Update: The Security Service of Ukraine confirmed that the man who attacked the Ukrainian soldiers has been detained. He is a 36-year-old Russian soldier from St. Petersburg who was previously convicted in Russia. The agency did not specify whether he was a prisoner of war.

Five soldiers from the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ 72nd Separate Mechanized Brigade were shot dead on October 13 in the village of Kutuzivka in the Kharkiv region.

According to Ukraine’s Military Law Enforcement Service, which polices the armed forces, “a man in civilian clothes armed with an automatic weapon” opened fire. The motive remains unknown. The service said the slain soldiers had gotten along well with their comrades and had no disciplinary problems.

The news outlet Hlavkom reported that police are searching for two Russian soldiers in connection with the killings. Both had escaped captivity.

Law enforcement sources told Suspilne that the gunman had already been detained in a district of Kharkiv. Police and prosecutors have not yet confirmed that account.

Ukrainian law enforcement authorities are considering several possible explanations for the attack and have not ruled out Russian soldiers’ involvement.

From Meduza’s archives

• ‘I don’t want this exchange anymore’ After their release, Russian POWs are being sent back to war instead of home to their families
• Russians deserting the army often turn to their families for help — but in small communities, hiding can prove impossible

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.

To read Meduza’s exclusive content in English, please subscribe to our newsletter.

SpaceX has restored service in Ukraine for Starlink satellite terminals moving at high speeds, former Ukrainian Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov said on the evening of October 14.

“Starlink connectivity at speeds of up to 160 km/h [about 100 mph] is being restored. Removing Starshield’s speed limit entirely is now critical for Ukraine’s defense. Thank you, Elon Musk. We hope for your continued support,” Fedorov said on social media.

In response, Musk said Starshield systems are owned and controlled by the U.S. government. “Any limits on speed or usage are decided by the US military and ultimately POTUS,” Musk said. He said Starlink is a commercial service whose use is “limited to civilian or defensive activities.”

Ukraine’s Defense Ministry told journalists that SpaceX still imposes a speed limit of 161 kilometers per hour (about 100 mph) on the terminals. “However, we’re currently seeing improved connection quality at speeds of up to 160 [km],” officials said.

Ukrainian military personnel and officials said on the morning of October 14 that SpaceX had restricted service without warning for Starlink terminals used by Ukraine’s armed forces on the front lines. The restrictions affected Starshield, the military version of Starlink needed to launch drones. Some even compared the damage the Starlink slowdown caused Ukraine’s armed forces to a nuclear strike on Ukraine.

The restrictions on Starshield came amid a crisis in relations between U.S. President Donald Trump and Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky.

Read more

• Ukraine strikes a Sberbank data center in Russia. Meanwhile, Kyiv isn’t getting crucial missile warnings from the U.S., and SpaceX is restricting Starlink.
• Trump calls for Ukraine to choose a new president as relations with Zelensky hit their lowest point since Oval Office clash
• Russia was never supposed to have Starlink, so why did SpaceX wait so long to cut it off?

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.

To read Meduza’s exclusive content in English, please subscribe to our newsletter.

On October 10, protest artist Pavel Krisevich said his wife, Yelena Morgunova, had managed to leave Russia after a series of “back-to-back” arrests. Police detained Morgunova in the Ryazan region on August 28 after she returned to Russia for a brief visit with relatives. Krisevich and Morgunova had been living in France since late 2025 — they left on a humanitarian visa after the artist served two jail terms for administrative offenses. In an interview with Meduza, Morgunova spoke about her detention, life in a Paris squat, and her relationship with former Pussy Riot member Rita Flores, who recently admitted to cooperating with Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB).

Warning: This article contains profanity.

‘What if they gave you some assignment — to bring in explosives?’

— Where are you now?

— I’m in Europe now, on my way to Paris to join Pasha. The problem is, I can’t fly because Céline [Morgunova and Krisevich’s dog] has a short, brachycephalic snout, and there’s a risk that the pressure inside her skull could rise on a plane. So I’m taking trains.

It’s quite an experience. I used to think of France and Germany as some other planet. But when you travel like this, you see how close everything is.

— How are you feeling?

— I’m okay, in a sort of survival mode where you have to hold it together and can’t fall apart. I had to hold it together in the detention center. Then I got out, and right away I had to figure out where to stay, how to get [to France with the dog]. I still haven’t had a chance to settle anywhere.

— What are your plans now?

— We’ll apply for family reunification so I can get a [French] residence permit and permission to work [Morgunova previously had a French humanitarian visa, but it expired]. Then I’ll look for work so I have some money and can help my family. If I can’t see them, at least I can help them that way.

Unlike Pasha, I didn’t apply for asylum at first. I wanted to be able to visit my parents in Russia from time to time.

— Why did you have to go to Russia now?

— I wanted to visit my family. And everything sort of came together: I had nowhere to live in Paris. Maybe if I’d had somewhere to stay, I would’ve gone after the elections, once everyone had calmed down. But I was already emotionally exhausted, and I wanted a little break somewhere familiar. Besides, I had my own place in Moscow.

Pasha and I were living in really difficult conditions in France, in a squat — an abandoned office. Russian-speaking artists and other creative people occupied one part of the space. They’re wonderful people, and we’re friends. They’re helping us however they can now, even though they’re barely scraping by themselves. Our half was pretty cozy, and there was a kitchen. But it was still hard to live like that. We lived in a coatroom; we didn’t even have a window.

People from Arab countries occupied the other half. Many were just passing through and didn’t clean up after themselves. Someone might just pee in the hallway. That was a bit of a shock for me.

We thought it would be temporary, but it dragged on. We arrived in France on June 3 — I remember because it was my name day — and lived there for almost three months. The paperwork took longer than we’d expected. At first, we hoped they’d give us housing together, because France has a law against separating families. People advised us to try [to get housing together], because everything in France is so random — maybe they’d accommodate us.

And at first, they really did try to accommodate us; they asked us for more documents. But in the end, despite a pile of recommendation letters and all the required paperwork, they told us only Pasha could get temporary housing in a dormitory [for refugees], and that he’d be better off taking it.

He got housing. I stayed for a couple of weeks in the apartment of some people I knew who were on vacation, then went home [to Russia] to my mom.

I looked for work in France. But it’s almost impossible to get a work visa while you’re already in the country. It’s much easier for local companies to hire people who already have permission to work. That’s why I kept getting turned down. And when a job opportunity came up, I went to Russia. I thought I’d wait there and, if I got an offer, apply for a work visa. Then I’d return to France on that visa.

— When you flew to Russia, did you consider the possibility that you might be detained?

— I’d planned from the start to keep visiting Russia. All my social media accounts were private, I kept a pretty low public profile, and I didn’t take part in Pasha’s protests. I didn’t think I was at much risk — it seemed like there was a rule that, for the most part, they left people’s loved ones alone. Besides, after Pasha left Russia, I lived in Moscow for about another six months, and I had no problems.

When I arrived in Russia, they checked my passport at the border — everything was calm. I spent two days in Moscow. Then my aunt invited my mom and me to the Ryazan region to see my nieces and help her dig up potatoes. My mom, the dog, and I set off for Skopin. I wasn’t feeling well, but I decided to go even though I had a fever. We never made it there, though.

