Semyon Krasotkin, a 27-year-old mathematician and journalist from Moscow, has been jailed on treason charges, the news outlet Vot Tak reported.

Krasotkin was detained at Domodedovo Airport in mid-August 2026 after a trip to Kyrgyzstan, a source told Vot Tak. Border guards searched his phone and found “stars” — paid reactions that serve as Telegram’s virtual currency — that he had left on posts in opposition and Ukrainian Telegram channels.

Krasotkin was then kept in custody through a series of back-to-back jail terms for the administrative offense of “petty hooliganism.” Before that, Vot Tak’s sources said, he had been threatened with treason charges, torture, and violence.

Krasotkin was due to be released on September 17 but was again kept in custody. He was taken to the Moscow office of the Federal Security Service, Russia’s domestic security agency, where authorities opened a treason investigation into him, sources told Vot Tak. On September 19, a court ordered him held in pretrial detention for two months.

One source told Vot Tak that investigators listed “star” reactions worth a total of 2,200 rubles in Krasotkin’s case. Another said Krasotkin had sent “stars” to a Ukrainian Telegram meme channel that was probably raising money for Ukraine’s armed forces.

Krasotkin earned a master’s degree from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology and worked as a mathematician at the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Trapeznikov Institute of Control Sciences. He also joined Russian Wikinews at 16. The project’s website lists him as one of its nine administrators; he has published more than a million news items.

Criminal investigations over Telegram “stars” have been reported since early 2026, though the initial investigations involved allegations of financing terrorism. In the summer, the Telegram channel Tyuremny Advokat reported the first treason investigations over Telegram “stars.” In September 2026, human rights advocates asked Telegram founder Pavel Durov to make paid reactions to posts anonymous because Russians were facing criminal prosecution over them.

More on political repression

• Russia charges Telegram founder Pavel Durov with facilitating terrorism as the Kremlin escalates its crackdown on the app
• Russia accuses Telegram founder Pavel Durov of aiding terrorism: what the FSB alleges, why two agencies report different numbers, and what it means for Russians still using the app
• ‘It’s Stalinist logic’ Three experts explain the escalating nature of Russia’s political repressions

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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In the summer of 2025, media outlets first reported on the “nefors” of Kitay-Gorod — teenagers in unusual clothes who hang out in this central Moscow neighborhood. Around the same time, local café and bar owners noticed they were getting fewer customers: The rowdy young members of alternative subcultures had scared them off. A year later, police began rounding up the “nefors,” handling teenagers roughly as they detained them, sometimes without explanation. Police go mainly by how they look. Sometimes, though, there are grounds for police intervention: The “nefors” get drunk, shout, and fight, or lie on the ground after overdosing on drugs. Some also hold far-right views. Bereg, a cooperative of independent journalists, spent two nights in Kitay-Gorod — one in the summer and another after the school year began. Meduza is translating its report in full.

Caution: This article contains extensive profanity, as well as xenophobic statements (which are important to understanding the story’s context).

Chapter One

August

‘Back in our day, it was six nine’

Late in the evening, several teenagers sit on the sidewalk in a quiet lane in Kitay-Gorod, in central Moscow. They’re dressed in black, their once brightly dyed hair now faded and grown out. One girl, wearing ripped fishnet tights and a short skirt, looks for something to prop her smartphone against as she gets ready to film a TikTok. Another, in an oversized hoodie, talks loudly on a video call. Several boys nearby roar with laughter.

Girls with bright makeup and faces whitened with unnaturally pale foundation or powder; boys with bob haircuts or long bangs; many in tall platform shoes, some with extensive piercings and tattoos, including on their faces and necks — people who look like this are called “nefors.”

Those particularly fond of them often use the affectionate diminutive “neforyata” — many are under 18. They belong to a range of youth subcultures and often look very different from one another, making any general description difficult. One thing is certain: They stand out from other Muscovites.

