved Chinese companies, including Alibaba, ByteDance, and ZTE, under strict conditions and monitoring. Then, after a short pause, China began allowing some technology giants to buy chips from the United States again.

At the same time, U.S. chips that are connected to the global network remain potentially vulnerable to digital oversight and remote tracking by the United States. Although there is no physical “kill switch” in processor architecture, manufacturers can record telemetry and geolocation markers. If data on a chip’s real location leaks onto the network and contradicts official procurement documents — for example, if a server is supposed to be in Malaysia but is actually pinging from a closed data center in Shenzhen — Washington immediately blacklists the intermediary company, permanently banning it from making new purchases from U.S. vendors.

In practice, however, this measure often resembles tilting at windmills. To fully avoid surveillance, authoritarian regimes use purchased chips only in closed, isolated circuits without access to the external internet. These fully autonomous “air-gapped” systems — which in practice train and run neural networks responsible for citywide video surveillance, biometric control, and other forms of internal AI repression — render any attempt at remote control by the United States useless.

Unable to legally buy advanced Western technologies, autocracies have built a parallel market for exchanging expertise and hardware-software solutions. China is the clear leader of this technological alliance, supplying Russia, North Korea, and Iran not only with hardware in the form of servers and processors, but also with ready-made machine learning algorithms.

Autocracies have built a parallel market for exchanging expertise and hardware-software solutions

Moscow, in turn, shares its expertise in cyberespionage, censorship circumvention, and human identification with Tehran and Tbilisi. This technological barter allows authoritarian countries to sharply reduce the time needed to introduce punitive tools, creating a common digital shield resistant to Western sanctions pressure.

Today, Beijing is the key supplier of technology to countries that have come under harsh Western sanctions, helping them acquire scarce physical semiconductors through well-established semi-legal channels while providing ready-made Chinese AI frameworks and models. As serial production of Huawei Ascend lines expands, China could become a full-fledged global exporter of turnkey digital dictatorship systems of the sort that would allow other autocracies to buy surveillance hardware and software packages that are entirely independent of Western licenses.

AI in service of the Kremlin: An upgraded “digital Gulag,” attacks on global chatbots, and “troll farms 2.0”

AI surveillance in Russia is being introduced with mixed success. Moscow’s Ministry of Digital Development, Communications and Mass Media has launched a large-scale project to create a single national video surveillance platform with a cost estimated at 2 billion rubles ($24.2 million). The initiative would integrate millions of outdoor surveillance cameras across the country into a single centralized system run by neural networks, allowing security agencies to automate the process of tracking citizens’ movements. As of May 2026, however, only about 7% of the country’s 15 million video cameras were connected to artificial intelligence.

Another example of major ambition and failed implementation involves an attempt by the FSB’s Second Service to use AI to automate its media-monitoring work. The department, officially responsible for “protecting the constitutional order and fighting terrorism,”  commissioned the Kazan IT company Mikord to develop a system called Pauk (lit. “spider”), which in Russian was short for the “Portal for Analytics and Content Management.”

The idea called for an AI agent to collect materials from Russian and foreign media in an external circuit, after which the data would be integrated with FSB materials in a closed circuit. By analyzing publicly available news, the system was intended to automatically identify “objects of interest” — namely political activists and opposition figures — and forecast protest sentiments in society at an early stage.

However, the security service’s attempt to put generative neural networks to work for political policing ended in failure after the Kazan-based company, which had received large state contracts thanks to its ties with former senior officials, failed to complete the project. Its developers simply proved unable to create a stable service meeting the requirements of a two-circuit architecture and integration with complex language models. As a result, the “Spider” project was suspended, and the FSB never got its AI assistant — leaving duty officers to continue monitoring media and drafting daily analytical summaries for leadership with the help of the automatic collection tools they already possessed.

Claims that AI models are being used for traffic filtering and internet blocking in Russia are not confirmed by technical experts, who say the hardware and software used by state regulator Roskomnadzor in particular EcoFilter systems — physically lack the computing resources needed to run terabit-level traffic through complex AI models in real time. But this does not prevent authorities from analyzing traffic with AI systems offline — a process that takes more time but still produces a list of “suspicious” domains to block.

Russia’s top leadership sees AI as a key element in countering so-called “color revolutions” and Western information-psychological influence. Moscow seeks to create chatbot responses fully controlled by ideology in order to preserve regime stability and neutralize internal threats. The Kremlin is deliberately isolating the domestic technology market, creating a phenomenon of “Russian sovereign AI” in which models such as YandexGPT and GigaChat are tightly censored after being trained exclusively on state-approved datasets. That allows the authorities to maintain the political narrative they need inside the country by denying citizens easy access to alternative sources of information.

Russia’s top leadership sees AI as a key element in countering “color revolutions” and Western influence

One of the most dangerous and technologically complex trends is the deliberate “poisoning” of search results — in effect, the manipulation of the databases on which popular Western chatbots are trained and from which they draw their information. Language models like France’s Mistral, OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Anthropic’s Claude, and Google’s Gemini have all been targeted by deliberate pro-Russian disinformation, leading to heavy pollution in answers on a range of social and political topics — the war in Ukraine in particular. 

Traditional “troll farms” that once saw employees manually writing comments on social media are moving to a new level, as AI helps them automate, customize, and scale disinformation campaigns. Previously, creating a convincing fake news story in a foreign language required professional translators and editors. Now, however, large language models can generate grammatically flawless texts in dozens of languages in a matter of minutes, making it possible to move beyond mere trolling by creating content that is almost indistinguishable from posts by real users.

Russian structures are actively testing AI in order to influence electoral processes in Europe. One vivid example was the recent election campaign in Germany, where far-right forces and hidden Russian actors gained a major online advantage by using virtual “AI influencers” — entirely neural-network-generated characters that ran blogs, promoted antigovernment narratives, and coordinated public opinion.

Kremlin-backed hacking groups are also actively using large language models to automatically search for zero-day vulnerabilities in Western software, to optimize malicious code, and to generate highly effective phishing campaigns, significantly increasing the speed and destructive power of cyberoperations. Neural networks also help hackers find software vulnerabilities more quickly and write more sophisticated phishing emails. Dutch intelligence services have warned that Russia is using AI to carry out hacking operations against European Union institutions, seeking to spy on employees of various EU bodies with autonomous AI agents.

Iran’s hijab controls, North Korean crypto theft, and crackdowns on protests in Belarus and Turkey

Iran is adapting AI facial-recognition technologies to monitor women’s compliance with headscarf laws and to suppress protests by deploying a large network of intelligent video surveillance integrated with the national biometric passport database. AI algorithms automatically identify women with uncovered heads in cars, shopping centers, and city streets, after which the system remotely issues fines, blocks bank accounts, and sends court summonses — all without direct police involvement.

North Korea, despite conditions of total economic blockade and strict international sanctions, has turned AI into a tool for financial espionage, cryptocurrency theft, and the covert sale of services. One of the most sophisticated methods for bypassing sanctions has been a large-scale scheme to place North Korean IT specialists in foreign companies under the guise of freelancers or remote employees, enabling them to earn hard-currency wages that go directly to the state while gathering key data on Western companies. In short, North Korea has built an extensive network of front people operating around the world.

Artificial intelligence has become a key factor in the success of this operation. Using generative AI tools, North Korean agents create fake resumes, generate high-quality profile photos, and use real-time deepfake technologies that allow candidates to change their appearance and voice directly in the video stream during interviews, adjusting their accent to match their chosen cover story — such as posing as freelancers from Canada or South Korea.

To counter the threat, Western corporations and their security teams have been forced to introduce strict verification protocols. Candidates are asked to turn sideways live on camera (which often breaks the deepfake algorithm), to show a physical passport at a specific angle, or complete unexpected logic tasks.

Nevertheless, North Korean-generated workers have managed to infiltrate dozens of leading European companies and gain access to their internal infrastructure and trade secrets. The campaign is continuous: every day, North Korean hackers use AI to generate hundreds of new fake identities, wearing down the security teams of Western corporations.

Hackers use AI every day to generate hundreds of new fake identities for North Korean IT professionals

Another important area of North Korean activity is cryptocurrency theft. Previously, writing complex malware required North Korean programmers to have extremely high levels of skill, but now large language models automate code writing, generate phishing emails without grammatical errors, and search for vulnerabilities in cryptocurrency exchanges. As a result, Pyongyang’s attacks have become more effective, providing Kim Jong Un’s regime with a steady flow of illegal funding. In 2025 alone, his hackers stole a record $2.1 billion in cryptocurrency, about 60% of the sector’s global losses for the year.

The main challenge for North Korea’s use of AI lies in hardware. Modern AI models require powerful advanced chips that cannot legally be exported to the country. Pyongyang, however, has learned to bypass restrictions by using older or gray-market Nvidia and Qualcomm chips while its engineers adapt heavy algorithms to function on less powerful hardware.

In Turkey, the authorities use AI to systematically suppress the domestic political opposition and to expand the punitive powers of the security services. The government has launched the development of a specialized AI service for automated profiling that identifies people who may be linked to terrorist organizations. Lawyers and human rights defenders warn that introducing this algorithm alongside vague anti-terrorism legislation allows citizens to be accused en masse of serious crimes without real evidence or judicial oversight.

This kind of algorithmic surveillance proved effective during a wave of antigovernment protests sparked by the arrest of Istanbul mayor Ekrem Imamoglu. Turkish security services used biometric neural networks to compare street camera footage with citizens’ social media profiles, making it possible to identify and detain about 2,000 protesters and independent journalists.

Like Turkey, the Belarusian regime is adapting AI technologies to expand state surveillance and systematically identify dissenters. The main tool of state control is the Republican Public Security Monitoring System, which operates on the Kipod AI platform. The system connects more than 13,000 cameras to the KGB’s centralized biometric databases.

The platform’s developer, the Belarusian company Synesis, was sanctioned by the European Union due to the fact that the platform’s algorithms were specifically adapted in order to identify and persecute peaceful protesters. The technology allows security services not only to track citizens’ movements in real time, but also to automatically alert the authorities when “unreliable” people are detected in public places.

A unique and especially dangerous feature of the Belarusian model is its capacity for so-called “retrospective investigation.” Security structures have used neural networks to scan and analyze vast video and photo archives from protest marches in 2020 and 2021. Artificial intelligence can reconstruct 3D models of faces and identify participants even from blurred footage or in instances when protesters’ faces were partially covered. As a result of this “delayed repression,” people have been searched, detained, and sent to prison years after taking part in protests.

At the same time, Belarusian security services have automated persecution in the digital space. Special AI scripts continuously parse Telegram channels and chats, collecting and processing large volumes of messages and metadata. The programs automatically analyze message histories, reactions, and comments, comparing digital traces with databases and allowing the authorities to identify opposition-minded citizens.

The free world against AI tyranny

The idea that artificial intelligence would be used mainly as a tool of commercial progress is gradually giving way to a broader understanding that its repressive effects may be just as impactful as dictatorships exploit the new technological tools at their disposal to scale up control at home while expanding their influence abroad. The danger of this new reality is that authoritarian regimes act synergistically, helping one another develop the tools that help all of them stay in power.

The main trend in the coming years will be the emergence of fully autonomous systems of “predictive repression” as the AI algorithms used by autocracies begin identifying and isolating potential centers of discontent before citizens themselves realize they are ready to protest. It will also mean creating generators of flawless AI fakes targeting Western populations ahead of elections — and at any other times the authoritarians see fit to take disruptive measures. 

Algorithms will begin isolating potential centers of discontent before citizens realize they are ready to protest

For the free world’s democratic institutions — built on openness and unrestricted access to information — this presents a challenge that needs to be countered. First, export controls must be radically tightened over the trade not only of cutting-edge semiconductors, but also of used ones, so as to fully cut off autocracies’ shadow supply channels. Additionally, it is important to create end-to-end content verification systems capable of recognizing AI disinformation and deepfakes in real time before they can poison search results and social media. Finally, the internal algorithms used by Big Tech companies to detect unwanted and malicious use of their products must be improved. Developers such as OpenAI, Microsoft, and Google should introduce proactive smart systems for monitoring API requests that are capable of recognizing behavior patterns by state hackers in real time and instantly blocking their accounts before commercial language models are used for cyberattacks or disinformation generation.

Democratic countries could aid in this effort by creating a legal framework for ensuring that AI is used for peaceable, productive means. State regulators could expand Know Your Customer rules to cloud-based AI services, making mandatory behavioral analysis of sessions part of cybersecurity standards.

Artificial intelligence has sharpened the historic confrontation between freedom and tyranny. In this technological race for survival, the democratic world no longer has the luxury of relying on laissez-faire market mechanisms to solve the problem. As the algorithms used by authoritarian regimes learn how to suppress freedoms faster than democratic institutions can respond, those democratic institutions will have to respond lest they suffer the same fate that the populations of autocratic countries are already suffering.

Horváth said investigators fully established the origin of the seized money and precious metals: they were indeed being transported as part of an interbank transaction between Austria’s Raiffeisen Bank International AG and Ukraine’s state-owned Oschadbank. Raiffeisen provided documents confirming the origin of the banknotes and metals, as well as payment by Oschadbank. NAV found that the assets were not of criminal origin and that there were no signs of money laundering or any other crime.

Hungarian law enforcement detained seven Oschadbank employees and two cash-in-transit vehicles on March 5. Oschadbank said from the outset that the shipment was a routine transfer being carried out under a contract with Raiffeisen and that the operation fully complied with international rules and European customs procedures.

The government of then-Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, however, claimed that it suspected money laundering. Then-Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó suggested the cash could belong to the “Ukrainian military mafia,” while some politicians from the then-ruling Fidesz party claimed the money might have been intended to finance the election campaign of Hungary’s opposition Tisza party — seeming to ignore the fact that the valuables had confiscated on their way out of Hungary rather than on their way into the country.

The detained Ukrainians were deported from Hungary on March 6. Kyiv said they had been held in handcuffs for more than a day and were not allowed to contact their relatives or the Ukrainian Embassy. Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry described the Hungarian authorities’ actions as “hostage-taking,” “theft” and “state terrorism.” The cash-in-transit vehicles were later returned to the bank, while the money and gold remained in Hungary during the investigation. Oschadbank confirmed that the vehicles were returned on March 12.

After Hungary’s change of government, the seized assets were also returned to Ukraine. On May 6, Oschadbank said it had received back all $40 million, €35 million, and 9 kilograms of gold. Bank representatives confirmed that the packaging remained intact. Later, the decisions to deport the couriers and ban them from entering the Schengen Area were also annulled.

In June, newly elected Hungarian Prime Minister Péter Magyar said ex-PM Viktor Orbán should be held responsible for the incident. Magyar’s statement followed an investigation by the Hungarian outlet Telex, which reported that the operation against the Ukrainian couriers was carried out on orders from the office of the then-prime minister. Orbán, through his spokesman, insisted that the previous government and law enforcement agencies had acted lawfully.

The paper was facilitated by French mathematician Bernard Randé, a member of Solidarité FreeAzat. The association said Randé decided to support Miftakhov as a fellow mathematician and sent him a problem related to Chui’s conjecture, a modified version of an unsolved mathematical problem. Miftakhov, who was in custody, worked on it for about four months under conditions in which he had no access to the internet, no scientific library, and almost no opportunity to discuss the work with other mathematicians.

After Miftakhov solved the problem, Randé then helped prepare the result for publication in French. Solidarité FreeAzat had earlier said the article was expected to appear in RMS in early August. In July, the University of Pisa also formally invited Miftakhov to present the result at a scientific seminar in April 2027.

Miftakhov, a graduate student in the mathematics and mechanics department at Moscow State University, was first arrested in 2019. In January 2021, he was sentenced to six years in a general-regime penal colony in a case over an attack on a United Russia office. Investigators alleged that Miftakhov and other anarchists broke a window and threw a smoke bomb inside. Miftakhov pleaded not guilty.

He was released in September 2023, but was detained again immediately outside the penal colony — this time in a case of  “justifying terrorism.” The charge was based on an alleged conversation between Miftakhov and a fellow inmate. That prisoner, who later became the prosecution’s main witness, was subsequently killed in the war in Ukraine.

In the second case, Miftakhov was sentenced to four years in custody, with the first two and a half years to be served in prison and the remainder in a high-security penal colony. It was while he was held in the prison in Dimitrovgrad that he solved the mathematical problem Randé had proposed.

After completing the prison portion of his sentence, Miftakhov was transferred to IK-18 Polar Owl, a penal colony in the settlement of Kharp in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous District. Notably, Polar Owl is located down the road from IK-3 Polar Wolf, where the late opposition politician and anti-corruption activist Alexei Navalny was murdered with a deadly frog-derived toxin in February 2024.

In May, Miftakhov reported that shortly after his arrival at Polar Owl, prison staff and two inmates tortured him for several hours. He said they beat the soles of his feet with a wooden mallet, threatened him with sexualized violence, threatened to dunk him in a sewage manhole, blocked his breathing, and tortured him with electric shocks.

Russia’s Investigative Committee initially refused to open a criminal case into the matter, saying the torture allegations had not been confirmed. Then, on July 15, a court in Labytnangi ruled that the investigator’s inaction was unlawful and ordered the violations to be corrected.

The decision was discussed at a meeting chaired by Bakyt Sydykov, the Kyrgyz president’s representative for special assignments. Also present were officials from government agencies, the National Bank, and commercial banks. State agencies were ordered to complete checks of the remaining companies within a week.

At the meeting, representatives of Kyrgyzstan’s National Bank reported on steps to strengthen oversight of the country’s payment services and platforms. The measures are intended to increase the transparency of financial transactions and ensure compliance with both local law and the country’s international obligations.

State-owned banks in Kyrgyzstan are also tightening compliance controls. In the weeks leading up to Aug. 14, Eldik Bank ended business relationships with about 109 companies, while about 20 more are in the process of having their accounts closed. Over the same period, Aiyl Bank ended its cooperation with about 35 companies, and about 40 more are undergoing checks.

The Economy Ministry said banks will continue conducting detailed reviews of payment documents, identifying the final recipients of goods and services and determining the destination countries for commercial shipments.

Several Kyrgyz banks and financial firms have previously come under EU, U.S. and UK sanctions over their ties to Russia. In May, for the first time in the country’s history, Kyrgyzstan’s Justice Ministry suspended the activities of 50 companies suspected of conducting transactions exposing them to high sanctions risks.

Almost all of the ads bear the same headline: “Security for Wildberries and Ozon warehouses as part of a [mobile fire] group.” The ads urge applicants to sign a contract before the start of “mobilization processes,” promising a one-time up-front bonus of 3.1 million rubles ($37,000). The application deadline listed in the ads was Aug. 15 — two days before they actually appeared en masse.

A Verstka correspondent, posing as a job seeker, called the phone numbers listed in two of the ads. Recruiters said candidates would sign a one-year “special contract” with Russia's Ministry of Defense, then get to work defending commercial warehouses from drones. One recruiter said Wildberries itself had allegedly asked the ministry to arrange such security measures.

The recruiters assured the journalist that those who signed the contract would not be sent to the front lines in Ukraine. Nevertheless, the registration procedure does not differ from ordinary recruitment for the invasion: candidates are asked to hand over their documents, sign a contract with the Defense Ministry, and undergo training in Tula. One recruiter warned that without an application filed through him, the applicant would be sent by the enlistment office directly to the combat zone.

The phone numbers to which the correspondent was told to send documents were labeled in caller ID apps as “Olesya SVO” and “Central Military District enlistment office.”

Three Verstka sources connected to military recruitment efforts said the ads were a cover for recruiting contract soldiers. Two of the sources said recruiters disguise military service offers as civilian jobs because Avito strictly moderates such posts.

Media outlets have previously found hidden online offers for military service disguised as jobs for drivers of humanitarian cargo, guards at warehouses in Belarus, and vaguely defined “peacekeepers.” The new ads appeared amid a series of drone attacks on Wildberries logistics centers.

ARD did not name the suspect but said he was the same man who was arrested in Poland in 2025 in the same case. Germany sought his extradition at the time, but a Polish court refused the request. Investigators have now located the man in Croatia, and Germany will seek his extradition, ARD said.

Polish media previously identified the suspect as Volodymyr Zhuravlov, a Ukrainian citizen. After he was detained at Germany’s request, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said it was not in Poland’s national interest to extradite Zhuravlov. Tusk said the problem with Nord Stream 2 was not that it was blown up, but that it had been built with money from European countries and had played a key role in Europe’s dependence on Russian energy.

The Nord Stream and Nord Stream 2 pipelines were damaged by explosions in September 2022, when three of the four lines in the pipeline network were hit.

As part of the investigation launched in Germany, another Ukrainian citizen — Serhiy Kuznetsov, the alleged leader of the group that carried out the explosions — was also arrested. His trial is set to begin in Hamburg in the coming weeks. Kuznetsov was detained in Italy and extradited to Germany in November 2025.

The frigate was spotted Monday, Aug. 17, off the coast of Fehmarn, a German island popular with tourists. The Telegraph linked the sighting to Vladimir Putin’s recent threats of a “mirror response” to EU countries detaining Russian vessels.

The Admiral Kasatonov is equipped with Tsirkon hypersonic missiles, which are capable of carrying nuclear warheads. The frigate entered service with the Russian Navy in 2020 and, as the newspaper noted, is one of the most modern ships in the Russian fleet.

It is the second Russian warship seen in the Baltic Sea in recent weeks. In early August, Russia deployed the Admiral Levchenko to the area. On Tuesday, Aug. 18, it was seen off the coast of Denmark.

OSINT analysts pointed to another important detail: the Admiral Kasatonov does not appear to be merely sailing in the Baltic Sea, but escorting the Portovyy LNG tanker. The Russian Forces Spotter project published a photo of the warship with the tanker, saying that the frigate had already been used this year to escort vessels from Russia’s “shadow fleet”( a term for ageing, poorly insured tankers used to bypass international sanctions or restrictions on Russian energy exports).

The analyst also noted that Russia is deploying “high-end naval assets” to protect its maritime trade.

“Quite a commitment of naval resources just to keep commercial shipping moving,” the analyst noted.

The Portovyy sails under the Russian flag and is used as floating LNG storage for Gazprom’s Portovaya LNG complex in Russia’s northern Leningrad Region. According to data from the vessel tracking platform Starboard Maritime Intelligence, the tanker has already left the Baltic Sea and is rounding the Norwegian coast. Notably, its listed final destination is another Russian port: Murmansk — usually a major hub for LNG exports, not a final destination for such cargo.

H.I. Sutton drew attention to that anomaly. The analyst said Murmansk is unlikely to be the final destination for the cargo, as Moscow does not need to “export gas to itself.” The shipment is more likely intended for East Asia, possibly China. If so, it would travel via the Northern Sea Route, traveling through the Arctic along Russia’s northern coast. The cargo may be delivered by the Portovyy itself or transferred to another tanker.

There is nothing unusual about LNG tankers transiting the Northern Sea Route, Sutton noted. However, such voyages typically begin from Murmansk, not from export terminals in the Baltic Sea. LNG cargoes from the Baltic Sea normally head south through the Mediterranean and the Suez Canal or around Africa.

During the summer season, the Northern Sea Route may be shorter and fairly easy for ships to navigate, and it may also help avoid risks from the war in the Middle East. But those are unlikely to be the decisive factors. The most likely reason for choosing this route is an effort to avoid Ukrainian naval drones, which have already succeeded in damaging LNG tankers outside the Black Sea.

“LNG cargoes are particularly vulnerable, and Russia is thus adapting to the Ukrainian threats to keep its important economic lifeline to fund its war in Ukraine,” H.I. Sutton concluded.

In March, Ukrainian forces were linked to an attack on the Arctic Metagaz LNG tanker in the Mediterranean Sea. Ukraine did not claim responsibility for the incident, but an investigation by Radio France Internationale later showed that the drones that attacked the vessel were launched from bases in Libya where Ukrainian troops were stationed.

There is something strange about Ceuta. From the Moroccan shore, the Spanish enclave looks tantalizingly close – almost close enough to reach out and touch, and certainly close enough to swim to. A strait just a few miles wide separates Africa from a part of Spain that, geographically speaking, lies on another continent.

Yet geography has never played a decisive role in this matter. Ceuta is a city of about 83,000 people, home to one of the European Union’s most vulnerable borders. It is Spanish territory, but Morocco does not recognize it as such. For generations, Ceuta’s residents have understood that the nearby border is at once a line on a map, a geopolitical fault line and a part of everyday life.

In late July 2026, this unusual geographic situation provided the backdrop for one of Europe’s largest migration episodes in recent years. On July 30 and 31, thousands of people headed toward Ceuta from Morocco. Spanish authorities estimated that tens of thousands crossed or attempted to cross the border during the mass breach.

According to one estimate by the Interior Ministry, around 49,000 people crossed it in a single day. Later estimates from the ministry put the figure at approximately 72,000. Spanish security forces struggled to contain the flow, and the military had to be brought in to assist. The migrant reception system was overwhelmed, and tensions in Ceuta reached a peak.

More than 80 migrants were ultimately reported to have died, many of them drowning or being killed in the crush among those trying to enter the enclave. Yet the true nature of what had happened became clear only afterward. Those who entered Ceuta did not stay there. Soon, the overwhelming majority of them – around 70,000 people – returned to Morocco.

Thus, the “invasion,” as some Spanish politicians and international commentators called it, turned out to be remarkably short-lived. The political consequences of the events, however, continue to be felt across Europe.

How the disinformation emerged

The immediate cause of the mass breach, at first glance, was simple: people believed the Spanish border was open. The rumor spread via Instagram, TikTok, Facebook and private messaging networks. Videos showed people who had reached Ceuta, while other posts described swimming routes, Spanish and Moroccan patrol locations, and purported changes to Spain’s migration policy.

Apparently, some migrants interpreted a recent ruling by Spain’s Supreme Court as meaning that people arriving by sea could not simply be returned to Morocco. In reality, the legal situation was considerably more complex. The Supreme Court ruled on how the procedure under Spanish law for refusing entry at the border should apply to people arriving by sea. The court limited the circumstances in which migrants could be immediately refused entry, but this did not mean that the Ceuta border was open or grant an automatic right to enter Spain or other Schengen countries.

Online, however, this subtle legal distinction was reduced to a simple claim: Spain had opened its doors. That was enough to send thousands of people, predominantly young men, into the Mediterranean from the Moroccan side of the border.

Le Monde’s investigation found no convincing evidence that a centralized disinformation campaign was behind the original rumor. Instead, the newspaper described something more chaotic and, in some ways, more disturbing – a “snowball effect” in which successful attempts to cross the border generated new videos, the videos shaped expectations, and those expectations encouraged ever more people to attempt the crossing.

WhatsApp and other closed networks made it virtually impossible to establish the rumor’s original source. This is important because the conventional understanding of disinformation assumes that there is an author. Someone lies, someone else believes the lie, and society faces the consequences. But the story of Ceuta points to a different model: a rumor can take on a life of its own.

The technology that made this possible is new, but the phenomenon itself is far from new. Migrants have always depended on information from those who set out before them. In the past, advice and directions might come from a cousin in Spain, a friend in Morocco, or a fellow traveler encountered along the way.

In 2026, a smartphone has become the source of such information. A video showing someone successfully swimming toward Ceuta does more than provide information – it can change a person’s perception of the risks involved. In other words, it may have created the impression that conditions at the border had changed before they actually had. And that was enough to set people on their way.

Videos of people swimming created the impression that border-crossing conditions had changed before they actually did

The extraordinary scale of this migration flow should not obscure the main point. For the crisis to emerge, it was not necessary for tens of thousands of people to independently reach the same conclusion. Social media created a mechanism in which one person’s decision became evidence for another. The more people set out, the more plausible the appearance became that something had changed. And once thousands were on their way, the rumor began to confirm itself.

A border with a long historical memory

For Spaniards, suspicions that Morocco may have played a role in the Ceuta crisis did not arise out of nowhere. The two countries share a long and complicated history.

Ceuta’s special status dates back many centuries. In 1415, the city was conquered by the Portuguese. In 1580, it passed to the Spanish Crown and has remained Spanish ever since.

Morocco, however, has never recognized Spain’s sovereignty over Ceuta and Melilla, another Spanish city and port on Africa’s Mediterranean coast. In this sense, the two cities are remnants of an imperial geography that survived decolonization.

The question of sovereignty, therefore, rarely recedes into the background, particularly at a time when the history of European colonialism is once again receiving close scrutiny around the world. Mass migration has made the issue even more salient.

The precedent most often cited is May 2021, when around 8,000 migrants entered Ceuta over several days amid a serious diplomatic crisis between Spain and Morocco. The immediate cause of the crisis was Spain’s decision to allow Brahim Ghali, leader of the Polisario Front of Western Sahara, to receive medical treatment in Spain.

Morocco viewed the decision as a serious diplomatic insult because it does not recognize the Polisario Front’s authority over Western Sahara, which it considers part of Morocco. The subsequent loosening of border controls was widely seen in Spain as a form of pressure by Rabat. The episode established an important precedent in the Spanish political consciousness: if it chooses to do so, Morocco can use migration as a tool of pressure. The events of 2026 inevitably brought that memory back to the fore.

There were grounds for suspicion. The July breach coincided with Morocco’s Throne Day celebrations, which reportedly limited the ability of the country’s security forces to respond to the events. Spanish officials also took into account the broader context of tensions over Western Sahara, Morocco’s rivalry with Algeria, and Madrid’s changing relationship with Rabat.

Some Spanish analysts went further. Carlos Echeverría Jesús, director of the Observatory of Ceuta and Melilla, said in Le Monde that the crisis should be viewed against the backdrop of Morocco’s broader territorial ambitions. In his view, the 2021 crisis, the dispute over Ceuta and Melilla, and other instances of pressure from Morocco form a broader pattern of “hybrid warfare” intended to demonstrate Morocco’s ability to destabilize Spain’s security environment.

This argument cannot simply be dismissed. However, there is currently no evidence that Morocco organized the influx of migrants in July 2026. Rabat does have considerable capacity to influence migration flows toward Ceuta. The authorities patrol the Moroccan side of the border and have an extensive security apparatus at their disposal.

Moreover, Morocco has demonstrated in the past that migration pressure can become intertwined with diplomatic disputes. But there is still no convincing evidence that Rabat ordered tens of thousands of people to head for Ceuta in July. Moroccan authorities themselves attribute the border breach to disinformation, the actions of smugglers, and confusion over Spanish legal provisions.

A more prosaic explanation may therefore prove more convincing: a decentralized movement of people coincided with a temporary weakening of border controls, an overwhelmed migrant reception system, and the existence of a diplomatic fault line.

Perhaps Morocco was unable to stop the flow of migrants or, once the scale of the breach became apparent, did not want to do so. Or the authorities may have decided that a certain level of pressure on Spain was acceptable and even took some satisfaction in watching Madrid struggle with the consequences. At this stage, however, it seems unlikely that Morocco actually provoked the crisis.

This is particularly important because Ceuta lies at the intersection of two very different kinds of politics: migration policy and sovereignty. The first question is who is allowed to enter Spain. The second is who has the right to assert that Ceuta is part of Spain. On July 30–31, 2026, those two questions became inseparable for a time.

From Ceuta to Brussels

The events that followed showed why the crisis could not remain solely a Spanish-Moroccan affair. Ceuta’s population is so small that the sudden arrival of tens of thousands of migrants could overwhelm the city’s infrastructure almost instantly. Migrant reception facilities filled up, while centers for unaccompanied minors were pushed well beyond capacity. Thousands of people needed food, shelter, medical care, and the processing of necessary documents.

But the political consequences were even more far-reaching. Spain’s opposition seized on the crisis as proof that Pedro Sánchez’s government had lost control of the country’s borders. Far-right politicians spoke of an “invasion.” Across Europe, governments and political parties once again returned to familiar arguments about the failure of European migration policy. Although most of the migrants in Ceuta did not remain there, the crisis nevertheless became a Europe-wide issue.

Most migrants in Ceuta did not stay, yet the crisis became a Europe-wide issue

And here one of the central paradoxes of modern migration policy becomes apparent. Europe is increasingly relying on non-EU countries to control migration before migrants even reach EU territory. Morocco has become a key partner for Spain in border control. In the east, Turkey plays a similar role. Libya and other North African countries serve a comparable function along Mediterranean migration routes.

This system gives European governments obvious advantages, but at the same time it provides neighboring non-EU states with leverage. If Morocco can help prevent migrants from reaching Spain, it becomes an indispensable partner. If cooperation with Morocco breaks down, Spain faces a crisis. The latest crisis in Ceuta made this dependence clear.

The crisis also exposed divisions within Europe over what migration policy should look like. Governments on the right of the political spectrum called for more decisive measures to curb migration and tighter border controls.

Their opponents emphasized legal obligations concerning asylum and the humanitarian consequences of an approach that treats migration primarily as a security issue. These disputes are not new, but what was unusual was how quickly a crisis that engulfed an enclave of 83,000 people on the very edge of Africa became a subject of debate over European migration policy as a whole. Ceuta became a mirror reflecting European society and its problems.

Almost half the city’s population is Muslim. Arabic and Spanish coexist in everyday life. Many residents of Moroccan origin move easily between cultural worlds that outsiders usually perceive as separate.

But the city has a complicated history of citizenship. Until the mid-1980s, a significant share of the Muslim population did not hold Spanish citizenship and did not enjoy the same rights as other residents. The July crisis revived some of these old anxieties. For Muslims whose families have lived in Ceuta for generations, the sudden association of Moroccan identity with migration and security raised a difficult question: what happens when Spanish sovereignty has to be defended against Morocco?

The far right sought to exploit precisely this tension, but encountered resistance from residents opposed to dividing Ceuta along religious or ethnic lines. On August 1, far-right Spanish politicians who arrived in the city were met by protesters, who chanted that Ceuta must remain united.

Thus, the episode exposed a paradox at the very heart of Ceuta. The city is often described as a place where four cultures coexist, but its history is also marked by a long struggle over who should be considered fully Spanish. This is another obvious contradiction that will become increasingly difficult to ignore in the wake of the latest migration crisis.

A wealth of conspiracy theories

By early August, the migration crisis itself was already beginning to subside, but the information crisis was only gaining momentum. After thousands of migrants crossed the border, the question “What happened?” gave way to “Who was behind it?” The obvious suspect was Morocco. After all, there was a historical precedent. Ceuta’s status was disputed, and Spain’s relationship with Rabat was complicated. But other explanations soon emerged, some of them highly fanciful.

As often happens during a crisis, antisemitic conspiracy theories were not far behind. Some, including internet influencers and celebrities, began claiming that the influx of migrants had been organized by Israel. Others pointed to the United States.

These theories drew on real geopolitical facts: Morocco and Israel have developed close strategic ties under the Abraham Accords; Washington has strongly supported Morocco’s position on Western Sahara; and relations between Spain and Israel have deteriorated sharply amid the war in Gaza.

But the existence of these ties and the rise of anti-Israel sentiment in Spain do not prove that Israel or the United States was involved in the migration crisis. There is absolutely no evidence for such claims. Yet when tens of thousands of people head toward a border almost simultaneously, it can be difficult to explain the event simply as the result of their own spontaneous decisions.

The available evidence suggests that Ceuta may be an example of how a multitude of small factors can combine to produce an event of enormous scale. The economic difficulties facing young Moroccans help explain why they were willing to make such a risky dash for the border. Geography created the opportunity, the Supreme Court ruling generated legal misunderstanding and confusion, and social media gave the situation a powerful boost. Once the movement began, images of what was happening became a political weapon. The crisis did not require a hidden mastermind – it was enough for all these factors and circumstances to converge.

An ideal scenario for Russia

But even if we reject the idea that some powerful shadowy forces were secretly behind the events of July, there is no denying that the crisis provided certain dubious actors with an excellent opportunity. Russia is particularly revealing in this regard because, unlike the unfounded claims that Moscow organized the influx, there is evidence that Russia-linked networks began exploiting the crisis after it was already underway.

According to a report by The Guardian, research by 411, a group that works to combat disinformation, found that Russia-linked social media accounts rapidly spread far-right narratives about the events in Ceuta. The posts portrayed the migration crisis as a deliberate attack on Spain and also employed Islamophobic and antisemitic rhetoric.

According to the study, the posts were translated into seven languages and received more than 720,000 views in just six hours on August 1. The networks involved included Rybar, a Telegram channel linked to the Russian military, as well as accounts associated with the Kremlin-linked Pravda network.

As of this writing, there is no evidence that Russia planned the Ceuta crisis. But there is evidence of something else, a much more familiar feature of modern information warfare: exploiting someone else’s crisis for one’s own purposes by amplifying it. Russia did not need to create the migration crisis to benefit from it.

Footage of Muslims and people from sub-Saharan African countries heading toward the Spanish enclave did much of the necessary work on its own. A European border was being overwhelmed by an influx of migrants. The Spanish government appeared unable to control the situation. Muslims were conspicuous among the migrants. Far-right parties mobilized. European governments grew deeply uneasy and began quarreling among themselves.

For a state seeking to exploit European divisions to its advantage, this was almost an ideal scenario. Thus, the same social media ecosystem served two seemingly opposite functions. On one side of the border, it helped migrants communicate with one another, find routes, and discover the possibility of reaching Europe. On the other, it helped political forces portray the migration crisis as evidence of Europe’s collapse. Technology merely accelerated the spread of both versions of events.

For a state seeking to exploit European divisions to its advantage, this was almost an ideal scenario

In this context, it is useful to compare the situation with the migration crisis on the Belarus-Poland border in 2021. At the time, Poland and the European Union accused Alexander Lukashenko’s government of deliberately facilitating the movement of migrants to the EU border in an effort to exert geopolitical pressure. In Ceuta, the scenario appears to have been different. The evidence that Morocco deliberately organized the influx is far less convincing.

But the comparison highlights a broader phenomenon. Migration can begin as a movement of people and then become a geopolitical tool. Governments, political parties, smugglers, activists and foreign information networks can all exploit it for their own purposes. And none of them necessarily has to have initiated the movement in the first place. That may be the most important lesson of Ceuta.

On July 30–31, 2026, the border in Ceuta did not simply open. Thousands of people believed that it had opened and acted on that belief. The tragedy that followed became the subject of political narratives that then took on a life of their own.

By the time migrants began returning to Morocco, roughly two days after the breach, the crisis had already spread far beyond Ceuta’s physical geography. It was being discussed in Madrid and Brussels, invoked by European and American populists, interpreted through the lens of the history of Moroccan-Spanish relations, and amplified through information networks thousands of miles from the scene. It also spawned a dizzying array of conspiracy theories and gave governments and political movements an opportunity to settle scores with one another.

That is why these events matter far beyond this small Spanish city with its unusual history. On that hot July day, the world saw once again how an influx of migrants can trigger political panic and even reshape the political and cultural landscape, turning a local event into a global crisis.

According to the service, gasoline and diesel availability declined over the week in the Volgograd, Chelyabinsk, Orenburg, Voronezh, Samara, Penza, Saratov, Lipetsk, and Rostov regions, as well as in Tatarstan. On Aug. 17, Izvestia checked 21 gas stations in Moscow and the Moscow region: AI-92 gasoline was available at seven of them, AI-95 at six, and AI-98 at five. Diesel fuel also was not available at all stations. A source told The Insider that while driving recently from northeastern Moscow toward the Moscow region, he did not come across a single gas station with gasoline available.

A new wave of fuel shortages began in Russia in August after authorities claimed that the situation had stabilized in late July. From Aug. 10 to Aug. 15, at least six regions reinstated or tightened restrictions on gasoline sales. In the Kaluga, Lipetsk, and Orenburg regions, local governments introduced odd-even rationing, allowing cars to refuel on alternating days depending on their license plate numbers. Several regions have also imposed limits on how much fuel one person can buy.

Russia’s fuel crisis has continued since late May, linked primarily to the aftermath of a series of Ukrainian attacks on oil refineries. During the spring and summer, at least 16 Russian refineries fully or partially halted processing, including plants in Volgograd, Ryazan, Nizhny Novgorod, Omsk, Moscow, Saratov, and Syzran. According to estimates from Reuters, as of July 10 gasoline production in Russia covered only about 65% of seasonal demand; the daily shortfall was estimated at 40,000 to 45,000 metric tons, with consumption at 115,000 to 120,000 metric tons.

In July, some plants began returning to operation, but refineries with a combined annual capacity of more than 45 million metric tons had still not resumed fuel sales on the St. Petersburg exchange by July 20.

By late July, however, the situation had begun to improve. Regional authorities started lifting restrictions, and Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak said the fuel balance had stabilized. But in August, the crisis worsened again after new attacks and emergency refinery shutdowns, coinciding with traditionally high summer demand. On Aug. 11, the Orsk refinery shut down completely following a Ukrainian drone strike. Authorities in the Orenburg Region said restoring damaged imported equipment could take up to six months.

In response to Ukrainian attacks on refineries, the Russian government has banned fuel exports, eased environmental requirements for gasoline, introduced measures to stimulate imports, and begun bringing gasoline in from abroad. The first shipment of gasoline from India, about 42,000 metric tons, arrived in Murmansk in early August. Its delivery to the domestic market, however, was delayed due to a price dispute.

The Khabarovsk is the first standard carrier of Poseidon systems — nuclear-powered, nuclear-armed, autonomous underwater drones first announced by Vladimir Putin in 2018. According to unconfirmed reports, the nuclear-powered Khabarovsk has six launch tubes for the systems. After the trials, the submarine  is expected to join the Pacific Fleet and be based in Kamchatka, possibly next year.

The Khabarovsk is the only submarine built under Project 09851, which was developed by the Rubin Central Design Bureau. The submarine was built at the Sevmash shipyard in Severodvinsk, in Russia’s Arkhangelsk region.

The Russian Navy currently has one Poseidon carrier: the Belgorod, a special-purpose nuclear-powered submarine. It was converted from an unfinished Project 949A Antey submarine cruiser and has four launch tubes for Poseidon systems.

Since 2018, Vladimir Putin has described Poseidon as a fantastic weapon of unprecedented power. Russian propaganda regularly uses Poseidon to threaten the West. For example, propagandist Dmitry Kiselyov claimed that detonating Poseidon off the coast of the UK could cause a tsunami capable of destroying the island.

It is impossible to test the Poseidon as a complete weapons system, rather than as separate components, because doing so would risk an environmental catastrophe (assuming its declared characteristics are accurate). Nevertheless, as The Insider previously reported, calculations and modeling show that a catastrophic radioactive tsunami cannot be produced by an underwater nuclear explosion.

The Poseidon project, which began in the 1980s, also appears to be one of the most expensive and resource-intensive programs in the recent history of Russia’s defense industry, leading to accusations that one of its primary purposes has been the siphoning off of state funds. Aside from enormous investments in research and supporting infrastructure, Poseidon requires enormous special-purpose nuclear submarines as carriers.

Poseidon would theoretically be a new class of nuclear weapon, combining elements of an underwater drone and a torpedo. In that sense, it has no direct equivalent. However, there is no confirmation that it exists as a finished, deployable weapon.

In the first seven and a half months of 2026, the level of such payments was already 50% higher than that for all of 2025. In its 2026-2028 budget law, the Finance Ministry had planned to bring in only 1.7 billion rubles a year under this category.

Instead, from January through March alone, nongovernmental organizations transferred 15.6 billion rubles to Russia’s government budget. By the end of April, the amount had grown more than tenfold, to 159.7 billion rubles. By the end of May, it had risen to 232.3 billion rubles, and by the end of June to 294.4 billion rubles. In July and the first half of August, the total increased by about another 30%. Vedomosti noted that these are record receipts under this budget category, which first appeared in 2022.

Alexander Shokhin, head of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, told Vedomosti that on the sidelines of the congress where the aforementioned meeting with Putin took place, major business owners had “raised the initiative of voluntary donations to the budget.” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov had also said earlier that one participant in the meeting with Putin proposed allocating a large sum for state needs.

Two months after the meeting, the Kremlin said Shokhin would head a reformed business ombudsman’s office. Putin signed a law establishing the office in June.

On March 26, The Bell reported, citing two people familiar with the closed-door meeting, that Putin had told business owners he intended to continue the invasion and then suggested they transfer money to the state budget. According to the outlet’s sources, the idea of “shaking down business at a difficult time for the country” was outlined to Putin before the meeting in a letter from Igor Sechin, the head of state-owned energy giant Rosneft. Sechin reportedly proposed issuing war bonds to finance the conflict, among other measures.

At the meeting, billionaire senator Suleiman Kerimov promised to contribute 100 billion rubles to the budget, two sources told The Bell. At least one other business owner supported the initiative without naming a sum.

In previous years, a large share of nonrepayable budget receipts came from mandatory payments by foreign companies leaving Russia. However, lawyers interviewed by Vedomosti said that source has largely dried up (even if deferred payments from previously approved deals may still have continued to go through in 2026). Over the past three years, the mandatory payment imposed on foreign owners exiting the Russian market has increased from 10% to 35% of an asset’s market value.

Overall, the current influx of non-tax revenue has already surpassed proceeds from Russia’s one-time windfall tax, which raised 318.8 billion rubles for the federal budget. The inflows come as Russia’s deficit widens, reaching 6.455 trillion rubles, or 2.8% of GDP, in January-July, a figure already in excess of the full-year target.

What is happening today at the level of the Polish and Ukrainian governments sometimes resembles a kindergarten sandbox squabble. For example, Polish politicians recently began competing over who had sent less military equipment to Ukraine.

“We gave them nothing but scrap metal from our warehouses!” says a former prime minister.

“Scrap metal? It was pretty good weaponry! I’ll show everyone the documents now! Here we are! We’re hardly giving them anything,” counters the former defense minister.

“What about the Patriot missiles?” the opposition presses.

Under normal circumstances, a cabinet minister would be proud of having sent missiles to save the lives of countless innocent civilians by protecting Ukraine from Russia’s barbaric attacks. But now this is not a source of pride, but a political problem — something that requires defensive justification.

Or take the Ukrainian president naming a Ukrainian Armed Forces unit after the “heroes of the UPA.” This, in fact, was the initial trigger of the current escalation. Volodymyr Zelenskyy showed complete disregard for the fact that the reaction in Poland would be fierce, as the awful role of the WWII-era Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) in the Volhynia Massacre represents a historical wound that has still not healed. When pollsters ask Poles, “What should the government discuss with Ukraine?” they hear in response: the exhumation and commemoration of the thousands of compatriots killed by the UPA in 1943, who still lie in the ground in mass graves on the other side of the border.

Moves like Zelensky's provoke outrage. Polish President Karol Nawrocki, egged on by pro-Russian politicians such as former Prime Minister Leszek Miller, demanded that Volodymyr Zelenskyy be stripped of the Order of the White Eagle. (gov.pl)

Zelensky did not keep him waiting long, sending it back to Nawrocki by mail in a box, and several former Ukrainian presidents, cabinet ministers, ambassadors, and officials followed suit with their Polish awards. Suddenly, a multitude of Orders of the White Eagle arrived in Poland. In the opposite direction, Polish officials sent Orders of Prince Yaroslav the Wise, 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Class. 

Warsaw is not at the table during “Coalition of the Willing” meetings — at Kyiv’s behest — nor is it part of the newly formed anti-ballistic coalition.

“Fine! We don’t care. And you’re not getting into the EU with your Bandera anyway,” the Poles say.

“You don’t care? Well, did you know Zelensky won’t be coming to Gdańsk?”

“But it’s the Ukraine Recovery Conference!”

“We can handle the recovery without you as well.”

Online, the two sides are trading blows. Experts and analysts on the Polish side are sounding the alarm that Ukraine is steeped in Nazism and Bandera ideology. Ukrainian experts insist that the atmosphere in Poland is reminiscent of the period before pogroms. They call on fellow citizens living along the Vistula to return home (which makes sense, since Ukraine has an interest in having its citizens return, just as Polish business owners have an interest in having them stay in Poland).

It should be noted here that the Polish police respond firmly and in an exemplary manner to reports of physical aggression against Ukrainians (these are orders from above). However, anti-Ukrainian and anti-Polish sentiment is currently in vogue – it generates clicks and likes.

The conflict has gone so far that Przemysław Czarnek, a leading politician in Poland’s main opposition party, Law and Justice (PiS), and a potential candidate for prime minister, declares: “We need to force the European Union, including by using our position within the EU, to suspend all funding for arms deliveries to Ukraine and for Ukraine’s reconstruction for the time being, until it sets out on the path of universal human values.”

True, Czarnek was called to order by the party chairman and the party split — not surprising given that PiS is not some fringe group, but the main opposition party. It was PiS that was running Poland in 2022 and did everything it could to help its neighbors. Its political position has always been to support Ukraine’s sovereignty and exercise caution toward imperial Russia. Its ranks produced the late Lech Kaczyński, who addressed the parliament in Tbilisi in 2008, with Russian tanks stationed on the outskirts of the city: “Today Georgia, tomorrow Ukraine, the day after tomorrow the Baltic states, and then perhaps the time will come for my country, Poland!” Now, one of the leading figures in the PiS of 2026 is calling for the suspension of Western aid to Kyiv.

Pendulum: from love to hatred

Amid the flurry of mutual accusations, several fundamental problems are being overlooked. Ukraine is fighting a defensive war. At such a moment, its only concern is the struggle for survival. When you are fighting for your life, there is no room for any phrase beginning with “yes, but…” There are no nuances when the world is burning, bombs are falling on your head, and the eastern horde is taking yet another village.

There are no nuances when the world is burning, bombs are falling on your head, and the eastern horde is taking yet another city

Poland is Ukraine’s closest ally. Whatever politicians and commentators in Warsaw may say, it is a weapons supplier and the logistical backbone of the front.

The two countries have a common existential enemy, and Ukraine’s defeat would be a catastrophe for Poland’s security. Ukraine’s victory and its continued course toward the West are crucial to that security, but Ukraine will not ever be able to join the EU without Poland’s consent. And glorifying historical figures who are, to put it mildly, controversial, certainly does not help Kyiv's cause. More than a million Ukrainians live, work, study, and pay taxes in Poland. Despite the disagreements, we are neighbors. And as we can see, despite the Kremlin’s enormous efforts, that is not going to change.

In the words of Jerzy Giedroyc, whose ideas became the foundation of Poland’s foreign policy after 1989:

“Polish state interests require a belt of independent states between Poland and Russia. Warsaw should support the sovereignty of its eastern neighbors, even if this means giving up some historical claims and disputes. Historical conflicts with Ukrainians should not obscure the strategic goal – an independent Ukraine as a guarantee of Poland’s security against Russian imperialism.”

So what, then, is the problem? Well, if you look at it coldly and armed with statistics, there is nothing surprising about the current dispute. CBOS, one of Poland’s most important public opinion research centers, first asked respondents about their attitudes toward Ukrainians in 1993. At the time, just 12% of Poles expressed sympathy for their neighbors, while a full 65% of respondents expressed dislike. Even Russians, Germans, and Jews – nations that traditionally receive only “so-so” affection in Poland – elicited warmer feelings. One could say that Poles really enjoyed not liking Ukrainians back then. A year later, in 1994, sympathy fell even further, reaching a historic low of 9%.

And all this was happening at a time when the Third Polish Republic was proud that “Solidarity” had helped bring down the USSR – the evil empire. In Warsaw, the independence gained by every nation recently subjugated under Moscow's rule was greeted with applause. On a diplomatic level, Poland was, after all, the first country to recognize Ukraine’s independence. The ideas of Jerzy Giedroyc described above were the guiding principle of its eastern policy, even if the mood in society was less than enthusiastic about befriending their newly free neighbor.

Interestingly, in the years that followed, sympathy toward Ukrainians and Ukraine slowly grew — albeit in an up-and-down pattern resembling a sine wave creeping upward. Surges of warm feelings came at particular moments. Poles felt warmly toward their neighbors in 2004 during the Orange Revolution, in 2008 at the time of the Russian-Georgian war, and in 2013–2014 during Ukraine's Revolution of Dignity, Russia's annexation of Crimea, and the outbreak of war in Donbas. Each upswing was followed by a cooling-off period, usually caused by fatigue with the situation and the return of difficult questions about history, particularly the war crimes committed by the UPA in Volhynia.

For a long time, Ukrainian politicians considered the UPA issue to be a problem invented for the purposes of domestic politics in Poland. However, as all the studies show, this is a deep wound that cannot be ignored. In 1943, at least 100,000 innocent civilians were killed in mass killings organized by the UPA. They were murdered in brutal ways. To this day, many Poles believe that the matter has not been properly resolved, and it cannot be buried without exhumations and re-burials. Ukraine blocked a decision on this for years.

The killing of 100,000 Polish civilians by the UPA cannot be resolved without exhumations and burials, and Ukraine blocked a decision on this for years

Thus, Poles' sympathy for their neighbors rose and fell. However, the pendulum never returned to its previous position, and from decade to decade, Poles grew increasingly fond of Ukrainians. By around 2010, sympathy had even begun to outweigh antipathy.

Sentiments on the other side of the border were similar. This is only natural: when we are in trouble, we appreciate a neighbor who wants to come to our aid, and we are grateful to them. Polish flags on the Maidan, the visit of Presidents Lech Kaczyński and Viktor Yushchenko to Tbilisi in 2008, Warsaw’s protests against the brazen annexation of Crimea – all this made a favorable impression on Ukrainians.

A pattern is easy to spot here: the worse Russian behavior was, the better relations between Poles and Ukrainians became. From this perspective, their attachment was a function of their dislike of an aggressive neighbor that threatened “both you and us.” A similar mechanism came into play in 2022. Poles opened their homes and hearts, taking in hundreds of thousands of women and children fleeing the full-scale war unleashed by the Kremlin.

President Andrzej Duda, the PiS government, and the opposition alike did everything they could to provide civilians with social assistance and the Ukrainian army with weapons and ammunition. However, the wave of spontaneous empathy and outrage at Russia, which was committing war crimes, did not prevent Polish politicians from keeping an eye on sociological trends. They could see that if Ukraine survived, the pendulum of sympathy would begin to swing in the other direction, and they needed to prepare for that.

Sociologists say that 2022 was nevertheless such an extraordinary year that it completely disrupted the typical pattern on both sides of the border. CBOS polls show that in March of that year, 94% of Poles supported accepting refugees from Ukraine, and Poland was Ukrainians’ most favored country, with 83% expressing a positive opinion of Poles. President Zelensky said that Ukraine and Poland were sisters.

It must be said that sister Poland really did open its arms wide to sister Ukraine. Legislators in Warsaw changed laws with lightning speed: for example, the law on assistance to Ukrainian citizens was adopted as early as March 12, 2022. This allowed refugees to easily legalize their stay and establish lives thanks to access to the labor market, social assistance, health care, and education – around 300,000 children and teenagers who did not know the language entered the school system. The challenge was enormous: during the first two weeks after February 24 alone, around a million people crossed the Polish border. Europe had not seen such a mass movement since World War II.

And estimates of the size of the migration varied considerably. For example, according to the Union of Polish Metropolises, shortly after the invasion there could have been as many as 3.9 million Ukrainians in Poland.

Reality and emotions

A year and a half later, more precise estimates could be made. They showed that the number of Ukrainians in Poland with an active PESEL Ukr number (which confirms legal residence and grants access to social benefits) stood at around 970,000. The majority of them (87%) were women and children. Poland is also home to more than 420,000 Ukrainians residing on other grounds, including temporary residence related to employment and permanent residence. This puts the total at approximately 1.4 million.

Sister Ukraine actively got to work in Poland. A year and a half after the invasion, 80% of Ukrainian migrant households supported themselves through their own labor. They worked for others or started businesses themselves: since 2022, Ukrainians have founded 60,000 businesses, of which around 35,000 remain active. They also own or co-own the largest share of companies with foreign capital (41%). “Ukrainian workers contributed to higher economic growth, by between 0.7 and 1.1 percentage points,” says Aleksander Łaszek, PhD in economics and a Deloitte expert.

Sister Poland, however, was in shock. After World War II, our country was essentially mono-ethnic. According to the 2011 National Census, foreigners accounted for only 0.1–0.2% of Poland’s population, or about 60,000 people. In reality, the figure was probably closer to 100,000, but hearing another language on the street was something unusual. In recent years, everything has been turned upside down: Ukrainian, and less often Russian and Belarusian, can be heard in stores, hospitals, and hotels. This could not fail to provoke a reaction from a society unprepared for such a dramatic change, and its effects were bound to begin showing up in the polls.

According to the 2011 National Population Census, foreigners accounted for around 0.1–0.2% of Poland’s population

Symptoms of the unraveling solidarity appeared fairly early. “What united the narratives of our middle- and working-class respondents was a strong dislike of Ukrainians, expressed spontaneously in all the focus groups. They reflect anxiety about losing priority access to benefits and public services,” Przemysław Sadura and Sławomir Sierakowski wrote in their report "Poles Are for Ukraine, but Against Ukrainians," based on research conducted in early June 2022.

Such voices rarely broke through into public discourse, but in real life people increasingly talked, for example, about Ukrainians driving down wages. The actual data showed that this was not true. For example, the influx of migrants had a negligible effect on the rise in unemployment (0.18–0.3%), and as Dr. Łaszek noted, “A Ukrainian taking a job was often associated with a Polish worker being promoted because they were more experienced and had a better command of the language.”

However, some rumors cannot be disproved with hard economic data. How, for example, do you disprove the panicked rumors about cunning Ukrainian women who, instead of showing gratitude, set about seducing Polish husbands? Or about Ukrainian children being admitted to emergency departments (SORs) ahead of young Poles waiting in line? These stories spread on social media, and according to experts, they were part of a disinformation campaign – one of many that would later sweep across Poland.

Of course, there were also measurable, entirely objective factors. Ukraine, having gained easier access to EU markets for grain and transportation because of the ongoing war, became a genuine competitor to Polish farmers and businesses. This resulted in a huge influx of grain into Poland, falling prices, and farmers’ protests in 2023, accompanied by a blockade of the border and Ukrainian grain being dumped onto the ground – images that were particularly painful in Ukraine, which had experienced the Holodomor.

This was compounded by President Zelensky’s words at a UN session: “Some of our friends are helping to set the stage for a Moscow actor.” In Poland, this was perceived as a stab in the back to President Andrzej Duda, who was finding it increasingly difficult to rally his camp behind unconditional support for Ukraine.

Moreover, Ukraine was putting pressure on EU institutions, arguing that the restrictions were hurting its economy and violating the principles of the single market and trade agreements. The European Commission became an arena for the dispute, as it was the Commission that administered the so-called autonomous trade measures for Ukraine. In September 2023, after the Commission decided not to extend the EU ban on imports, Ukraine filed a complaint against Poland (and also against Hungary and Slovakia) at the WTO.

In Poland, this was seen as disloyalty and a lack of solidarity. After all, it was not only Andrzej Duda who might have disliked Zelensky’s barbed hint at him in his UN speech. The late Lech Kaczyński must have felt awful when his friend Viktor Yushchenko called Stepan Bandera and Roman Shukhevych heroes. And Bronisław Komorowski must have felt the same when, on the day he addressed the Verkhovna Rada, Ukrainian lawmakers passed a law granting UPA fighters veteran status.

Foreign policy as domestic policy

Poland entered an electoral cycle in 2023, beginning with parliamentary elections marked by the highest turnout in the country's history. This was followed by the no less hotly contested presidential election of 2025. In 2027 there will once again be a battle for a parliamentary majority, a fact that does not make for normal debate. 

Parties commission polls and tailor their messaging to voters’ expectations, and a combination of fear and anxiety can propel a party to the top. Everyone wants to ride this wave; no one will swim against the current, because they will drown.

“Of course, politicians sensed the growing skepticism and did not want to go against the tide,” political scientist Ernest Wyciszkiewicz, until recently the director of the Juliusz Mieroszewski Center for Dialogue, said in an interview with Polityka weekly. The center has been conducting detailed sociological research on Polish-Ukrainian relations since the beginning of the invasion, and historical issues — Volhynia, exhumations, and irritation over monuments being erected and streets being named after figures such as UPA commander Roman Shukhevych — have been coming up increasingly often.

On the Ukrainian side, meanwhile, there has been a noticeable rise in national pride. There has also been a renaissance of interest in history. Under the circumstances of the war, the past actions of the UPA have been reinterpreted. Just a decade and a half ago, only around 20% of respondents viewed the UPA positively. Today, the overwhelming majority viewing them as fighters for independence. More than 80% sympathize with Stepan Bandera, and around 70% with Roman Shukhevych, both of whom are viewed as villains in Poland.

More than 80% of Ukrainians sympathize with Bandera, and around 70% with Shukhevych

Poles do not like this, but this is perhaps the worst possible moment to give their neighbors “history lessons.”  Ukrainians are defending themselves against Russia and suffering daily casualties. They have no desire to listen to criticism from anyone.

At the same time, far-right groups have been gaining popularity in Poland by riding the anti-Ukrainian wave. A party called “Confederation” received 7% and 18 seats in parliament in October 2023, finishing fifth. Today, “Confederation” has split into two factions, both of which are gaining ground: the first has around 13–15% support, while the second has around 8–11%. In the presidential election, candidates from “Confederation” came in third and fourth, while the top spot went to PiS candidate Karol Nawrocki, a former head of the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) who had no qualms about attacking “Banderite” Ukraine, threatening that it would not join NATO or the EU and calling for the “restoration of justice” – that is, stripping refugees of financial benefits.

The radicals’ convictions inevitably set the tone of the debate, leading others to become more radical. As a result, a law was passed abolishing assistance for the most vulnerable Ukrainian refugees who depend on aid. It is not about the money (after all, it is a pittance), but about showing that we care primarily about our own citizens. The prime minister talks about the need to deport young Ukrainians who got into a scuffle with security guards at a concert (by Max Korzh in Warsaw), while the interior minister personally takes up the case of a blogger who drove a race car with Ukrainian license plates into a national park in the Tatra Mountains to take a selfie. The illegal catching of a catfish by a Ukrainian migrant is elevated to the level of a national security issue.

Ukraine, too, pretends that it is not engaged in domestic politics amid the war, but that is not true either. A political game is afoot in Kyiv given the understanding that as soon as the shooting stops, parliamentary elections and a new race for the presidency will begin. 

A Ukrainian opposition politician said that viewing the current dispute with Poland as a cunning ploy by Zelensky would be a gross exaggeration: “There is a narrative being promoted in Warsaw that Zelensky cleverly engineered all this – he stirred up a storm and boosted his ratings. That is a wonderful compliment to the president’s entourage, but completely undeserved. There was no plan. It should be added that, like a stage performer, he has a genius for reading his audience. He quickly realized that people liked this assertiveness and went in that direction: ‘Karol wants the White Eagle back? Great, send it!’ And he was right. The support was enormous. Unfortunately, the price was a deterioration in relations with Poland.”

Zelensky went further, pushing through a law on the Pantheon of Heroes of Ukraine. It is to be a place commemorating figures important to the country’s history and will almost certainly include people whom Warsaw will find difficult to accept. Kyiv, for example, is seeking the return of Stepan Bandera’s remains to Ukraine, to be followed by a ceremonial burial. Even politicians who are not sympathetic to Zelensky came out in his support. 

Zelensky is, after all, fighting for reelection. A huge corruption scandal is hanging over him, and increasingly serious opponents are emerging. The situation at the front, dissatisfaction with mobilization, and holes in the budget are all on his shoulders. Relations with Poland are certainly not a priority for him. Preserving his hold on power, however, is.

Nothing but negativity

The Polish research group Res Futura, which studies the internet and social media, noticed something interesting during the latest dispute over naming a Ukrainian military unit after the “heroes of the UPA.” According to its research, 754,000 posts about Ukraine appeared from June 1-21, 2026. These posts generated 10.2 million reactions and comments. “Among non-neutral posts, nine out of ten are negative toward Ukrainians,” emphasized Michał Fedorowicz of Res Futura.

Between June 1 and 21, 2026, 754,000 posts about Ukraine appeared, and if neutral posts are excluded, nine out of ten are negative, Res Futura calculated

Criticism of Ukraine on social media has been growing steadily since the beginning of May, and each crisis pushes this level higher. Importantly, it no longer recedes.

Fedorowicz says that the UPA issue accounted for less than 5% of discussions about Ukraine on social media a year ago. At the time, there was a social and online consensus that the issue should not be discussed because it served Russia’s interests (and was being promoted by pro-Russian propaganda). However, the situation has now been turned upside down: “Today, there is absolutely no room – above all, politically – to change these sentiments.”

Of course, eventually, the pendulum will swing in the other direction again – the sooner, the better. At some point, Poland and Ukraine will love each other a little more again – they have little choice. That is, after all, how sisters love.

Fourteen of the wounded were hospitalized, while three others received treatment at the scene, Viktor Zabashta, director of the regional emergency medical center, told Suspilne, Ukraine’s public broadcaster. The wounded suffered burns and shrapnel injuries, and some are in serious condition. Syniehubov said DNA testing would be needed to identify the dead.

Oleksandr Husarov, head of the Pechenihy community, said Russian forces attacked the town with two Banderol missiles. The two munitions landed about 50 meters apart, with one striking a cafe. Among those killed, Husarov said, were customers, vendors, and people who were nearby. Work to clear the rubble is continuing, meaning the casualty figures could rise.

The attack damaged 10 private homes, a cafe, a post office, a shop, and at least seven cars. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the strike hit a “crowded intersection” surrounded by residential buildings. A fire at the site was extinguished.

Ukraine’s military intelligence agency, HUR, classifies the S8000 Banderol as a Russian cruise missile that is developed and produced by the Russian company Kronshtadt. It has a range of up to 500 kilometers and a maximum speed of 620 to 650 kilometers per hour. Among other components, the missile uses a Chinese turbojet engine and foreign-made electronics.

Unprecedented challenges

According to Klepach, in recent years the world has faced challenges that are “unprecedented for the entire postwar period.”

• The model of globalization that emerged in the 1980s and 1990s is reaching its limits.
• A redistribution of spheres of influence and the formation of new alliances have begun.
• National security and national interests are beginning to take precedence over the goals of economic and sustainable development.
• And Western sanctions imposed over the invasion of Ukraine have severed the economic ties between Russia and the European Union.

“The question arises: what place will we [Russia] occupy in this world, both now and going forward? Will we be, as we say – and this is a priority of our policy – a sovereign regional or even global power, or will we turn into a country with a non-sovereign economy overwhelmingly dependent on China?

The structure of Russian exports and imports already points to an extremely high degree of dependence on China, in many respects greater than our previous dependence on the European Union. The only question is how far we will comply with China’s various regulatory requirements and allow Chinese businesses to take control of different sectors of the Russian economy. Or will we once again become a dependent state under the United States and the European Union if we reach an agreement? Sooner or later, one way or another, we will reach an agreement – the only question is at what cost...

All military confrontations eventually end in peace, good or bad. If our policy was previously focused on joining advanced Western civilization, integrating into the European economy and Western institutions, and forming alliances with international companies, primarily European and American, then under conditions of global confrontation, we will not return to the model of European integration, not even after the end of the 'special military operation.'”

The impact of the war on the Russian economy

• Military spending has fueled GDP growth and contributed to a substantial increase in real household incomes. The share of military pay and other military-related payments in household incomes rose from 2% to 7–8% of total household income.

“However, the economic slowdown and mounting budget problems have also slowed the growth of household incomes. We estimate that real disposable incomes will grow by 0.6% this year, while the decline in inequality has come to a halt.

Although real wage growth has slowed, wages are still pushing incomes upward (with the exception of public-sector wages, which are lagging behind), as are high interest rates on bank deposits. The main factors holding incomes back are low pensions, which are increasingly falling behind wages, and incomes from small and medium-sized businesses (although we will only have a complete picture of those a year from now).”

• Among civilian industries, only pharmaceuticals and fertilizer production grew in 2025, but their growth also slowed toward the end of the year, in part because of Ukrainian strikes on chemical plants.

“This resulted in a contraction in the first quarter [of 2026]. The Institute for National Economic Forecasting and the VEB Institute had made forecasts and warned the government that we would see a contraction — not just a slowdown in growth. This is the result of uncoordinated monetary, fiscal, and industrial policies... In our estimation, investment will decline by 2.5% in real terms in 2026, and there may be no growth in 2027 either.

Even the food industry contracted, mainly because of beverages, both as a result of higher taxes and tighter regulation and fees...If the ‘special military operation’ continues, along with anti-Russian sanctions and a sufficiently tight monetary policy, followed in the longer term by a tight fiscal policy, the Russian economy is unlikely to achieve annual growth rates above 2–2.5%, meaning it would lag behind the growth of the global economy. Given the risk of a new wave of tighter sanctions and mounting losses from Ukrainian strikes on industrial facilities and transport infrastructure, GDP growth in 2027 will not exceed 1–1.5%.

Our monetary policy is unique: we are at war, spending a huge amount of money on defense while squeezing the economy, especially the civilian sector, through high borrowing costs – there are no other historical examples of such a policy in wartime.”

One of the most pressing issues, both in the past and today, is creating an effective system of governance and building a responsible elite.

“In addition to the traditional disputes and conflicts between monetary, fiscal, and industrial policies and growth policy, there is now an intensified search for a new balance between nationalization and privatization, as well as for a new model of strategic governance. However, the current privatization process looks more like taking assets away from ‘bad’ people and transferring them, often at a low price, to ‘good’ people. Ownership is being redistributed, but this is driven less by the priority of strengthening the integrity of the Russian economy and improving its efficiency than by shifts in the balance of private interests under conditions of anti-Russian sanctions.”

Another problem is the growing debt burden, primarily arrears on government contracts.

“We are seeing a fairly substantial increase in non-payments, and the statistics do not show the full picture because the Defense Ministry’s arrears are not included. Something needs to be done about this: either these obligations, particularly the Defense Ministry’s debts, should be converted into government debt, or they should be offset by an easing of monetary policy. Non-payments throughout the contracting chain are now becoming a serious barrier to economic growth.”

The Middle East crisis and oil

• The war in the Middle East and the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz will bring 2–2.5 trillion rubles in additional revenue to the Russian budget this year. However, the positive effect on the real economy will be limited.
• Losses from Ukrainian strikes on oil and gas facilities, ports, and other infrastructure have already become a significant macroeconomic constraint on the growth of the Russian economy.

“Instead of increasing oil production and exports, we appear to be entering a period of decline. Production will not exceed 500–505 million metric tons. This will, of course, have a significant impact on industrial and GDP growth. In addition, gas infrastructure and the energy sector are coming under attack. Plants producing nitrogen fertilizers have already suffered significant damage, while production and exports have declined, meaning that we cannot take advantage of favorable conditions on global markets. We are increasing exports of potash fertilizers, while nitrogen fertilizer production is declining.

The peak in oil production will be reached sometime around the middle of this year. In the second half of 2026, and especially in 2027, the price of oil will fall significantly.”

The agricultural crisis

• Global conflicts have driven up food prices, which benefits Russia as a major exporter of wheat and oilseeds.
• However, limited Russian shipping infrastructure will likely prevent the country from increasing its exports.

“The profitability and incomes of our farmers have been declining for several years. Whereas profitability in grain production used to average around 40%, it is now 4–5%. Some regions, including in Siberia, are simply operating at a loss. Agriculture has received little investment for about five years, and there will most likely be no investment this year either – which means a decline in spending on machinery, agricultural facilities, and everything else. Thus far, this reality has not prompted any support measures.”

The strengthening of the ruble helped slow price growth, including food prices, at the end of 2025 and this year.

“It is important to understand that this happened against the backdrop of problems our farmers are having selling their produce. In addition, fruit and vegetable prices usually rise sharply in late winter and in the fall, but this time they did not. And this was not because of an excess domestic supply of food, but because we opened up the market to Chinese producers. For the first time in recent years, food and agricultural imports exceeded agricultural exports. All of this put downward pressure on prices, which, of course, helped bring inflation down.

The demographic crisis

In recent years, Russia’s population has been declining. The death rate has been rising, and the birth rate is falling.

“Given current trends, the population is shrinking and will continue to shrink – primarily in European Russia, the Volga region, central Siberia, and the Far East. The Caucasus, as well as some regions of eastern Siberia, are seeing population growth.

It is not possible to reverse these trends simply by encouraging higher birth rates. As has already been acknowledged in government documents, we need to increase the age at which people remain actively employed, as well as find a balanced approach to migration.

In the last population census [in 2020–2021], we ‘found’ 1.5 million people who were not accounted for in any of our estimates based on birth rates, death rates, and migration. Apparently, we need to conduct the next census – it is scheduled for 2030, unless it is postponed due to a lack of funding – and perhaps we will find another 1–1.5 million people. In addition, around 5.5 million people live in Russia’s new regions – the DNR, LNR, and the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions (11 million lived there before the ‘special military operation’). I think that at some point we will start counting them as part of Russia’s population.”

According to Central Bank surveys, more than 30% of Russia’s residents have enough money only for food — not for clothing or other needs.

“A huge proportion of the population falls into the category of low-income people. If we take those with incomes between one and three subsistence minimums, they account for almost 40%.

Having a child when the woman is not working (or stops working) automatically means that they fall into poverty. Forty percent of the poor in Russia are children, despite all the benefits and maternity capital.”

“We are losing out not only to the U.S. and China, but also to Ukraine”

“Whatever we do with our economy, it will survive... The problem is rather that we are falling behind. We are losing the technological and economic competition in the world. And we are losing not only to China and the U.S. — in some respects, we are losing to Ukraine as well.

Ukraine’s economy has obviously been destroyed to some extent, and there has been a demographic catastrophe. But the Ukrainian economy, despite everything, is surviving. Of course, there is enormous financial assistance; without it, everything would collapse. But with that level of assistance, their military spending and their own expenditures amount to almost 50% of our budget. And if you take all the assistance as a whole, it is several times greater than our capital outflow.

We will not win the competition in this war of attrition. We have this illusion that everything there will collapse. It hasn’t, and it won’t. Our costs are mounting. According to public opinion surveys, the quality of healthcare is deteriorating. Our scientific and technological sector is highly uneven. In some areas, we have achieved results and made breakthroughs, but overall, in my view, we are losing the competition, not winning it. Inequality is growing. After declining substantially in 2023–2024, it has now begun to move in the opposite direction.

In my view, the economy will withstand the pressure, but a social crisis may emerge – and when it does, no one will be expecting it. But no one expected the February Revolution either, let me remind you. Lenin wrote in December 1916 that “we will not live to see it,” but within a few months, he did. As for the situation in the Soviet Union in 1991, we had been steadily moving toward it for a long time, and everyone understood that we were heading toward a crisis. But there was nothing fatally inevitable about the Soviet Union’s collapse.

I believe Russia will not fall apart, but I am almost certain that we will face a social crisis. We will not collapse economically, but we will continue to lag further behind the rest of the world, with all the consequences that entails.”

What Reform UK does have in abundance, however, is dependence on its leader. 

The Battle of Clowns in Clacton

Financing is often a weak spot for right-wing populists. Nigel Farage likes to talk about how he was given millions of pounds without being asked for anything in return, arguing that his finances are being investigated by British authorities only because the establishment cannot defeat him in a fair political fight. “Let ordinary voters judge me,” he said: “If I win, you win, because if I lose, they win.” This was the main message of Farage’s speech this past July 7, when he announced that he would stand again in an early election in his Clacton constituency. His slogan for that campaign: “The People versus the Establishment.”

The comedy began the very next day. All parties with any meaningful support – Labour, the Tories, the Liberal Democrats, the Greens, and Restore Britain (Farage’s rival on the right) – declined to field candidates. Thus, Farage’s main opponent was Count Binface (literally a man with a garbage bin on his head), along with three representatives of the Official Monster Raving Loony Party, several other novelty candidates, and a couple of dozen independents. A record 34 candidates in all joined the field.

Farage, of course, won. From the outset, around 70% of the constituency’s voters were ready to support him, compared with roughly 20% for Count Binface, and in the end the Reform UK head claimed 63% (then declined to attend the official announcement of the results). More importantly though, at the national level, 73% of Britons believe the investigation into Farage's finances should continue, no matter what the voters of Clacton may have said.

Political resilience

Farage is one of the most consistent and persistent politicians in modern Britain. For more than 30 years, he has built his political career around a single idea: I am on the side of the people in their struggle against a political class that betrays the will of ordinary Britons, and I will restore the country’s national sovereignty and control over its borders. The names and party labels change, but Farage and his basic message remain.

In 1989, Farage, still a Tory at the time, voted for the Green Party, reportedly because it was then seen as Euroskeptic. Three years later, in protest against the signing of the Maastricht Treaty (which created the European Union), he left the Conservative Party and joined the Anti-Federalist League, which soon became the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP). He led UKIP from 2006 to 2016 before taking over the newly established Brexit Party in 2019. In 2021, the party was renamed Reform UK, and Farage announced his retirement from politics. But ahead of the 2024 general election, he unexpectedly returned and, on his eighth attempt, was elected to the House of Commons.

Farage likes to portray himself as an outsider who can bring about the political revolution Britain so badly needs

Farage likes to portray himself as an outsider who can bring about a political revolution Britain supposedly so badly needs. The son of a trader, he attended a private school and then followed in his father's footsteps, becoming a trader in non-ferrous metals in the City of London. He made his way into politics thanks to an obvious talent for working with the media and a skillfully crafted political narrative that was very simple – and, therefore, persuasive.

The narrative works

Immigration and sovereignty remain at the core of Farage’s political program – in other words, his main political tool remains emotion. Farage's positions on “secondary” issues, especially economic ones, can change, sometimes radically, and his critics' charge that Farage offers slogans rather than plans are indeed consistent with reality. Unsurprisingly, 86% of Reform supporters consider immigration to be the country's most important political issue, compared with 42% of Britons overall. (The cost of living comes second, at 38%.)

In the worldview Farage offers, the topics of immigration, Brexit, economic problems, the declining quality of public services, and distrust in government institutions have become intertwined. The conclusion – that Britain is “broken” – is often expressed in forceful, militaristic rhetoric, with words such as “betrayal,” “war,” and “invasion.” The changes proposed are sometimes even given the names of military campaigns, such as “Operation Restore Justice.”

Channeling these emotions has proven effective. By summer 2026, 61% of Britons surveyed considered Reform to be one of the “major parties,” compared with just 19% two years earlier. In the 2025 and 2026 local elections, hundreds of the party’s candidates were elected as local councilors, and Reform now controls dozens of local authorities. It has become a real political force.

Something went wrong

Until early fall 2025, the average of the seven most recent polls conducted by different  firms showed a steady rise in support for Reform, reaching around 32%. For comparison, Labour, now the governing party, won more than 400 of the 650 seats in 2024 with a comparable share of the vote.

But then came an equally steady decline. As of Aug. 5, support for Reform UK was back down to 24.0%, coming in behind Labour at 25.9%, with the Conservatives, Greens, and Liberal Democrats attracting 19.4%, 11.1%, and 10.7% support, respectively).

Reform’s growing prominence probably brought greater scrutiny of its plans, revealing that many people either saw the party’s proposals as eye-catching wish lists without realistic plans behind them (such as its call to invade France) or simply did not approve of them. For example, critics described as unfair and “un-British” the proposal to force people who had legally settled in Britain years or even decades ago to prove their right to remain all over again.

Another possible reason for Reform’s deteriorating position in the polls is the gradual recovery of the Conservative Party, which Farage has publicly vowed to displace. The Tories' current leader, Kemi Badenoch, has seen her popularity rise since September 2025.

Finally, a string of new scandals and reports of parliamentary and police investigations into the financial dealings of Farage and Reform, which began in spring 2026, may also have played a role. Not the main one, since Reform’s decline in the polls began long before the first reports of possible financial irregularities. Nevertheless, the allegations could ultimately cost Farage his seat in Parliament.

Is there life after Farage

The facts and suspicions described above – million-pound gifts, transfers sent through complicated channels, questions about financial disclosures, and ongoing investigations – look like a pattern of behavior when taken together, even if all of the allegations are yet to be proven. As a result, Farage's rhetoric of being with the people and against the elites is beginning to sound less convincing.

Traditionally, Farage is seen as the party’s main asset – he is still better than anyone else in Britain at using the media, and the loyalty of Reform UK supporters is centered on him. As many as 91% of those who back the party view him positively, with 49% viewing him very positively. Among the electorate as a whole, however, the picture is radically different. When More in Common asked Britons “Who do you trust more, the leader or the party?”, 7% chose Farage, while 17% chose Reform UK. Under the circumstances, breaking with Farage might actually benefit the party: while the leader once pulled the party upward, his high personal unfavorable ratings and financial scandals could now drag it down. For now, however, Reform UK is, in essence, Nigel Farage himself. 

In the More in Common poll, when asked “Who do you trust more, the leader or the party?”, 7% chose Farage, while 17% chose Reform UK

Major internal party disagreements are usually resolved through Farage’s personal intervention. That was the case, for example, in June 2025, when party official Zia Yusuf announced his resignation. However, after speaking with Farage, who publicly said he had “forgiven” Yusuf, he returned 48 hours later. The same applies to tensions between Reform UK’s old core and the Conservatives who have joined the party – above all Robert Jenrick. For now, these tensions are largely being managed from above by Farage.

Or take the procedure for selecting parliamentary candidates. As of early August, the party’s Parliamentary candidates portal promised to “publish in due course” the rules for selecting them – this despite the fact that the party has existed for more than seven years, participated with some success in a general election two years ago, and intends to win a parliamentary majority in 2029. Somehow though, there are still no clear rules beyond the discretionary decisions of the party leadership.

The same story is playing out at the local level. In the absence of an established procedure, Reform UK can end up with candidates like Linden Kemkaran, who became leader of Kent County Council after the party won a majority there in 2025. So far, under her leadership, the local administration has been known largely for the advice its new leader gave to dissenting fellow party members: “fucking suck it up.”

That is precisely why bringing in experienced politicians and administrators is so important for Reform UK, as demonstrated by the example of North Northamptonshire Council, which is successfully led by a former Tory. Once in power, the rhetoric of revolution runs up against the mundane realities of everyday work like drawing up budgets and dealing with the rest of the administrative grind.

To become a successful, long-lived political force, Reform UK will have to develop mechanisms and procedures for the party’s internal life: how to resolve conflicts, how to constrain the leader’s arbitrary power, how to select high-quality candidates, and what a party member can do if they disagree with a decision. It is precisely the existence of such mechanisms that allows Labour and the Conservatives to survive instability at the top. With the “Faragists,” it is the other way around – stability at the very top and chaos below.

Obstacles from the right as well

In addition to internal professionalization, Reform UK’s future also depends on what happens to the Conservative Party over the next few years. The two right-of-center political groupings face different challenges. For Reform to win in the long run, it is not enough to be incrementally more popular; instead, it needs to prove that the Conservatives are finished as a serious electoral player. 

This will not be easy. The growing personal popularity of Tory leader Kemi Badenoch represents a real threat to Reform UK. Among Reform supporters, 56% have a positive view of her, up from 37% a year earlier, and 40% say they would consider voting for her party. Among those who voted Conservative in 2024 but later switched to Reform, her net favorability rating has risen from +20 to +58, and 73% of this group say they could return to the Conservatives.

In short, the Conservatives are showing true signs of life. The results of the 2026 local elections were not as bad as expected, and they looked poor in part because they were being compared with unusually strong results in the previous electoral cycle. The Tories won the Aberdeen South parliamentary by-election with 49.5% of the vote, leaving Reform in third place with 8.6% – several times lower than its nationwide polling numbers. Moreover, this was the first Scottish by-election won by the Conservatives in half a century.

This was the first Scottish by-election won by the Conservatives in half a century

The Tories’ long-term prospects are impossible to predict. They may gradually recover under the firm hand of Badenoch, but it may also turn out that what we took for signs of life were merely bumps that made the corpse jolt.

Reform also has a more radical rival on the right – Restore Britain, founded by former Reform member Rupert Lowe. Like Reform, Restore too is “viciously attacked by the establishment.” It has also been publicly endorsed by Elon Musk and has already won 7–9% in several elections.

Lowe is popular among Reform supporters, particularly those who voted for the party in 2024 but do not see Farage as being radical enough. However, if Reform drifts to the right under the influence of this faction, it will ultimately lose the center, where elections are still won.

The electoral pen

Institutional weakness, an incomplete program, and high unfavorability ratings could trap Reform in a kind of electoral pen. Its outer boundary is made up of the many voters who find Farage and his party unacceptable, as even some people who are planning to vote for Reform sometimes say in focus groups that they will do so while holding their noses. Its inner boundary consists of the most radical supporters, who are ready to switch to Restore if Reform tries to become more moderate – for example, if it refuses to hold the referendum on restoring the death penalty as demanded by Lowe.

Institutional weakness could prevent Reform UK from convincing voters that it is capable of governing effectively. There is a gap between support for the party and perceptions of its readiness for exercising power — an Ipsos poll conducted in late June 2026 showed that support for Reform was significantly higher than the number of people prepared to trust it to form a government (and the latter figure fell from 29% last September to 21% earlier this summer). With Reform and Labour hovering around comparable polling numbers, 30% overall still preferred to see Andy Burnham as prime minister, while only 16% chose Farage.

Looking competent is especially important for a party that is deeply unpopular beyond outside its base of loyal supporters. This is a feature of the first-past-the-post system: whatever your overall polling numbers, what matters is beating your opponent by a single vote in a given constituency. As tactical voting becomes more popular, some voters cast their ballots for the party that can stop a candidate they dislike.

Here Reform is at a real disadvantage. A YouGov poll published in early July 2026 shows that around 62–63% of Britons have a negative view of Farage's party. When compared with the Conservative Party the overall figure for support is comparable, but 39% viewed the Tories “very negatively,” as opposed to 53% in the case of Reform – this a mere two years after the Tories suffered their worst electoral defeat in history.

Farage himself is doing no better. According to Pollcheck, as of Aug. 1 he ranked last among party leaders, with a net favorability rating of –22.3%, while his main rival on the right, the Conservatives' Badenoch, stood at +1.7%.

How the story ends

Forecasting at a point of bifurcation is a thankless task. Broadly speaking, two medium-term scenarios are emerging: Reform could replace the Tories as the main party on the right, or it could end up in its own electoral pen, expansive but with no way out.

For Farage’s party to succeed, it needs to halt its decline in the polls, become a professional political institution, and establish itself in the eyes of right-wing voters as the main means of removing Labour from power – and it needs to do so before investigations and internal infighting undermine voters' confidence in Farage and his movement. If Reform succeeds, it would attract not only tactical voters (for whom defeating the “left” is the overriding priority), but also higher-caliber candidates and staff.

Reform UK could replace the Tories as the main party on the right or end up in its own electoral pen, expansive but with no way out

But the opposite outcome is entirely possible: the party could retain its high unfavorable rating and remain unable to move beyond its current base, while also failing to professionalize. Meanwhile, the “revived” Conservatives could win back some of their erstwhile supporters who are currently holding their noses while voting for Reform.

In short, the populist tactics that enabled Reform to grow so quickly are now holding it back, making it harder to turn a “party of the aggrieved” into a party of government.

And of course, there is the separate question of what will happen with Farage himself. He has already shown that he can pursue his goal for decades and get back on his feet after defeats. But he has now set himself a new task – to create a party capable of crushing or absorbing one of the oldest political institutions in history. The Conservatives need only avoid losing, while Farage needs to win. The moment of truth is approaching for Farage and Reform UK.

The concerts will mark the rapper’s debut on the Russian stage. However, West, now known as Ye, has visited the country before: in June 2024, he made a surprise visit to Moscow for the birthday of fashion designer Gosha Rubchinsky.

West’s planned visit was welcomed in the State Duma, Russia’s lower house of parliament. Elena Drapeko, first deputy chair of the Duma’s culture committee, told the outlet Podyom that she viewed the tour as a good sign while still expressing hope the performer had changed some of his past views.

“I hope that since then he has changed his mind and changed his attitude toward both Hitler and Russia,” she said. “The fact that he is coming to us is, in fact, a good sign.”

Drapeko added that West would fill Gazprom Arena and called his visit a “breakthrough of the blockade,” framing the rapper’s planned visit as an example of Russia escaping the Western cultural isolation that followed the invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Drapeko acknowledged, however, that she had not heard any of the rapper’s songs and was not interested in the genre.

Ye has drawn widespread criticism and condemnation in recent years after he began making antisemitic remarks and voicing admiration for Adolf Hitler. In early 2025, in a series of posts on X, Ye openly called himself a Nazi. He later released a song titled “Heil Hitler” (along with a companion title, “WW3,” which similarly glorified Hitler) and also offered a $20 white T-shirt printed with a swastika and the code "HH-01" for sale on his website (which he also advertised at Super Bowl LIX).

Several of Ye’s European performances were canceled in 2026, including those scheduled in the UK and Poland. Britain blocked West from traveling to the country in April to headline London’s Wireless Festival due to his antisemitic comments and celebration of Nazism. Several weeks later, the Swiss football club Basel also refused to host his concert at its stadium, St. Jakob-Park, saying the event was incompatible with the organization’s values.

West has issued apologies to the Jewish community on several occasions, most recently taking out a full-page advertisement in the Wall Street Journal in January 2026. In the ad, he said he had “lost touch with reality” and attributed his behavior to an undiagnosed brain injury from a 2002 car crash, along with untreated bipolar disorder

"I regret and am deeply mortified by my actions in that state, and am committed to accountability, treatment, and meaningful change. It does not excuse what I did, though. I am not a Nazi or an antisemite. I love Jewish people," he added.

The final sentence combined Shlosberg’s punishments under two charges, partially added together, and took into account an earlier sentence under Russia’s “foreign agent” law. State prosecutor Anna Goryacheva had sought a harsher sentence, asking that Shlosberg be given 12 years and one month in prison.

Malyamova closed the judicial investigation on Aug. 14. Shlosberg’s defense lawyers did not appear at the hearing, and a state-appointed lawyer said he was not prepared for oral arguments. Shlosberg himself was never questioned in court, though his testimony from the investigation stage was read aloud on July 28 — despite his objections. Shlosberg insisted that he would speak only after the defense presented the rest of its evidence. The judge interpreted that as a refusal to testify and interrupted him during his final statement.

The politician’s final statement in court can be viewed (in Russian) above, while its key excerpts, translated by Mediazona, are available in the fold-out below.

Lev Shlosberg’s final statement in court

The “fake news” case against Shlosberg stemmed from a repost on his Telegram channel made on Feb. 25, 2022: a post by the Russian media outlet Ekho Moskvy (lit. “Echo of Moscow”) showing the front page of Britain’s Daily Mirror, which showed a portrait of Vladimir Putin next to a photograph of a bloodied Ukrainian woman. The headline read: “Her blood… His hands.”

The second charge, involving “discreditation,” was built around a debate titled “A Shameful Peace or a Just War,” held on Jan. 10, 2025, on the YouTube channel Zhivoy Gvozd, an independent media project created by former Echo of Moscow journalists after the radio station was closed. During the debate, Shlosberg argued that a ceasefire agreement should be signed immediately. His opponent, historian Yury Pivovarov, argued for continuing the war until Ukraine’s victory and warned that a rushed peace would lead to another war. A recording of the debate appeared on the Russian social network Odnoklassniki on Jan. 12, and that recording became the basis for the case.

Shlosberg pleaded not guilty. In the “fake news” case, he noted that the repost on his Telegram channel appeared before the relevant article was added to Russia’s Criminal Code. In the second episode, he said he did not create the Odnoklassniki page and did not upload the video there. He also said the charges cite two remarks by Pivovarov taken out of context. This was not Shlosberg’s first day in court. In January 2025, Shlosberg was charged with failing to comply with his duties as a “foreign agent,” a Russian designation imposed on people and organizations that authorities claim are under foreign influence and that carries burdensome reporting and self-labeling requirements. 

Lev Shlosberg is a well-known Russian opposition politician, human rights activist, journalist and longtime member of the liberal Yabloko party, where he serves as deputy chairman. Based in the western Russian city of Pskov, he founded the independent regional newspaper Pskovskaya Gubernia in the early 2000s. The publication gained national and international attention for fearless local reporting, including exposing the secret deaths of Pskov paratroopers fighting in Ukraine in 2014. The Russian authorities labeled Shlosberg a “foreign agent” in June 2023.

Previously, Yandex typically hid military and other sensitive sites by blurring specific areas. In the Kronstadt case, editors appear to have tried to hide the position’s existence altogether by copying natural landscape over it. The company did not respond to Yle’s questions about the origin of the edited image.

The area previously held Bastion anti-ship missile systems, as well as radar systems and signals intelligence equipment. Marko Eklund, a former Finnish military intelligence officer, identified launchers and radars in a Google Earth image from July 2022. Equipment was last clearly recorded at the position in April 2026.

Eklund said the retouching is useless from a military standpoint because Ukraine and Western intelligence agencies use their own satellite imagery. In his view, the editing likely reflects an administrative ban on publishing images of certain sites. Western mapping services also hide some military facilities, but fixed positions remain visible in images from other satellite operators.

In 2024, a Russian court ordered Yandex to hide the Ryazan oil refinery in satellite images because of Ukrainian drone attacks. In a joint investigation, Northern European media, including Swedish national broadcaster SVT, counted 119 blurred sites in western Russia, including military bases and nuclear power plants. The hidden locations also included Vladimir Putin’s residence at Valdai.

Kronstadt remains one of the key bases of Russia’s Baltic Fleet. In June, Ukrainian drones struck the missile corvette Boikiy, which was in dry dock there, causing a fire on the vessel after two hits. Later satellite image analysis showed serious damage to the ship’s radar systems and electronic warfare equipment.

Following the incidents, the head of the Institute of Water Problems at the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS) called the spill “the most serious environmental disaster in Russia since the beginning of the 21st century.”

Volgoneft-212: Two shell companies and 100 enforcement cases

In April 2025, Rosprirodnadzor assessed the environmental damage from the wreck of the tankers at 84.9 billion rubles. To recover damages to the Black Sea ecosystem, the Black Sea-Azov Marine Department of the Federal Service for Supervision of Natural Resources filed suit. The court allocated responsibility between the owners and charterers of the tankers as follows: Kama Shipping, owner of the Volgoneft-212, and KamaTransOil, which leased it, must pay 49,460,085,849 rubles for the fuel oil spill; meanwhile, Volgatransneft must compensate the state 35,483,862,830 rubles for damages caused by the wreck of the Volgoneft-239.

The formal owners of KamaTransOil LLC are listed as Viktor Fyodorovich Selkov and his two sons, Alexei and Konstantin. The company’s assets at the end of 2024 were valued at 111 million rubles. In 2025, the company did not publish financial statements.

Nineteen enforcement proceedings totaling 55.39 billion rubles have been opened against KamaTransOil, with most of that amount related to the claim described above. Notably however, in most of the company’s previous 179 enforcement cases (totaling a relatively modest 17.27 million rubles), creditors were unable to recover their money. In 60 proceedings, bailiffs said they could not establish the debtor’s location, while in 73 other cases the debtor supposedly had no assets.

According to the enforcement case database, bailiffs were unable to find assets belonging to the company for nine years. The earliest enforcement case against KamaTransOil that was returned to the claimant was dated Jan. 30, 2017.

The chances of recovering tens of billions of rubles from Kama Shipping LLC are also extremely low. On July 27, 2026, the Arbitration Court of the Perm Region accepted an application by Interdistrict Federal Tax Service Inspectorate No. 21 for the region to declare the company bankrupt.

The company’s founders, Larisa Frolova and Konstantin Selkov, have financial problems of their own. Frolova has already gone through personal bankruptcy proceedings, while Selkov was entered in Russia’s register of disqualified persons in 2020 for repeatedly failing to file for his own bankruptcy.

Unlike KamaTransOil, Kama Shipping did not avoid paying debts, but its payment discipline deteriorated sharply after the tanker wrecks. There are now 82 enforcement proceedings open against the company, the earliest dating to February 2025. The Federal Tax Service office for the Omsk Region has already asked a court to declare Kama Shipping bankrupt.

The July 27, 2026, ruling by the Arbitration Court of the Perm Region suggests that the debtor’s assets are expected to be sold to satisfy creditors’ claims. The court appointed a financial manager and ordered the debtor to provide a list of company property, as well as lists of creditors and debtors. Given that the entire procedure is being conducted to repay a debt of 65 million rubles, recovery of 49 billion rubles in damages appears practically impossible.

Volgoneft-239 and a preventive bankruptcy

The owner of the Volgoneft-239, which must compensate 35,483,862,830 rubles in damage caused to a body of water, is Volgatransneft CJSC. The company’s assets were valued at 457.65 million rubles as of Dec. 31, 2025, meaning compensating Rosprirodnadzor for even part of its claim appears almost impossible. Since September 2025, bailiffs have returned five enforcement proceedings to companies and government agencies that had unsuccessfully tried to collect debts from the oil transport firm.

For example, on Sept. 25, 2025, an enforcement case was returned to the Gorodets Ship Repair Plant, which had tried to recover 2.19 million rubles from Volgatransneft. The reason given was the “impossibility of establishing the location of the debtor or its property.” Three more enforcement proceedings were returned to other claimants with the same wording.

The most serious sign in this context is the pension fund’s unsuccessful attempt to collect debts. Its enforcement case was returned “because the debtor was declared bankrupt.” At the time of publication, the enforcement case register was the only source of information about the company’s bankruptcy. There were no bankruptcy notices for Volgatransneft in Russia’s Unified Federal Register of Bankruptcy Information, the Unified State Register of Legal Entities, or the company insolvency register maintained by the business newspaper Kommersant.

Rosneft CEO Igor Sechin’s yachts could cover two-thirds of the environmental damage

Both wrecked tankers were closely linked to Rosneft. Russia’s Transport Ministry confirmed that at the time of the wrecks, both tankers were carrying fuel oil belonging to Rosneft, which was simultaneously the owner of the petroleum products, the shipper, and the consignee.

The independent investigative outlet Important Stories has shown that in the six months before the disaster, the Volgoneft-212 loaded fuel oil twice at Rosneft’s Saratov refinery and once carried petroleum fuel from Rosneft’s Syzran refinery. Volgatransneft CJSC, which owned the Volgoneft-239, won a tender in 2017 to transport 1.5 million metric tons of Rosneft petroleum products worth more than 3.3 billion rubles.

Notably, the value of just two superyachts belonging to Rosneft CEO Igor Sechin is equivalent to about two-thirds of the environmental damage caused by the spill. The Amore Vero, seized in France, is valued at $120 million, while the Crescent, detained in Spain, is valued at $600 million. At the current exchange rate, selling the superyachts could bring in 59.39 billion rubles, covering 69% of the total damage.

Everyone will pay — except for Rosneft

The sums described above relate only to claims by Russia’s environmental regulator against the tanker owners, but the real number of victims and the total damage are much higher. In Russia, fishing companies lost catches, beach and hotel owners lost customers, and agencies that cleaned up the spill were not compensated for their work. And Russia itself is only one of the affected parties.

In June 2025, scientists from Ukraine, Japan, and Singapore modeled Black Sea currents as part of the OpenDrift project to show how fuel oil spilled near Kerch reached the coasts of Turkey, Georgia, Romania, Bulgaria, and Ukraine. The model showed how environmental disasters in those countries were linked to the wrecks of the Russian tankers.

Yevgeny Simonov, an expert with the Ukraine War Environmental Consequences Work Group (UWEC) told The Insider that “in terms of impact on the overall marine ecosystem, a spill of this scale affects all countries in the Black Sea region because it affects large populations of species, such as seabirds. Any Black Sea country can claim environmental damage even if a specific fuel oil discharge did not reach its coast.”

In July 2025, an elevated concentration of petroleum products was recorded on the coast of Abkhazia, a Russian-backed breakaway region of Georgia. Although media reports linked it to the December 2024 fuel oil spill, Abkhazia’s Moscow-backed authorities ignored those reports — while also saying its beaches were safe for swimming.

Then, in 2025, Turkish media reports and environmental assessments recorded mass deaths of birds covered in fuel oil along Turkey’s Black Sea coast. Although the bird deaths were attributed to the wrecks of the tankers near Kerch, Turkish authorities did not issue an official response.

Ukraine was the only country to link environmental consequences to the wrecks of the Russian tankers, reporting on fuel oil that had washed ashore in the Tuzly Lagoons, Serhiivka, and the Lymanske community in the Odesa Region.

In addition to Rosprirodnadzor, which is seeking compensation for harm to the water environment, the Arbitration Court of the Krasnodar Region is hearing lawsuits filed by the Marine Rescue Service, the administration of the city of Anapa, and the Temryuk District Administration in the Krasnodar Region. As a result, the main payers in the Marine Rescue Service’s lawsuit were insurance companies: Absolut Insurance paid Rosprirodnadzor 200.5 million rubles, and VSK paid 199.4 million rubles. KamaTransOil and Kama Shipping got off with modest payments of 1.6 million and 2.6 million rubles, respectively.

Russian authorities even considered a mechanism to compensate for the fuel oil spill through international funds. Russia is one of 126 member states of the International Oil Pollution Compensation Funds, or IOPC Funds. According to the funds’ reports, in 2025 the IOPC director held informal discussions with a Russian delegation, which said that “the question of whether to make a formal application to the 1992 Fund was still under consideration.”

Russia’s plans to seek compensation through the IOPC are also indirectly hinted at by the fact that the fund is listed as a third party in a case heard by the Arbitration Court of the North Caucasus District.

According to The Bell, Klepach was fired Sunday, Aug. 16. One of the outlet’s sources said VEB head Igor Shuvalov made the decision “after a call from above” — a Russian expression typically meaning an order from senior officials. Another source confirmed that the dismissal was linked to the economist’s May remarks. VEB had not responded to The Bell’s request for comment by the time of publication.

Klepach worked as VEB’s chief economist for 12 years. Before that, he spent 10 years at Russia’s Economic Development Ministry. In 2004, while working under German Gref, he became head of the ministry’s macroeconomic forecasting department. From 2008 to 2014, he served as deputy minister under Elvira Nabiullina, Andrei Belousov, and Alexei Ulyukayev.

“The dismissal of Klepach, one of Russia’s best macroeconomists, is unlikely to delay the looming crisis he is talking about,” Alexandra Prokopenko, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center in Berlin, told The Bell. “Only paid propagandists, not respected economists, can fail to see the problems in economic growth rates barely above zero, two-speed industry, declining investment, and rising unproductive defense spending.”

Prokopenko said Klepach had previously publicly defended his own assessments of the Russian economy, which were often more pessimistic than official forecasts.

“It is worth recalling his public disputes with Alexei Ulyukayev in 2011 and his departure from the Economic Development Ministry, where Klepach was responsible for macroeconomic forecasts, when Ulyukayev became minister,” Prokopenko said. “Klepach’s forecast as VEB’s chief economist was also based on assessments of reality, not on a desire to please anyone, and was often gloomier than the official figures.”

What Klepach said

Klepach delivered a report titled “Russia’s Economy and Geopolitical Challenges” on May 21 at a meeting of the Nikitsky Club, a nonprofit organization affiliated with the Moscow Exchange that holds discussions with Russian economists. The Moscow Times drew attention to his remarks.

Klepach said Russia’s economy had shown strong resilience to sanctions but that losses were gradually growing. After rapid growth in 2023 and 2024, the economy slowed sharply in 2025. In 2026, Klepach said, growth was lower than in the United States and Ukraine.

“After record growth rates in the Russian economy in 2023 and 2024, they fell in 2025 and, judging by expectations, are lower this year than growth rates in the United States and Ukraine, with which we are engaged in a military-political confrontation,” he said.

Klepach estimated that Russia’s GDP would grow by no more than 1.5% in 2027, and that growth would later lag behind the global average.

“If the special military operation continues, along with anti-Russian sanctions and fairly tight monetary policy — and, in the future, tight fiscal policy — the Russian economy is unlikely to achieve growth rates above 2% to 2.5% a year,” Klepach said.

Klepach also pointed to social problems, saying real disposable incomes rose by only 0.6% in 2026. Additionally, the decline in inequality had stopped, pensions were increasingly falling behind wages, and incomes for small- and medium-sized businesses were shrinking.

At the same time, Klepach said an immediate economic collapse is not on the horizon. He described the main threat as being Russia’s gradual fall further behind its competitors.

“Whatever we do with our economy, it will survive. In that sense, there is no critical point from an economic standpoint,” Klepach said. “The problem is rather that we are falling behind. We are losing both the technological and economic competition in the world. And we are losing it not only to China and the United States. In some ways we are losing it to Ukraine, however unpleasant that may be even for me. Ukraine’s economy, of course, has been partly destroyed, and there is a demographic catastrophe there. But Ukraine’s economy, despite everything, is surviving.”

Klepach added that Ukraine receives large-scale Western aid, without which its economy could not exist.

In the final part of his speech, Klepach said Russia could not win a prolonged war of attrition and warned of the risk of an unexpected social crisis:

“We won’t win this war of attrition. We’re under the illusion that everything over there will collapse. It hasn’t collapsed, and it won’t. Our costs are rising. According to public opinion polls, the quality of healthcare is deteriorating. In science and technology, our progress is very uneven. In some areas, we’ve achieved results and made breakthroughs, but overall, in my view, we’re falling behind the competition rather than pulling ahead. Inequality is becoming a growing problem.”

Overall, his message was one of prolonged depression, rather than of immediate collapse.

“The economy will hold up, but a social crisis may arise, and at a time when no one particularly expects it,” Klepach said. “But no one expected the February Revolution either, I would remind you. I believe Russia will not fall apart, but I am almost certain that we will arrive at a social crisis. Economically, we will not collapse, but our gap with the rest of the world will continue to widen, with all the consequences that entails.”

Belenky was detained at a Moscow airport in September 2025 — originally on a petty hooliganism charge before being placed in pretrial detention over suspected “financing of terrorism” under Part 1.1 of Article 205.1 of Russia’s Criminal Code.

Investigators accused Belenky of making six transfers totaling 742.26 USDT (a cryptocurrency token pegged to the U.S. dollar). The Ukrainian wallet’s address had been published by journalist Arkady Babchenko, who organizes fundraising drives in support of the Ukrainian army. Babchenko’s cryptocurrency addresses are public, meaning any user can view their transaction history and current balance. Russian security officials learned about Belenky’s specific transfers thanks to Babchenko’s Telegram chat, where users reported their donations.

This past October, Russia’s Investigative Committee asked Binance to provide the transaction history of several users, including Belenky, citing criminal cases that had been opened under the charge of “terrorism.”

The report Binance sent to the Investigative Committee contained a detailed history of Belenky’s account. The file included personal data, document scans, Binance Pay card transaction data, account login history, a list of trusted devices, and records of transfers, deposits, and cryptocurrency withdrawals.

From the report, security officials learned of nine more transfers from Belenky to Babchenko’s address, the rights group said. That information was passed to the FSB, Russia’s domestic security service. Belenky is now accused of 15 transfers totaling 1,680.69 USDT.

Pervy Otdel said it is not aware of any other case in which a cryptocurrency exchange handed such a large volume of client information to Russian security officials at their request. In 2022, Reuters reported that Binance had shared with Rosfinmonitoring, Russia’s financial monitoring agency, data on people who donated to Alexei Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation, or FBK. Binance denied that report.

A country’s economic history can be written by tracking the performance of its stock market indexes. Their decline often foreshadows a contraction in GDP and other shocks in the real economy.

Russia’s main ruble-denominated stock market index — the Moscow Exchange Index (formerly the MICEX) — was first calculated in 1997. Before that, in 1995, the dollar-denominated RTS Index was introduced. Both started at 100 points. Over its entire history, the ruble-denominated Moscow Exchange Index has risen 22.2-fold, while the dollar-denominated RTS Index has risen only 8.8-fold — the difference being most readily attributable to the ruble's depreciation relative to the dollar over the past three decades (from the beginning of 1998 to the present day, the price of gold has risen 14.4-fold in dollar terms but 207-fold in rubles).

Incidentally, if an investor in Russian stocks had reinvested all the dividends received since 1998, the dollar value of the portfolio would have increased only 5.3-fold, while its ruble value would have risen 95-fold. Investing in gold would have produced much higher returns in either case.

War and Punishment

In the period August–December 2014, the dollar-denominated RTS Index suffered a sharp decline, while the ruble-denominated Moscow Exchange Index did not. The reason was simple: in 2014, following the imposition of Western sanctions, the Russian economy experienced not so much a stock market crisis as a ruble devaluation (and strictly speaking, this trend was a continuation of the major market collapse that had begun back in April 2011).

In the fall of 2021, the Russian stock market essentially anticipated the coming full-scale invasion of Ukraine and its dire consequences for both countries. From September through mid-November, the Moscow Exchange Index fluctuated mostly between 4,000 and 4,200 points — close to its historic high. However, when leading Western media outlets  began reporting on the unprecedented buildup of Russian troops along the border with Ukraine starting in November, the trend turned negative. On November 10, then-U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken openly warned that possible Russian aggression against Ukraine would be a major mistake, and on November 19, The New York Times reported that U.S. intelligence was taking the threat of a Russian invasion of Ukraine extremely seriously. “The United States does not believe this is a bluff,” the newspaper wrote of the Kremlin’s military preparations (this at a time when  many observers, including the author of this article, could not believe that a major war was actually approaching).

The Russian stock market, however, assessed the situation accurately. It was on that very day, November 19, 2021, that the Moscow Exchange Index last held above the 4,000-point mark. By New Year’s, it had fallen to 3,800, and on the last trading day before the invasion, it closed at 3,085 points. The Moscow Exchange Index fell by a total of 28% in the four months preceding February 24, 2022, and fell another 33%, to 2,058 points, on that fateful day.

The RTS Index, which is denominated in U.S. dollars rather than rubles, followed a similar trajectory. Overall, the shock connected with the Russian invasion of Ukraine was comparable to the most severe economic crises in Russia's modern history (1998 and 2008). 

The current downturn is less severe than those three — comparable instead to the pandemic-related decline of 2020 and the “Kursk” contraction of 2024. But in any case, from March through July 2026 there was not even a minor short-term correction back upwards: the Moscow Exchange Index fell for 19 consecutive weeks, an unprecedented streak, before a correction began at the end of last month.

Profit collapse, defaults, and bankruptcies

Sharp stock market crashes can have long-term consequences. For example, the Moscow Exchange Index returned to its pre-2008 crisis level of around 1,900 points only eight years later, while the RTS Index never returned to that level. In May–June 2008, Gazprom was worth around $340 billion and ranked third in the world by market capitalization, behind only ExxonMobil ($476 billion) and PetroChina ($441 billion).

In 2008, Gazprom was worth $340 billion, ranking third in the world and trailing only ExxonMobil and PetroChina

Today, Gazprom's valuation of $25-28 billion is well under 10% of its previous worth, and if measured in gold, it falls to less than 2% (if the company were valued in gold bars, it would have gone from being a large house full of the stuff to little more than a closet). ExxonMobil, the largest U.S. oil and gas corporation and the main surviving fragment of the Rockefeller empire, is now worth $650 billion – 36% more than it was 18 years ago. In 2008, Gazprom’s market capitalization was 71% of ExxonMobil’s; today, it is 4%. ExxonMobil is not even among the world’s 20 largest oil and gas companies; and yet, it is worth more than all Russian issuers combined.

Even within Russia, Gazprom has long since ceased to be the most valuable company, ranking only fifth – behind Sberbank, Rosneft, NOVATEK, and Lukoil. At the end of March, its shares traded at 138 rubles, but on July 17 they fell 42%, reaching an all-time low of 79 rubles (open trading of the company began only in 2006). The correction has brought it up to the 90-ruble range.

Rosneft shares fell almost as sharply: by 41% at the bottom and by 30% after the correction. NOVATEK performed slightly better, and Lukoil slightly better still. Nevertheless, losses across the entire oil and gas sector amounted to at least 20%. The decline in metals and mining was less severe, with the main sell-off occurring in 2024. And the decline in financial and technology stocks was more moderate.

The decline in Russian stock prices is linked to the overall decline in profits of Russian businesses. However, the stock market has moved much more sharply. The aggregate financial result of Russian organizations for January–May 2026 amounted to 99% of the previous year’s figure. Interestingly, the oil and gas sector, which saw the steepest decline in stock prices, recorded a 70% increase in profits compared with the previous year. This apparent contradiction can be explained by the fact that stock prices reflect not current conditions but market participants’ expectations. And those expectations incorporate the assumption that, given the sanctions and Ukrainian strikes on oil and gas processing and transportation infrastructure, the profitable period for oil and gas companies will not last long.

In the metals and mining sector, by contrast, profits fell six- to sevenfold, but stock prices did not fall nearly as sharply. This is because their share prices are already at very low levels compared with their prewar peak. The second round of declines in Russian metals producers’ share prices began in spring 2024. At the time, the United States and the United Kingdom banned imports of Russian-origin aluminum, copper, and nickel and also restricted their use on global metal exchanges and in derivatives trading. 

Overall, the market remains near its lows even after the correction. A Moscow Exchange Index reading of around 2,300 corresponds to the worst point of the pandemic panic in 2020 and of the lowest levels seen during the war (from April 2022 to March 2023). An RTS Index below 900 points likewise matches levels seen during the COVID-19 pandemic and at the start of the war.

As stock prices fall, bond defaults are also being announced on an almost daily basis on the Moscow Exchange. There were 62 defaults in July (including technical defaults), a year-on-year six-fold increase. With borrowing costs high and business activity declining, issuers are finding it increasingly difficult to meet their debt obligations.

Business bankruptcies are also becoming more frequent. In the first half of 2026, there were 11% more of them than in the same period last year. The number of cases in which a company is placed under observation (the first stage of bankruptcy proceedings) increased by 21%. This process accelerated particularly sharply in April–June.

However, the number of bankruptcies has not yet reached their 2024 peak, which was driven by a trend towards tightening monetary policy That year, the Bank of Russia raised the key rate three from 16% to 21%. However, after entering 2026 back at that same 16% rate, the Central Bank has made further cuts, bringing it to 14%. The average RUONIA rate was 17.3% per annum in 2024, compared with 14.9% over the part of 2026 that has elapsed so far. Clearly, borrowing is now cheaper than it was in 2024, which is why there are still fewer bankruptcies.

The problems in the stock market in 2026, like the difficulties faced by the companies behind them, can easily be explained by monetary policy.

Stages of war grief

Since the start of the full-scale war, the Central Bank’s monetary-policy swings have gone through four stages.

Fear of inflation

In February 2022, at an emergency meeting held overnight on a Sunday, the Central Bank sharply raised the key rate from 9.5% to 20%, fearing rising prices. That fear was entirely justified. Year-on-year inflation subsequently jumped to 17–18%, according to official figures, and without the rate hike, things would have been even worse.

However, this stage did not last long. After all, in addition to inflation, the Russian economy was hit by the inevitable decline in production (and of business activity in general). In particular, foreign investors left the country en masse, while some found their funds frozen. 

The stock market plunged sharply. Between February 25 and March 24,  2022, stock trading on the Moscow Exchange was suspended altogether. Once operations resumed, it became clear that a return to prewar stock prices and trading volumes was out of the question. At the end of April, the Moscow Exchange Index was 20% below its level on the eve of February 24. Under these circumstances, the Central Bank began to regard a depressed economic trajectory as the main danger.

Fear of recession

The second stage lasted from May 2022 to August 2023. During this period, the key rate was rapidly cut, holding at 7.5% for most of the period. The money supply grew from 68 trillion rubles to 90 trillion as the crisis was flooded with money.

The short-term consequences for the economy were exactly what had been hoped for: optimism took hold in a country at war. In April 2023, the Moscow Exchange Index returned to 2,500 points, reaching 3,000 in July. By the end of August, it was already at 3,200 – higher than on the eve of February 24, 2022!

Starting in the second quarter of 2023, Rosstat reported a return to GDP growth – at impressive rates of 4–5% year-on-year. Official inflation, responding with a lag to the anti-crisis measures, continued to decline through April 2023. Moreover, from March to June, it remained below the 4% target. However, it reached 4.3% in July and 5.1% in August. The attempt to bring it back to moderate levels failed.

Renewed fear of inflation

From July 2023 to October 2024, the Bank of Russia raised the key rate eight times, taking it to a record 21%, and then kept it at that level for nine months. At first, this did not help – the accumulated effects of the previous period of cheap money were too strong. And the expansion of the money supply did not stop, growing from 90 trillion to 119 trillion rubles.

Until July-August 2024, price growth continued to accelerate, reaching 9%, according to official figures. The stock market also did not perceive this policy as particularly tight, and through May-June 2024, the Moscow Exchange Index was broadly flat.

In the second half of 2024, monetary policy reached its maximum level of tightness: stocks plunged, while the number of bankruptcies reached a record high. The stock market suffered another major decline, partly as a result of sanctions against the Moscow Exchange.

However, rather than falling, inflation remained steady at around 9% a year until the very end of this stage. Under these circumstances, the Bank of Russia changed its priorities again without waiting for a clear and visible victory over inflation. In 2025, the decline in stock prices was accompanied by a sharp slowdown in GDP growth, to 1–1.3% a year. Once again, fears of an economic downturn came to the fore.

Renewed fear of recession

The Central Bank continues to say that “pro-inflationary risks outweigh disinflationary risks,” while systematically cutting the key rate. As always, the effects are not immediate.

Inflation through the end of 2025 was determined by the conditions of the preceding period of tight monetary policy, with price growth slowing to 6% year-on-year. In 2026, however, there has been no further slowdown: inflation has remained at around 6%. Moreover, the outlook is unfavorable. As recently as June, the Bank of Russia forecast that “annual inflation will decline to 4.5-5.5% in 2026.” By July 24, however, it had given a different forecast: “According to the Bank of Russia’s forecast, annual inflation will be 6–7% in 2026 due to the significant increase in fuel prices.” 

Whether fuel is to blame or not, the Russian economy's situation is now critical both in terms of inflation and of real output. Inflation rose in response to the easing of monetary policy, and when that policy was then eased a little further, the inflation forecast was raised accordingly. Meanwhile, real GDP had already contracted in January and February, even according to Rosstat figures. Russian companies’ shares have been falling for the third year in a row, with the annual return  negative in 2024, 2025, and in the part of 2026 that has elapsed so far.

The negative trend is being exacerbated by the growing erosion of property rights, as controlling stakes in various companies are increasingly being transferred from private owners to the state through legal actions that are becoming less and less transparent. A precedent was set by the nationalization of a controlling stake in the gold-mining company UGC, a process that harmed not only the majority shareholder accused of legal violations, but also minority shareholders, who did not receive the buyout offer required by law.

While the Central Bank can fully control inflation, it can influence the level of business activity only in the short term. Once the fundamental conditions for an economic downturn have taken hold in a country, no monetary policy can reverse them.

It should not be forgotten that war means diverting labor and capital away from productive activity and into destructive activity. It means death and injury for some people, emigration for others, and burnout and exhaustion for almost everyone. It means consuming accumulated reserves. It means replacing familiar and predictable rules with chaotic emergency measures – including nationalizations, price manipulation, and unpredictable seizures and giveaways worth trillions of rubles. It means isolation from the rest of the world, higher unit costs, direct physical destruction, and accelerated deterioration of infrastructure. It means environmental and social disasters from pollution to rising crime. Monetary “stimulus” is powerless in the face of such a calamity, and many economists believe that it is powerless even against regular cyclical crises.

Monetary “stimulus” is powerless in the face of the calamity of war and even regular cyclical crises

And yet, the second and fourth stages of the Bank of Russia’s wartime policy show precisely such attempts to stimulate the economy. At one point, they even created the illusion of an economic recovery (or at least softened the negative shock), but now they are close to exhausting their potential. Rather than preventing the inevitable economic downturn, they are merely postponing it while dooming the country to a state of stagflation – and since no central bank will ever care to acknowledge that it has created stagflation, once it comes within one step of it, it will again seek to tighten monetary conditions. 

Russia is therefore now close to entering a fifth stage, when rate cuts will once again come to an end. The stock market will then fall even further, while bankruptcies, defaults, and losses will increase. Production statistics, and perhaps GDP as well, will show negative growth.

An anti-inflationary policy requires ruthlessness. The only question is whether Russia’s monetary authorities have a mandate from the Kremlin to pursue such a course. The last two times the Bank of Russia cut the key rate, the reductions were minimal – just 0.25 percentage points – and both times, the decisions were preceded by public statements from Vladimir Putin that the rate should be lowered.

However, the Central Bank stated in its new medium-term forecast that expected inflation was higher and GDP growth was lower than in its previous projection. It is as if the Central Bank is hinting that if Putin personally wants to control the key rate, then he should also explain the bad news to the public.

The tanker was built at the Zvezda Shipbuilding Complex in Bolshoy Kamen, a town in the south of Primorsky Krai, to serve the Arctic LNG 2 project, which is under U.S. sanctions.

Zvezda delivered the first Arc7 ice-class LNG carrier, the Alexey Kosygin (IMO: 9904546), to the customer in December 2025. Such tankers are capable of breaking through ice up to 2 meters thick. The shipyard had planned to build 15 vessels of this type, but sanctions caused delays. A third tanker working for Arctic LNG 2 is the Merkuriy (IMO: 9326689).

As Anna Orlova, an investigator with Arctida, an NGO specializing in research on the Russian Arctic, previously told The Insider, Arc7-class tankers will allow Novatek, the operator of Arctic LNG 2, to export liquefied natural gas year-round.

“The key difference between Alexey Kosygin and standard LNG carriers lies in its ability to independently navigate ice fields up to 2.1 meters thick. This feature is critically important for operations in the waters of the Kara Sea and the Gulf of Ob during the winter period, which lasts from December to May, when the thickness of first-year ice often exceeds 1.5 meters and pressure ridges block the movement of lower-class vessels.

Until now, the Arctic LNG 2 project had been in a difficult situation: the plant was producing output but could not ship it during the winter months due to the lack of vessels capable of operating in the freezing Ob Bay. The new tanker makes it possible to carry out two to three shipments per month even in the harshest cold, ensuring exports of up to 250,000 metric tons of LNG per month.

This will help prevent inventory buildup. The LNG production process is continuous: if storage tanks are full and no tanker is available for loading, production has to be halted. A full shutdown and subsequent restart of liquefaction trains in Arctic conditions is a risky and costly operation. An Arc7-class vessel will ensure the minimum required shipping cadence and help maintain continuity of the production cycle.”

According to Condottiero, Serdinov was killed in Mali, while Voevoda Veshchayet did not name the country, saying only that it happened “in one of the African republics.” Judging by posts from multiple Russian pro-war Telegram channels, Serdinov was serving with Russia’s Africa Corps.

According to Voevoda Veshchayet, Serdinov was previously a reserve captain in the Russian Aerospace Forces and an attack pilot in the 18th Guards Attack Aviation Regiment. He later joined the Wagner private military company’s aviation detachment. The circumstances of the combat sortie in which he was killed were not specified.

The channel’s name is linked to the call sign of another former Russian military pilot, Senior Lieutenant Alexei Zemtsov. He was previously one of the administrators of the pro-war channel Povernutye na Voyne (roughly meaning “Obsessed With War”) and in 2023 created his own channel — Voevoda Veshchayet. After Zemtsov made a series of posts critical of the military, he was suspended from flying. In July 2026, he was sentenced to three years in prison on charges of extortion and making death threats.

The Russian Defense Ministry’s Africa Corps replaced Wagner in Mali and is fighting alongside the army of the country’s military junta against Islamist groups and Tuareg separatists. In recent months, Russian units have taken part in fighting in northern and northeastern Mali and have used aircraft including Su-24 jets and Mi-24 helicopters. Russia has also continued sending military equipment to the region. In July, Human Rights Watch reported that at least eight civilians were killed in one Africa Corps airstrike in central Mali.

Moscow claims to have annexed the Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions, as well as Crimea, but the annexations are illegal and not internationally recognized. Notably, Russia has also not held any of the annexed regions — apart from Crimea — under full military control. In April, Russia's Ministry of Defense claimed, for the third time since the start of the full-scale invasion, to have fully occupied Ukraine's Luhansk Region. 

According to the documents, the FSB plans to invalidate its own previous orders that had effectively made entry into and exit from the regions annexed in 2022 almost identical to crossing a state border. The drafts say the changes are needed because the illegally annexed Ukrainian regions were “admitted into the Russian Federation,” and their borders now form a “state border adjoining the territory of a foreign state.”

As a result, border zones will now be defined only for territories adjacent to the state border, rather than along the former administrative boundaries between Russian regions and annexed territories.

An exception was made for Crimea, where the border zone will remain, but only “within the Black Sea islands belonging to the Russian Federation.” The regional FSB branch will be responsible for setting specific places and hours for entering that zone and for installing warning signs.

Tusk said the target was a dual national who was inconvenient for Vladimir Putin’s regime. He said Poland’s Internal Security Agency (ABW) and police had prevented “this execution, this attack," adding that he was not authorized to disclose the name of the detainee or of the intended victim.

Local radio station RMF FM, citing unofficial sources, reported that the intended target was a defense industry entrepreneur who supplied products to Ukraine. The alleged perpetrator was said to be a 29-year-old resident of Donbas, the eastern Ukrainian region partly occupied by Russia since 2014. He was detained in Warsaw’s Mokotów District by officers from the Warsaw police department who are responsible for combating terrorism, killings, and criminal violence, with support from the country’s counterterrorism service.

Tusk stressed that this was the first case in which someone acting on Russia’s behalf had attempted to assassinate a U.S. citizen in another NATO country.

“We must assume that the Putin regime will try to eliminate people who are inconvenient for various reasons, in various places around the world,” Tusk said. “Which is why our actions in this matter will be extremely intensive, so as to prevent any further attempts against citizens of Poland or other countries, in our country.”

Tusk said he had held a lengthy discussion on the case with the minister coordinating Poland’s security services, adding that Poland would likely continue to face similar pressure in the future. “We will have to work hard to avoid such scenarios,” Tusk summed up.

In June, Semyon Skrepetsky (real name Robert Kuzovkov), a 44-year-old Russian opposition artist, was shot dead in a planned attack in the Polish city of Biała Podlaska.

Several hours later, the AFU’s Center for Strategic Communications responded on its own channel with an image of a burning Russian oil refinery bearing the following caption: “We’ll warm ourselves with the flames of Russian refineries.”

Earlier today, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said it was unacceptable to halt the fighting along the current line of contact:

“This is not just about how comfortably someone lives today. Our people are suffering, people are dying from these terrorist acts. It is about our responsibility for the thousand-year history of the Russian state.”

Lavrov said Russia would intensify its actions against Ukraine.

“We are already doing this,” he said. “They are already starting to groan.”

The previous day, Aug. 13, Reuters reported that Ukraine had sent Russia a proposal through a third party to mutually halt attacks on civilian sites in the Black Sea, saying the fighting in the region had threatened global food supply chains. Several days earlier, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said Ankara had sent Kyiv and Moscow proposals to create a moratorium mechanism on strikes against commercial vessels in the Black Sea.

“Russia has not received a formal Turkish appeal through official channels specifying the terms of this initiative,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova responded on Aug. 14.

In June, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky published an open letter to Vladimir Putin proposing a direct meeting between the two and a ceasefire along the entire front line for the duration of the talks. But no such developments ever materialized.

Since 2022, Russia has been intensifying its strikes on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure every fall in an effort to leave the country without electricity and heating during the winter months. In fall 2024, Russia managed to disable about 80% of Ukraine’s power generating capacity, damaging nearly all the country’s major thermal power plants. Ahead of the upcoming winter, Russian forces have focused on destroying the infrastructure of Ukraine’s electricity grid, targeting substations and power lines in the Sumy, Chernihiv, and Kharkiv regions.

The British newspaper The Guardian, which published widely circulated news about a 54% global decline in men’s testosterone levels, described the trend as one of the most alarming findings in modern reproductive medicine. However, it is important to understand that the article was based not on a full scientific publication but on a presentation given at the annual congress of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology (ESHRE). The researchers published only a brief description of the study —  its main findings — without explaining the methodology, statistical analysis, or limitations of the research.

The authors examined data from studies on changes in men’s testosterone levels between 1972 and 2019. Of the more than 8,600 publications identified, only 12 studies met the selection criteria. These contained data on 102,334 men from seven countries —  mostly, as the authors note, high-income ones. This means the findings may not fully reflect the situation in regions where comparable long-term data are still virtually nonexistent.

The researchers analyzed three measures: total testosterone, free testosterone, and sex hormone-binding globulin. According to the meta-analysis, all three measures have declined significantly over the past 50 years. The authors also noted that after the year 2000, the rate of decline in total testosterone nearly doubled. However, the 54% figure cited by The Guardian does not appear in the study materials. It may have been mentioned during the presentation itself or included in the slides accompanying the talk (but this cannot currently be verified, as the slides are not publicly available).

It is also important to understand that such a meta-analysis can identify a statistical trend but cannot establish its causes. It shows that the measures are changing over time but does not answer the question of why. Moreover, the authors themselves note that the results may have been influenced by changes in the characteristics of the populations studied (such as the growing prevalence of obesity). As a result, they stress the need for further research.

What you need to know about testosterone

In modern medicine, testosterone is regarded as one of the important markers of a man’s overall health. It plays a role in the development of the reproductive organs even before birth, and also plays a critical role in puberty, sperm production, libido, and erectile function. The hormone affects muscle mass, bone density, fat distribution, blood cell production, metabolism, and even brain function. Testosterone receptors have been found in virtually all tissues of the body.

Modern medicine regards testosterone as a marker of a man’s overall health

But testosterone levels are not constant — they decline with age, and also follow circadian rhythms. Testosterone concentrations are usually highest in the early morning and gradually decline throughout the day. Because of these variations, it is recommended that blood tests be taken in the morning, and if the result is borderline or unexpectedly low, that the test be repeated on another day.

In addition to natural daily fluctuations, testosterone levels are affected by body weight, sleep quality, physical activity, chronic diseases, certain medications, alcohol consumption, and stress. In other words, the level of testosterone reflects the overall state of the body.

However, even taking individual fluctuations in testosterone levels into account, a decline in the average level may indicate that real biological changes are occurring in the population. If such a trend does indeed exist, what exactly is driving it? 

Why testosterone levels are declining

Today, most researchers view declining testosterone levels as the result of an interplay of aging, chronic diseases, lifestyle, and environmental factors. At the same time, the strength of the evidence for different causes varies considerably. Some factors are supported by large epidemiological studies, clinical observations, and mechanistic data, while others are backed only by isolated observations and experimental models.

Metabolism

Scientists are most confident about the negative role played by excess weight. Adipose tissue, particularly visceral fat (the kind that accumulates around the internal organs), literally converts testosterone into estradiol, the most active of the estrogens (female sex hormones). The more of this fat there is, the faster estrogen levels rise — and in turn, they suppress signals from the brain that trigger testosterone production in the testes. Low testosterone makes it easier to accumulate the same visceral fat, and so the cycle closes.

Excess weight is the main factor behind declining testosterone levels

This process is reversible, as numerous studies have confirmed. One of the first major meta-analyses, published in 2013 by a group of scientists from the University of Florence in Italy, showed that a low-calorie diet can increase testosterone levels (as can bariatric surgery to reduce the size of the stomach). Obesity is perhaps the only factor that can be effectively addressed: lose the excess weight, and hormone levels return to normal.

Type 2 diabetes also causes testosterone levels to decline and leads to hypogonadism — a condition in which the body does not produce enough of the hormone. Persistently high blood sugar and insulin resistance disrupt signaling in the brain and directly affect the cells that produce testosterone. At the same time, low testosterone levels, in turn, reduce the sensitivity of organ tissues to insulin, creating another vicious cycle.

Metabolic syndrome works in a similar way — a dangerous “cocktail” of high blood pressure, disrupted cholesterol levels, and abdominal obesity (when excess weight accumulates around the abdomen, surrounding the internal organs with metabolically active visceral fat).

The authors of a large population-based study, the Study of Health in Pomerania (SHIP), conducted in northeastern Germany, identified a pattern: the more components of the syndrome (a sagging belly, high blood pressure, and hormonal imbalances) a man has, the more rapidly his testosterone levels decline, with the effect particularly pronounced in younger patients.

The more factors that lower testosterone accumulate in a man, the faster his hormone levels decline

Almost all metabolic disorders are accompanied by so-called systemic chronic inflammation. In obesity and diabetes, fat cells and macrophages (cells of the immune system) continuously release “alarm signals” into the bloodstream — pro-inflammatory cytokines — which directly attack the body’s testosterone “factories.” Laboratory experiments using cultures of Leydig cells (which synthesize the hormone in the testes) have shown that the higher the concentration of cytokines, the more strongly testosterone synthesis is suppressed.

Chronic inflammation literally “switches off” key enzymes inside cells, blocking the production of the hormone. Many modern endocrinologists agree that inflammation is how the harmful effects of excess weight, impaired glucose metabolism, and even the natural aging are mediated (the latter is known in science as “inflammaging,” or inflammatory aging).

Lifestyle

Unlike obesity or diabetes, the effects of lifestyle on testosterone levels have not been studied as extensively. The concept itself is too broad to be measured as precisely as blood sugar levels. Taken together, the evidence suggests that chronic stress, insufficient sleep, alcohol abuse, certain medications, and excessive physical activity can indeed lower levels of male sex hormones.

Sleep is the most extensively studied factor in this group. Men produce the most testosterone at night, during the deeper stages of sleep, so it is logical to assume that sleep deprivation would directly affect the hormone. Evidence supporting this hypothesis was provided by a 2011 study by researchers at the University of Chicago: ten healthy young men slept for five hours a night for a week instead of their usual eight, and by the end of the experiment, their daytime testosterone levels had fallen noticeably, with the participants themselves beginning to complain of low energy and reduced libido.

Dozens of observational studies involving much larger groups subsequently confirmed the same pattern — an analysis by the U.S. National Center for Health Statistics involving thousands of participants, for one. However, when the effects of obesity and associated diseases are removed from the calculations, the link between sleep and testosterone levels weakens considerably, suggesting that insufficient sleep most likely reinforces the metabolic mechanisms described above.

The mechanism by which chronic stress affects testosterone has been well-studied at the experimental level: it triggers the production of cortisol, which suppresses the signal from the brain that is essential for initiating the entire chain of testosterone synthesis. The problem is that at the population level, it is extremely difficult to standardize the very concept of “stress” — after all, strenuous physical work, anxiety, depression, and chronic illnesses produce very different hormonal effects. As large systematic reviews show, when data from thousands of men are analyzed, subjectively perceived psychological stress is only weakly associated with testosterone levels, unlike in strictly controlled experimental models.

In the case of alcohol, hormone production is clearly dose-dependent. In cases of chronic alcohol abuse, ethanol and its metabolite acetaldehyde directly damage Leydig cells and suppress the production of the regulatory hormone that gives these cells the signal to synthesize testosterone. A marked decline in total and free testosterone is found specifically in men with chronic patterns of alcohol consumption.

Moderate consumption, however, is a different story: most studies have found no consistent clinically significant effect. Some short-term experiments have even shown a temporary spike in testosterone in response to small amounts of alcohol, but these changes quickly disappeared and had no lasting consequences.

As for medications, it is specific groups of potentially harmful drugs that disrupt hormonal balance. The main enemy of testosterone in this case is potent opioid painkillers. When taken over a long period, they literally “switch off” the mechanism in the brain that signals the body to produce the male hormone. There is even a separate term for this condition — opioid-induced androgen deficiency (a deficiency of male sex hormones). Statistically, this problem affects upwards of 80% of men who take high dosages of certain painkillers for an extended period. T

Diet and physical activity

Contrary to “superfood” advertising campaigns, there is no magic diet for men’s health — what matters to the body is overall balance and metabolic health, not specific foods. Both overeating and starvation are equally harmful to the hormonal system. 

Too much food leads to obesity (which, as noted above, literally destroys testosterone). However, strict diets and a sharp calorie deficit signal to the body that it is in survival mode, causing it to conserve energy. In such cases, the first thing to be shut down is the reproductive function. Additionally, a deficiency of zinc, magnesium, or vitamin D can cause a slight drop in testosterone levels, but for men whose blood tests are normal, an extra dose of vitamins will do absolutely nothing.

There is no diet specifically designed to maintain “men’s health”

Large-scale meta-analyses confirm that physical activity does cause a substantial but short-lived spike in testosterone levels in men. Long-distance runners, however, have been found to show the opposite trend: excessive cardio exercise lowers baseline testosterone levels. This phenomenon is explained by relative energy deficiency in sport (RED-S) — with frequent endurance training, the body experiences a calorie deficit and deliberately suppresses the reproductive system. Thus, maintaining a stable hormonal balance requires moderation. Moderate strength training and adequate calorie intake stimulate testosterone production, while chronic excessive cardio training has the opposite effect. And the long-term effects of exercise programs in older people vary considerably depending on the type and intensity of exercise.

Environmental factors

In recent years, there have been increasingly frequent claims that microplastic pollution and household chemicals are to blame for the global decline in testosterone levels. The leading proponent of this idea is Shanna Swan, a leading environmental epidemiologist at the Icahn School of Medicine in New York. She has raised the alarm about the issue on major media platforms — from the podcasts of Joe Rogan and Andrew Huberman to Netflix documentaries. In her book Count Down, Swan argues that plastic and household chemicals are threatening humanity with a reproductive apocalypse.

Proving this hypothesis is more difficult than establishing the effects of obesity or diabetes. The problem is methodological: in today’s world, it is impossible to create a “clean” control group. Microplastics and phthalates affect people even before birth and remain with them throughout their lives. In a “cocktail” of hundreds of substances, it is difficult to identify a specific “culprit” and prove its direct effect. Nevertheless, it is worth looking at the factors currently under active investigation.

First on the list of prime suspects is bisphenol A (BPA) — a basic component of rigid, transparent plastics, epoxy resins, and the inner lining of food cans. As a structural analogue of estrogen, the substance can fool the body by binding to hormone receptors. Large-scale laboratory tests demonstrate that in animals, BPA suppresses testosterone synthesis in the testes and interferes with the activity of brain structures that initiate this process. Cell experiments have also shown that the substance disrupts the biosynthesis of cholesterol — the primary raw material for producing the male hormone.

However, when scientists test these findings in humans, they once again encounter contradictions. On the one hand, a large-scale meta-analysis of epidemiological studies in 2024 found an association in men between high concentrations of bisphenol and lower testosterone levels. On the other hand, the effects of BPA in real life appear to be quite modest. Another study, published in 2010, found that in adult men, higher urinary BPA levels were associated with only minimal fluctuations in sex hormones.

The next suspects are phthalates, which are used to make plastic soft and flexible. Their effects on fetal development are well documented. For example, Shanna Swan found that boys born to women with high concentrations of phthalates in their urine showed signs of reduced exposure to male sex hormones in the womb. This finding was later confirmed to varying degrees by large cohort studies in Sweden, Mexico and the United States, and Japan.

The link between phthalates and testosterone in adult men has also been documented, but the effect is usually minimal, inconsistent, and highly dependent on the specific chemical compound. Data from the U.S. National Center for Health Statistics show that these substances significantly lower hormone levels only in men over 60. In younger people, the body can metabolize and eliminate these toxins quickly. 

For adult men, the problem is different: according to a meta-analysis published in March 2026, phthalates impair sperm quality and motility. In other words, plastic-induced “chemical castration” is not a threat to adult men, but fertility problems certainly are.

Chemicals significantly lower hormone levels only in men over 60

Next are the so-called forever chemicals (PFAS), which do not break down for decades, whether in the environment or in the body. Here, the findings are even more contradictory. Some studies have found a link between high concentrations of PFAS in the blood and low testosterone, while others have found no such association. Nevertheless, the link between “forever chemicals” and impaired sperm quality has been consistently confirmed.

A large systematic review by a group of researchers from Michigan notes that the decline in sperm motility and concentration associated with PFAS is much more consistently observed than their effect on testosterone levels.

Air pollution is also being considered as a factor in the global decline in testosterone. So far, this question has been addressed by only one large study, conducted by researchers in Beijing. From 2014 to 2019, they collected data on nearly 73,000 men aged 20 to 55 and compared their testosterone levels with concentrations of air pollutants both on the day of testing and during the preceding month.

They found that the dirtier the air immediately before the measurement, the lower the testosterone level. A 10-microgram-per-cubic-meter increase in the concentration of fine particulate matter was associated with a roughly 1.6% drop in testosterone, while for larger particles, the decline was 1.1%. The figures are small, but the effect proved consistent and statistically significant across the enormous sample.

Nevertheless, this study has significant limitations. First, the data do not show the effect that long-term exposure to a polluted environment may have on testosterone production. Second, it has not been established that particulate matter affects hormone levels directly rather than through some other factor. Third, pollution levels were assessed using data from urban monitoring stations rather than individual sensors — meaning the study does not account for who spent more time outdoors and who stayed indoors with an air purifier.

Finally, it is not entirely clear from the study data to what extent the participants’ lifestyle, stress, and sleep were taken into account — factors that may well accompany exposure to polluted air in a major city. In short, it is too early to speak of a sustained effect of air pollution on testosterone. In order to find a reliable answer, studies with individual exposure monitoring and long-term follow-up of the measured individuals are needed.

It is too early to speak of a sustained effect of air pollution on testosterone

The last factor under discussion is climate change. Here, science is still limited to hypotheses and assumptions. Scientists have demonstrated that extreme heat is a proven threat to male fertility. However, studies of men engaged in strenuous work in conditions of constant overheating (such as foundry workers) show that although heat stress damages sperm, it has virtually no effect on testosterone levels. A global report published by The Lancet in 2025 clearly distinguishes established reproductive risks from the hypothetical effects of climate on the endocrine system.

An aging population

Could it be that there is no real decline in testosterone at all, and that it is all due to statistical artifacts – for example, the population is aging, more older men with comorbidities are included in samples, and the average level is falling as a result? Scientists have repeatedly tested this hypothesis.

Virtually all major studies on the subject use statistics specifically adjusted for age: instead of comparing all men indiscriminately, they compare, say, 30-year-olds from a sample collected in the 1990s with 30-year-olds from a sample collected in the 2010s. Even with this methodology, the decline in testosterone persists.

The Massachusetts Male Aging Study in the United States – one of the first and best-known studies on the subject – shows that a man who was 60 in 1989 had, on average, higher testosterone levels than a man who reached that age in the 2000s.

A similar trend has been observed in a much more recent study by scientists at Tel Aviv University: after analyzing the results of tests performed on more than 100,000 men between 2006 and 2019, they found a sustained, statistically significant decline in testosterone that was independent of age. The trend persisted within each age group separately and could not be explained by the increase in obesity among the participants.

What a decline in testosterone levels means

From a biological perspective, the consequences of declining testosterone extend far beyond what is usually associated with “male strength.” They include loss of muscle mass, an increase in body fat (which, as noted above, only exacerbates the problem), an increased risk of osteoporosis, metabolic disorders, and an overall decline in quality of life. In some cases, fertility is also affected.

For the healthcare system, this translates into an additional burden on clinics. Demographic consequences, however, should be discussed with caution: there is simply no scientific evidence yet directly linking declining testosterone levels to falling birth rates at the population level. A man can have perfectly normal hormone levels and still experience reproductive problems for dozens of other reasons. Conversely, fertility is not necessarily affected in all men with low testosterone.

Can the spread of weight-loss drugs reverse this trend?

Importantly from a scientific standpoint, obesity has been shown to be the factor that has the strongest effect on testosterone levels. Could widespread weight loss driven by the growing use of drugs such as Ozempic reverse the downward trend in this hormone? GLP-1 receptor agonists — semaglutide (Ozempic, Wegovy) and tirzepatide (Mounjaro, Zepbound) — slow gastric emptying and suppress appetite, causing patients to lose an average of 10–17% of their body weight.

Data from the past two years have so far supported this hypothesis. A retrospective study based on a sample of 234 men, presented at the Endocrine Society’s annual meeting (ENDO) in San Francisco in 2025, found that after starting treatment with these drugs, both total and free testosterone levels increased in men with obesity.

According to another study presented at the same event, over 18 months of treatment, the proportion of patients with normal testosterone levels in a group of 110 men with obesity or type 2 diabetes rose from 53% to 77% as they lost about 10% of their body weight. The researchers explain that weight loss increases levels of SHBG (sex hormone-binding globulin), which in turn raises total testosterone levels.

Weight loss increases total testosterone levels

However, there is no shortage of evidence pointing in the opposite direction. Animal experiments show that GLP-1 agonists are not always capable of restoring testosterone levels lowered by a high-fat diet. Nevertheless, the widespread use of GLP-1 therapy in the coming years could become the largest natural experiment in the history of endocrinology.

If the average testosterone level in the population begins to rise as obesity declines, this would provide one of the most compelling indirect confirmations of the metabolic hypothesis discussed above. If that does not happen, scientists will have to take a much closer look at other factors — the environment, modern lifestyles, and perhaps other potential causes that have yet to be identified.

Since Aug. 1, the platform has been running on a new IT system designed to help sellers to connect up at scale. Sellers are now able to list goods, change prices, monitor inventory, and handle documents through their personal accounts.

Roy.Market was launched in early 2025. During the pilot phase, the Center for Unmanned Systems and Technologies built out the platform’s logistics and tested out a specialized supply model.

In addition to drone components, the storefront already includes 3D printers, fiber-optic spools, antennas, and chargers — equipment that is used to assemble and maintain drones in the field. By 2027, the center expects to expand the catalog to more than 10,000 items by adding manufacturers of uniforms, protective equipment, and body armor.

The center is counting on attracting sellers who were already working on Wildberries and Ozon, Russia’s largest online marketplaces, but who face restrictions on selling military goods. Wildberries, for example, bans the sale of ready-made military gear and the fabrics that are used to produce it. Roy.Market, however, operates differently from civilian marketplaces.

The platform’s commission on turnover will be “significantly lower” than on mass-market services, though sellers will have to pay for logistics themselves. For comparison, according to Russia’s Association of E-Commerce Representatives, Wildberries’ average commission in 2025 was 21.3%, while Ozon’s was 22.9%, depending on the category of goods. Amid ongoing Ukrainian drone attacks on Russian logistics centers, in early August Ozon began moving expensive goods from warehouses to pickup points. Shortly before that, its insurance partner, Ingosstrakh, raised the rate for insurance against drone attacks by a factor of 3.3.

The center is moving Roy.Market logistics to a distributed 4PL model under which goods can be stored by the seller or remain in existing logistics chains until an order is placed. The center said the model is intended to expand the geography of deliveries without creating its own warehouses in order to reduce risks from concentrating inventory in one place.

User access to the platform remains closed and is available only through individual authorization. The new version has expanded catalog search and added up-to-date information on prices, availability, and delivery times. It also added a third-party payment function allowing a completed shopping cart to be sent by link to someone willing to pay for it. The center wants to bring charitable foundations into that system.

The Roy.Market catalog will not be built only by its sellers. If a relevant product or manufacturer is not on the platform, customers will be able to submit a request to the marketplace team that others be added. 

The Khrunichev Center listed production bottlenecks and critical vulnerabilities while asking for its stock of industrial equipment to be renewed. In its request, the center told the ministry that in the workshop responsible for heat treatment, hot stamping, metal cutting, and sandblasting, the average age of main technological equipment is 20 years, its utilization rate is 90%, and physical wear is also 90%. In addition, the workshop lacks a waterjet cutting unit and an electric furnace, the center said.

According to the Khrunichev Center’s letter, the workshop that makes large structural parts — including frames, panels, beams, crossbars, and fittings — has equipment with an average age of 29 years and average wear of 80%. The production bottleneck there is a CNC vertical milling machining center, with four units needed.

In another workshop, which makes parts such as skins, end caps, hemispheres, pipe connections, bottom sectors, flanges, fairings, cups, and bellows, the center reported equipment wear of 90%, saying it needs a spin-forming machine. In the workshop that manufactures, assembles, welds, and tests low- and high-pressure hoses, it said welding equipment and a test pumping station are lacking.

The Khrunichev Center also complained that equipment wear in the electroplating workshop is 90% and that the workshop lacks a drying chamber. In the workshop that makes and installs forging and trimming dies, welding fixtures, molds, forming mandrels, fitter’s assembly tools, heading tools, and special cutting tools, the average age of equipment is 30 years and wear is 90%. The center is asking for an industrial sharpening machine.

The requested equipment also includes a German Wenzel XO 108 coordinate measuring machine, to be supplied by Kamadi JSC, a well-known importer of metrology equipment. The Insider previously reported on the company’s role in the delivery of such machines to Russia.

Another company, i Machine Technology LLC (which featured in a major investigation carried out jointly by The Insider and Taiwan’s The Reporter), is supposed to supply the Khrunichev Center with a Taiwanese LV-1577 machining center — this despite repeated claims by the government of the Republic of China (Taiwan) banning such shipments.

The rest of the imported equipment requested by the Khrunichev Center is Chinese: a LOG90A8 injection molding machine, a PS-CNC3X-460Z-2000 spin-forming machine, a MODIIS SD435Q high-speed hole-drilling electrical discharge machine, and a DM-300 five-axis CNC tool grinder.

Even if the Khrunichev Center’s management is exaggerating the company’s problems in order to secure state support, replacing the equipment would open major opportunities for the enterprise, given that the center continues operating even with the level of wear it reported. 

The military enterprise’s confidence that it can obtain the requested equipment from China also indicates that Chinese government claims about banning exports of dual-use goods to Russia’s military-industrial complex do not match reality.

The Khrunichev Center develops and produces the Angara and Proton launch vehicles. It is under U.S. and EU sanctions.

An industry source told the newspaper that Russian refineries were expected to process between 3.8 million and 4.1 million barrels per day in August. In September, the figure could rise to between 4 million and 4.3 million barrels per day, but the industry will not return to its usual level of 5.3 million to 5.5 million barrels per day for the foreseeable future. According to Kommersant’s source, if processing falls below a level of 3.3 million and 3.5 million barrels per day, then supplying the domestic fuel market becomes extremely difficult.

The Russian gasoline market remains sensitive to production cuts. Again according to Kommersant, as of early July Russian refineries were producing only about 70% of the gasoline needed during the seasonal demand period, forcing authorities to arrange imports. At the time, Kpler had forecast that refinery runs would rise to as high as 5 million barrels per day in July by September, but it lowered that estimate after new shutdowns.

The International Energy Agency also linked the worsening situation on the global oil products market to attacks on Russian refineries. The agency cut its forecast for global refining in the third quarter by 370,000 barrels per day because of strikes on Russian plants and disruptions to petroleum product supplies from the Middle East. The IEA estimates that global refining volumes will fall by an average of 2.5 million barrels per day in 2026.

One of the latest facilities to shut down was the Orsknefteorgsintez refinery, which was attacked by Ukrainian drones on Aug. 11. According to Reuters, the plant stopped processing operations due to a fire and equipment damage. The facility has a capacity of 5.76 million metric tons of oil per year, or about 115,000 barrels per day.

Amid fuel shortages, authorities in the Lipetsk Region decided to reintroduce “odd-even” gasoline sales from Aug. 13 after canceling the system earlier in the month. Drivers will be allowed to buy fuel on designated days based on their license plate number. In the Orenburg Region, the same system was introduced for the first time at all gas stations after the attack on the plant in Orsk. In both regions, gasoline sales were limited to 30 liters per vehicle. Earlier, authorities in the coastal city of Sochi in southern Russia urged residents and tourists to avoid using private vehicles due to supply disruptions at local gas stations.

According to the Ukrainian military, the strike hit two Project 11356R frigates, the Admiral Makarov and Admiral Essen; an unnamed Project 21631 Buyan-M small missile ship; and the Project 22160 patrol ship Vasily Bykov. Russia has not commented on the reported damage, and the claims have not yet been independently confirmed.

The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) also said it struck a range of additional targets: a 30N6E radar station belonging to a Russian S-300 air defense system, a mobile firing group on one of the piers, the tunnel entrance at the Grushovaya oil depot, and infrastructure at three berths of the Sheskharis oil export terminal. The SBU said conventional drones, jet-powered Palianytsia drones, Neptune missiles, and strike systems launched from maritime platforms were used in the attack. Those claims also have not been independently verified.

Ukrainian monitoring Telegram channels including Exilenova+ published annotated satellite images of the base after the attack. The authors said they believed both frigates were likely damaged, along with an unnamed Project 266M minesweeper, the test vessel Viktor Cherokov, an unidentified Project 22160 patrol ship, and the reconnaissance ship Priazovye. They also said a strike may have hit an unidentified cargo ship and several ground infrastructure sites belonging to the 4th Submarine Brigade.

According to Reuters, the Aug. 12 attack halted operations at Novorossiysk’s two largest grain terminals — the Novorossiysk Grain Terminal and the Novorossiysk Grain Plant. Authorities said three people were killed, including an 8-year-old child, and 24 others were injured. Several residential buildings, educational facilities, and businesses were damaged. The Insider earlier reported a fire at the port coinciding with the introduction of a state of emergency in Novorossiysk.

The frigates Admiral Makarov and Admiral Essen, each equipped with launchers for eight Kalibr cruise missiles, have been targeted by Kyiv’s forces before. In March, the Ukrainian military said both frigates had been damaged, and in April it reported a new attack on the Admiral Makarov in the port of Novorossiysk.

“This campaign is characterized by short English-language videos that mimic the layout of well-known German media outlets. Using sensationalist headlines and biased claims, it spreads narratives aimed at polarizing East and West Germany, stirring up anti-federal sentiment, and discrediting state and local politicians,” the agency said.

The BfV found that in August, bots on X (Twitter) spread posts with the hashtag #TimeToDivideGermany, promoting the renewed division of Germany into East and West while calling such a split a “historical necessity.” The agency said that in 2026, regional and local politicians were the targets of smear campaigns.

“Those particularly affected are politicians from parties that represent political positions not in line with the strategic interests of the Russian Federation,” the BfV said.

Germany will hold elections this fall to the state parliaments (Landtags) of Saxony-Anhalt and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, both in the former East Germany. Elections will also be held for Berlin’s parliament and for local offices in Lower Saxony.

Earlier, Gabriel Attal, a French presidential candidate and leader of the Renaissance party, filed a complaint over alleged foreign interference by Russian online networks. Attal’s lawyers said France’s General Secretariat for Defense and National Security— along with the Viginum agency, which monitors foreign digital interference — had warned of disinformation campaigns targeting the politician.

Viginum confirmed to AFP that it had linked the operation to the pro-Russian Matryoshka bot network with a high degree of confidence. On Aug. 4, the day before Attal’s first complaint, The Insider reported on eight fake videos designed to look like reports by BFM, RFI, Le Parisien, AFP, France 24, Le Figaro, Libération, and Le Monde.

On the night of July 17, the 25th Knesset passed a self-dissolution law that officially ended its term — one of the most contentious in the country’s history, as it encompassed both the October 7 Hamas terrorist attack of 2023 and the wars in Gaza, Lebanon, and Iran that followed in the three years since. The period was also characterized by deep internal divisions in Israeli society over Benjamin Netanyahu’s attempts at judicial reform and disputes regarding ultra-Orthodox military service. The current campaign to elect a new Knesset to grapple with these problems promises to be no less contentious.

Polls so far offer neither the parties in the governing coalition nor the opposition a clear path to a majority, though as of late July some polls gave the Zionist opposition parties — excluding the two Arab lists — a projected 60–61 seats. The governing coalition’s Zionist parties were averaging 34 seats without the ultra-Orthodox and 50–52 with them. However, the picture was somewhat better for the coalition in polls published by Channel 14, which supports Netanyahu: 45 seats without the ultra-Orthodox and 62 with them.

According to some polls, the opposition could win more than 60 seats; according to others, Netanyahu and the ultra-Orthodox could secure that many

The distinction between Arab and ultra-Orthodox parties is important, as both are considered part of the anti-Zionist bloc. Arab parties, naturally, do not consider themselves part of the Jewish national movement. Most ultra-Orthodox Jews, meanwhile, have rejected secular Zionism (the idea that Jews should achieve national self-determination through their own state). As the election campaign heats up, the most serious question concern cooperation between the potential winners and the non-Zionist parties of various stripes — namely,  who is willing to sit with them in the same government and who is not?

Another debate revolves around who considers it permissible to form a government with Likud, led by Netanyahu, and who categorically refuses to sit at the same table as the current prime minister. There is also the reverse question: how stable is the opposition bloc, given diversity that ranges from the far-left Democrats to Avigdor Lieberman’s right-wing Yisrael Beiteinu?

In any case, public opinion polls are constantly shifting, and not all parties have even entered the race yet. As usual, new alliances emerge before elections, and unexpected coalitions may form. Some parties may fail to clear the electoral threshold, leading to a redistribution of seats. And after the election, politicians’ promises never to sit in a government with a particular party may be broken yet again. For example, Naftali Bennett, one of the leaders of the current BeYachad electoral list and a former prime minister, promised in 2021 never to join a coalition with Arab parties, but he later went back on his word, citing the interests of the state and society as his justification for doing so.

A parliamentary majority consists of 61 seats. After the election, the president consults with all the parliamentary factions and asks the lawmaker he believes has the best chance of securing the Knesset’s support to form a government and become prime minister. This is not necessarily the leader of the largest party. In 2021, for example, Bennett became prime minister even though his party held just seven seats — and even then, not all of its members supported the new government.

Moreover, a formal confidence vote can pass without 61 votes in favor. For example, the government formed by Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid was approved by a vote of 60–59, with one abstention coming from a lawmaker of the Islamist Ra’am party. The party itself, meanwhile, made history by becoming the first Arab political movement in Israel to sign a coalition agreement with the Zionist camp by supporting the Bennett–Lapid government.

A party can also remain outside the coalition and receive no ministerial posts while supporting the government in confidence and budget votes. In the 1990s, for example, Arab factions helped keep Yitzhak Rabin’s minority government in power without joining it. But for a cabinet to function stably, it generally needs either its own stable coalition or guaranteed outside support. The Bennett–Lapid government, which lacked these requisites, lasted just over a year before announcing its dissolution.

Under the current political configuration, Netanyahu needs the ultra-Orthodox vote to have any hope of maintaining a majority. He may still find allies among smaller parties, but some of these categorically rule out supporting a government led by him or involving his Likud party — at least for now. However, they might agree to compromise in the event that Netanyahu agree to give up the premiership in the name of national unity.

“Kingmakers” – what the ultra-Orthodox want

The ultra-Orthodox are primarily interested in their own agenda, which involves state funding for their communities (including religious education), the sustained authority of rabbinical courts, and exemptions for yeshiva students from military service. They are willing to join forces with any party that best promises to satisfy their demands.

Attempts to reach an agreement on these issues began even before Israel declared its independence. In 1947, David Ben-Gurion, the country’s future first prime minister, promised to preserve the status quo: Saturday would be the official day of rest, state institutions would observe kosher dietary laws, marriages and divorces would remain under the jurisdiction of religious courts, and religious schools would retain their autonomy. In return, Ben-Gurion sought to secure the ultra-Orthodox’s support for the establishment of a Jewish state.

The situation changed dramatically in the late 1970s and early 1980s. In 1977, the left-wing camp, previously led by Mapai and later by the Labor Party, lost power for the first time. In 1981, Likud and the left-wing bloc won almost identical numbers of seats — 48 and 47, respectively. Neither the right nor the left could count on forming governments exclusively with ideologically like-minded partners, and horse-trading with smaller parties began. The ultra-Orthodox proved particularly useful because, in Israeli political terms, they did not identify with either the right or the left, particularly when it came to the Arab-Israeli conflict and, above all, the Palestinian issue.

Today, the ultra-Orthodox camp is represented by two electoral lists but in fact consists of three parties: Shas, Degel HaTorah, and Agudat Yisrael. Since 1992, the latter two parties have run together under the United Torah Judaism list, which primarily represents Ashkenazi Haredim — descendants of Jews from Central and Eastern Europe. But the list contains two separate party structures, each subordinate to a different rabbinical council.

Agudat Yisrael (“Union of Israel”) consists primarily of Hasidic communities. The party was founded in Poland in 1912 as a movement of Orthodox Jews opposed to secularization and political Zionism. In Israel, the party’s influence is divided among several Hasidic courts, the largest of which have their own rabbis, educational institutions, and political representatives. Final decisions are made by the Council of Torah Sages, which includes leaders of influential Hasidic communities.

Degel HaTorah (“Banner of the Torah”) represents the Lithuanian, or Litvak, tradition. The party was founded in 1988 by Rabbi Elazar Shach after a conflict with the Hasidic leadership of Agudat Yisrael. Its leading religious authorities today are Rabbis Dov Landau and Moshe Hillel Hirsch. Their directives determine how Degel HaTorah lawmakers vote on key issues and which coalition they can join.

The two parties run together in elections because competing separately would put both at risk of failing to clear the 3.25% electoral threshold. Still, within United Torah Judaism, disputes over the allocation of seats, positions, and budgets are constant.

Shas (Sephardim – Torah Guardians) represents another segment of ultra-Orthodox society: Jews whose families originated mainly in the Middle East and North Africa. It was founded in 1984 by Rabbi Ovadia Yosef with the support of Rabbi Shach. One of the reasons for its creation was discrimination against Sephardim within the Ashkenazi system of religious schools, yeshivas, and political organizations. The party’s highest religious body is the Council of Torah Sages.

One of the clearest examples of the rabbis’ influence over the choice of prime minister can be found in the 1990 political crisis known as the “dirty trick.” Labor leader Shimon Peres secured a no-confidence vote against Yitzhak Shamir’s national unity government and attempted to form an alternative coalition with the ultra-Orthodox parties, but the deal fell apart after religious authorities intervened. Rabbi Shach opposed an alliance with the left, and two Agudat Yisrael lawmakers failed to show up for the decisive vote. Peres was unable to form a government, after which Shamir formed a new right-wing coalition.

For many years, however, the Haredim’s alliance with the right was not unconditional. In 1992, Shas joined Yitzhak Rabin’s government alongside Labor and the left-wing Meretz bloc. Labor had 44 seats, Meretz 12, and Shas six, giving the government a 62-seat majority. However, after Shas left the coalition, Rabin’s cabinet became a minority government and depended on outside support from Arab factions.

In 1999, Shas joined Ehud Barak’s center-left government, having by then won a record 17 seats. United Torah Judaism, with five lawmakers, also joined the coalition.

There have also been governments without the ultra-Orthodox. In 2003, Ariel Sharon opted for an alliance with the anti-clerical Shinui party, and in 2013, Netanyahu left Shas and United Torah Judaism in opposition, reaching an agreement with Yair Lapid and Naftali Bennett instead. The most recent government without the ultra-Orthodox was the short-lived coalition that formed in 2021.

In the 25th Knesset, Shas and United Torah Judaism had a combined 18 lawmakers, and both remained key partners for the ruling coalition for most of the term. July polls projected the ultra-Orthodox to take between 15 and 17 seats in the October vote, but there is still no guarantee that they will support Netanyahu, who failed to keep too many promises over the past four years.

The ultra-Orthodox’s main grievance

The main complaint Shas and United Torah Judaism have against Netanyahu and their other coalition partners is the failure to pass a law that would guarantee exemptions from military service for yeshiva students (the bill never reached a final vote), who since 1948 have been granted deferments under the principle of “Torah is their vocation.” Initially the provision applied to only about 400 students, but since 1977 there has been no limit on their number. The provision had been enshrined in law several times, but those laws were struck down by the Supreme Court starting in July 2023, though the government subsequently issued a temporary order that yeshiva students not be drafted, hoping to pass a new law.

In June 2024, the Supreme Court ruled that the government could not grant such an exemption on its own and ordered the state to apply the general Military Service Law to the ultra-Orthodox. The army then began sending out draft notices — and later issuing arrest warrants — for conscripts who failed to report. By July 2026, some 72,000 Haredim aged 18 to 24 who were subject to the draft had not enlisted. The resulting arrests triggered mass protests within the community.

By July 2026, some 72,000 Haredim aged 18 to 24 were subject to the draft but had not enlisted

After nearly three years of war — in Gaza, Lebanon, and Iran, along with continued tensions in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) — the Israeli military is facing a manpower shortage that has placed an enormous burden on reservists. From October 2023 to the present, 27% of reserve soldiers have served a total of 150 to 300 days, while 20% have served more than 300 days. Against this backdrop, the idea that part of society is ignoring their obligation to service has sparked strong negative feelings.

The issue is not simply a demand to send all yeshiva students into the army immediately. Most Arab citizens of Israel are also exempt from the draft, while the IDF already has units adapted to the needs of the ultra-Orthodox, where special kosher requirements and gender segregation are observed. Supporters of the draft see this as proof that integration is possible, while most ultra-Orthodox Jews fear that mass military service would undermine their religious way of life. At the same time, there are concerns that adapting the army to accommodate ultra-Orthodox service could limit opportunities for female soldiers.

The issue, therefore, is much broader. Should the army adapt to the demands of the ultra-Orthodox community, or should the community adapt to the army’s general rules? Can military service be replaced with civilian service, and can that contribution to the nation truly be considered equivalent? And should a particular community be allowed to maintain near-total autonomy if the burden of its protection and funding falls on everyone else? Ultimately, the dispute over military service has become a debate over what the State of Israel should be and what obligations its citizens should have toward it.

In any case, as the election approaches, one element of this complex problem stands out: Netanyahu has alienated the ultra-Orthodox community. Moshe Gafni, the leader of Degel HaTorah, says the previous coalition arrangement will not be repeated after the election, promising: “Before forming any government, we will first pass a military draft law.” Technically, this is possible. The new Knesset can begin legislative work while the outgoing government remains in office, and the ultra-Orthodox parties could delay signing a coalition agreement until after the law they want has been finally passed.

Shas uses less forceful language and has not ruled out siding with the right-wing bloc, but the party’s fundamental demand is the same. Back in May, Shas leader Aryeh Deri said: “We will not join a coalition or government until we resolve the status of those who study Torah.”

The legislative blitz

Once it became clear that fulfilling the ultra-Orthodox’s main demand before the election was impossible, the Knesset entered what Israeli journalists called a “legislative blitz.” In the final days, lawmakers passed a series of laws demanded by the Haredim, who in return agreed to keep parliament working until a date that suited the prime minister by helping Netanyahu pass initiatives he and other coalition members needed. These included weakening the powers of the government’s legal adviser and reforming the media market.

The ultra-Orthodox secured a Basic Law on Torah study, albeit in a heavily watered-down version of the original proposal. Israel does not have a single written constitution — Basic Laws partly serve that role, so even a short declaration formally has constitutional status. The original version equated sustained Torah study with “meaningful service” to the state (that is, military service) and would have allowed it to be taken into account when allocating rights and benefits. This triggered a wave of criticism, including from within the coalition.

The ultra-Orthodox secured a Basic Law on Torah study, albeit in a heavily watered-down version of the original proposal

As a result, the substantive provisions were removed from the text. All that remained was a single provision: “Torah study is a fundamental value of the heritage of the Jewish people and the State of Israel.” For the Haredim, this amounted to historic recognition. Aryeh Deri called the vote “a victory for the Torah world,” while Gafni described it as the creation of “the state’s value compass.” But even within the Haredi community, questions arose as to whether the law had become a consolation prize.

A more effective measure was supposed to be a law suspending the arrest of Haredim who failed to report for military service after receiving draft notices. It barred the military police from detaining yeshiva students, initiating new criminal proceedings against them, or continuing cases already underway. The protection also covered those who reached draft age after the law took effect. Formally, the restrictions were set to remain in place until November 30, but given the election and the transition period, they could have remained in force until the end of January 2027. However, the Haredim did not have time to make use of the law. Less than 24 hours later, the Supreme Court suspended it.

Still, the Haredim did manage to secure some gains. The Knesset repealed the kosher certification reform adopted by the previous government and expanded the possibility of separate education for men and women at universities. Previously, special programs for Haredim existed primarily at the undergraduate level. Now the Council for Higher Education can authorize separate master’s and doctoral programs. At mixed-gender institutions, segregation is permitted in classrooms, and participation must be voluntary. Such programs will be available not only to Haredim but also to other students who cite religious beliefs. To secular Israelis, however, the law amounts to segregation and has further deepened the divide between the opposition and the coalition. For Netanyahu, though, this only works to his advantage, as it increases the chances that the Haredim will remain with him.

Against the backdrop of the heated public debate, the ultra-Orthodox do not have many options, as their agenda does not align with that of many other opposition parties. Asher Medina of Shas, for example, warned against an alliance with the left-wing camp, saying that its “only common denominator is hatred of the Haredim.”

But Israeli politics is known for its unexpected alliances and sudden twists. There are almost three months to go before the election, and the balance of power could change many times before then.

“They recently came up with the possible seizure of our vessels and sale of property stolen from us,” Putin said. “Of course, this [detention of Russian vessels] is nothing other than piracy and robbery. And if this begins to be implemented in practice, we will be forced to respond in kind…where we ourselves consider it necessary and appropriate — anywhere, including in the area of responsibility of the Pacific Fleet.”

Putin has previously described Western actions taken against vessels in Russia’s “shadow fleet” as piracy. He used that term after the tanker Boracay (IMO: 9332810) was detained by the French Navy in September last year. The vessel was released several days later.

This past July, Putin reiterated that view, saying attempts to seize Russian tankers should be treated as piracy.

“In such cases, of course, it is necessary to act carefully, within the framework of international maritime law, but decisively — the way piracy and pirates should be fought,” Putin said at a meeting with the commanders of Russia’s Pacific, Northern, Baltic, and Black Sea fleets, along with those of the Caspian Flotilla.

EU countries periodically detain “shadow fleet” vessels involved in transporting Russian oil, but later release them. In June, the UK detained a Russian tanker in the English Channel for the first time, with British forces and law enforcement personnel boarding the sanctioned tanker Smyrtos (IMO: 9389100).

The EU has authorized its member states to sell Russian oil and petroleum products that their authorities have seized or confiscated, and proceeds from these sales cannot be transferred to Russian citizens, companies, or organizations. The new rules are contained in an EU Council regulation that took effect July 24.

Russian investigators allege that in 2021 and 2022, Zaitsev transferred money to Navalny’s projects at least seven times. Zaitsev does not deny making the donations, saying he personally supported Navalny “because he believed that his anti-corruption work was beneficial.” Asked whether he continued donating to the ACF after the foundation was designated an “extremist organization,” Zaitsev answered: “Most likely, no.”

The Anti-Corruption Foundation (ACF, also known by its Russian acronym FBK), is an NGO founded by the late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny. It investigates corruption by high-ranking Russian government officials and releases its reports in videos that attract millions of views. In 2017, its YouTube expose “He Is Not Dimon To You” (or “Don't Call Him 'Dimon'”) accused then-Prime Minister (and former President) Dmitry Medvedev of misusing an estimated $1.2 billion in state resources.

Another notable investigation, “Putin’s Palace,” released in 2021 shortly after Navalny’s arrest sparked nationwide protests, focused on the massive Black Sea residence that was built for Vladimir Putin using a  complex web of corruption schemes. The property was estimated to have cost in excess of 100 billion rubles (over $1 billion). As of Nov. 27, 2025, the video has amassed 134 million views on YouTube.

The Russian ACF, along with Navalny’s network of regional headquarters, were declared extremist organizations in 2021. Two years earlier, in 2019, the foundation had been designated as a “foreign agent.” In Russia, the Anti-Corruption Foundation was formally liquidated as a legal entity in September 2021. In November 2025, the foundation’s arm in the U.S. —  Anti-Corruption Foundation, Inc. — was designated a “terrorist organization” in Russia.

This is the second criminal case brought against an EUSP lecturer in the past month. Earlier, former university researcher Mikhail Turchenko was accused of spreading “fake news” about the Russian army, a charge Russian authorities use to prosecute statements about the war in Ukraine that contradict the Kremlin’s version of events. According to a report by the independent outlet Novaya Gazeta, Turchenko left Russia in 2022.

Igor Zaitsev holds a candidate of sciences degree in philosophy, roughly equivalent to a Ph.D., and is an associate professor and researcher at Stasis, the European University’s Center for Practical Philosophy.

The European University at St. Petersburg is a private graduate school in the social sciences and humanities and is widely regarded as one of Russia’s few remaining independent universities.

Tankers with “cope cages”

The shipping monitoring service TankerTrackers.com recently reported on the 28-year-old Suezmax tanker Caruzo (IMO: 9137648), which passed through Istanbul with about 1 million barrels of Russian crude oil. The vessel sails under the flag of Sierra Leone. It is under sanctions imposed by the UK, EU, New Zealand, Canada, Switzerland, and Australia, but it has notably avoided any restrictions from the United States. The international NGO Greenpeace also identifies the Caruzo as part of Russia’s “shadow fleet.”

TankerTrackers.com noted that the crew had completely covered the Caruzo’s superstructure with netting, effectively placing themselves inside it. The service said the sailors appeared to be trying to protect themselves from Ukrainian aerial drones.

Additional protection is also visible at the tanker’s stern, where metal structures resembling cages hang from both sides. TankerTrackers.com assessed that these were intended to protect the engine room from naval drone attacks.

Judging by data from the vessel tracking platform Starboard Maritime Intelligence, since July 2025 the ship has been turning off its AIS before entering the Black Sea, making it appear for months as if it were “located” in the Bosphorus.

Ukraine’s military intelligence agency (HUR) classifies the Caruzo as a vessel involved in exporting Russian oil and petroleum products in circumvention of the G7 oil embargo and price cap. According to HUR, the tanker has been involved in these shipments since at least October 2023. In January 2024, it took part in a ship-to-ship (STS) oil transfer near the Kerch Strait with sanctioned tankers.

The Caruzo’s routes extend far beyond the Black Sea. The database lists terminals and ports in Turkey, China, India, Malaysia, Morocco, Egypt, and Vietnam, among others. The HUR separately notes that the vessel has called at Russian ports and has been recorded turning off its AIS.

A cargo ship with camouflage

The day before, another unusually protected Russian vessel in Istanbul caught the attention of Murat Fırtına — a Turkish sailor, merchant fleet captain, and author of books about his experience at sea. The Turkish industry outlet HaberDenizde also cited Fırtına’s  observations.

On Aug. 10, Fırtına saw the Russian cargo ship Mechta S (IMO: 8419659) in the port of Haydarpaşa and photographed it from a passing ferry.

The Mechta S, a general cargo ship built in 1987, is about 119 meters long and sails under the Russian flag. It was previously named Sormovskiy-3059 and belongs to the Sormovskiy class of Soviet-designed vessels built for Black Sea and river-sea routes. The ship still operates in the Black Sea basin.

Fırtına’s attention, however, was drawn less by the cargo ship’s specifications than by its unusual paint scheme. The sides, bow, stern, and superstructure of the Mechta S are covered with sharp geometric shapes painted in blue, dark blue, white, and gray.

The captain said the pattern resembled dazzle camouflage, a disruptive naval paint scheme that became widespread during World War I and was also used during World War II.

Historically, such camouflage was not meant to make a vessel invisible. Instead, high-contrast geometric patterns were designed to visually distort the ship’s silhouette, making it harder to determine its size, the location of its bow and stern, its direction of travel, and possible strike points.

Fırtına noted that older photographs of the Mechta S do not show the geometric paint scheme, meaning the vessel received it later.

“Given that even merchant ships in the Black Sea today face threats from unmanned aerial vehicles and naval drones, it cannot be ruled out that this paint scheme is not merely aesthetic, but military camouflage intended to complicate optical detection and targeting of the vessel,” he said.

“Seeing a merchant ship in 2026 in the middle of Istanbul, in Haydarpaşa, looking as if it had stepped off the pages of wartime history, is quite unusual,” he added.

Russia’s Mechta S had not previously appeared on “shadow fleet” lists

Notably, Ukraine has not yet added Mechta S to its list of “shadow fleet” ships, and the vessel has so far avoided sanctions.

Starboard Maritime Intelligence data reviewed by The Insider show that the Mechta S regularly operates in the Black Sea region, with Novorossiysk the most frequently visited port in the vessel’s available history. Starboard recorded 83 calls by the cargo ship at Novorossiysk, totaling more than 72 days. Its route history also includes ports in Russia, Turkey, Ukraine, Italy, Greece, Bulgaria, Romania, Georgia, Israel, Egypt, Croatia, Cyprus, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan. The service’s data cover 3,294 days (about nine years).

Shortly before the Mechta S was spotted in Istanbul with its unusual paint scheme, the cargo ship had called at Novorossiysk. It then spent a long period in Yalova, one of Turkey’s largest ship-repair centers. According to Starboard, the Mechta S arrived there around July 15 and stayed until Aug. 10, about 26 days. Only after that did the cargo ship appear in Istanbul, where Fırtına photographed it decorated in geometric camouflage. Fırtına himself noted that earlier photos of the Mechta S did not show such a pattern.

Another feature of the vessel’s history involves its significant gaps in AIS data. Over 3,294 days of monitoring, Starboard counted about 930 days and six hours for which no location data were available for the Mechta S — roughly 28% of the period covered by the service.

Starboard also identified several risk factors for the Mechta S. The service could not confirm that the vessel’s declared Russian flag matched the registries it uses, nor could it confirm that the ship was insured through a known P&I club (a protection and indemnity insurer that covers maritime liability). The Mechta S also regularly called at ports in countries with relatively high perceived levels of corruption.

The court found no evidence in the case file constituting grounds for suspicion that Semyon and Tatyana had committed any crime. The ruling also said the Russians had cooperated with Swedish authorities and that police had failed to present convincing facts indicating that the couple had come to the country for purposes other than tourism.

“The mere fact of Russian citizenship and the fact that they speak Russian cannot be grounds for a detention decision,” the defense said in its complaint.

Police had insisted that Semyon and Tatyana posed a threat to Sweden’s internal security and might try to flee if released — arguments which the court found to be unsubstantiated.

The couple were detained on the morning of Aug. 6 while vacationing near the town of Furuvik. The Antiwar Committee previously told The Insider that Semyon and Tatyana had lived in Spain for the past five years and had come to Sweden as tourists. They were traveling with a tent, set up camp by the sea and went fishing.

A private home belonging to a person protected by the Swedish authorities was located near their campsite, something the tourists were not aware of, according to the Antiwar Committee. Security guards at the home called the police. Both the guards and law enforcement officers were reportedly drawn to the couple because they were speaking Russian and had two hiking walkie-talkies.

As The Insider previously reported, the Russians also could not clearly explain to the police why they had chosen that particular place to spend the night. They later told human rights advocates that they enjoy hiking and had decided to camp by the water.

After the detention, police ordered the couple deported, and Semyon and Tatyana were placed in a migration center. The Antiwar Committee said at the time that the decision to detain and deport the couple were based solely on three factors: their Russian accents, the walkie-talkies, and the tourists’ inability to convincingly explain their choice of campsite.

Margarita Kuchusheva, a consul with the Anti-War Committee, told The Insider that the case was not unprecedented: 

“This is not the first case in which Sweden has recognized Russian citizens as a threat to national security. Unfortunately, anti-war Russians sometimes fall under these criteria as well. In this case, [they were] simply a pair of tourists who chose to go on a camping trip. Challenging such a status is extremely difficult, and it can seriously damage a person’s life, such as when one wants to apply for a visa.”

The Antiwar Committee added that Semyon (who works as a game developer) and Tatyana oppose Russia's invasion of Ukraine, do humanitarian work, and help teenage emigres adapt to life abroad. 

The value of the deal was not disclosed. According to Lloyd’s List, both vessels are heading to Alang, India, for scrapping.

“The U.S. government has sold them to us and there was a court order authorizing the sales, but there are complexities, not least the fact that we weren’t really sure who previously owned them,” GMS CEO Anil Sharma told Lloyd’s List.

The Era, which previously sailed under the names Bella 1 and Marinera, was seized by the United States in January between Iceland and the British Isles after a two-week pursuit during which the tanker changed its flag to that of Russia. The vessel’s captain, Georgian citizen Avtandil Kalandadze, was arrested. On Aug. 10, a U.S. court sentenced him to 10 months in prison, to be followed by deportation, for his refusal to obey a U.S. Coast Guard order to stop the ship.

The Lileo, formerly known as Veronica and Galileo, was also seized in January — that time near Venezuela. Washington said the tankers had been used to smuggle oil from Venezuela and Iran.

Kalandadze commanded the Bella 1 from September through late December 2025. The tanker was headed to Venezuela when the Munro tried to stop it as part of a U.S. maritime blockade. The vessel did not comply and crossed the Atlantic, prompting a Coast Guard pursuit.

During the crossing, the tanker changed its name from Bella 1 to Marinera and was re-registered under the Russian flag. On Jan. 7, U.S. forces boarded the vessel between Iceland and the British Isles. The Insider reported at the time that the operation, carried out by the U.S. Coast Guard and U.S. military with support from British forces, followed a chase that had lasted for more than two weeks. Media reports said Russian warships and a submarine were also heading to the area, but U.S. forces seized the tanker before they arrived.

As it was being pursued, the Marinera attempted to conceal its route. Satellite data from Starboard Maritime Intelligence provided to The Insider showed no stable AIS signal in the North Atlantic, and the vessel abruptly changed course on the day of the operation.

U.S. prosecutors also alleged that while Kalandadze was commanding the Bella 1, the tanker carried about 1.8 million barrels of Iranian-origin oil to Asia. Prosecutors said the crew turned off AIS and hid the vessel’s name during a ship-to-ship transfer, a practice in which oil or other cargo is moved between vessels at sea — a tactic that can be used to obscure the cargo’s origin. In 2024, the United States imposed sanctions on the registered owner of the Bella 1, Louis Marine Shipholding Enterprises, for carrying sanctioned cargoes on behalf of Hezbollah. U.S. authorities classify the vessel as part of the “shadow fleet,” a term used for tankers that try to evade sanctions or restrictions on oil shipments.

How the vessel is linked to Russia

In a comment to The Insider, maritime shipping expert Mark Douglas noted the tanker’s Russian registration — and Russia’s silence in response to the ship’s seizure:

“What is interesting is that the tanker was supposedly flagged to Russia (following a questionable mid-sea reflagging) but that hasn’t stopped the prosecution, and Russia has stayed very quiet about the whole thing.”

After the seizure, the tanker was towed to the United States. In early June, it returned to sea under the name Era, flying the flag of the Comoros Islands. According to Equasis data, its current owner is listed as Global Marketing Systems, and the vessel’s status is “to be broken up.”

U.S. President Donald Trump confirmed Robert Gilman’s release in a post on Truth Social:

“I am proud to announce that American Citizen Robert Gilman, a former United States Marine, is coming HOME! In a well known Media story, Robert was imprisoned in Russia in 2022, during the Biden Administration. After my discussions with President Vladimir Putin, Russia has agreed to release him, very much on a Humanitarian Basis. We appreciate this decision, and the fact that Russia asked for no one in return — No exchange took place. Robert will land at Andrews Air Force Base, in Washington, D.C., tonight, where my Representatives, some of whom are on the plane with him, will welcome Robert back to THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA! I just spoke to him, and he had one request — A GREAT cheeseburger when he lands. I will take care of that!”

According to Reuters’ sources, the United States did not hand over any prisoners to Russia in exchange for Gilman’s release, which followed intensive talks between Russian and U.S. representatives over the weekend. One U.S. official described Moscow’s decision as a “goodwill gesture.”

Last week, Russian presidential aide Yuri Ushakov told officials in the Trump administration that Putin had agreed to sign a decree pardoning Gilman, according to the news agency’s sources. The White House and the U.S. State Department had been seeking Gilman’s release and had asked that he be allowed to leave Russia in order to receive medical treatment.

On Tuesday, Gilman was flown out of Russia on a State Department plane bound for Washington. He was accompanied by his mother, Nina, and four doctors who were there to assess his condition during the flight. A U.S. official who spoke to Gilman told Reuters that he was walking and talking. "All things considered, he seems to be in good shape," the official said.

After arrival on American soil, Gilman was expected to be sent for treatment at a rehabilitation center in San Antonio, Texas.

Five days before his release, Reuters reported that Gilman’s condition may have been critical. Global Reach, an organization representing the Gilman family, said that in late June, when he was transferred from a prison hospital to the psychiatric ward of a civilian hospital, Gilman’s physical state resembled catatonia. His condition was assessed as “dissociative stupor.” According to the organization, Gilman could not communicate, did not open his eyes, and was being fed through a tube.

Gilman was detained in Voronezh in January 2022 after he was removed from a train traveling from Sukhumi to Moscow. Prosecutors said the American, who was intoxicated, kicked a police officer at a police station. Gilman’s father said his son had become unwell and accidentally struck the officer. He said the officer was not injured.

In October 2022, Gilman was sentenced to four and a half years in a penal colony, a Russian prison facility where inmates are usually required to work. In 2023, his sentence was reduced to three and a half years before new cases were opened over alleged attacks on Federal Penitentiary Service staff and an investigator, after which his sentence was increased to ten years. 

According to court documents reviewed by Bloomberg, Séba — who was born in France and previously led a Black nationalist movement there — is linked to Francois van der Merwe, the leader of the South African white nationalist movement Bittereinders. Prosecutors say both men have ties to Russia.

Séba, his son, and van der Merwe were all arrested in Pretoria in April. Prosecutors say they had planned to illegally cross the Limpopo River into Zimbabwe and that Séba had hired guards to help him escape. The guards, however, turned out to be undercover police officers. Authorities seized more than 300,000 South African rand (about $18,500) during the arrest.

According to the Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation, van der Merwe received money from Moscow to “to assist with the safe escorting and transfer of Mr. Capo Chichi from South Africa to Zimbabwe.” From there, Séba was allegedly to have traveled to Europe to carry out terrorist attacks there and in the UK. “The information also mentioned that the person is trained by the Russians and is extremely dangerous,” the documents said.

Séba is also suspected of taking part in Russian-backed anti-Western propaganda campaigns in Africa, according to Bloomberg. Benin issued an arrest warrant for Séba after he supported the idea of a mutiny on social media. He has also been charged with money laundering and terrorism.

Séba is known as an activist in the anti-French movement in West Africa. In 2017, he was arrested in Senegal and deported. In 2024, he was stripped of his French citizenship amid accusations that he had incited violence against the state. In 2022, the U.S. State Department accused Séba of links to the Wagner Group, the Russian mercenary organization co-founded by the late Yevgeny Prigozhin.

The Bittereinders white nationalist movement also has ties to Russia. Last year, its leader van der Merwe attended a meeting of right-wing organizations in St. Petersburg, alongside Germany’s AfD.

The populists’ central argument — that “forever wars” are ruinous — is shared in part by the second faction, whose leading ideologue is former Pentagon official Elbridge Colby (backed by Senator Josh Hawley). These advocates of strict strategic prioritization argue that America's overstretched defense industrial base cannot sustain its current count of confrontations on multiple fronts and that Washington should thus redeploy its naval forces and advanced technologies to the Indo-Pacific for what they see as an existential struggle with China. Under this scenario, responsibility for Europe's security — and for Ukraine's future — would be shifted onto the Europeans themselves.

Both of these camps are fiercely opposed by the traditional Reaganite hawks, led by Secretary of State Marco Rubio (and his predecessor as National Security Advisor, Mike Waltz). They embrace the doctrine of “peace through strength,” arguing that an American retreat from Europe would only signal the kind of weakness that could encourage Beijing to invade Taiwan. Accordingly, they argue that the United States must maintain overwhelming military dominance across all key regions of the world in order to pressure the informal axis of Russia, China, and Iran, while simultaneously pushing NATO allies to increase their defense spending.

The fourth faction, made up of business-oriented investors led by Jared Kushner, seeks to reconcile the financial interests of the Saudi monarchy with a pro-Israel vision of the global order.

At the center of this political cacophony stands Trump himself. A transactional pragmatist, he has shown little hesitation in alternating between these mutually contradictory approaches (his critics like to joke that he invariably echoes the views of whichever adviser spoke to him last). He readily borrows Vance's isolationist rhetoric to mobilize his core electorate and shares Colby's fixation on the threat posed by China, while at the same time deliberately appointing uncompromising hawks to key positions. Critics describe this as foreign policy schizophrenia, whereas supporters argue that Trump has turned the chaos and unpredictability of his own personnel decisions into his greatest political asset.

Restrainers — the new isolationists

The isolationist “restrainers” previously appeared to be the chief intellectual force driving the MAGA movement, and the group's position had seemed unassailable after JD Vance was appointed vice president. However, the Trump administration's military campaigns against Iran exposed a clear fault line within the president’s inner circle, with the isolationists losing out in their confrontation with the Republican Party's traditional hawks — at least when it came to the Middle East.

In addition to Vice President Vance and his longtime media ally Tucker Carlson, this camp has traditionally included Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and a collection of other hardline Trump loyalists in the House of Representatives. Its intellectual backbone consists of organizations such as the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and the right wing of the Heritage Foundation, which has sought to provide a theoretical foundation for American neo-isolationism.

The faction's electoral base is made up of the disillusioned working class of America's Rust Belt who most eagerly consume content from the movement’s  sprawling network of alternative media outlets and far-right activists. Weary of “forever wars,” this faction has even found common cause with left-wing anti-imperialists (like Tulsi Gabbard).

The isolationists' immediate objectives have always been highly practical. They seek to block all financial and military aid to Kyiv, force America's European NATO allies to pay for their own security, and redirect the resulting savings toward securing the southern border. Over the longer term, however, the group aims to dismantle the global security architecture created after World War II, replacing it with rigid economic protectionism and sweeping tariffs. Their ideal is to turn the United States into a self-sufficient “fortress” that attacks foreign markets with tariffs rather than missiles. Achieving that vision would require the complete abandonment of the Republican party’s Reagan-era legacy of internationalism.

The isolationists' ideal is to turn the United States into a self-sufficient “fortress,” attacking foreign markets with tariffs rather than missiles

In their struggle for influence, the restrainers work closely with right-wing populist leaders in Europe, above all former Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. They also rely on the backing of tech billionaires led by Elon Musk, who shares the group’s skepticism toward Washington's global commitments.

Their principal adversaries are the traditional Washington establishment, the defense-industrial complex, and the powerful pro-Israel lobby represented by the Republican Jewish Coalition. Within the administration itself, they have been engaged in an unrelenting bureaucratic struggle with the globalist hawks led by Rubio and Waltz — who ultimately seized the initiative by drawing the White House into a major military escalation in the Middle East.

Recent events have led to a de facto split within the isolationist camp itself. Tucker Carlson, who publicly denounced the strikes on Iran as a vile and immoral decision driven by Benjamin Netanyahu's manipulation, has definitively broken with Trump, saying he deeply regrets his past support for the president. Like Marjorie Taylor Greene, his dramatic split launched a public debate over the potential creation of an independent political movement.

At the same time, JD Vance has been forced to play an extremely careful game of internal politics, balancing loyalty to his boss against his own presidential ambitions for 2028. In his public appearances, the vice president has had to defend Trump's hard-line policy on Iran while assuring the press that he does not take orders from Carlson.

Trump himself, driven solely by transactional calculations and a desire for quick geopolitical victories, has for now pushed the restrainers to the sidelines. Responding to Carlson's criticism, he remarked that the real MAGA movement supports the president’s decisive actions — making it clear that the isolationist agenda has lost at least some of its influence to Washington’s familiar advocates of military force.

Prioritizers — strategic prioritizers with an anti-China focus

The faction of prioritizers, which has become the intellectual backbone of the Defense Department during Donald Trump's second term, represents the most pragmatic — and, for America's European allies, the most troubling — wing of the revamped Republican foreign policy establishment.

Unlike the outright isolationists, who dream of retreating behind America's borders, this camp thinks in terms of geopolitical “realism.” Its leading figures include Elbridge Colby (the grandson of a former CIA director), who serves as the Pentagon's under secretary of defense for policy, and populist Senator Josh Hawley. The group's ideological core also includes Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, under whose nominal leadership Colby has effectively taken the lead in shaping America's new National Defense Strategy. Other prominent members include former Rep. Mike Gallagher, along with analysts at the Marathon Initiative, a think tank co-founded by Colby.

The faction's principal financial backers come from Silicon Valley's conservative wing, most notably venture capitalists such as Peter Thiel and Palmer Luckey, (founder of the defense startup Anduril). They are interested in redirecting government contracts toward artificial intelligence, satellite reconnaissance, and autonomous combat systems capable of competing with China.

The prioritizers' immediate tactical objectives involve suspending the deployment of purportedly scarce U.S. resources currently going to Ukraine and Europe and directing them towards Asia instead. In the short term, they seek to freeze all secondary conflicts in order to rapidly redeploy American aircraft carriers, air defense systems, and precision-guided missile capabilities to the Taiwan Strait.

Their long-term strategic objective is to prevent Beijing from establishing hegemony in Asia and to carry out a sweeping economic and technological decoupling that would completely cut China off from Western intellectual and financial resources. To that end, Hawley has introduced legislation in the Senate calling for a radical separation of American and Chinese artificial intelligence capabilities, banning all U.S. investment in China, and imposing severe penalties on American corporations that transfer technology there. In the prioritizers’ worldview, the European Union is seen not as a historic ally bound to the United States by shared values, but as a geopolitical free rider and potential economic competitor that must be forced to achieve full strategic autonomy, even if doing so leads to the collapse of transatlantic unity.

The prioritizers' long-term strategic objective is to prevent Beijing from achieving hegemony in Asia

On the international stage, the prioritizers are working to develop an architecture of bilateral partnerships, working closely with Australia through the AUKUS alliance, as well as with Japan and Taiwan. Colby has demanded unequivocal commitments from these partners to commit substantial resources in the event of a conflict with China — including by engaging in the fight directly.

At the same time, the prioritizers are engaged in two relentless bureaucratic struggles back in Washington — defending themselves against the globalist hawks led by Rubio, and supporting Congressional efforts to investigate major technology companies such as Meta over senior executives’ secret concessions to the Chinese Communist Party, made in order to preserve their access to Asian markets.

Colby and his team are now fully focused on implementing a new doctrine of flexible realism. They have been traveling to regional summits, where they have sought to build barriers against China's expanding influence by forcing America's allies to choose sides.

The group has retained Trump's favor because it provides the president with an ideal intellectual justification for his distrust of European leaders. At the same time, however, its narrow strategic focus and reluctance to divert attention to other regions periodically irritate the White House — especially when Trump becomes captivated by dramatic escalations in the Middle East that call for a classic display of imperial power rather than the long-term planning required for a decades-long technological competition with China.

Primacists — Washington's global hawks

The primacist faction, or global hawks, represents the Reaganite neoconservative wing of the Republican Party. Despite fierce resistance from the isolationists, this group has staged an impressive bureaucratic comeback during Donald Trump's second term. Its leading figures include Rubio and Waltz, along with former National Security Advisor Robert O'Brien, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and influential Republicans on key congressional committees, including Michael McCaul and Mike Turner.

The faction's intellectual and financial foundation rests on the traditional American defense-industrial complex (represented by giants such as Lockheed Martin and Raytheon), the old guard of the intelligence community, and the influential pro-Israel lobby (including the Republican Jewish Coalition). They see the primacists as the last line of defense against a complete American withdrawal from the world's key geopolitical flashpoints.

The global hawks' immediate tactical objectives center on projecting overwhelming military power and containing Washington's principal adversaries through direct escalation. This was clearly reflected in their role as the leading advocates of the military campaign against Iran and the large-scale strikes in Venezuela in early 2026.

Over the long term, the primacists seek to preserve total U.S. dominance across all three critical regions — Europe, Asia, and the Middle East — and they believe any concession to Russia or Iran would immediately encourage China to move against Taiwan. To that end, they are reshaping America's traditional alliances, promoting concepts such as the “Shield of the Americas” while demanding that European NATO members assume full operational responsibility for the continent's security while continuing to act under American leadership.

The hawks seek to preserve total U.S. dominance across all three critical regions: Europe, Asia, and the Middle East

On the international stage, the primacists closely coordinate with Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel and with right-wing Latin American regimes while simultaneously waging an intense behind-the-scenes struggle in Washington. Their principal rivals remain JD Vance’s restrainers (who accuse the hawks of dragging the United States into endless proxy wars) and Elbridge Colby's camp of Asia-focused pragmatists (who argue that Washington should abandon Europe in order to concentrate on Taiwan).

Rubio's team is currently consumed with managing the aftermath of the strikes on Iran, shaping a new security architecture in South America, and protecting the Pentagon’s bureaucracy from the influence of the prioritizers. The global hawks enjoy Trump's favor only so long as their operations deliver quick, headline-grabbing victories that benefit the president politically — like the capture of Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro in January.  Their influence nevertheless remains precarious, as Trump could pivot back toward isolationism if protracted military campaigns begin to damage his domestic approval ratings.

The sudden death of Sen. Lindsey Graham on July 11 — just days after his tenth visit to Kyiv, came as a profound shock to the global hawks. Graham consistently championed the neoconservative doctrine of "peace through strength,” steadfastly supported Ukraine, advocated for maximum pressure on Iran, and regarded NATO as one of America's most important strategic assets, firmly rejecting calls to scale back the country's global presence. Graham's unique strength lay in his remarkable ability to translate geopolitical strategy into the “language of deals” that Trump understood best. For example, he successfully lobbied for continued aid to Kyiv by pragmatically emphasizing Ukraine's lithium and titanium reserves, arguing that they could not be allowed to fall into the hands of Moscow or Beijing. Through countless rounds of "golf diplomacy," the senator effectively implanted traditional hawkish ideas directly into the president's thinking, skillfully counterbalancing the influence of Vance's radical isolationists.

Shortly before his death, Graham had even secured White House approval for a new package of sanctions against Russia. His passing, however, has created a critical vacuum: deprived of their most effective political negotiator, the hawks now risk ceding control of U.S. foreign policy to the isolationists.

Developers — New York dealmakers

The faction of transactional business pragmatists — the so-called “developer diplomacy” team led by Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner — has emerged as the most secretive and financially driven center of influence in U.S. foreign policy. Kushner's official appointment in February 2026 to the newly created position of special envoy for peace formalized what had previously been an informal network. In addition to Kushner, the group includes his closest partner and ally, New York real estate magnate Steve Witkoff, who simultaneously serves as special envoy for the Middle East and as the administration's chief negotiator with the Kremlin.

The team is backed by the sovereign wealth funds of the Gulf states — above all Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund. It also enjoys financial support from the ruling elites of the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, which view Kushner and Witkoff as reliable interlocutors capable of converting American geopolitical influence into concrete investment projects.

The developers' immediate tactical objectives are centered on concluding the highly sensitive backchannel negotiations between the United States and Iran. Working through intermediaries in Doha and Oman, Kushner and Witkoff are seeking to finalize the terms of a nuclear agreement while launching large-scale postwar reconstruction projects in the Gaza Strip that would transform its ruins into potentially lucrative waterfront real estate. The group's long-term strategy is to replace traditional alliances and international institutions with a network of cross-border commercial consortia, in which regional stability would be guaranteed not by an American military presence but by the intertwining of capital from authoritarian regimes and Western investors.

The group's long-term strategy is to replace traditional alliances and international institutions with a network of cross-border commercial consortia

On the international stage, they work closely with the Gulf monarchies and Israel's right-wing government. At the same time, they are engaged in an intense behind-the-scenes struggle against Rubio’s global hawks, who view Kushner's business-oriented approach as a threat to U.S. national security, as the developers’ approach exhibits a willingness to accommodate authoritarian regimes in pursuit of personal gain.

In Washington, Kushner's team is under a barrage of investigations by congressional Democrats and watchdog organizations such as CREW, which accuse the envoys of unprecedented conflicts of interest. By mid-2026, the assets under the management of Kushner's investment firm, Affinity Partners, had surpassed $6 billion — much of it coming from foreign governments with which Kushner was simultaneously conducting official negotiations on behalf of the White House. At the same time, Witkoff has been accused of promoting the cryptocurrency venture World Liberty Financial (launched together with Trump's sons) to Middle Eastern sovereign investors.

Kushner and Witkoff are currently preoccupied with preserving the fragile June 2026 ceasefire with Tehran in order to prevent repeated regional exchanges of fire from derailing the technical consultations taking place in Qatar. Despite mounting criticism and legal scrutiny, Kushner remains under Trump's protection. His ability to package geopolitical crises into business proposals that resonate with the president — combined with the administration's disregard for the bureaucratic conventions of old Washington — has been enough to turn him into Trump’s personal envoy.

At the same time, however, the lack of meaningful diplomatic experience on the Kushner-Witkoff team has undermined their initiatives. That has been particularly evident in Moscow, where transactional business deals have proven ineffective against the Kremlin's uncompromising imperial ambitions.

The battle of Washington's power centers

By the middle of 2026, the internal struggle over foreign policy within the Trump administration had escalated into an all-out battle for survival. Each of the four factions has sought to secure its own independent sources of power, reducing its dependence on the president's shifting preferences. The primacists (global hawks) led by Marco Rubio and Robert O'Brien possess the deepest institutional roots and the strongest external backing. They are supported by the traditional American defense-industrial complex, the Republican Party's old establishment, and powerful lobbying organizations such as AIPAC.

The prioritizers (Asia-focused hawks) led by Elbridge Colby and Josh Hawley have built a very different power base. They rely on Silicon Valley's defense-tech ecosystem and billionaires such as Peter Thiel and Palmer Luckey, who finance startups developing autonomous drones and artificial intelligence systems for the Pentagon.

The restrainers (isolationists) led by JD Vance draw their strength directly from the right-wing populist media empires of Elon Musk and Tucker Carlson, giving them direct access to the MAGA grassroots.

And the developers (business world “pragmatists”) led by Jared Kushner stand out as a genuinely transnational force, with support coming not from American institutions but from the multibillion-dollar sovereign wealth funds of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

This diversification of political and financial resources directly shapes the standing of each faction's leaders among ordinary Americans as the country approaches the 2026 midterm elections and the 2028 presidential race.

Marco Rubio remains the most popular figure among moderate conservatives and independent voters, embodying a sense of stability and traditional American strength. By contrast, JD Vance, despite serving as vice president and being regarded as Trump's likely successor (at least by the party's more radical wing), remains a deeply polarizing figure with very high unfavorability ratings among centrists. His ally Tucker Carlson, meanwhile, commands enormous but highly polarizing popularity, making him more of a media kingmaker than a plausible electoral candidate.

The prioritizers' intellectual leader, Elbridge Colby, is virtually unknown to the broader public. He deliberately avoids electoral politics, preferring to work behind the scenes at the Department of Defense. Jared Kushner, meanwhile, consistently ranks among America's least popular and least trusted political figures due to allegations of nepotism and his cynical blending of public office with private business interests.

The bureaucratic and ideological confrontation among these factions has intensified with each passing month as the battle to inherit Trump's political legacy in 2028 rages on. Vance is attempting to use the vice presidency to purge the party apparatus of the Republican old guard. His position, however, has been significantly weakened by Tucker Carlson's open break with the administration.

Rubio and O'Brien quickly moved to exploit that split. Through loyal allies on congressional committees, they are seeking to convince Trump that only their vision of global American primacy can guarantee the Republican party victories at the ballot box.

Colby's prioritizers are pursuing a more subtle strategy, trying to establish confrontation with China as a permanent pillar of U.S. national security doctrine — one that would outlast any future president. Kushner, meanwhile, has largely distanced himself from electoral politics, focusing instead on locking in his Middle Eastern business deals before Trump leaves the Oval Office.

On the question of Israel, Rubio's primacists and Kushner's business diplomats alike advocate unwavering support for Jerusalem. Kushner, in particular, views a firmly pro-Israel policy as the foundation for bringing Saudi Arabia into his broader economic projects. The prioritizers, by contrast, are considerably less enthusiastic about supporting Israel, arguing that Washington should remain focused on Taiwan. The isolationist wing surrounding Carlson has gone even further, launching sharp attacks on Benjamin Netanyahu that accuse the Israeli prime minister of manipulating the U.S. military in order to drag America into a major Middle Eastern war.

The differences between the factions are also evident in their responses to less visible crises. One example of this behind-the-scenes struggle has been the debate over Trump's repeated threats to launch direct military or missile strikes against Mexican drug cartels on Mexican territory. This hard-line proposal has been enthusiastically embraced by the isolationists around JD Vance, who see it as the literal embodiment of the promise to defend America's borders. They are joined by Rubio’s global hawks, who view military action in Latin America as a classic demonstration of American power inside Washington's geopolitical backyard. Colby's Asia-focused hawks, however, have expressed frustration with such plans, arguing that drawing the Pentagon into a prolonged and resource-intensive counterterrorism campaign on America's doorstep would tie up scarce intelligence assets, special operations forces, and logistical capabilities that are critically needed to deter China in the Taiwan Strait.

An equally fierce conceptual clash is unfolding over technological protectionism and the regulation of artificial intelligence. In this arena, Colby's prioritizers, backed by Silicon Valley defense technology advocates, argue that American defense-tech startups should be granted maximum regulatory freedom while cutting China off from access to advanced semiconductors in order to win the next-generation global arms race. This military-technological approach is directly opposed by Jared Kushner's camp, which views artificial intelligence not as a doomsday weapon but as an unprecedented commercial opportunity. The group is currently working to channel billions of dollars from the sovereign wealth funds of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates into the construction of massive data centers. Such commercial opportunism on the part of the president's son-in-law has infuriated national security hawks of every stripe, who accuse Kushner of being willing to place the critical infrastructure of the future under the de facto control of authoritarian Gulf monarchies for the sake of personal financial gain.

In the long run, experts generally regard Colby's prioritizers as the faction with the greatest staying power. Their narrow focus on the technological competition with China aligns closely with the broad consensus among America's traditional conservatives and the intelligence community.

Rubio's global hawks, for their part, are widely regarded as highly effective bureaucratic operators, capable of skillfully managing the machinery of government. Their vision of the United States as the global policeman, however, is increasingly viewed as outdated and is rapidly losing support within a changing Republican Party.

Kushner's faction, by contrast, is generally seen as having only short-term, opportunistic potential — capable of delivering high-profile but fragile diplomatic successes that could quickly unravel in the face of any major systemic crisis.

Experts assign the lowest marks for governing capacity to the isolationists led by Vance and Carlson. Their overwhelming dependence on Trump's personal favor, along with their internal divisions and lack of experienced personnel to fill senior government positions, leave them highly vulnerable to the institutional weight of Washington's traditional bureaucracy, which has repeatedly managed to reassert control over the actual conduct of White House policy.

Zelensky’s visit to Belgrade took place Saturday, Aug. 8. During the meeting, the two leaders discussed European integration, humanitarian aid, and mutual support.

Vučić assured Zelensky that Ukraine can always count on Belgrade’s backing when it comes to Kyiv’s pursuit of EU membership. More concretely, Belgrade will also allocate around 2 million euros to help restore Ukraine’s energy sector. Zelensky, in turn, said he hoped that “Serbia’s path to the EU will accelerate.”

Vučić also repeated his earlier statements that Serbia supports Ukraine’s territorial integrity and that there are “no buts” on that issue.

Reaction to the visit was mixed. Pro-government media avoided detailed coverage, while activists from the “Serbs for Russians” initiative (known in Serbian as “Srbi za Ruse”), held a protest in the center of Belgrade replete with Russian tricolor flags and portraits of Vladimir Putin.

At a soccer match held the same day, fans of Red Star Belgrade displayed a banner reading: “While you are hosting a Nazi in Belgrade, Serbs are bleeding in crucified Kosovo!” The wording reflects pro-Russian propaganda narratives that falsely portray Ukraine’s government as Nazi, as well as Serbian nationalist rhetoric over Kosovo, whose independence Serbia does not recognize.

Belgrade-based political analyst Djokic told The Insider that the visit itself gives Vučić an opportunity to “demonstrate” to the European Union that he is ready to accommodate European concerns to the extent he believes his domestic political constraints will allow. At the same time, Djokic said, Vučić’s position on Ukraine is essentially aligned with that of Brussels — save for his refusal to impose sanctions on Russia.

“For Russia, this will undoubtedly be painful in terms of prestige, but Moscow currently has no real means to change the situation in Serbia,” Djokic said. “It will have to accept it. At the same time, Vučić’s goal remains the same: to stay a perpetual candidate for EU membership, never bringing the matter to actual accession to the European Union, while also not breaking ties with Brussels.”

For Kyiv, the visit is valuable, as it preserves cooperation in the energy sector via the aid package proposed by Belgrade and because of possible indirect arms supplies, which are extremely important for Ukraine.

In May, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Taras Kachka paid an official visit to Belgrade. It was the second visit to Serbia by a Ukrainian official of that rank since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion.

Vučić visited Kyiv in July to attend the Southeast Europe-Ukraine summit. After the trip, he promised Ukraine additional financial, medical, and energy assistance. At the same time, however, Vučić said he had refused to sign a joint declaration calling for increased pressure on Moscow.

Komin is director of research at the Center for Advanced Governance, a Russian policy research organization.

In his view, the initial decision to register Yabloko may have been made by the presidential administration’s domestic policy department, which oversees Russian election campaigns. Komin said the Kremlin may first have studied closed-door polling and focus group results, including reactions to Yabloko’s main campaign slogan, “For Peace and Freedom.”

“I think that [the presidential administration] looked at some polling that they themselves commission and conduct, and that we do not see publicly,” Komin said. “They tested the slogans that Yabloko was planning to use in focus groups — ‘For Peace and Freedom.’ They looked at the results and understood that the polling showed a fairly small number of votes.”

According to Komin, the presidential administration may have assumed that Yabloko’s vote share could be kept below the 5% necessary for representation in the State Duma — and even below the 3% required to qualify for state funding — via a combination of propaganda, administrative mobilization, and vote-rigging. In that scenario, Yabloko’s participation in the election could itself have benefited the Kremlin, as a defeat for the only registered party with an anti-war platform would have allowed the authorities to present the results as evidence that calls for peace had little public support.

“They realized it would be better to let Yabloko in and make an example of it during the campaign, to show that a very limited number of people support the slogan ‘For Peace and Freedom,’ and that this social group is marginal,” Komin said. “It is a safe way to demonstrate that society is in fact consolidated around the idea of war.”

Komin said that, under that scenario, a strong result for the ruling United Russia party would take on additional significance. The authorities could use it as confirmation of public support for continuing the war, thereby giving the Kremlin extra political legitimacy to implement post-election decisions that would more directly affect the public.

Komin cited the possibility of a new wave of mobilization into the Russian army as one possible example.

“We know that the prospect of mobilization in one form or another is now being actively discussed: hidden mobilization, mobilization into [the] drone forces, mobilization in the form of rotation, or some other options,” he said. “Perhaps such broad legitimacy for the idea of the war is needed for other decisions as well — not only mobilization, but decisions that affect the population more directly and influence people’s social well-being.”

Komin said the initial plan may therefore have been to allow Yabloko to run, ensure its defeat, and then present the election results to Vladimir Putin as proof that society was consolidated around the continuation of the war. Such a course of events could have expanded the space for more radical decisions the Kremlin considers necessary to change the trajectory of events on the battlefield in Ukraine.

According to Komin, the civilian wing of the presidential administration, associated with Sergei Kiriyenko and the domestic policy department, initially approved of Yabloko taking part in the election. But the security wing, which Komin links primarily to the FSB’s Second Service and its head, Alexei Sedov, may have viewed the party’s presence on the ballot as too dangerous.

“Russia’s security structures favor cutting off risks through repression and bans,” Komin said. “The civilian administration more often takes the position that risks are better managed by creating a more complex picture and applying more complex solutions. And those protect against risks much better than blunt bans.”

Komin said Yabloko’s registration and then removal suggest that such a competition really did take place behind the scenes, likening it to the Kremlin’s decision to block Telegram. According to Komin, the civilian wing of the presidential administration opposed blocking the messaging service (or at least opposed making such a move before the election), while security officials took a harder line. Komin also attributes Telegram founder Pavel Durov’s addition to Russia’s list of extremists to developments in the internal Russian power struggle.

Komin sees the State Duma campaign of anti-war politician Boris Nadezhdin, who was barred from running in Russia’s 2024 presidential election, as another similar episode. In his view, the civilian administration may have planned simply to deny Nadezhdin’s registration over problems with signatures, while security officials saw that scenario as too risky after lines of people seeking to support his nomination formed across the country.

“They saw those lines for Nadezhdin last time and did not want to create them under any circumstances,” Komin said. “So they opened the relevant cases against him, which prevented him from running and campaigning, and then pushed him out of the country.”

Nadezhin has fled Russia and now lives in France.

Komin stressed that these political developments do not represent a split inside the government so much as they signal the presence of competition between two approaches to controlling the political space. In his assessment, the advantage has increasingly gone to the security services.

“This is actually not a very good signal, because we see that in all these decisions, at least the ones we know about, the security services are winning,” Komin said. “That means repression as a tool will develop and expand.”

Komin said the presidential administration’s policy approach, which involved preserving a more complex and manageable political landscape rather than relying on direct bans, is clearly falling out of favor with the Kremlin as the full-scale war in Ukraine rages well into its fifth year.

At the hearing, Rodina representatives described those claims in greater detail, arguing, for example, that a photograph of the Hiroshima bombing on Yabloko’s website violated the copyright of the U.S. Army, and that images generated with ChatGPT violated the rights of its developer, OpenAI. No evidence was presented suggesting that the copyright holders themselves ever filed any complaints over the alleged violations.

At the hearing, Yabloko chairman Nikolai Rybakov quoted Vladimir Putin on the need for a ceasefire in the war, saying Yabloko’s position did not contradict the president’s words.

“I want to draw your attention to a quote from President Putin: ‘... We proposed options and rational solutions that could suit everyone in America, Europe, Asia — throughout the world. We believe that it would be worth returning to their substantive discussion in order to formalize the conditions under which a peaceful settlement of the conflict in Ukraine can be achieved — and the sooner, the better.’

So yes, the factual situation is that the Yabloko party believes negotiations are needed, President Putin believes negotiations are needed, and the administrative plaintiff believes this is extremism!”

Before the hearing, dozens of Yabloko supporters gathered outside the Supreme Court. The party’s press office said at least 500 were waiting in line to be allowed in for the proceedings. Yabloko chairman Rybakov and Moscow branch head Kirill Goncharov came to the courthouse as well, but Goncharov was not allowed into the courtroom.

During the protests, police vans arrived outside the courthouse. Some supporters brought apples, a reference to the party’s name and symbol, and chanted pro-Yabloko slogans. At least two young women carrying Yabloko leaflets were taken away “for a conversation” by OMON riot police.

Rodina’s lawsuit was heard by Judge Vyacheslav Kirillov, who previously dissolved the Civil Initiative party, which nominated Boris Nadezhdin for the 2024 presidential election. Kirillov also ruled to designate the International Memorial Public Movement as extremist.

Rodina filed the lawsuit against Yabloko on Aug. 7. Aside from the copyright allegations, Rodina’s representatives argued that Yabloko’s election posts on blocked social media platforms violated campaign rules. The lawsuit equated Yabloko’s anti-war position with calls to violate Russia’s territorial integrity, and its statements against political repression and censorship with extremism.

Yabloko was the only registered party running in the September State Duma election with an anti-war platform. Its campaign slogan is “For Peace and Freedom.”

Rodina chairman Alexei Zhuravlyov, who currently serves as deputy head of the State Duma Defense Committee, had earlier called Yabloko members “national traitors” who should be “driven out” of the election campaign. Representatives of other parties also joined the criticism, with Liberal Democratic Party leader Leonid Slutsky calling for Yabloko to be declared an “undesirable organization,” a Russian legal designation that effectively bans a group’s activities and can lead to criminal prosecution for those who cooperate with it in any way.

Russian opposition figures abroad, including Alexei Navalny’s widow Yulia Navalnaya, had previously spoken out in support of Yabloko. The party distanced itself from those statements, saying that such statements from abroad could lead to candidates being removed from elections in Russia.

Earlier this summer, several Yabloko candidates were denied registration for elections to the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly. Election officials later rejected the party’s entire list. Yabloko was also barred from running in the city council election in Petrozavodsk, the capital of Karelia.

The facility belongs to EMCO, a defense company owned by Bulgarian businessman Emilian Gebrev — a repeated target of operations suspected to have been carried out by the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence agency. The Insider, together with Bellingcat and Der Spiegel, investigated an attempt by GRU officers to poison Gebrev in 2015, as well as explosions at ammunition depots that held munitions intended in part for Ukraine.

Dencho Minev, the mayor of nearby Tryavna, said the fire inside the warehouse compound had been extinguished. All workers were evacuated on EMCO buses. The area was cordoned off, and an operational headquarters was set up at the scene with emergency and law enforcement services present.

The fire spread to forested areas near the facility. Because of the heavy smoke, authorities urged residents of nearby settlements to close windows, use protective masks, and avoid going outside unless necessary. Officials planned to install a mobile air-quality monitoring station in the town of Plachkovtsi. The BG-ALERT emergency warning system was activated in the Gabrovo region. A road near the turnoff to the village of Armyankovtsi was closed. Residents of settlements near the plant were evacuated as a precaution.

The cause of the fire remains under investigation. Bulgarian authorities’ preliminary assessment is that the incident was accidental, not sabotage. Interior Minister Ivan Demerdzhiev said the causes were “most likely internal.”

The incident came two days after another explosion in Bulgaria. On Aug. 8, the country’s prime minister said a drone that had flown in from Romania exploded in Bulgaria approximately one kilometer from a compressor station on the Trans-Balkan gas pipeline.

Bulgaria’s Defense Ministry said it was most likely a Ukrainian Maya decoy drone. Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry said that if the device did belong to Ukraine, it had reached Bulgarian territory unintentionally. Kyiv said it was ready to cooperate with Sofia to establish the circumstances of the incident.

Explosions have hit Gebrev’s warehouses before

The latest fire is far from the first such incident at facilities linked to Gebrev.

In 2014, explosions rang out at warehouses in the Czech village of Vrbetice that contained EMCO ammunition. Two people were killed. Czech authorities later accused officers from GRU Unit 29155 of organizing the act of sabotage. The Insider and Bellingcat investigated the operation in detail and established that the officers who were likely involved subsequently participated in subsequent Russian military intelligence operations in Europe.

In August 2022, a fire broke out at an EMCO arms warehouse near the Bulgarian city of Karnobat. Gebrev said at the time that he considered it to be the result of deliberate arson, ruling out “human error.”

In June 2023, explosions again occurred at the same complex near Karnobat. Local residents reported several powerful blasts at about 1 a.m. No one was injured. The site was closed for an investigation.

The Insider noted at the time that the incidents were taking place against the backdrop of a yearslong series of GRU operations against Gebrev and his business. According to investigations by The Insider and Bellingcat, officers from the GRU’s Unit 29155 tracked the businessman during a period when his company was linked to ammunition supplies to Ukraine. The 2014 explosions at warehouses in Vrbetice were followed by the attempt to poison Gebrev himself in Bulgaria in 2015.

How GRU officers tried to poison Gebrev

In April 2015, Gebrev suddenly lost consciousness during a reception in Sofia, and his son and one of EMCO’s senior executives developed symptoms of severe poisoning. All three had been at the company’s office that morning.

The University of Helsinki laboratory later detected traces of two organophosphates in Gebrev’s body, indicating poisoning with a nerve agent from the Novichok family.

The Insider, Bellingcat, and Der Spiegel established that at least seven GRU officers from Unit 29155 likely took part in the operation against Gebrev. CCTV footage near Gebrev’s office identified GRU officer Denis Sergeev, who used documents in the name of Sergei Fedotov. In 2018, he was also in Britain at the time of the poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal.

Investigators established that a group of GRU officers traveled to Bulgaria at least three times. The first group arrived in February 2015, two months before the poisoning. The second was in the country at the time of the attack — Sergeev and two other suspected GRU officers arrived April 24 and left Bulgaria on April 28, the day Gebrev was poisoned. In May, Sergeev again traveled to the country, after which Gebrev’s condition sharply worsened again, leading to his hospitalization.

The precise motive for the attack has never been definitively established. EMCO exported weapons, supplying arms to Georgia during the 2008 war. In later investigations, The Insider linked the GRU’s interest in Gebrev to ammunition supplies to Ukraine after Russia began its aggression there in 2014.

The count covers only the officially published staff of the Russian Embassy and Russian missions to international organizations. Administrative and technical staff were not included. Some of the identified links are confirmed by previous places of service or employment, while others are based on registered addresses, information about relatives, and other indirect indicators.

Of the 48 employees of the Russian Embassy, at least eight showed signs of links to intelligence agencies. Counselor Evgenii Ambrosii is registered at an SVR departmental building on Vilniusskaya Street in Moscow. Attaché Aleksandr Sobolev received income from military unit 21247, which corresponds to the Foreign Intelligence Academy. Alexander Paloyan received income from SVR military unit 33949.

First Secretary Alexander Golovashkin, military attaché Alexey Fokin, and attaché Stanislav Aleksandridi are linked to GRU addresses and units (Aleksandridi listed the military intelligence headquarters on Khoroshevskoye Highway in Moscow, while Fokin was registered on the grounds of the Senezh Special Purpose Center). Attaché Dmitrii Kramarev worked in the 2000s at the Atlas Scientific and Technical Center, which at the time was under the FSB.

Ambrosii and Golovashkin had already appeared in The Insider’s previous investigation into Russian intelligence activity in Austria. Ambrosii supervised the SVR’s Vienna station on the political intelligence track, while Golovashkin served at the GRU’s Moscow Intelligence Center before arriving in Vienna. In March 2024, a source in Austria’s Foreign Ministry told The Insider that both had been added to the list of personae non gratae. The Insider found that they still appear among embassy staff in the Austrian Foreign Ministry directory updated in August 2026.

Of the 22 employees of Russia’s mission to the OSCE, links to intelligence agencies are suspected in seven cases. Four figures — Counselors Anton Momatyuk and Vitaly Kozlov, First Secretary Sergei Kildyashov, and Second Secretary Alexei Silantyev — used addresses of facilities linked to the GRU and military education. Three other employees previously worked at Defense Ministry institutions or listed addresses belonging to the General Staff, military academies, and military units.

Among 47 employees of Russian missions to other international organizations, signs of links to intelligence agencies were found in five cases. Three of them work at the IAEA. In particular, Sergei Berezin was registered on the grounds of the GRU’s Central Special Communications Hub, while Grigory Krivenchenko received income from military unit 52025, a nuclear weapons arsenal in Mozhaysk. Two other diplomats with possible links to military intelligence represent Russia at U.N. institutions.

Vienna remains one of the most important centers of Russian intelligence activity in Europe. The Financial Times previously reported that Russian diplomatic facilities in the city have become Moscow’s largest signals intelligence platform in the West. According to Austria’s intelligence service, Russian diplomatic missions in Vienna employ around 500 individuals when staff members (who are not included in public lists) are counted. Up to one-third of these nominally lower-level figures may also be involved in espionage.

In May 2026, Austria expelled three Russian diplomats, accusing them of intelligence activity. Austrian authorities did not disclose their names.

Russian investigators said they had opened a criminal case into what they described as a terrorist attack, alleging that Ukraine had struck residential areas and that a child was among the dead.

Tatarstan declared a day of mourning. Additional medical teams were deployed to Nizhnekamsk from the nearby city of Naberezhnye Chelny.

The independent Russian outlet Astra conducted an open source intelligence (OSINT) analysis of one of the published videos and concluded that the Nizhnekamskneftekhim plant was likely attacked. Footage filmed by local residents showed a fire and a column of smoke rising above the industrial zone. The site of the strike had not been officially confirmed at the time Astra released its analysis.

Later, Ukraine’s General Staff confirmed on Telegram that it targeted the TANECO refinery in Nizhnekamsk, while other strikes hit a repair workshop in Khrustalnyi in Ukraine’s Luhansk Region, a logistics warehouse in Novoselivka, and a field artillery depot in Boieve in the Donetsk Region.

The General Staff also clarified the results of previous attacks. It said an AVT-6 crude distillation unit was damaged at the Ilsky refinery in Russia’s Krasnodar Region on Aug. 8, while on Aug. 3 nine aviation fuel tanks were destroyed and two aircraft hangars damaged at the Hvardiiske airfield in annexed Crimea.

Last night’s attack extended beyond Tatarstan. Russia’s Defense Ministry said 456 drones were intercepted over 16 Russian regions and annexed Crimea. The ministry did not say how many drones were intercepted over Tatarstan itself.

Ukraine has intensified strikes on Russian oil refineries in recent months, contributing to severe fuel shortages across many parts of Russia and Russian-occupied Ukraine, though authorities claim that most early disruptions have been resolved.

Kyiv says the campaign is intended to make ordinary Russians feel the cost of Moscow’s war. Russia has turned to fuel imports from countries like Belarus and South Korea to shore up supplies.

Nizhnekamskneftekhim, one of Europe’s largest petrochemical plants, is part of the Sibur holding company. It produces rubber, plastics, ethylene, and other petrochemical products. It ranks among the world’s 10 largest producers of synthetic rubber.

The Nizhnekamsk industrial zone, which also contains the TANECO and TAIF-NK oil refineries, has been attacked by Ukraine several times. In June, Ukraine’s General Staff said it had struck both refineries, and The Insider detected a fire in the industrial zone using data from the satellite-based fire monitoring system NASA FIRMS. In early July, Astra speculated that a drone captured on video had crashed on the grounds of TAIF-NK.

“We have begun returning [our] specialists to the construction site of the Bushehr nuclear power plant. The first five engineering and technical staff members have already arrived at our residential settlement and begun carrying out their professional duties,” Likhachev said, adding that a total of 25 Russian specialists are now at the plant.

Rosatom reported in early April that it was evacuating its employees and their families from Bushehr.

“We are completing the planned evacuation of our employees. More than 200 people will leave the plant this week — this is the final group,” Likhachev said at the time.

The Russians were evacuated after the United States and Israel launched a military operation against Iran in late February. Iranian authorities reported shelling at the nuclear plant on several occasions.

Bushehr, Iran’s first nuclear power plant, was built with Russian involvement in the southern city of Bushehr. Its first reactor was completed in 2013, while the second and third units are still under construction. As of 2025, approximately 500 Russians were working there.