— How did they detain you?

— My mom and I were on the bus, almost in Skopin. Suddenly, the bus stopped and two police officers got on. They came over to us and said they were conducting some kind of operation: checking the passports of people who’d returned from “unfriendly” countries.

They took us off the bus, and we went to the local police station. At the station, they asked me, “Your husband wouldn’t happen to be a ‘foreign agent,’ would he?” I said, “‘Foreign [agent].’” They said, “Then we have to check your phone.”

I didn’t want to unlock my phone. I told my mom to prepare herself: I’d be spending time in jail [for an administrative offense]. They kept me at the station for a while. Then they took me to the station chief, and he asked, “Will you hand over the phone, or will you put up with what’s coming?” I said I’d put up with it.

Then they took me to court. The court record said I’d supposedly failed to show my passport. I thought maybe they’d mixed something up… I thought, great, maybe I’ll serve a jail term for an administrative offense and get out with my phone. Pasha had given me that phone and said, “Please don’t lose it or let anyone steal it.”

I didn’t admit guilt in court, but when they gave me the record, it said I had. I asked the judge’s assistant, “Why does it say that? I didn’t admit anything.” She said nothing.

I wrote that I agreed with the record. It was clear anyway that once they’d detained me, they weren’t just going to let me go [and I’d have to spend some time in jail for an administrative offense].

— Had you faced any administrative or criminal proceedings before?

— I faced administrative charges four times over rallies and pickets in 2020 — back when we still believed we could change something.

My first rally was over the “Network case.” But I’d never been held in a detention center. And I’d always passed every security check when applying for jobs.

— On what grounds did they detain you?

— They took us to the station because I’d “recently been in an ‘unfriendly’ country.” And once we were there, they arrested me for supposedly failing to show my passport, which wasn’t true. By then, my cold had given me a fever and a terrible headache. I could barely stand.

I signed the court record — I thought, who cares anymore, a lawyer isn’t going to come anyway, and there won’t be an appeal. I thought they’d take me to the detention center, I’d lie down, and I’d quietly serve out those days.

But they took me to another office. There were six FSB guys in plain clothes. Two were definitely from Moscow; the others were local, as far as I could tell. They all had different roles.

One was hysterical and aggressive, shouting, “Who do you think you are? I’m not going to address you politely; you haven’t earned it.” I told him I was used to being shouted at — I’d grown up with it — and it wouldn’t work on me. Then he started threatening my mom and my dog, who were still at the station. That really floored me, because I hadn’t expected anything like it. I’d been detained illegally before, too, but in Moscow they’d been more or less polite.

Actually, the interview with Rita [Flores] that I’d watched the day before helped me. She said they’d used her mom to pressure her, too. And the lawyer Dmitry Zakhvatov told her that the real threat was most likely criminal prosecution for “fake news,” rather than anything happening to her mom.

I don’t remember exactly how he threatened to kill the dog, but at one point I said, “Are you officers or animal abusers?” After that, he just kept saying they’d throw her out on the street and other dogs would tear her apart.

When they started threatening to arrest my mom too, put her in the next cell, and make me listen to her screams, I figured they were bluffing. So I always gave the same answer: I give you permission to take my phone for inspection; let’s write up the paperwork. I sounded like a broken record.

There was another FSB guy, apparently from Moscow — a real dandy with slicked-back hair. Tanned, with shiny skin. He was calm. And there was a young guy from Skopin who kept telling me, “I really feel sorry for your mom and your dog. But this is all your fault.” It went on for a long time, several rounds. They all took turns talking. “What if you’ve been recruited? What if they gave you some assignment — to bring in explosives?”

‘I knew that if this continued, I’d grab a pen off the desk and keep hitting my wrist with it so they’d think I was unstable’

— When were you detained the second time?

— When I got out of the detention center. It’s all in the same little courtyard: the detention center and the police station’s duty desk. They took me into an office with a giant DPR flag and a poster with cringey quotes from Dzerzhinsky: “Your clean criminal record isn’t your achievement — it’s our failure.”

An officer there said, “I think you take drugs.” I asked him where he thought I’d taken them, given that I’d been in the detention center. Never mind that I don’t take them at all. He said my pupils were dilated and my cheeks were red.

They called in witnesses to observe the procedure. In front of them, he asked whether I was refusing a medical examination. I kept saying they should let me see a lawyer first, because accusing me of taking drugs was serious. I was afraid that without a lawyer, they’d take me somewhere and anything could happen there.

He said, “Do you like it abroad? Your husband is a political prisoner.” I said, “My parents are here.” Then he started asking whether I supported my husband’s protests. I said, “Let’s not have these conversations. Only with a lawyer.”

I was shocked by what was happening, and I still had a fever… And this song kept running through my head: “If they’ve picked you up, take a deep breath… […] I don’t know anything. I’m a housewife, I listen to love songs.” I really love it. I kept saying I didn’t know anything and couldn’t remember anything.

From Meduza’s archives

• Ex-Pussy Riot activist Rita Flores says Russia’s FSB forced her to inform on performance artist Pavel Krisevich. He found out from her interview and wrote to tell her she’s forgiven.
• Off the cross and into the police van ‘Meduza’ speaks to the activists behind the ‘crucifixion’ outside Moscow’s FSB headquarters
• ‘I don’t want to become a political prisoner’ Three ‘foreign agent’ journalists describe life after designation by Russia’s Justice Ministry

— You told the Telegram channel No Future that you were arrested because you’re Pasha’s wife.

— Yes. They wanted to send me for a medical examination to check for drugs, and they wanted me to go without my phone. I got scared because I didn’t know where they’d take me or what they’d do there. Besides, I knew a lawyer was waiting just outside the door, and I asked them to let her in. Of course, they didn’t.

When I was sentenced again, instead of taking me to the detention center, they took me back to that office. There were two men there again: the “dandy” and, apparently, his boss. The boss said, “What’s your name?” And for me, the scariest and most unpleasant part was these conversations outside any formal legal procedure.

I said, “You don’t know my name? Ask your colleague.” He said, “I’m not asking my colleague. I’m asking you.” I introduced myself. He said:

— Do you know why you’re here?

— Explain it to me.

— Who’s your husband?

— My husband is Krisevich.

— And you’re here because you’re his wife. Do you like living this way?

And he asked, “Why do you look so sad? Did something happen? This will keep happening over and over, over and over.” I asked:

— What do you want?

— We want you to leave as quickly as your husband did. Understand?

— I understand. But I won’t be able to leave that quickly.

— How many days do you need?

And they gave me three days to leave.

— Do you think they were trying to figure out whether they could recruit you?

— I think they were testing the waters. That’s what the lawyer thinks.

— Your lawyer, Nataliya Tikhonova, said they suggested you “leave” Pasha. What exactly did they say?

— They said, “What do you need Pasha for? He got you into this. You’re here because of him; he ruined your life. You could be working in peace right now.” I think they were testing the waters, looking for a rift they could then use to put pressure on me.

---

Hi, I’m Katya.

I’ve been running Meduza’s crowdfunding since 2021. Today, supporting Meduza is a crime in Russia. You can be sent to prison just for donating. We’re still able to do our work thanks to thousands of our Russian readers who now live abroad. But even they’re no longer safe. 