Since the spring of 2025, Kitay-Gorod has become the main hangout for young “nefors.” Nowhere else in the city has so many of them. Groups of teenagers from different subcultures, immediately recognizable by their distinctive clothes, emerge from subway stations and fan out through the neighborhood.

Two boys turn into a courtyard near the Moscow Choral Synagogue on Bolshoy Spasoglinishchevsky Lane. Both wear black T-shirts; one has a keffiyeh wrapped around his head and mismatched sneakers.

“Fuck!” one of them blurts out. There’s a police car in the courtyard they were heading for, and an officer is smoking a little farther away.

Since the summer of 2026, police and the Russian National Guard have been patrolling Kitay-Gorod more frequently. They used to focus on fining people for drinking alcohol where it wasn’t permitted. Now they may turn a blind eye to people carrying beer bottles. They pay much more attention to teenagers.

Patrol cars are a frequent sight on the streets, with police vans here and there. From Friday through Sunday, the number of police vehicles in the neighborhood rises noticeably. Officers may drive past the same spot several times in an hour.

Red barrier tape is strung across the entrance to a courtyard with several bars and cafés. Two athletic-looking men stand nearby, both in civilian clothes and balaclavas. They barely pay attention to adults, even those arriving with large backpacks. But the moment they spot “nefors,” they spring into action, blocking the entrance, ready to demand ID. The “nefors” aren’t eager to engage with the guards: They quickly turn around and leave.

— So they’re only keeping schoolkids out? a man of about 40 in a white shirt asks one of the bar’s patrons.

— Yeah. If they can see you’re normal, they let you through.

The man nods knowingly: All last summer, teenagers in unusual clothes crowded around the bar, and customers were “not thrilled” with them.

Other customers felt uncomfortable around the “nefors,” who got drunk, shouted, and sometimes threw up right beside the benches where they hung out. The schoolkids didn’t go into the bars themselves, except to look for a bathroom. They brought their own alcohol and snacks: There are plenty of liquor stores nearby, and locals say the staff sometimes don’t ask customers for ID.

The patrons keep discussing the teenagers, mostly dismissively. They joke that you don’t need ID to tell how old “kids like that” are — just ask them to read an analog clock or finish a line from the song “Nu gde zhe ruchki” (“Where Are Those Hands?”).

— Or that meme, “six-seven”! If [someone] does this — that’s it, fuck off, says the man in the white shirt, moving his hands up and down like a scale to demonstrate the signature gesture.

— I know that meme too, and I’m almost 40. So what? another patron replies.

— But you wouldn’t do that with your hands.

— No. Back in our day, it was six nine!

In the bar next door, the conversation is also about teenagers and screening people at the door. The bartender and his customer reminisce about their youth: There were subcultures back then too, but they “stood for something.” Now, they think, teenagers are simply being obnoxious.

“I was actually pleased once when I heard a Deftones track, ‘My Own Summer’: Wow, they’re starting to learn the basics!” the bartender says. “Turns out it’s just some short video that went viral on TikTok and has nothing to do with Deftones! They’re just [milking] it, and nobody’s planning to learn [to play guitar] or even find out what it is.”

The customer recalls recently seeing a teenager on the subway wearing an Aria band T-shirt, with a skateboard under his arm and a fresh scar on his face, probably from falling off the board. The bartender decides the younger generation isn’t a lost cause — there’s just “something wrong” with the “nefors” who come to Kitay-Gorod to have fun.

‘All of Kitay-Gorod can see people constantly having it out, drinking, smoking, doing drugs, and screwing’

“People have become afraid to come to Kitay-Gorod, because before 9 [p.m.] it’s one crowd, and afterward it’s a completely different one,” Albert (not his real name) tells Bereg. He owns a business in the neighborhood and is now in his second year of watching the crowds of teenagers who hang out here.

At first, Albert says, there were no problems: Teenagers in unusual clothes gathered in the courtyards, but they behaved “perfectly reasonably” and people were simply curious about them. Gradually, the alternative crowd grew to include people who got drunk and behaved indecently, for instance relieving themselves in the street. By the middle of the summer of 2026, Albert says, this behavior had become the norm for them.

“They like to shout and act really obnoxious. Their favorite pastime is pepper-spraying each other. They get into fights every day,” Albert says. Although this “aggression” wasn’t directed at bystanders, the bar’s customers felt unsafe and stopped coming to Kitay-Gorod.

“Customers told us straight out: We love you, we appreciate you, we respect you, but we’re scared to come into your neighborhood on Fridays and Saturdays, because things are totally out of control here,” Albert says. In the summer of 2025, his business’s revenue was 40% lower than the year before.

When teenagers fought or used pepper spray, Albert, his employees, and other Kitay-Gorod business owners called the police. Sometimes they had to call several times in an evening. But their complaints went nowhere: The police would arrive and shrug.

Albert says officers told business owners that “dealing with minors is a pain in the ass,” especially since there were dozens of them here and, as he understood it from what the officers said, only one patrol car. The bar owner believes getting away with it only encouraged the teenagers.

Everything changed after March 20, 2026. That evening, several unidentified people attacked students leaving the Moscow Choral Synagogue. “Across the street is Gorka Park. People who look pretty rough gather there every day, especially on Fridays. They’ve had a few drinks, and sometimes they go looking for trouble,” the synagogue’s communications director, Dmitry Drigailo, said of the attack.

Whether any “nefors” were among the attackers is unknown. But several Muscovites who often spend time in Kitay-Gorod tell Bereg that this was when the National Guard and OMON riot police began patrolling alongside the police.

The roundups of “nefors” began after that. One of the largest took place on July 3, when officers detained and beat dozens of people, including teenagers. “Suddenly I was hit on the back of the neck, forced to my knees, grabbed by the arms, punched in the face, and then hit in the leg,” one person detained that day told Bereg.

“All of Kitay-Gorod can see people constantly having it out with each other, drinking, smoking [marijuana], doing drugs, and screwing,” Albert says:

All of Kitay-Gorod is turning into a public toilet — I look [at the sidewalk] and realize the toilet is here now, and here, and here. Things have gotten out of control. If it hadn’t gone this far, I wouldn’t even pay attention to these teenagers. But I’m certainly not going to make excuses for these kids, because I’ve seen all this over and over.

In the evenings, especially on Fridays and weekends, broken glass is scattered throughout Kitay-Gorod, and the air smells of urine.

Police raids forced the teenagers out of the parks and small public gardens where they used to hang out and into the lanes and courtyards. Albert says “now it’s other people’s problem,” and he “doesn’t envy them.”

Intensive care ambulances driving past are a sign to pedestrians that teenagers are still partying nearby. Bereg’s correspondent spotted several of these vehicles in Kitay-Gorod, including ones marked “pediatric intensive care.” Albert says that “at least 20 times” he has seen teenagers overdosing and watched as ambulances were called for them.

Albert says there have always been young people who “show off for each other” and try to express themselves through unusual clothes and bright makeup — and that’s normal. But the bar owner struggles to sympathize with the “nefors”: He has witnessed their “out-of-control behavior” too often. “These aren’t the sweet, innocent kids they’re made out to be on Instagram,” he tells Bereg.

Albert says their behavior is the only reason he feels negatively about these teenagers. “I hope they figure out what they love as soon as possible and find the confidence to pursue it,” he says. “And above all, I hope they have the sense and instincts to avoid stupid mistakes and not ruin their lives for no reason.”

‘There were these loud chicks right there — they left them alone and picked on us’

It’s easy to find where the “nefors” hang out in Kitay-Gorod — just follow someone in unusual clothes. You can also find specific spots through Instagram and TikTok videos; sometimes the creators even post GPS coordinates in the comments under their videos.

The most popular places have names: the “drunk courtyard,” the “puck,” and several “zigas” — “upper,” “lower,” and “old.” One of the first “zigas” is near the rock merchandise store Zigzag.

The teenagers call Danilovskaya Alley the “old ziga.” It’s a tiny park with a Soviet-era playground, screened from the road by rows of trees. Apparently counting on that cover, the people at the “old ziga” don’t even try to keep the noise down. All you have to do to find the visibly intoxicated young people is follow the sound.

Several groups have gathered in the courtyard, surrounded by empty bottles, cigarette butts, pill blister packs, and other trash. A rental e-scooter lies in a puddle beneath the pull-up bars.

A tall blonde girl in wide-mesh fishnet tights and a long-haired boy sit down on a bench. Both look about 16. They discuss their search for the places in Kitay-Gorod where groups of teenagers gather. Both are annoyed: Their acquaintances gave them only vague descriptions, so they had to figure it all out themselves. They don’t like the police raids either, but their desire to be part of the scene outweighs their fear of getting caught in a roundup.

“The riot cops are the worst — there’s no reasoning with them at all,” the boy says. “Whether you’ve got connections or not, nobody gives a fuck: They’ll just beat you up, and that’s it.” He can’t understand why officers behave so differently at big events, such as soccer games.

— I went to a Spartak game — everything was fine, they were polite there. Here, though — it’s just fucking insane, they’re murderers and fucking psychos.

— Like the country’s got no other problems — so they come to Kitay-Gorod, his companion says with a smirk.

— That’s what I’m saying. Don’t they have anything better to fucking do?

The girl says she ran into a raid a few hours ago but managed to get away while police were checking her friends’ IDs. “There were these loud chicks right there — they left them alone and picked on us,” she says. The boy doesn’t seem impressed by her story — he smirks and says he witnessed a “real roundup” that same day:

Today, near the “puck,” in the courtyards, I went up to a group. I said, “Guys, a paddy wagon just pulled up.” They go, “What’s a paddy wagon?” Then bam — five seconds later, a whole bunch of cops in body armor come in. Everyone’s yelling, “Pigs, fucking run!” And I slowly stepped aside, pressed myself against the fence — and they left me alone.

The boy says that when he’s sure there’s nothing to detain him for, he tries to act as though nothing’s happening — and it works. “I get the fuck out when I’m either high or drunk,” he says. Right now, he’s “a little drunk.” But even if he were sober, he thinks he could still get in trouble if detained:

The booze doesn’t fucking matter, but weed takes two weeks to clear your system, and if they take me to the station and test me, I’m fucked. If they find anything — drug treatment clinic, injections, parents. But if you’re sober and they definitely won’t find anything, just act normal and pray.

A loud belch comes from the far end of the courtyard, followed by a burst of laughter.

— Bless you! a male voice calls out.

— I need to puke, another replies.

— Well, go over there, in the bushes.

The courtyard goes quiet.

— What’s your name again? I forgot, the long-haired boy asks the girl sitting beside him on the bench.

— You never asked.

The boy is surprised that she’s perfectly comfortable hanging out with him when she doesn’t even know his name. She admits she “knows everything about him”: Before they met in person, she looked up his Telegram username with a bot that searches for personal information. Their conversation makes it clear that Telegram is where they met.

— You were willing to spend 200 rubles on that?

— I bought a bunch of searches at once a while back — about 15 rubles each.

— I think doxxing is cringe now.

— Well, I mostly use it if I need to call someone urgently and don’t have their number. Or if I forgot their name.

The teenagers move on from roundups, drugs, and personal data searches to complaining about their parents. The boy boasts that he managed to get his mom to let him stay out until 1 a.m. But his “bros” have “strict parents,” so he has to find new people to hang out with. “I want to get drunk, unwind — and they’ve got to be home by 10,” he says.

The group on the next bench is planning to keep the night going at someone’s apartment. They discuss how to get there (the subway has already closed) and what cover story to tell their parents.

— Business [a Business-class taxi — Bereg] or the bus? asks a short girl with red hair.

— I need to get drunk, or there’s no point taking the bus, another girl’s voice says with a laugh.

A phone rings. “Got any pepper spray?” the same voice asks into the phone. “Yeah, bring me some.” The girl moves the phone away from her ear, and the screen lights up her face. She’s blonde, with many facial piercings.

— Got anything on you? someone asks the blonde cryptically. It’s too dark to see the speaker’s face.

— No, not even any vodka left, bro.

— A lighter?

— Definitely got a lighter. A fancy one, too.

The girl takes out a lighter shaped like a gold bar.

— That’s cool! a boy says admiringly.

— Check it out, check it out! her red-haired friend says.

“Ah, who gives a fuck, we bought a pack at Sadovod for 600 [rubles] — there’s like 20 in there, for fuck’s sake,” the blonde brags. “We said we’d bring [the money] later.”

— So, did you?

— No! It burned down, fucking Sadovod.

The teenagers roar with laughter. When Bereg’s correspondent asks whether they feel safe in this courtyard, they say “the pigs never come here.” Soon the group leaves in a taxi.

A couple — a boy and a girl — comes running up to take their place. It’s too dark to make them out.

“Holy fuck, why are there old people sitting here?” the male voice mutters irritably, referring to Bereg’s correspondent.

The couple moves over to the playground merry-go-round, where their friends are already sitting. The teenagers discuss concerts and festivals and swap gossip about performers.

A high-pitched male voice sings:

You jerked me off with your hands,
My dick wouldn’t get hard.
Fucking sick of all the calls,
This way and that.

People in another part of the courtyard pick up the tune and sing along. Nearby, a boy in a hoodie sits on a playground slide, leaning on his knees with his head hanging down. He’s clearly unwell, but he refuses Bereg’s correspondent’s offer of help. The singing teenagers pay him no attention.

A few minutes later, a National Guard vehicle drives past the courtyard. It stops nearby, but no one gets out. After waiting a little while, it drives away.

* * *

By the end of August, officers had finally turned their attention to the “old ziga.” Local residents say there was a fight “involving knives,” after which forensic specialists came to the playground. Residents saw them taking fingerprints from bottles scattered around the courtyard. Bereg could not confirm through publicly available sources that such a fight had occurred.

In September, the playground entrance was closed.

Chapter Two

October

‘Cops aren’t our bros!’

It’s been pouring all evening. But the teenagers pay no attention, walking around without umbrellas or their hoods up. Despite the start of the school year and the nasty weather, they still gather in Kitay-Gorod on Fridays.

Two dark-haired girls in thick-soled shoes enter Gorka Park between Bolshoy Spasoglinishchevsky and Petroverigsky Lanes and head confidently down a path. A few minutes later, they emerge onto a playground. At least a hundred young people in “nefor” clothes are there, ranging in age from about 12 to 20. This place is called the “new ziga.”

“Maybe we’ll find someone we know after all,” a girl of about 14 says hopefully to her friend. Her friend shrugs. Even if there are familiar faces here, finding them will be hard: Parts of the courtyard are packed, and most of the teenagers keep moving around.

Several people are shouting and tossing someone into the air — light-colored sneakers flash above the crowd’s heads. It’s very loud, with music playing from all directions: everything from Kai Angel and 9mice — teen favorites the crowd sings along to — to, for some reason, lezginka dance music.

— You sober? a boy in a black hoodie asks me and a girl standing nearby.

— Yes.

— Pfft, he snorts, walking away as he laughs loudly and exchanges glances with his friends.

Different boys approach Bereg’s correspondent and other girls with similar questions several more times. They react much the same way when told the girls are sober. Some don’t bother speaking: They simply lift the edge of a girl’s sweatshirt hood, look into her eyes, and walk away disappointed. They’re checking her pupils: If they’re unnaturally dilated, she’s probably under the influence of synthetic drugs or psychiatric medication. These boys aren’t interested in sober girls.

— So, how do you like the zoo? a curly-haired teenager in baggy black jeans and a leather jacket asks, stopping in front of me. Apparently, my age and “normie” clothes make me stand out.

— Why a zoo?

— Just look at them, he says, spreading his arms and swaying a little.

He says you can sometimes find “normal people” here, and “there’s always something going on.” Mark (not his real name) is 16. He says he spends every weekend here and recognizes many of the “new ziga” regulars. Right now, he’s trying to find the “bros” he arranged to meet, but they aren’t answering.

“Give me back the vodka, for fuck’s sake!” a short girl with long dark hair screams behind him. She looks no older than Mark. Boys have crowded around her and are playing keep-away, tossing a vodka bottle to one another so she can’t get it.

— I’m telling you, it’s a total zoo! You can’t stand being here drunk or [sober].

— But you’re here anyway.

— Well, I’m on a bender — my girlfriend dumped me.

The bottle flies over Mark’s head, narrowly missing him, and lands in the bushes. The girl who was trying to catch it runs screaming after it.

Mark says he plans to party all night and go home in the morning once he’s sobered up. He says his parents don’t mind him spending weekends in Kitay-Gorod. “They get that I’m 16, I want to hang out,” he says. “What am I supposed to do, sit at home on TikTok? That’s boring.”

As a child, Mark practiced martial arts, often won competitions, and was passionate about it. But then he was injured and had to quit. On top of that, conflicts with classmates escalated into bullying, and he began having mental health problems.

Mark says he spent time in a psychiatric hospital and calls himself “suicidal”: Several times, he stood at the edge of a roof, but something stopped him each time. Once, for instance, his mom called, and the call made him change his mind — Mark was afraid his death would “really traumatize her.”

Now Mark wants to train as a surveyor. “First, the pay’s good; second, you basically don’t do anything at work; third, I really like math,” he says. “And it’s a cool job: If I do well in school and get hired somewhere building tunnels, someone’s life will depend on my calculations.” He says that “as someone who’s suicidal,” he understands “the value of life.”

“Something’s keeping me here, apparently,” he says, continuing to recall his attempts. “Maybe I’ll be some really great family man, maybe I’ll have some really great kids — I don’t know, but there’s got to be a reason for all this.”

While Mark reflects on his purpose in life, the teenagers around us start to get restless. He raises his head and peers into the distance. “Oh, cops,” he says matter-of-factly. “Let’s get the fuck out of here, because shit’s about to go down.”

Someone bolts and starts climbing the fence, but most of the teenagers walk confidently along the path toward the exit. The path narrows, and in the crowd it starts to feel as if we’re leaving a concert or some other big event — everyone is packed in practically shoulder to shoulder, but they try to stay calm and avoid pushing.

— What are they gonna do to us, anyway? a male voice asks behind me.

— Beat the shit out of us! another replies.

— For what?

— Everything.

— We’re not even drinking!

Mark offers to show me the “puck” — that’s where the “nefors” go after officers drive them out of the “new ziga.” He says they try to take different routes to avoid attracting police attention. “Cops aren’t our bros!” he says with a smile.

“Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil!” someone in the crowd chants loudly. It’s unsettling. The only response from those around us is to joke that the riot police might come after the “nefors” too.

I ask Mark if it’s true that gatherings here often end in fights. He nods emphatically. “There was even shooting here a few days ago!” he says excitedly. “It’s the kind of [round] that could easily go right through someone, but luckily they fired into the air.”

Mark says he himself was once “grabbed for fighting” in Kitay-Gorod. According to him, there was no fight — he was just teaching a girl he knew how to wrestle. They had to tell the officers they knew each other and were just practicing. