U.S. President Donald Trump said he is open to a three-way meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping, Reuters reported.
“If President Xi wants to have it, I’d have it,” Trump said.
He said the meeting could focus on nuclear disarmament. “We would have it to talk about nuclear weapons and denuclearization,” Trump told reporters.
On October 19, sources told The Wall Street Journal that Putin had proposed a three-way summit with Trump and Xi to discuss Ukraine. Putin reportedly wants to negotiate an end to the war on terms favorable to Moscow, without Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky taking part. Beijing has indicated that it would not object if Trump agrees to the meeting, the Journal’s sources said.
In recent weeks, Trump has renewed pressure on Ukraine, demanding that it stop striking Russian oil refineries, hold a presidential election, and reach an agreement with Russia. Trump has also authorized imports of Russian diesel fuel into the United States and decided against imposing “sanctions from hell” on Russia.
It is unclear exactly why Trump decided to escalate tensions with Ukraine. He is thought to have agreed to the diesel deal with Putin to appease Americans unhappy with rising diesel prices caused by the U.S. war with Iran and to improve his approval ratings ahead of congressional elections. Trump himself maintains that he simply does not want to “push” Russia “away” from peace talks with Ukraine.
At Meduza, we are committed to transparency about our use of artificial intelligence in the newsroom. The story you’re reading was written by one of our living, breathing journalists and translated from Russian using an AI model configured to follow our strict editorial standards. This translation process is the result of extensive testing and refinements to ensure our English-language coverage is timely and accurate. A Meduza editor reviews every draft before publication.
If you find any errors in this translation, please contact us at reports@meduza.io.
U.S. President Donald Trump said he is open to a three-way meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping, Reuters reported.
“If President Xi wants to have it, I’d have it,” Trump said.
He said the meeting could focus on nuclear disarmament. “We would have it to talk about nuclear weapons and denuclearization,” Trump told reporters.
On October 19, sources told The Wall Street Journal that Putin had proposed a three-way summit with Trump and Xi to discuss Ukraine. Putin reportedly wants to negotiate an end to the war on terms favorable to Moscow, without Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky taking part. Beijing has indicated that it would not object if Trump agrees to the meeting, the Journal’s sources said.
In recent weeks, Trump has renewed pressure on Ukraine, demanding that it stop striking Russian oil refineries, hold a presidential election, and reach an agreement with Russia. Trump has also authorized imports of Russian diesel fuel into the United States and decided against imposing “sanctions from hell” on Russia.
It is unclear exactly why Trump decided to escalate tensions with Ukraine. He is thought to have agreed to the diesel deal with Putin to appease Americans unhappy with rising diesel prices caused by the U.S. war with Iran and to improve his approval ratings ahead of congressional elections. Trump himself maintains that he simply does not want to “push” Russia “away” from peace talks with Ukraine.
At Meduza, we are committed to transparency about our use of artificial intelligence in the newsroom. The story you’re reading was written by one of our living, breathing journalists and translated from Russian using an AI model configured to follow our strict editorial standards. This translation process is the result of extensive testing and refinements to ensure our English-language coverage is timely and accurate. A Meduza editor reviews every draft before publication.
If you find any errors in this translation, please contact us at reports@meduza.io.
Russian forces used a drone to strike the central park in Nova Vodolaha, a town in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region, said Ivan Vyhivskyi, head of Ukraine’s Interior Ministry.
Six people were killed: a man, three women, and two girls. One girl was 11, and the other was just over a year old, said Oleh Syniehubov, head of the Kharkiv regional military administration.
Another 15 people were wounded, including seven children, he said.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the younger girl was named Angelina. Her mother, Inna, also died. Zelensky said a Shahed drone struck the park.
At Meduza, we are committed to transparency about our use of artificial intelligence in the newsroom. The story you’re reading was written by one of our living, breathing journalists and translated from Russian using an AI model configured to follow our strict editorial standards. This translation process is the result of extensive testing and refinements to ensure our English-language coverage is timely and accurate. A Meduza editor reviews every draft before publication.
If you find any errors in this translation, please contact us at reports@meduza.io.
Russian forces used a drone to strike the central park in Nova Vodolaha, a town in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region, said Ivan Vyhivskyi, head of Ukraine’s Interior Ministry.
Six people were killed: a man, three women, and two girls. One girl was 11, and the other was just over a year old, said Oleh Syniehubov, head of the Kharkiv regional military administration.
Another 15 people were wounded, including seven children, he said.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the younger girl was named Angelina. Her mother, Inna, also died. Zelensky said a Shahed drone struck the park.
At Meduza, we are committed to transparency about our use of artificial intelligence in the newsroom. The story you’re reading was written by one of our living, breathing journalists and translated from Russian using an AI model configured to follow our strict editorial standards. This translation process is the result of extensive testing and refinements to ensure our English-language coverage is timely and accurate. A Meduza editor reviews every draft before publication.
If you find any errors in this translation, please contact us at reports@meduza.io.
Meduza is 12! When we were just starting out in 2014, the world was a very different place — no COVID, no President Trump, no mass exodus of Russians. Russia’s war against Ukraine had already begun, though, and of course there was Putin (who had been in power long before that). What will the world and Russia be like in 12 years? And what would you like them to be like? We put these questions to 12 people we trust.
Galina Timchenko, Meduza co-founder and publisher
The honest answer to this question sounds pretty harsh, but what can you do: “I don’t know.” No, it’s worse than that: “Nobody knows.”
There are too many variables, too many forks in the road. We’re still managing a precarious balancing act, but the risk of tumbling into catastrophe is greater than ever. Some things are obvious, like the AI “big bang”; others are less so, like the “rightward turn” in many countries.
Making predictions is a thankless business. My only hope is that in 12 years, no one will remember them.
As for what I’d like the world to be like in 12 years, John Lennon put it best in his famous song “Imagine.”
Boris Grebenshchikov, musician
Fortunately, I cannot see the future at all, and I wouldn’t want to, because it depends on how we act now. We can only act authentically by listening to our hearts. Knowing the future would keep us from acting sincerely, as our hearts tell us to.
Lyubov Sobol, politician
I see Russia as a wonderful country. Without wars. Without restrictions. With leaders elected by its own citizens, working to make people’s lives better: so they can live happily, grow, work and earn a living, raise children, and think about the future, rather than struggle to survive in a toxic present. With advanced technology, high-quality healthcare and education, and a commitment to protecting the environment and ensuring everyone’s well-being.
A country that builds partnerships with its neighbors and with countries willing to work with us. Without coercion, blackmail, or threats, and to everyone’s benefit. Russia is neither an appendage of the West nor a colony of China. We can learn from other countries’ mistakes and successes while finding our own way. Right now, we’re falling behind in everything, from the AI race to human rights, but why can’t we succeed at both? Russia can be a wonderful country. That’s worth fighting for.
Maria Kolomychenko, journalist at The Bell who researches technology and internet restrictions
It’s hard for me to predict the future more than a decade ahead, but I’ll try. I’ll focus on a subject I’ve covered for years: how governments regulate the internet. I’ll be only too happy if this prediction doesn’t come true =)
Given current trends, I expect the line between how democracies and autocracies regulate the internet to blur by 2038. Experiments with “digital sovereignty,” partial restrictions on minors’ internet access, and surveillance through lawful interception (in other words, the same thing as Russia’s SORM surveillance system) — all of this is already happening in European and other democratic countries. The technologies used to exert control and the arguments for using them increasingly resemble those employed by authoritarian states such as Russia.
As a result, children growing up now and those born in the next few years will probably never know an anonymous, truly free internet — in Russia, and possibly in Europe and the U.S. as well. They’ll learn from books that people once used the internet without having to show ID every time they logged in, and without fearing that every action and every like could be traced back to them.
Artificial intelligence will bring many benefits, but also new problems — and we’re already seeing the first signs. Government agencies responsible for censorship and repression are already trying to incorporate AI into their work. Over the next decade, Russia will probably use it increasingly for mass surveillance of internet users, primarily to automate the analysis of the vast amounts of data collected by SORM and other government systems.
The question is whether Europe will use these technologies the same way Russia does, or whether it will manage to draw a line between security and total surveillance. I don’t have an answer.
Georgy Trishkin, rocket launch analyst and author of the Telegram channel Tekhassky Vestnik (The Texas Herald)
Predicting the future is a thankless task, but let’s assume that in 12 years, high-speed satellite internet will be commonplace and having no internet on a plane will be a thing of the past. Streams of tens of thousands of satellites will be visible in the night sky, and reusable rocket launches will happen daily, if not hourly. Several private and national space stations will replace the International Space Station, but the militarization of space will recall the frenzy of the 1980s.
By then, astronauts from the United States, China and Europe will have landed on the Moon, perhaps joined by Russians or Japanese astronauts taking part in other countries’ missions. And Mars? It will still be inhabited by robots, but scientists on Earth will already be studying samples of its soil. The world will see both the metallic core of a protoplanet and the methane glaciers of Titan, and witness Apophis’s close approach. Both Voyager probes will, sadly, fall silent after a half-century mission. Sightings of passing interstellar objects will become more common, and they’ll continue to fuel conspiracy theories. We’re unlikely to find traces of other life or discover the nature of our own, but as before, we’ll be one step closer. What matters, though, is that the next 12 years, like the last 12, pass without any loss of human life in orbit.
Anton Dolin, film critic
Probably David Lynch’s famous quote: “I’m wearing dark glasses today because I’m seeing the future, and it’s looking very bright.”
Asya Zolnikova, architecture journalist and art historian
According to the U.N., two-thirds of the world’s population will live in cities by the middle of the 21st century. Cities will be even bigger and more crowded, and competition for housing, education, and healthcare will intensify. Everyone has to decide for themselves what to do about that, but it’s certainly something to prepare for.
Now for the second part of the question — what I’d like Russia to be like.
I’ve lived in Moscow all my life and saw the city change for the better in the 2010s. But at the same time, restrictions and repression kept growing. I vividly remember the day in 2012 when members of Pussy Riot were sentenced — I was already working as a news reporter then. The two-year sentence completely threw the newsroom. It was a shock. After work, I went to the Oktyabrskaya subway station, near where I was living at the time, and saw that part of Muzeon Park had reopened after renovations, with landscaping and pavilions unlike anything we’d seen before. I don’t remember whether the ship Bryusov was there yet, but it certainly was a couple of years later, when things in Russia had gotten even worse. I walked along, thinking about that two-year sentence, unable to understand how all of this could exist side by side: the sentence was handed down at Moscow’s Khamovniki District Court, just a couple of kilometers from the park.
I’ve lost some of my idealism since then, but I’d really like beautiful parks and architecture to stop being a consolation or a smokescreen.
Maria Moskaleva, a student who left Russia after being persecuted over an antiwar drawing
Many readers may be hoping to find pure, childlike optimism here — touching visions of a happy future for Russia and a world that still has a chance at a decent, rational future.
But I had to take off my rose-colored glasses long ago. I had to face reality — its cruelty and uncomfortable truths, and the candor that people so rarely show.
It seems to me that Russia has no hope left. There are too few people who care about life itself — and I want to remind you how much that word means. And even that small percentage of people can’t truly change, or even shake, what has taken hold in the country. What hope there is lies with young people capable of clear thinking.
A fascist regime has seized control of Russia. Thousands, hundreds of thousands of shattered lives. Poverty. Wars. Illegally seized territories. But behind all of this, there is one cause that seems to me the most important. How people think.
Not everyone becomes truly human simply by being born. What makes us human is the path we take through life. A path toward the kind of thoughtful reasoning society badly needs. But while this problem has deep historical roots in Russia, things don’t look much better in the rest of the world. Just look around, read the international press, and see what’s happening.
It’s hard for me to imagine how many years, decades, or even centuries will have to pass before Russia can be called a free and democratic country, before tens of thousands of people finally wake up and rise up against the bloodstained regime. That takes a leader.
People no longer understand words whose meanings should be impossible to forget.
Love. Happiness. Goodness.
Without understanding what these words mean, people continue to support bloodshed, their own humiliation, and the destruction of their loved ones’ lives.
The world is changing in complicated ways, but certainly not for the better. Money dictates everything. Too many people in power don’t care about human lives, and that trend can only grow stronger.
I won’t make predictions or guess at the future. But there will never be heaven on earth. There will never be a time of perfect harmony, complete tranquility, happiness and well-being. No. That world doesn’t exist and never will.
And yet the most frightening thing is something else: we’re driving ourselves deeper and deeper into the abyss. Every day. With our actions, words, and thoughts.
We have only ourselves to blame for what happens around us and for the suffering we endure.
And so there’s no point anymore in shouting, “Come to your senses!”
It’s too late.
Though I’d like to believe it isn’t.
Angelina Davydova, environmental journalist
I want to see a more peaceful, calmer world with greater solidarity, where people and governments in different countries work to solve global problems, including climate change, biodiversity loss, plastic pollution, inequality, and treatment for rare diseases.
A world where humanity works across borders on comprehensive solutions to environmental and social problems, while trying to build a new system of economic and social governance that doesn’t deplete resources, pollute the environment, or deepen inequality. A world where people have the resources, energy, opportunities and time to pursue these goals without facing threats to their lives, freedom, or health.
But we probably won’t see such dramatic changes for the better in 12 years. For now, many parts of the world seem to be heading toward destruction instead: International relations and agreements, international organizations, and joint efforts to solve problems are breaking down. Ongoing wars and conflicts, new races for resources, the rise of authoritarianism and other undemocratic forms of government amid political crises in traditional democracies, growing social inequality and divisions within societies, and the lack of real action on global environmental problems are all pushing many parts of the world further toward the destruction of existing political, social, civic, and international structures.
I very much hope that this period of upheaval and destruction, as the world we know disappears, will eventually hit rock bottom, after which countries and regions will try to begin a new era of renewal, joint action, and cooperation. I’d like to see that new world. For now, we can only guess what it might look like.
Dmitry Kuznets, Meduza’s military analyst
The future, as physicists and philosophers tell us, is fundamentally unpredictable. Yet many people try anyway, passing off outcomes they consider likely as certainties. I’m not comfortable making forecasts, but if you insist, I’ll give it a try too.
In a short-term forecast — and 12 years isn’t far off — the likeliest outcomes are those in which the world doesn’t change very much. After all, it’s barely changed in the past 12 years: The Russian army was fighting in Ukraine in 2014, too; Meduza was working out of Latvia, and most of its readers were in Russia.
There are differences, of course. The war between Russia and Ukraine will be over by 2038. But, alas, Russia has already mortgaged its future — in every sense — to fight it, and no “victory,” whatever that word is supposed to mean, will get it out of that debt trap.
We can, of course, hope (or fear) that artificial general intelligence will sweep everything away like a mighty hurricane and let every country and society start with a clean slate. (What’s a 12-year forecast without AI?) But here, too, it’s better to make a cautious prediction: Don’t expect AI to solve all the mysteries of the universe, dramatically increase labor productivity, or wipe out all of humanity and put us all out of work.
AI advances will be adopted fastest in warfare: We’ll almost certainly soon see vast numbers of fully autonomous drones deciding for themselves whether to kill. That will certainly happen before people trust AI to fly commercial airliners or perform other safety-critical tasks.
What the AI industry will take from us is money. In the U.S., capital investment in this sector already exceeds investment in all other industries combined. News organizations are especially vulnerable: Their reporting is already being taken without compensation and delivered to paying users by AI agents. We’ll be sure to discuss all of this on Meduza in 12 years.
Whatever the world is like in 12 years, I hope we’ll still be able to explore it in all its beautiful and terrible diversity. I’d like to believe that efforts to correct globalization’s mistakes won’t lead to closed borders, and that technological progress won’t exclude people from pursuing knowledge.
Apart from that, progress has so far made the world better and more interesting (even if many people disagree), and there’s no reason to think that trend will change by 2038.
Alexey Uvarov, historian
How inevitable a good or bad future seems depends in large part on how we feel at the time. In the fall of 1940, for instance, hundreds of thousands of Londoners endured constant bombing by the Nazi Luftwaffe and later lived to see the Beatles and the Moon landing. How much of that future could they possibly have imagined back in 1940?
The thing is, we’ve grown used to living in a world that’s moving in the “right” direction, a world destined for progress. But for millennia, humanity lived in a different kind of world, including one that saw two world wars, genocides, the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the nuclear disasters at Chornobyl and Fukushima. None of these terrible tragedies condemned future generations to eternal suffering, though the suffering of those who lived through these horrors is immeasurable.
Perhaps that’s where our hope lies: Neither the “course of history” nor the “logic of human development” makes progress or self-destruction inevitable. It all depends on us — on people — and recognizing our power to shape events can help restore our faith in the future.
In hindsight, we tend to see many tragic events as inevitable, but in fact nothing is predetermined. So we shouldn’t expect either flying cars or the ashes of a nuclear apocalypse in 2038. It will be a new, changing world, in some ways less balanced and less predictable than ours.
But the question is what we ourselves can do for our future, rather than which direction the world is heading. I believe and hope that the world in 2038 will be a place where everyone takes more responsibility for their own life and future.
Galina Yuzefovich, literary critic
From where we stand today, it’s hard to imagine a bright future, but I’ll try.
By 2038, even if the world hasn’t entirely abandoned the idea of war as a way to resolve differences (that’s too much to hope for), it will at least have entered another long period of relative peace.
Clearly, artificial intelligence isn’t going anywhere (though as a natural-born Luddite and technological pessimist, I wouldn’t mind if it did). But I’m almost certain that agreements setting standards for AI use will be reached before long, so I’m not worried about a machine uprising or a total catastrophe in the job market (including creative work) by 2038.
As for my own field, I think we’ll very soon see intellectualism and serious reading come back into fashion. In fact, that’s already happening, but I see it as a “long-term trend” that won’t run out of steam in 12 years — it will gather strength instead. Society will inevitably celebrate print books, long novels, and the slower pleasures of sustained attention, while Instagram Reels and other “fast” content will become a little embarrassing, like fast food.
I’ll take the liberty of referring readers to John Lennon’s song “Imagine,” which expresses my ideals best, and focus on books. I very much want to believe that by 2038, reading will really be back in fashion — that it will return not just as an activity society approves of (in that sense, it will definitely come back — it’s already coming back), but as something more. That books will once again be at the center of public attention, that people won’t just put them on shelves and take pretty photos of them, but actually read them, discuss them, and share them with one another.
With all the enormous upheavals we’re witnessing, and those we can only foresee for now, this may seem like a trivial detail and wishful thinking on the part of someone who simply loves to read. But I really am convinced that reading is what allows both individuals and humanity as a species to maintain a certain depth and complexity.
Books also foster empathy and provide a foundation for constructive, civil debate — something a genuinely democratic society cannot exist without. In the future I hope to see, reading will matter again — both as an individual pursuit and a shared social activity.
At Meduza, we are committed to transparency about our use of artificial intelligence in the newsroom. The story you’re reading was written by one of our living, breathing journalists and translated from Russian using an AI model configured to follow our strict editorial standards. This translation process is the result of extensive testing and refinements to ensure our English-language coverage is timely and accurate. A Meduza editor reviews every draft before publication.
If you find any errors in this translation, please contact us at reports@meduza.io.
Grozny’s Akhmatovsky District Court fined St. Petersburg resident Lena Patyayeva 150,000 rubles for holding a solo picket on the third anniversary of the disappearance of her friend Seda Suleimanova, a Chechen woman, according to a post on Chechnya’s Supreme Court website.
The post does not identify the person fined, but Mediazona reported that it was Patyayeva.
The court found her guilty of a repeat violation of protest laws under Article 20.2, Part 8 of Russia’s Code of Administrative Offenses. In November 2025, Patyayeva was sentenced to nine days in jail under the same provision for a solo picket.
Lena Patyayeva held a solo picket in Grozny on August 23, 2026. She stood at a monument to fallen journalists, holding a sign that read “I demand an investigation into the murder of Seda Suleimanova” and, in Chechen, “Where is Seda?” Patyayeva was detained shortly afterward.
Seda Suleimanova fled her relatives in 2022 because they were planning to force her into marriage. She lived in St. Petersburg. In August 2023, police officers came to her apartment and told her she was suspected of stealing jewelry worth 150,000 rubles, following a complaint from her mother. They detained her, took her back to Chechnya against her will, and handed her over to her relatives. A few days later, Chechnya’s human rights ombudsman, Mansur Soltayev, published a photograph and a video of Suleimanova. She has not been seen since.
In February 2024, the SK SOS project reported that Suleimanova might have been killed by her relatives. Shortly after a public campaign demanding that she be found, Russia’s Investigative Committee opened a murder investigation. In May 2025, authorities declared Suleimanova a missing person and launched a search for her.
At Meduza, we are committed to transparency about our use of artificial intelligence in the newsroom. The story you’re reading was written by one of our living, breathing journalists and translated from Russian using an AI model configured to follow our strict editorial standards. This translation process is the result of extensive testing and refinements to ensure our English-language coverage is timely and accurate. A Meduza editor reviews every draft before publication.
If you find any errors in this translation, please contact us at reports@meduza.io.
Grozny’s Akhmatovsky District Court fined St. Petersburg resident Lena Patyayeva 150,000 rubles for holding a solo picket on the third anniversary of the disappearance of her friend Seda Suleimanova, a Chechen woman, according to a post on Chechnya’s Supreme Court website.
The post does not identify the person fined, but Mediazona reported that it was Patyayeva.
The court found her guilty of a repeat violation of protest laws under Article 20.2, Part 8 of Russia’s Code of Administrative Offenses. In November 2025, Patyayeva was sentenced to nine days in jail under the same provision for a solo picket.
Lena Patyayeva held a solo picket in Grozny on August 23, 2026. She stood at a monument to fallen journalists, holding a sign that read “I demand an investigation into the murder of Seda Suleimanova” and, in Chechen, “Where is Seda?” Patyayeva was detained shortly afterward.
Seda Suleimanova fled her relatives in 2022 because they were planning to force her into marriage. She lived in St. Petersburg. In August 2023, police officers came to her apartment and told her she was suspected of stealing jewelry worth 150,000 rubles, following a complaint from her mother. They detained her, took her back to Chechnya against her will, and handed her over to her relatives. A few days later, Chechnya’s human rights ombudsman, Mansur Soltayev, published a photograph and a video of Suleimanova. She has not been seen since.
In February 2024, the SK SOS project reported that Suleimanova might have been killed by her relatives. Shortly after a public campaign demanding that she be found, Russia’s Investigative Committee opened a murder investigation. In May 2025, authorities declared Suleimanova a missing person and launched a search for her.
At Meduza, we are committed to transparency about our use of artificial intelligence in the newsroom. The story you’re reading was written by one of our living, breathing journalists and translated from Russian using an AI model configured to follow our strict editorial standards. This translation process is the result of extensive testing and refinements to ensure our English-language coverage is timely and accurate. A Meduza editor reviews every draft before publication.
If you find any errors in this translation, please contact us at reports@meduza.io.
“Imperium,” a documentary by Sergei Loznitsa, won the best film award at the British Film Institute’s 70th London Film Festival.
“Imperium” consists of archival footage shot by Italian documentary filmmakers in the Soviet Union in the 1970s. Loznitsa discovered the footage at the Audiovisual Archive of the Workers’ and Democratic Movement in Rome. The film opens with a parade on Red Square, then moves to other regions of the country to show everyday life and celebrations.
The jury said “Imperium” offers a fresh perspective on life in the Soviet Union before its collapse. “The film offers a broad view of life in a country with an extraordinarily diverse social and cultural landscape, many aspects of which have rarely appeared on-screen,” it said in a statement.
At Meduza, we are committed to transparency about our use of artificial intelligence in the newsroom. The story you’re reading was written by one of our living, breathing journalists and translated from Russian using an AI model configured to follow our strict editorial standards. This translation process is the result of extensive testing and refinements to ensure our English-language coverage is timely and accurate. A Meduza editor reviews every draft before publication.
If you find any errors in this translation, please contact us at reports@meduza.io.
“Imperium,” a documentary by Sergei Loznitsa, won the best film award at the British Film Institute’s 70th London Film Festival.
“Imperium” consists of archival footage shot by Italian documentary filmmakers in the Soviet Union in the 1970s. Loznitsa discovered the footage at the Audiovisual Archive of the Workers’ and Democratic Movement in Rome. The film opens with a parade on Red Square, then moves to other regions of the country to show everyday life and celebrations.
The jury said “Imperium” offers a fresh perspective on life in the Soviet Union before its collapse. “The film offers a broad view of life in a country with an extraordinarily diverse social and cultural landscape, many aspects of which have rarely appeared on-screen,” it said in a statement.
At Meduza, we are committed to transparency about our use of artificial intelligence in the newsroom. The story you’re reading was written by one of our living, breathing journalists and translated from Russian using an AI model configured to follow our strict editorial standards. This translation process is the result of extensive testing and refinements to ensure our English-language coverage is timely and accurate. A Meduza editor reviews every draft before publication.
If you find any errors in this translation, please contact us at reports@meduza.io.
The U.S. and Ukrainian presidents have continued their long-distance war of words. Donald Trump wrote on social media that Volodymyr Zelensky “doesn’t want to end this war.”
“[W]ith all of the money that Europe is famously giving him, and that Crooked Joe Biden gave him in the past, he doesn’t want to end this war, and probably never did,” Trump said on his social media platform, Truth Social.
The U.S. president said Zelensky could have “made a better deal two years ago than he can now.” “His country is in shambles, a large portion of his land is lost,” Trump said. He also said Ukraine had lost access to seas and oceans and that its male population had shrunk — “wounded, and/or dead.”
U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Zelensky “presents a false binary” by linking an end to the war with a Ukrainian victory. “The war must end, and that will be with some kind of a negotiated settlement, and President Trump is working on that every day. He’s done it since he came into office,” Bessent said in an interview with NBC News.
He also urged Zelensky to “be very careful” about accusing the United States of restricting Starlink in Ukraine. Bessent said those claims were untrue.
Zelensky said Ukraine, rather than Russia, was being pressured to make concessions. “I believe steps have been taken to convince Ukraine to capitulate,” Zelensky said in an interview with Bloomberg.
I’m not saying that’s what our partners are trying to achieve. I don’t want to think our American partners believe the war can end sooner at Ukraine’s expense. But that’s how it looks.
Zelensky again said the United States had deliberately slowed Starlink service in Ukraine, putting Ukrainian military operations at risk, and was also delaying deliveries of missiles for Patriot air defense systems.
“My latest model was: We don’t target Russian diesel, you give us missiles for Patriot systems to protect our facilities. But they just want us to stop attacking diesel. And if we strike that, they will disconnect us from something,” Zelensky said.
The Ukrainian president tied the U.S. actions to the November midterm elections, in which Trump is trying to shore up his Republican Party. “Politics is very aggressive during election time,” he said. “I think it is agony now, but after elections, life will continue, and I believe it will be calmer.”
The war in photographs: The aftermath of a strike on Kyiv
As Trump and Zelensky trade barbs over who should make concessions to end the war, Russian forces continue to strike Kyiv every day. Ukraine receives no advance warning of the strikes.
Kyiv. October 19, 2026A damaged shopping center in Kyiv. October 19, 2026A confectionery shop after a Russian strike. Kyiv. October 19, 2026A clothing store after a Russian strike. Kyiv, October 19, 2026A damaged subway station in Kyiv. October 19, 2026
At Meduza, we are committed to transparency about our use of artificial intelligence in the newsroom. The story you’re reading was written by one of our living, breathing journalists and translated from Russian using an AI model configured to follow our strict editorial standards. This translation process is the result of extensive testing and refinements to ensure our English-language coverage is timely and accurate. A Meduza editor reviews every draft before publication.
If you find any errors in this translation, please contact us at reports@meduza.io.
The U.S. and Ukrainian presidents have continued their long-distance war of words. Donald Trump wrote on social media that Volodymyr Zelensky “doesn’t want to end this war.”
“[W]ith all of the money that Europe is famously giving him, and that Crooked Joe Biden gave him in the past, he doesn’t want to end this war, and probably never did,” Trump said on his social media platform, Truth Social.
The U.S. president said Zelensky could have “made a better deal two years ago than he can now.” “His country is in shambles, a large portion of his land is lost,” Trump said. He also said Ukraine had lost access to seas and oceans and that its male population had shrunk — “wounded, and/or dead.”
U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Zelensky “presents a false binary” by linking an end to the war with a Ukrainian victory. “The war must end, and that will be with some kind of a negotiated settlement, and President Trump is working on that every day. He’s done it since he came into office,” Bessent said in an interview with NBC News.
He also urged Zelensky to “be very careful” about accusing the United States of restricting Starlink in Ukraine. Bessent said those claims were untrue.
Zelensky said Ukraine, rather than Russia, was being pressured to make concessions. “I believe steps have been taken to convince Ukraine to capitulate,” Zelensky said in an interview with Bloomberg.
I’m not saying that’s what our partners are trying to achieve. I don’t want to think our American partners believe the war can end sooner at Ukraine’s expense. But that’s how it looks.
Zelensky again said the United States had deliberately slowed Starlink service in Ukraine, putting Ukrainian military operations at risk, and was also delaying deliveries of missiles for Patriot air defense systems.
“My latest model was: We don’t target Russian diesel, you give us missiles for Patriot systems to protect our facilities. But they just want us to stop attacking diesel. And if we strike that, they will disconnect us from something,” Zelensky said.
The Ukrainian president tied the U.S. actions to the November midterm elections, in which Trump is trying to shore up his Republican Party. “Politics is very aggressive during election time,” he said. “I think it is agony now, but after elections, life will continue, and I believe it will be calmer.”
The war in photographs: The aftermath of a strike on Kyiv
As Trump and Zelensky trade barbs over who should make concessions to end the war, Russian forces continue to strike Kyiv every day. Ukraine receives no advance warning of the strikes.
Kyiv. October 19, 2026A damaged shopping center in Kyiv. October 19, 2026A confectionery shop after a Russian strike. Kyiv. October 19, 2026A clothing store after a Russian strike. Kyiv, October 19, 2026A damaged subway station in Kyiv. October 19, 2026
At Meduza, we are committed to transparency about our use of artificial intelligence in the newsroom. The story you’re reading was written by one of our living, breathing journalists and translated from Russian using an AI model configured to follow our strict editorial standards. This translation process is the result of extensive testing and refinements to ensure our English-language coverage is timely and accurate. A Meduza editor reviews every draft before publication.
If you find any errors in this translation, please contact us at reports@meduza.io.
Wagner fighters escort CAR President Faustin-Archange Touadéra, July 17, 2023
After Yevgeny Prigozhin’s death, Russian authorities took control of the Wagner Group and created the Defense Ministry’s Africa Corps, which was supposed to take command of Wagner’s mercenaries in Africa. But Prigozhin’s son Pavel managed to retain control of Wagner fighters in the Central African Republic (CAR) and expand his father’s business, The Wall Street Journal reported.
CAR President Faustin-Archange Touadéra helped him by asking the Kremlin not to replace Wagner fighters with Russian Defense Ministry troops, the newspaper reported. Touadéra integrated Prigozhin’s mercenaries into the country’s police, army, and intelligence units.
About 500 Wagner fighters are based in the capital, Bangui. They guard the president, fight rebels, and make money from gold mining and trafficking in drugs and weapons, the Journal reported.
The younger Prigozhin controls the CAR’s largest gold deposit, which generates $250 million a year. Local authorities help ship the gold abroad by labeling it as government property. Over the past three months, shipments have gone through Belarus, according to the newspaper.
Prigozhin also controls a substantial share of the local tramadol market and sells weapons to rebel groups in Sudan and Libya. Wagner also produces vodka and beer in the CAR.
In total, the Prigozhin family earns more than $400 million a year, according to an estimate by the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime.
Experts who spoke to the Journal believe an agreement with the Kremlin may have helped the younger Prigozhin strengthen his position in the CAR. The Wagner Group also owns radio stations in the country that broadcast anti-Western propaganda, glorify Touadéra, and praise Russia, the newspaper reported.
Pavel Prigozhin lives in St. Petersburg but regularly visits Bangui, according to the Journal. During these visits, he stays at the Ledger Plaza hotel, which has effectively become Wagner’s headquarters in the CAR. Fighters armed with assault rifles guard the hotel grounds, and even senior government officials go through security checks to meet him.
Pavel was 25 when his father died in August 2023. He inherited his father’s entire estate, valued at 12 billion rubles.
The elder Prigozhin was also survived by his wife, two daughters, and mother. Under the will, Pavel was required to provide them with a “decent standard of living.” The news outlet Port, citing an unnamed source, claimed that Pavel’s unwillingness to share the inheritance had caused a family dispute.
At Meduza, we are committed to transparency about our use of artificial intelligence in the newsroom. The story you’re reading was written by one of our living, breathing journalists and translated from Russian using an AI model configured to follow our strict editorial standards. This translation process is the result of extensive testing and refinements to ensure our English-language coverage is timely and accurate. A Meduza editor reviews every draft before publication.
If you find any errors in this translation, please contact us at reports@meduza.io.
Wagner fighters escort CAR President Faustin-Archange Touadéra, July 17, 2023
After Yevgeny Prigozhin’s death, Russian authorities took control of the Wagner Group and created the Defense Ministry’s Africa Corps, which was supposed to take command of Wagner’s mercenaries in Africa. But Prigozhin’s son Pavel managed to retain control of Wagner fighters in the Central African Republic (CAR) and expand his father’s business, The Wall Street Journal reported.
CAR President Faustin-Archange Touadéra helped him by asking the Kremlin not to replace Wagner fighters with Russian Defense Ministry troops, the newspaper reported. Touadéra integrated Prigozhin’s mercenaries into the country’s police, army, and intelligence units.
About 500 Wagner fighters are based in the capital, Bangui. They guard the president, fight rebels, and make money from gold mining and trafficking in drugs and weapons, the Journal reported.
The younger Prigozhin controls the CAR’s largest gold deposit, which generates $250 million a year. Local authorities help ship the gold abroad by labeling it as government property. Over the past three months, shipments have gone through Belarus, according to the newspaper.
Prigozhin also controls a substantial share of the local tramadol market and sells weapons to rebel groups in Sudan and Libya. Wagner also produces vodka and beer in the CAR.
In total, the Prigozhin family earns more than $400 million a year, according to an estimate by the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime.
Experts who spoke to the Journal believe an agreement with the Kremlin may have helped the younger Prigozhin strengthen his position in the CAR. The Wagner Group also owns radio stations in the country that broadcast anti-Western propaganda, glorify Touadéra, and praise Russia, the newspaper reported.
Pavel Prigozhin lives in St. Petersburg but regularly visits Bangui, according to the Journal. During these visits, he stays at the Ledger Plaza hotel, which has effectively become Wagner’s headquarters in the CAR. Fighters armed with assault rifles guard the hotel grounds, and even senior government officials go through security checks to meet him.
Pavel was 25 when his father died in August 2023. He inherited his father’s entire estate, valued at 12 billion rubles.
The elder Prigozhin was also survived by his wife, two daughters, and mother. Under the will, Pavel was required to provide them with a “decent standard of living.” The news outlet Port, citing an unnamed source, claimed that Pavel’s unwillingness to share the inheritance had caused a family dispute.
At Meduza, we are committed to transparency about our use of artificial intelligence in the newsroom. The story you’re reading was written by one of our living, breathing journalists and translated from Russian using an AI model configured to follow our strict editorial standards. This translation process is the result of extensive testing and refinements to ensure our English-language coverage is timely and accurate. A Meduza editor reviews every draft before publication.
If you find any errors in this translation, please contact us at reports@meduza.io.
The Russian military satellite Cosmos 2612 has come very close to ICEYE-X36, a radar satellite operated by the Finnish-American company ICEYE, according to LeoLabs, which monitors activity in space.
In an October 16 statement, LeoLabs said the Russian satellite’s movement “appears to be a deliberate approach toward” ICEYE-X36. As of Friday afternoon, Cosmos 2612 was about 4.8 kilometers from ICEYE-X36, down from more than 320 kilometers a day earlier. Dutch satellite tracker Marco Langbroek estimated the distance between the satellites at 1 to 2 kilometers.
“That is very worrisome. This RPO (Rendezvous and Proximity Operation) is completely non-consensual.
“If ICEYE-X36 is indeed used by Ukraine, this means that a satellite from one country (Russia) is closely approaching a satellite of another country (Ukraine) with which it is at war,” Langbroek wrote.
By Monday, October 19, the distance between the spacecraft had shrunk to 26 meters, according to rocket launch analyst Georgy Trishkin, who runs the Telegram channel Tekhassky Vestnik. He said any approach that brings spacecraft within a kilometer of each other in orbit “is considered critical.” “And here they’re also flying in tandem without coordinating with each other. In this case, the maneuvers aren’t accidental — they’re very much deliberate,” Trishkin said:
The know-it-alls are all rattling off the same lines about “intelligence gathering” and “jammers” — typical output from an AI chatbot. But the actual purpose of these maneuvers is less obvious. What we’re seeing is one of the first demonstrations of a new kind of confrontation in orbit — noncontact deorbiting through fuel depletion.
Trishkin added: “Directly interfering with other spacecraft is dangerous — whether through kinetic or electromagnetic means, it’s an outright act of aggression.”
The U.S. Defense Department and ICEYE representatives declined to comment. An unnamed Ukrainian official told Axios that Ukraine’s military works with the Finnish company and “uses its capabilities,” but could not say whether ICEYE-X36 was involved.
In 2024, the Ukrainian Defense Ministry’s Main Intelligence Directorate said it had been using an ICEYE satellite for almost two years to identify “hostile targets” and “defend the country” and had taken more than 4,000 images of “enemy facilities” during that time. ICEYE and Ukraine’s Defense Ministry signed a new cooperation agreement in January 2026, giving Ukraine’s military expanded access to high-quality radar satellite imagery.
Russian satellites have made dangerous maneuvers before. In the summer of 2026, four Russian military satellites — Cosmos 2610, Cosmos 2611, Cosmos 2612, and Cosmos 2613 — changed their orbits and approached the ICEYE-X36 radar satellite.
At Meduza, we are committed to transparency about our use of artificial intelligence in the newsroom. The story you’re reading was written by one of our living, breathing journalists and translated from Russian using an AI model configured to follow our strict editorial standards. This translation process is the result of extensive testing and refinements to ensure our English-language coverage is timely and accurate. A Meduza editor reviews every draft before publication.
If you find any errors in this translation, please contact us at reports@meduza.io.
The Voroshilovsky Interdistrict Court in annexed Donetsk has sentenced military blogger and RT columnist Tetyana Montian to 18 months in a penal colony over calls for “extremism,” Mediazona reported.
The prosecution stemmed from Montian’s remarks during a December 2022 livestream about “regime loyalists,” whom she urged viewers to “take out without a shred of regret.” Montian said she meant government supporters who conceal problems at the front and change their views to match those of their superiors.
The criminal investigation into Montian became public in October 2025, when she was added to the list of terrorists and extremists maintained by Russia’s financial monitoring agency, Rosfinmonitoring. Before that, Yekaterina Mizulina, who heads the Safe Internet League and reports people to the authorities, said she had contacted the Interior Ministry after receiving numerous complaints about Montian’s posts “discrediting” the army.
Montian also faced criticism on propagandist Vladimir Solovyov’s channel, where host Boris Yakemenko alleged that she was involved in stealing money from fundraisers she had organized to support Russian soldiers.
Montian was born in Crimea and practiced law in Ukraine before moving to Russia in 2021. She began writing columns for RT in 2023. Her Telegram channel had more than 400,000 subscribers. Ukrainian authorities have opened several criminal investigations into her.
At Meduza, we are committed to transparency about our use of artificial intelligence in the newsroom. The story you’re reading was written by one of our living, breathing journalists and translated from Russian using an AI model configured to follow our strict editorial standards. This translation process is the result of extensive testing and refinements to ensure our English-language coverage is timely and accurate. A Meduza editor reviews every draft before publication.
If you find any errors in this translation, please contact us at reports@meduza.io.
Ukraine’s parliamentary human rights commissioner, Dmytro Lubinets, said Russia and Ukraine had “begun working out the final details” of a plan to evacuate residents of Oleshky, also known as Aleshki, in the Russian-occupied part of the Kherson region.
According to Ukrainska Pravda, Lubinets stressed that residents would not simply be taken out of Oleshky but brought directly “to territory controlled by the Ukrainian government.”
“So there are still some difficult issues, let’s put it that way, but I hope we’ll all see concrete results from these talks soon,” he said.
Lubinets said talks with Russian officials were taking place every day. “I can’t share many details, but I’ll put it this way: In my view, we’ve made as much progress as possible,” he said.
Lubinets said there were also plans to evacuate residents of six nearby towns and villages. Preliminary estimates put the total number of people to be evacuated at 6,000, including up to 200 children.
Russia occupied Oleshky at the start of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. By the fall of 2026, conditions there had become dire — residents were left without food, electricity, or adequate medical care. They cannot leave the city safely. Pope Leo XIV appealed to Russian President Vladimir Putin over the situation in Oleshky. In a phone call, the pope called for a ceasefire to allow humanitarian aid deliveries and let residents evacuate voluntarily and safely.
At Meduza, we are committed to transparency about our use of artificial intelligence in the newsroom. The story you’re reading was written by one of our living, breathing journalists and translated from Russian using an AI model configured to follow our strict editorial standards. This translation process is the result of extensive testing and refinements to ensure our English-language coverage is timely and accurate. A Meduza editor reviews every draft before publication.
If you find any errors in this translation, please contact us at reports@meduza.io.
The Russian military satellite Cosmos 2612 has come very close to ICEYE-X36, a radar satellite operated by the Finnish-American company ICEYE, according to LeoLabs, which monitors activity in space.
In an October 16 statement, LeoLabs said the Russian satellite’s movement “appears to be a deliberate approach toward” ICEYE-X36. As of Friday afternoon, Cosmos 2612 was about 4.8 kilometers from ICEYE-X36, down from more than 320 kilometers a day earlier. Dutch satellite tracker Marco Langbroek estimated the distance between the satellites at 1 to 2 kilometers.
“That is very worrisome. This RPO (Rendezvous and Proximity Operation) is completely non-consensual.
“If ICEYE-X36 is indeed used by Ukraine, this means that a satellite from one country (Russia) is closely approaching a satellite of another country (Ukraine) with which it is at war,” Langbroek wrote.
By Monday, October 19, the distance between the spacecraft had shrunk to 26 meters, according to rocket launch analyst Georgy Trishkin, who runs the Telegram channel Tekhassky Vestnik. He said any approach that brings spacecraft within a kilometer of each other in orbit “is considered critical.” “And here they’re also flying in tandem without coordinating with each other. In this case, the maneuvers aren’t accidental — they’re very much deliberate,” Trishkin said:
The know-it-alls are all rattling off the same lines about “intelligence gathering” and “jammers” — typical output from an AI chatbot. But the actual purpose of these maneuvers is less obvious. What we’re seeing is one of the first demonstrations of a new kind of confrontation in orbit — noncontact deorbiting through fuel depletion.
Trishkin added: “Directly interfering with other spacecraft is dangerous — whether through kinetic or electromagnetic means, it’s an outright act of aggression.”
The U.S. Defense Department and ICEYE representatives declined to comment. An unnamed Ukrainian official told Axios that Ukraine’s military works with the Finnish company and “uses its capabilities,” but could not say whether ICEYE-X36 was involved.
In 2024, the Ukrainian Defense Ministry’s Main Intelligence Directorate said it had been using an ICEYE satellite for almost two years to identify “hostile targets” and “defend the country” and had taken more than 4,000 images of “enemy facilities” during that time. ICEYE and Ukraine’s Defense Ministry signed a new cooperation agreement in January 2026, giving Ukraine’s military expanded access to high-quality radar satellite imagery.
Russian satellites have made dangerous maneuvers before. In the summer of 2026, four Russian military satellites — Cosmos 2610, Cosmos 2611, Cosmos 2612, and Cosmos 2613 — changed their orbits and approached the ICEYE-X36 radar satellite.
At Meduza, we are committed to transparency about our use of artificial intelligence in the newsroom. The story you’re reading was written by one of our living, breathing journalists and translated from Russian using an AI model configured to follow our strict editorial standards. This translation process is the result of extensive testing and refinements to ensure our English-language coverage is timely and accurate. A Meduza editor reviews every draft before publication.
If you find any errors in this translation, please contact us at reports@meduza.io.
The Voroshilovsky Interdistrict Court in annexed Donetsk has sentenced military blogger and RT columnist Tetyana Montian to 18 months in a penal colony over calls for “extremism,” Mediazona reported.
The prosecution stemmed from Montian’s remarks during a December 2022 livestream about “regime loyalists,” whom she urged viewers to “take out without a shred of regret.” Montian said she meant government supporters who conceal problems at the front and change their views to match those of their superiors.
The criminal investigation into Montian became public in October 2025, when she was added to the list of terrorists and extremists maintained by Russia’s financial monitoring agency, Rosfinmonitoring. Before that, Yekaterina Mizulina, who heads the Safe Internet League and reports people to the authorities, said she had contacted the Interior Ministry after receiving numerous complaints about Montian’s posts “discrediting” the army.
Montian also faced criticism on propagandist Vladimir Solovyov’s channel, where host Boris Yakemenko alleged that she was involved in stealing money from fundraisers she had organized to support Russian soldiers.
Montian was born in Crimea and practiced law in Ukraine before moving to Russia in 2021. She began writing columns for RT in 2023. Her Telegram channel had more than 400,000 subscribers. Ukrainian authorities have opened several criminal investigations into her.
At Meduza, we are committed to transparency about our use of artificial intelligence in the newsroom. The story you’re reading was written by one of our living, breathing journalists and translated from Russian using an AI model configured to follow our strict editorial standards. This translation process is the result of extensive testing and refinements to ensure our English-language coverage is timely and accurate. A Meduza editor reviews every draft before publication.
If you find any errors in this translation, please contact us at reports@meduza.io.
Ukraine’s parliamentary human rights commissioner, Dmytro Lubinets, said Russia and Ukraine had “begun working out the final details” of a plan to evacuate residents of Oleshky, also known as Aleshki, in the Russian-occupied part of the Kherson region.
According to Ukrainska Pravda, Lubinets stressed that residents would not simply be taken out of Oleshky but brought directly “to territory controlled by the Ukrainian government.”
“So there are still some difficult issues, let’s put it that way, but I hope we’ll all see concrete results from these talks soon,” he said.
Lubinets said talks with Russian officials were taking place every day. “I can’t share many details, but I’ll put it this way: In my view, we’ve made as much progress as possible,” he said.
Lubinets said there were also plans to evacuate residents of six nearby towns and villages. Preliminary estimates put the total number of people to be evacuated at 6,000, including up to 200 children.
Russia occupied Oleshky at the start of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. By the fall of 2026, conditions there had become dire — residents were left without food, electricity, or adequate medical care. They cannot leave the city safely. Pope Leo XIV appealed to Russian President Vladimir Putin over the situation in Oleshky. In a phone call, the pope called for a ceasefire to allow humanitarian aid deliveries and let residents evacuate voluntarily and safely.
At Meduza, we are committed to transparency about our use of artificial intelligence in the newsroom. The story you’re reading was written by one of our living, breathing journalists and translated from Russian using an AI model configured to follow our strict editorial standards. This translation process is the result of extensive testing and refinements to ensure our English-language coverage is timely and accurate. A Meduza editor reviews every draft before publication.
If you find any errors in this translation, please contact us at reports@meduza.io.
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