Imagine you’ve left Russia, but then your mom becomes seriously ill. It could be your last chance to see her, so of course you go home. At the border, you’re interrogated. Officers hack into your phone and search for any trace that you’ve donated to Meduza.

The Kremlin is counting on that fear, and it’s working. People are afraid to donate. I’m afraid for our supporters, because any one of them could end up in prison. And I’m afraid for Meduza. Without crowdfunding, we simply can’t continue. So if you live outside Russia and don’t have to worry that donating to Meduza could keep you from going home to your family, I’m asking for your help. Please support our work.

---

— Did you end up handing over your phone?

— [Even before the first arrest,] they interrogated me, and I kept giving the same answer. They took me to the detention center and said, “Be tougher on her.” I spent some time there, and then they called me back to their office.

I walked in, and my mom was already sitting there with [our dog] Céline. As I found out later, they’d pressured my mom too, insulted her, and so on.

Céline was trying to get to me. They started pressuring me again, and I kept giving the same answer again. The dog lunged toward me. And then my mom couldn’t take it anymore and started crying. That high-strung officer started pulling the leash out of my hands. I unclipped it from the harness. Then he started pulling on the harness: he pulled one way, I pulled the other. Céline pressed herself against me. I dug my fingernail into his hand so he’d let go — without thinking, it was just my reaction. And he said, “Keep digging your nails in, and you’ll go to prison under Article 318.”

My mom is very naive. They told her that if I gave them my phone password, I’d be out on Monday. I said, “Mom, that’s not going to happen.” And I watched her get up from her chair, walk over to them, and say, “Please don’t, please don’t.” I was afraid she’d have heart trouble or her blood pressure would [shoot up]…

And I gave them the phone password. They unlocked it. Then they let my mom and the dog go. But I also had a passcode on Telegram, which they hadn’t noticed.

I went back to the detention center. After a while, they called me in again and said, “Tell us the Telegram passcode.” I said, “I don’t remember; the stress has wiped my memory.” I didn’t have the strength to actively resist anymore, so I just started trying to trick them. I entered the wrong passcode several times. I don’t know how long all of this lasted.

They took me back to the detention center. Then they called me in again at night and said, “Do you know Nadya Tolokonnikova?” I said, “No.” They said, “You’re fucking lying. We hacked your Telegram.” They brought in my phone — and Telegram was open, with my messages with Nadya. So [Pavel] Durov’s security is really unreliable; he gets a thumbs-down from me.

When it was finally over, one of the FSB guys said, “Go get some sleep. If you want to get out early, ask for me.” It was Friday, and they didn’t work on weekends. And those days were the scariest for me — I was afraid they’d come back and these conversations would start again.

Sound carried really well in that place: you could hear everything happening in the hallway, every phone call, every word, every whisper. You’d jump at every sound. But I already had a plan. I knew that if they kept this up, I’d just grab a pen off the desk and keep hitting my wrist with it so they’d think I was unstable. Knowing I had a backup plan calmed me down.

The lawyer came on Saturday. We talked everything over and agreed to go public so this recruitment attempt, if that’s what it was, would stop. After that, they didn’t come back.

I also had a PTSD episode because they all addressed me with the informal “you.” My aunt sent me shampoo in the detention center, and I was reading the instructions, which said, “Your hair will shine,” using the informal “you.” I thought, damn, why is this shampoo talking to me like a cop?

— What else stands out from your time in detention?

— I remember that despite all of this, there were humane, kind people there, too. But I can’t go into more detail, because I don’t want anyone to get into trouble for acting like a human being.

I also remember my cellmate Lena, who I spent three days with. When I first arrived, they told me I was lucky: Lena wasn’t there. They said she threw fits and attacked people. They only put her in with me during my second jail term.

At first, I’d sometimes hear detention center officers walk past her cell and taunt her. For example, she was due to get out on August 20, but they’d tell her, “You’ll get out on the 30th,” and she’d start crying really hard.

She was in for violating court-ordered supervision, and before that, I think she’d been convicted of causing serious bodily injury and robbery. But most likely she’d just taken the blame for those crimes — she was a little crazy.

Once, I heard her crying again, and some friends had just sent me a pastry, so I said [to the guards], “Give it to Lena.” They did. The next day, I heard her refusing all food, saying she only wanted black bread. My aunt had sent me a care package then. I put together some things from it for her and said, “Give it to Lena,” and they did that, too. Then the next day, the guards came and said, “The chief says you need to be moved into a cell with Lena. There’s just one problem — she smells.”

Lena turned out to be an absolutely lovely woman. She’s about 57, and she told me her stories. Even though she’s a little crazy, she understood a lot of things better than other people. For example, she’d say we should give them [the guards] and their children the food they fed us, and see how they liked it.

She also told me why they didn’t pick on the others: the others had relatives who’d complain if something happened — but she was an orphan, and there was no one to stand up for her. I kept telling her she’d serve exactly as much time as the judge had ordered, and no one could change that.

When Lena and I were put in separate cells, I heard an officer come back and start tormenting her again, and she told him, “I’ll serve exactly as much time as the judge ordered.” I thought, “Oh, she learned that from me!”

Another time, I heard a different officer go into her cell and start speaking to her rudely: “When you go to the shower, you’ll be washing in your own piss.”

I told him, “If you keep mistreating her, I’ll file a complaint. She’s behaving herself, and you should too.” After that, they stopped.

I don’t understand that kind of humor. Maybe working there for a long time warps you somehow.

— How did your mom cope with all of this?

— It was really hard for her. In the detention center, I tried to tell her I was fine so she wouldn’t worry so much. But when they said I had to leave like that, it was hard. I’m an only child, and I never wanted to leave for good. We spent those three days together. Mostly we dealt with paperwork and arranged powers of attorney.

— So they got access to your phone and your messages. Do you think they could have learned anything from them?

— I think everyone had time to delete their messages with me, because Pasha found out I’d been detained.

— You mentioned Rita Flores. Do you think the security services’ interest in you could be connected to her recent interview?

— I don’t know how much it could have to do with the interview. They asked me about Nadya [Tolokonnikova], Rita, and [Marat] Gelman. Those were the people they were interested in.

— What did they ask?

— Whether I was in touch with Rita. And they asked about Nadya — she put Pasha in touch with Babel, which published his book. They asked where Pasha got his money — I laughed at that question. They asked about Gelman, how Pasha was connected to him [Pasha had stayed at his artist residency]. I told them things that were already public knowledge.

I think my detention was more likely connected to the elections — and to the fact that I went to Skopin. Apparently, the local FSB guys in Skopin are a bit unhinged. I even think that if I’d stayed in Moscow, maybe things would’ve been more civilized.

The Moscow FSB guys knew Pasha well. And they’d had time to prepare. They knew my father had had three strokes and wouldn’t survive finding out I’d been detained. They knew Rita’s and Nadya’s patronymics.

— Why do you connect your detention to the State Duma elections?

— I think it was some kind of preventive measure, because they let me go the day after the elections. They were playing it safe and doing what was expected of them — to show their bosses they’d done everything they could.

‘Even Artyom Kamardin asked in every letter from prison whether Pasha and Lena had left. But we didn’t want to leave’

— Do you believe what Rita Flores said in her interview?

— I do. We really were in touch when Pasha was detained, and she really did try to persuade us to leave. The only problem was that it was impossible to persuade Pasha.

But when Pasha was designated a “foreign agent,” we considered leaving as a backup plan — it’s just hard for “foreign agents” to comply with the law. We started looking into visa options even then. We just didn’t think it would become so urgent.

Pasha and I talked on the phone [when he was in prison], and I told him lots of our friends were advising us to leave. Even Artyom Kamardin asked his wife Sasha in every letter whether Pasha and Lena had left. Artyom was really worried something might happen to us. But we didn’t want to leave, because we had a more or less settled life.

Pasha had a job, too. He worked at a Yandex warehouse as a self-employed contractor. When all his shifts disappeared after the “foreign agent” designation and he couldn’t book new ones, his boss started looking into what had happened. It turned out Yandex’s head office had blocked him.

— In her interview, Rita Flores said she tried to drive a wedge between you and Pasha, and that she supposedly told you Pasha didn’t think about you at all.

— That happened. Pasha and I really did have a falling-out when he went to jail for a protest I’d asked him not to stage. We had a huge fight. I was hysterical, and Rita happened to message me then and ask, “How are you?”

I needed to get it off my chest, and I wrote to her that I was really hurt, because I had a new job and was struggling, and he’d gone to jail. Though of course he hadn’t planned on going to jail either. Anyway, I wrote all that to Rita, and she just supported me.

Maybe she wrote what she actually thought, but I figured she was just the kind of friend who always takes your side. And I didn’t make much of it. I just don’t believe anyone can drive Pasha and me apart.

Rita and I keep meaning to call each other, but it never works out. Either I’m busy or she is. I hope everything turns out okay for Rita.

— During your second jail term, did you expect them to let you leave?

— When I was getting out after the second jail term, I didn’t know what was waiting for me. Would there be more, or would they let me leave? At that point, they didn’t give me my phone back, and they took me to an office where there was an investigator.

He was like, “How’s it going?” I said, “Fine.” He said, “Well, in our line of work, the main thing is not to lose your optimism. What are your plans?” I said, “Well, as we agreed — I’ll leave.” And he was like, “Okay.” Then I knew that was it, they weren’t going to keep me there. When I left the detention center, they gave me my phone back.

— Why do you think they let you leave?

— I think it’s because they let Pasha leave. We do live in a very sexist society, after all. There were some really horrific stories recently involving Kynev and Morozov; apparently, they don’t get that brutal with women. I think, yes, it’s because I’m a woman. And if they didn’t put Pasha in prison, maybe they thought putting his wife in prison wasn’t something a real man would do.

— I take it you won’t be going back to Russia?

— Not anytime soon. It’s really hard. It feels like I’ve been torn away from my life in Russia. It breaks my heart that I can’t see my mom. But I’m trying not to fall apart and to set some new goals here.

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Interview by Yelizaveta Antonova

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he regrets that Kyiv is losing a strong ally in Washington.

Asked about his first reaction to the “diesel deal” between Russia and the United States, Zelensky told journalist Piers Morgan in an interview: “It’s a pity that we’re losing a strong partner.”

Asked whether he felt betrayed by Trump, the Ukrainian president said, “Yes, but it’s a little bit more complicated than just my emotions or my feelings.”

Zelensky said Ukraine is “losing” the United States through no fault of its own. Kyiv “can’t be weak,” he said, or it “will not survive.” “We are not selling our country. Look guys, it’s not about business for us. [It’s about] our lives — this is our country. It’s our home, our children,” he added.

Zelensky said it was “painful” when U.S. President Donald Trump “took a side, and it’s not our side,” adding that he has no objection to Trump taking a neutral position.

But if you’re in the middle, you have to stay in the middle, not on the wrong side. I think his advisers are wrong. I don’t know who is pushing him not to the right side. This is not the right side of history.

Zelensky also said he considers businessman Elon Musk’s decision to restrict Starlink’s operation in Ukraine a mistake that will cost lives.

Trump said on October 10 that he had reached an agreement with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Russian diesel supplies. The next day, he said Russia and Ukraine had agreed to a truce covering the energy sector. Zelensky said the announced truce “was news” to him. Trump also recently said Ukraine needs to find a new president who can “make a deal.”

Read more

• Trump’s diesel deal with Putin, a rebuke from Brussels, and a squabble over Europe’s enormous Russian energy bill

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The trial of Ukrainian national Serhiy Kuznetsov began in Hamburg on October 14. Investigators allege that he took part in the September 2022 bombing of the Nord Stream pipelines.

Kuznetsov, 50, is formally charged with disrupting the operation of essential public infrastructure. Investigators allege that he coordinated the sabotage team that carried out the explosions.

The indictment, reviewed by the broadcaster ZDF, says Ukrainian state agencies commissioned the sabotage. ZDF did not specify which agencies. Investigators identify Roman Chervinskyi, an officer in Ukraine’s security services, as the organizer.

Prosecutors say Kuznetsov’s actions should be classified as a war crime because he was serving in the military at the time of the bombing and acted with the knowledge of the Ukrainian authorities. His defense team maintains that he had nothing to do with the incident. His lawyers say he was in Ukraine when the bombing occurred.

The broadcaster ARD reported that the trial and the court’s final ruling will have significant international implications. “The mere fact that a Ukrainian citizen is appearing before a German court on charges of sabotage and other crimes is an extremely serious matter at a time when Ukraine is fighting for its survival and Germany is its biggest supporter in its fight to defend itself against Russia,” international law expert Clemens Fischer told the broadcaster.

He said Germany would find it “very difficult to continue supporting Ukraine unconditionally” if the court established that the Ukrainian government was involved in the sabotage.

It is unclear how long the trial will last. The court said it could not conclude the case in just a few hearings, “simply because of the volume of case files and the international aspects of the case.” Hearings are currently scheduled through January 29, 2027, averaging twice a week. It could take “years” to reach a verdict, ARD reported.

Kuznetsov is the first defendant in the Nord Stream bombing case. German prosecutors have issued seven arrest warrants for suspected participants in the sabotage. The only other suspect in custody is Volodymyr Zhuravlev.

Zhuravlev was detained in Poland in 2025, but a Warsaw court refused to extradite him to Germany, citing a lack of evidence linking him to the incident. He went to Ukraine, but in 2026 he was detained again on the German warrant, this time in Croatia. According to unconfirmed reports, he had traveled there for the filming of a movie about the Nord Stream bombings. He is now awaiting extradition to Germany.

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Russian rapper Navai Bakirov, known as Navai, has been detained in Kazakhstan on suspicion of drug smuggling.

Police in Kazakhstan’s Zhambyl region said Bakirov was detained at a border checkpoint as he entered Kazakhstan from Kyrgyzstan after drugs were found in his car. He was taken to a temporary detention facility.

Navai was scheduled to perform in Astana on October 14. Organizers said the concert had been postponed indefinitely “for technical reasons.”

Baza, citing checkpoint staff, reported that 10 grams (about 0.35 ounces) of marijuana was found in Navai’s car. His manager and driver were also in the vehicle.

Navai Bakirov is best known as a member of HammAli & Navai, a hookah rap duo active from 2016 to 2025. Bakirov launched a solo career after the duo broke up.

Related reading

• Kazakhstan is no longer safe for anti-war Russians. So why are so many still staying?
• Abducted abroad: How Russia seizes its citizens in Armenia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan — and puts them on trial back home

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Two masked intruders broke into a communications facility near Sofia, Bulgaria, and set fire to 11 of its 17 antennas used to communicate with Starlink satellites, Bulgarian National Television reported.

The Insider determined from satellite images that the fire occurred 20 kilometers (about 12 miles) from Sofia.

Bulgarian lawmaker Ivaylo Mirchev also reported the incident. He posted a video of the fire and said a similar incident occurred in Poland in September. According to Mirchev, Polish authorities have no doubt that Russia is behind the acts of sabotage.

“Clearly, these antennas were deliberately targeted, since they provide the main connection to the satellites,” Mirchev said.

There was no word on whether the damaged antennas were used to provide communications for Ukraine’s armed forces.

On October 14, Ukraine’s armed forces said SpaceX had restricted Starlink satellite communications for the Ukrainian military. The restrictions affected the military version of the service, called Starshield, which drone operators rely on. The Ukrainian military said the restrictions caused some drones to lose their connections midflight and some operations to fail.

Read more

• Russia is escalating its hybrid attacks on the West. Moscow will make Europe’s life ‘hell’ for supporting Ukraine, Kremlin insider tells Bloomberg.
• ‘There has to be a cost’ Russian sabotage spiked in Europe last year. So why don’t Western officials do more to stop it? 
• Russia keeps attacking Ukrainian data centers, calling it a ‘mandatory digital detox’

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Montenegrin citizens will need visas to travel to Russia, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova told Izvestia.

She confirmed that Montenegro’s Foreign Ministry had notified Russia that it was terminating the agreement governing travel between the two countries. Starting November 1, Russians will need visas to enter Montenegro.

“As a result, Montenegrin citizens will also have to obtain visas to travel to Russia,” Zakharova said.

On July 27, Montenegro officially announced it would introduce visa requirements for Russian citizens. The government said the changes were necessary to bring its visa policy into line with EU rules. Citizens of Belarus, China, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia will also need visas.

On October 9, Montenegrin authorities detained Mikhail Zvinchuk, the creator of the Telegram channel “Rybar,” who had traveled there in part to film a report ahead of the new visa requirements for Russians. In 2024, the U.S. State Department announced a $10 million reward for information about Zvinchuk; he is also under EU sanctions. In the end, however, Montenegrin authorities simply expelled him and sent him back to Russia.

Related reading

• Montenegro detains founder of Rybar, one of Russia’s most popular pro-war Telegram channels. Here’s what we know.
• Kazakhstan is reportedly preparing for a mass deportation of anti-war Russians. Is anywhere safe for those fleeing Kremlin repressions?

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Portion sizes for prepared food in Russia fell by 10.3% over the past year to 266 grams (about 9.4 ounces), according to calculations by the analytics company Ntec, as cited by Kommersant.

Prepared food remains the fastest-growing category in grocery retail. Retail stores account for about a quarter of the prepared food market, and that share could reach 40% by 2030, according to Stanislav Bogdanov, chairman of the Association of Retail Companies.

Profit margins in the category are very low, however. Retailers have to invest in central kitchens, packaging, and logistics, while 14% of products are written off because of their short shelf life.

Production costs are rising, but producers are finding it harder to pass them on to consumers. Intense competition and weakening demand are forcing them to hold down prices. As a result, producers are choosing to reduce portion sizes, experts said.

Smaller portions may reflect both shrinkflation and changing demand, the experts said. Russians buying prepared food have increasingly been choosing small snacks such as onigiri, sandwiches, and hot dogs. In the first half of 2026, sales of these snacks rose by 48% in value, while sales of main dishes and salads grew more slowly — by 16% and 14%, respectively.

Related reading

• How much damage can Russia’s fuel crisis do to the economy?

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Russia needs a “doomsday” data center, said Valery Yermakov, deputy chairman of Rostelecom’s management board. He made the proposal on the day Ukrainian drones first attacked a Sber data center.

Everyone understands that we absolutely need a so-called doomsday facility today. It’s a place to store backups so that if something happens, you can always restore your services. Some time ago, this really would have been unimaginable, but now there’s a very real need for it. We need a so-called doomsday data center because backups now allow any service provider to recover very quickly.

Ukrainian drones attacked Sber’s infrastructure for the first time overnight into October 14, hitting a data center in Balakovo, in Russia’s Saratov region. Sber confirmed the attack but said all its services were operating normally. Users, however, began reporting disruptions to Sber and other services.

Read more

• Ukraine strikes a Sberbank data center in Russia. Meanwhile, Kyiv isn’t getting crucial missile warnings from the U.S., and SpaceX is restricting Starlink.
• Ukrainian drones are hitting Russia’s biggest data centers. Why are they so vulnerable — and can anything protect them?
• Ukraine knocked out key Yandex data centers. The fallout is being felt across Russia.

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.

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The news outlet Takie Dela has been fined 200,000 rubles for publishing a quote from musician Boris Grebenshchikov without mentioning that Russia has designated him a “foreign agent,” the outlet reported.

“Our lawyer said the hearing lasted a minute. The judge wouldn’t listen to the defense’s arguments,” Takie Dela said.

The case stemmed from a quote Takie Dela published on its VKontakte page: “Russia has a remarkable ability to cast out people who are ready for the wider world.” Grebenshchikov said this in a May 2026 interview with RTVI.

Takie Dela’s editors said they cannot include a “foreign agent” disclaimer for everyone with the designation in their social media posts and asked for help paying the fine.

“Maybe 200,000 rubles seems like a small amount. But we don’t have it. We’ve just launched an SOS campaign to raise at least 900,000 rubles in recurring donations. Because our budget is a million rubles short, and starting in January or February, we won’t have any money to pay salaries,” the outlet’s editor-in-chief, Yevgenia Volunkova, wrote.

Takie Dela covers social problems in Russia. Its editors continue to work inside the country despite the challenges. In 2024, T-Bank’s payment service stopped processing donations to Takie Dela, and in 2026, the outlet’s website was blocked.

From Meduza’s archives

• What you need to know about Russia’s updated ‘foreign agent’ laws
• A new kind of ‘foreign agent’ Russian journalists risk a dreaded designation for reporting on army hazing, space-agency corruption, and much more. Felony liability looms, as well.

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Russia’s largest pretrial detention center will be built in the Solnechnogorsk district of the Moscow region. The regional office of the Federal Penitentiary Service has put the construction contract out to bid.

The center will hold up to 4,000 detainees. The complex will cover more than 42 hectares (about 104 acres).

It will include multistory buildings for men and women, as well as separate buildings for people with tuberculosis and criminal gang leaders deemed a harmful influence on other detainees. The complex will also include three buildings with apartment-style accommodations for Federal Penitentiary Service employees.

The complex will be built near the 71-kilometer (44-mile) marker on the M-11 highway, between the villages of Shapkino and Ozhogino.

The starting price for the construction contract is 37.8 billion rubles. Construction is scheduled to be completed in October 2031.

Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin signed an order in 2022 to build a pretrial detention center for 4,000 people in the Moscow region. The project received final approval from state expert reviewers this past winter.

“Kolpino,” known as “Kresty-2,” is currently considered Russia’s largest pretrial detention center. It was built in a suburb of St. Petersburg in 2017. Construction took 10 years.

From Meduza’s archives

• Russia’s prison dilemma As the Russian penitentiary system considers its first major reforms in 20 years, human rights advocates don’t like what they see
• ‘They watch television and drink tea’ Here’s what Navalny’s lawyer told us about the detention center where he’s imprisoned

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Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak said Ukraine attacked two Russian oil refineries on October 14.

“According to the Energy Ministry and the companies, the Kyiv regime attacked two oil refineries today — in the Saratov and Ryazan regions. We see no sign that the Ukrainian side is moving toward an energy ceasefire,” he said.

Novak did not specify which refineries had been attacked. Authorities in the two regions had not said that any refineries had been attacked that day.

Rostov Governor Yury Slyusar said on Telegram that morning that more than 160 drones had been destroyed or disabled over the region, but stressed that “no reports of casualties or any impact on the ground had come in.”

Saratov Governor Roman Busargin said a civilian had been killed and residential buildings damaged in Balakovo, which is home to a Sber data center (the governor did not mention it). Busargin did not say that an attack had been repelled in Saratov, where the region’s only oil refinery is located.

Meduza could find no reports of explosions or fires at Russian oil refineries on Russian or Ukrainian monitoring channels.

U.S. President Donald Trump said on October 11 that Russia and Ukraine had agreed not to strike each other’s oil refineries. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the announcement “was news” to him, but later said the Ukrainian armed forces had “received all the relevant orders.” Zelensky did not explicitly confirm that he had agreed to stop attacks on oil refineries.

Read more

• Trump calls for Ukraine to choose a new president as relations with Zelensky hit their lowest point since Oval Office clash
• ‘We’re being used as a front,’ Zelensky says of Trump’s diesel deal with Putin
• Trump claimed that Russia and Ukraine had agreed to an energy truce. Neither side stopped the strikes.

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Russian drones struck a wholesale warehouse in Lutsk, killing six people, said regional Governor Roman Romaniuk. Five died at the scene, and a sixth died later in the hospital from their injuries.

Romaniuk said 10 people were injured, while Ukraine’s State Emergency Service reported 12 injured.

Romaniuk also said two people, including a child, were injured in a nine-story apartment building struck in the attack.

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After strikes on Yandex’s data centers, pro-war channels accused the company of inaction and even sabotage. Elements of critical infrastructure turned out to be completely unprotected against drone attacks. Now similar accusations will likely be directed at Sberbank: the bank’s largest data center in the Saratov region was attacked overnight on October 14. All these facilities were an obvious target for Ukraine’s military, if only because Russian forces are actively striking similar targets in Ukraine. Of course, the inadequate protection of the data centers has nothing to do with malicious intent or negligence on the part of Yandex and Sberbank’s management. It is known that, even before the strikes, authorities and the military discussed measures to defend such facilities with businesses. And judging by video of the attacks, at least in Yandex’s case some defense — probably in the form of mobile fire teams or automatic turrets — did exist: drones were fired at with small arms. This shows that Russia still lacks the resources to build a multilayered anti-drone air defense system anywhere except Moscow. And site-level defenses at individual factories, warehouses, and data centers cannot repel massed strikes.

First, a reminder of which facilities Ukraine’s military struck

Ukrainian strikes hit three of Yandex’s six largest data centers, also known as data processing centers, between October 7 and 11. None were located in the Moscow region, the area most heavily protected by Russian air defenses.

• The data center in Sasovo, in the Ryazan region, which also housed two of Yandex’s three supercomputers, stopped operating entirely. Judging by satellite images from the Planet Labs, the wing of the building housing the data center had burned down completely.
• The data center in Vladimir (one of two in the city) also shut down completely, while the one in Kaluga sustained significant damage.

A Ukrainian strike hit Sberbank’s Mega Data Center in Balakovo, in the Saratov region, overnight on October 14. Construction began in 2021, when Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Chernyshenko promised the facility would become the largest in Russia.

When Yandex and Sberbank built these facilities before the full-scale war, they had no reason to design the buildings to withstand drones carrying warheads with dozens of kilograms of explosives. HAKA Moscow, the company that built one of Yandex’s data centers in Vladimir in 2016–2017, said its main objectives were:

• speed of construction;
• the ability to expand the facility;
• and, importantly, reducing the need for active cooling of the equipment, which increased the facility’s energy efficiency.

Reinforced concrete slabs — a material characteristic of Soviet industrial construction — were not used to build the building’s frame.

So what went wrong with the defenses at these data centers?

All buildings of this kind — built with modern technology out of metal structures — are vulnerable to drones carrying relatively small warheads. By contrast, defense and civilian enterprises built during the Soviet era, such as thermal power plants, are difficult targets for these drones.

The full-scale war has confirmed this. When striking targets in Ukraine, Russian forces prefer to hit reinforced concrete buildings with ballistic and cruise missiles, which carry warheads weighing hundreds of kilograms and can penetrate obstacles because of their high kinetic energy.

Likewise, Ukraine’s military, which has not yet received large numbers of missiles with a range of more than 300 kilometers (186 miles), prefers relatively “soft” but economically important targets: oil refineries, warehouses, and now data centers. Ukraine tries to strike Soviet-era industrial facilities with missiles such as the Flamingo cruise missile, but it does not yet have enough of them to achieve an effect of strategic scale.

Ukraine’s army has also used drones to damage facilities that are strategically important to Russia and its military. In most cases, though, foreign companies built the buildings housing these facilities using metal structures.

Optical Fiber Systems JSC in Saransk, Russia’s only major fiber-optic producer, was built turnkey by a Finnish company in the late 2000s. The plant was important to the Russian military because fiber optics are used, among other things, to make fiber-optic-guided drones for the front line. In 2025, Ukrainian drone strikes effectively destroyed the building and its equipment. Rebuilding it will take several years, Russian authorities reported. Other successful attacks on workshops built from metal structures have also been recorded.

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Beyond the vulnerability of the buildings themselves, Yandex and Sberbank also erred in choosing where to build. By the fifth year of the full-scale war, facilities in and around Moscow had gained a major competitive advantage: the military and Russian authorities have clearly chosen to allocate air defense resources to protect the capital, just as Ukraine’s leadership has done for Kyiv.

Traditional short-range air defense systems, the Tor and Pantsir families, remain the backbone of Russia’s drone defenses, and there clearly are not enough of them to protect the country’s entire territory. Concentrating these systems around Moscow, however, has made hitting targets in the capital difficult.

Difficult, but solvable: massing drones in a single wave sometimes lets Ukraine’s military break through the defenses around Moscow and reach particularly important targets, such as the Moscow oil refinery. Many attacks fail, however: videos and photos of drones shot down around Moscow circulate often, with no verified evidence that targets inside the city were struck.

Most of Russia’s key internet infrastructure nodes are located in Moscow and St. Petersburg. M9 (MSK-IX), the most important node, houses the infrastructure for the root DNS servers and sits in the southwest of the capital. During a drone attack on August 18, a fire broke out for unknown reasons at the CHPP-20 power plant, which supplies M9 with electricity, causing problems for thousands of websites. However, the data center itself was not damaged at the time.

How could these fragile targets be defended, in theory?

Methods of protection fall into two categories: passive and active. Passive measures include building physical protective structures around a facility or, where possible, dispersing production.

Building protective structures requires large capital investments with no guarantee the method will work. Russia also used to require government authorization to build these structures, but a 2026 law repealed that rule.

The problem is that not all structures are effective. Expensive protective structures, naturally, have a better chance of working. The same cannot be said for the ordinary anti-drone nets used at the front to counter small drones: they are not very effective against fixed-wing drones carrying warheads of dozens of kilograms.

This fall, Russian oil refineries and oil depots began installing sturdier metal nets of various designs. There is still no data on how much this protection helps. A video showing nets being installed at the Moscow oil refinery was published September 21, while the most recent attack — which again damaged unnamed equipment at the plant — had occurred the day before. The video was probably filmed before that strike, so doubts remain about how effective the netting is. There is also a risk that these barriers could be breached by repeated strikes on the same spot.

Previous experience has also failed to prove the method’s effectiveness. Bashneft, for example, began installing metal nets around its primary oil-refining units in the spring of 2024, yet drone strikes knocked the company’s plants out of operation in 2026.

That doesn’t mean more expensive, complex structures won’t offer protection. These experiments — sturdy metal cages and nets — are being conducted in Gulf states, though they, too, have not yet been tested in combat. Iran and its allies, the Houthis, have not recently used drones for strikes on land, preferring missile attacks instead. Russian companies, however, have already begun building these “fences” at their refineries.

Reliable passive drone defense might force an adversary to use more expensive munitions — missiles above all — to hit targets. Russian enterprises are already trying to build more reliable defenses that could also stop missiles in theory. At some power plants, for instance, construction has begun on structures resembling reinforced concrete sarcophagi.

Ukraine has chosen a second path of passive defense: dispersing potential targets. Fire Point, a manufacturer of drones, cruise missiles, and ballistic missiles, has said more than 20 camouflaged production sites are working on its ballistic missile project. This approach naturally reduces production efficiency, if it doesn’t rule out mass-producing complex products altogether.

Ukraine is helped by its ability to move some production outside the country. In Russia, the equivalent might be relocating sensitive facilities en masse to the Far East, but a shortage of production factors there, labor among them, and complicated logistics stand in the way.

Active defense — air defense and electronic warfare assets — also has its drawbacks. Russia’s model relies on a network of traditional short-range air defense systems backed by mobile fire teams equipped with man-portable air-defense missile systems, small arms, anti-aircraft artillery, interceptor drones, and mobile radars. Covering the entire territory from the Ukrainian border to targets deep inside the country is impossible: Russia’s Aerospace Forces and Ground Forces had 129 Tor-M½ systems and just over 50 Pantsir systems at the start of the year, according to the Military Balance 2026 reference guide. Even mounting them on towers and tall buildings, a widely used practice, does not allow them to detect, track, and hit a low-flying drone at a range of more than 15 kilometers (9 miles).

Saturating the defenses with hundreds or thousands of mobile fire teams, each capable of hitting targets within hundreds of meters or, at most, a few kilometers of itself, is also impossible: the Russian military lacks the personnel for it. The Kremlin has tried to solve the problem by calling up reservists through the Combat Army Reserve of the Country program, created in 2021, under which participants receive small payments and attend annual military training while keeping their regular jobs. Russia, however, appears to have not found enough reservists.

Russia has not yet built a layered system of sensors and interceptor drones similar to Ukraine’s, though individual elements, such as mobile groups with interceptors, have been deployed. Russian Defense Minister Andrei Belousov promised in the spring that the system would be ready by November. Work is underway: new regional structures are being created, and the outlines of a defense are taking shape.

Even so, Ukraine’s layered defense isn’t perfect: Russian forces have managed to temporarily neutralize it by quickly shifting to producing thousands of faster jet-powered drones and miniature cruise missiles. Neither Ukraine’s interceptor drones nor the sensors supporting them are designed for these targets, so Ukraine’s military now has to build a new system and new production lines to counter the Russian drones. Both the jet-powered drones and the tools to counter them have turned out to be far more expensive than the previous generation of equipment.

As a result, Russia’s anti-drone air defense still tends toward protecting individual sites, but there are so many potential targets that protecting all of them is impossible. And where this protection does exist, attackers can overwhelm it by saturating the defenses with a mass of drones.

The Kremlin is trying to get the owners of these facilities to pay for their own drone defenses. A decree now allows the state to temporarily take over management of enterprises that fail to provide their own protection. Beyond passive protection measures, though, enterprises have few tools available for defense. Companies are allowed to “rent” air defense systems from the Defense Ministry, for instance. However, many large companies are trying to build their own radar and interceptor-drone systems. This effort is hindered, among other things, by aviation regulations, which there are now proposals to amend urgently.

A separate problem for private air defense is the inability to use explosive warheads on interceptors. Despite some successes, it is unlikely that fixed-wing drones can be reliably shot down using only the kinetic energy of a small, low-speed interceptor, though manufacturers claim otherwise.

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The Explainer Desk

Ukraine is investigating criminal cases against five Russian archaeologists over excavations in occupied Crimea, BBC Russia reported, citing prosecutorial and court documents obtained by the outlet.

The archaeologists have been designated as suspects in absentia in war crimes investigations. BBC names two of the suspects: the leaders of an excavation at the medieval site of Solkhat: Mark Kramarovsky, an 86-year-old Soviet and Russian scientist who founded the excavation in 1978 and has led it ever since, and Emil Seydaliev, a senior researcher at the Institute of Archaeology of Crimea.

The Ukrainian outlet Graty reported in August that Ukraine had formally designated Kramarovsky and Seydaliev as suspects. Ukrainian investigators said the scientists carried out illegal excavations at Solkhat, helped Russia appropriate the valuables found there in violation of international humanitarian law, and damaged the cultural layer beyond repair.

BBC does not name the other three scientists.

Since 2014, the excavation has received permits from Moscow, BBC said, and its finds have been handed over to the Crimean Tatar Museum of Cultural and Historical Heritage, established by Russian authorities. All the objects have been entered into Russia’s museum fund. Ukrainian prosecutors believe this has led to the “illegal appropriation of Ukrainian cultural heritage.”

Emil Seydaliev was born in Crimea, held Ukrainian citizenship and later obtained a Russian passport. He has worked in Crimea his entire life and called the criminal case against him and his colleagues a farce.

In December 2025, Polish security services detained Russian archaeologist Alexander Butyagin, who had conducted excavations in Crimea for many years. Since 1999, Butyagin had led the Myrmekion archaeological expedition, which studies the ancient site of Myrmekion in present-day Kerch. He said he kept working in Crimea after 2014 because he considered it necessary and right for the site. Ukrainian prosecutors believe he conducted illegal excavations in Crimea after 2014 and destroyed a cultural heritage site. Ukraine had sought Butyagin’s extradition, but in April 2026 Poland handed him over to Russia as part of an exchange.

Ukraine initially accused Butyagin of partially destroying a cultural heritage site and causing damage exceeding 201.6 million hryvnias ($4.8 million). After his release, Ukrainian authorities reclassified the case as a war crime: “looting of national treasures in occupied territory” by prior conspiracy. A court in Kyiv authorized an in-absentia investigation into a new case against him, allowing him to be tried in absentia. The previous charge did not allow for that, BBC said.

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The number of users reporting outages in Sberbank’s services has sharply increased in Moscow, St. Petersburg, the Novosibirsk region, and other regions, according to data from the monitoring sites Sboi.rf and Downdetector.

Users reported that online banking was not working, payments were not going through, the website would not load, and the app would not open.

Outages were also reported on other sites and services: Mail.ru, Kontur, Ozon, MegaFon, and VKontakte, as well as the provider SkyNet St. Petersburg.

Ukrainian drones attacked a Sberbank data center in Balakovo, in the Saratov region, overnight on October 14. Sberbank First Deputy Chairman Alexander Vedyakhin confirmed the attack but said all services were operating normally.

Ukraine’s armed forces struck data centers belonging to Yandex three times last week. After the third strike, users across Russia began experiencing problems with Yandex’s own services as well as those of many other websites. Yandex’s services abroad, in Armenia, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, and Serbia, also stopped working or experienced disruptions.

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Russia

Ukrainian drones struck a data center operated by Sberbank in the city of Balakovo in the Saratov region overnight on October 14. Ukrainian monitoring channels were the first to report the attack. Saratov Governor Roman Busargin said the strike damaged residential buildings in Balakovo and killed one person. He said all infrastructure facilities in the city are “operating normally.”

A few hours later, Sberbank First Deputy Chairman Alexander Vedyakhin confirmed the attack on the data center, saying all the bank’s systems and services are “operating normally.” The bank’s press service said no employees were injured.

This is the first Ukrainian attack on Sberbank data centers. Last week, Ukrainian drones struck data centers belonging to Yandex in the Ryazan and Vladimir regions, as well as in Kaluga.

Sberbank announced plans to build a data center in the Saratov region in 2020 and began construction the following year. The facility is expected to cover almost 60,000 square meters (about 646,000 square feet). Authorities said it would be the largest data center in Europe, and one of Sberbank’s supercomputers is being built at the Balakovo site.

Ukraine

Ukraine’s Western partners once again failed to warn Kyiv that Russia was preparing a ballistic missile strike on the capital, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on the evening of October 13. He said the missiles were detected only as they approached Kyiv. The main target was the CHP-4 power plant, one of Kyiv’s major energy facilities.

Ukrainian Air Force spokesperson Yurii Ihnat said partners did not warn Ukraine ahead of the first ballistic missile strike during the overnight attack on October 14, but did send notifications ahead of the three subsequent waves of strikes.

A day earlier, Zelensky had said Ukraine had received no intelligence from Western partners about the Russian missile strike on Kyiv on October 12. “Intelligence about the launch of Russian ballistic missiles helps save people’s lives, and this is one of the most critical issues. This is exactly what helps prevent killings when there is a warning about ballistic missiles,” he said.

According to Politico, the United States told Ukraine it had withheld intelligence about the missile strike on Kyiv on the evening of October 12 because of poor weather conditions. Ukrainian authorities fear “this might not have been the case.”

U.S. President Donald Trump, asked directly by a journalist whether Washington had stopped sharing intelligence with Kyiv, answered: “No.” Earlier, the Financial Times reported that the United States had threatened to cut off intelligence sharing with Ukraine unless Kyiv stopped striking Russian oil refineries.

On the morning of October 14, Ukrainian military personnel began reporting that SpaceX had restricted the operation of Starlink satellite terminals used by Ukrainian forces at the front. The restrictions affect Starshield, the military version of Starlink, and limit the speed of drones that rely on satellite communications.

Starshield is faster and necessary for drone operators, a source in the Ukrainian military told Ukrainska Pravda, a Ukrainian news outlet. Regular Starlink, installed on drones, supports speeds of up to 160 kilometers per hour (99 mph), which is not enough for some missions. One commander sent the outlet a video showing two Ukrainian drones climbing into the sky and then “lose” their connection, unable to continue the mission.

“Our defense forces did not receive a warning about these restrictions, and that led to the failure of a number of missions. It’s obvious that this action cannot be a coincidence and is connected to the current political situation,” said Serhii Beskrestnov, an adviser to the Ukrainian president.

SpaceX has not yet commented on the Ukrainian military’s statements.

The war in photos. The aftermath of the missile strike on Kyiv

Russian forces struck Kyiv overnight on October 14, killing three people and injuring 21, according to the latest data. A strike hit a multistory residential building in the Desnianskyi district. Among the injured is a child.

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Latvia has officially notified Russian journalist Leonid Ragozin that it is expelling him from the country, he said on social media.

“I can now confirm that yesterday I was notified of my expulsion from Latvia where I lived for 12 years,” Ragozin wrote.

The notice did not specify “any specific misdemeanors or statements which prompted the decision,” according to Ragozin. He added that he had been declared persona non grata, a status intended “for diplomats who enjoy immunity from prosecution, not for ordinary people.”

Ragozin considers his expulsion political persecution, saying it stemmed from “long-brewing revenge” by far-right politicians over his investigation into their ties to Russian neo-Nazis who have taken refuge in Kyiv. “It is also a punishment for my commentary on the Russian aggression in Ukraine and for Pavel Sheremet investigation,” he wrote.

Latvian outlets reported in early October that the country’s Foreign Ministry had begun the process of declaring “another Russian citizen” persona non grata. Foreign Minister Baiba Braže said the decision was based on information “from the competent authorities” following consultations with the interior minister and the prime minister. The identity of the person being expelled was not officially disclosed, but Delfi reported it was Ragozin.

In Russia, Ragozin worked as a correspondent and producer for BBC Russia from 1998 to 2103 and as an editor at the magazine Russian Newsweek, and he also collaborated with Lonely Planet. He moved to Latvia after Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014. More recently, he has worked with Al Jazeera, Jacobin, and The American Conservative.

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The business association Delovaya Rossiya has drafted proposals to overhaul the Russian economy, the Russian business news outlet RBC reported. Some of the proposed measures would significantly tighten conditions for small and medium-sized businesses, while others target citizens’ passive income.

The draft document, which RBC reviewed, includes 52 proposals covering a wide range of topics. Among other things, the organization proposes the following:

• Eliminate the tax regime known as the “Income” version of the simplified tax system (USN), which carries a 6% rate. The Bell explains that this would mean “primarily an increase in the tax base for entrepreneurs who earn income through their own skilled labor.”
• Lower the threshold for applying VAT under the auto-USN regime from 60 million to 20 million rubles (matching the current threshold for the “standard” USN).
• Eliminate the patent-based tax system, which The Bell says is widely used by microbusinesses.
• Introduce social security contributions for citizens whose income mainly comes from interest or dividends.
• Introduce an inheritance and gift tax on amounts exceeding 50 million rubles.
• Restrict imports of “strategic innovative products.”

The Bell calls the proposal “a blow to small business” and says it “looks very bad” for medium-sized businesses too.

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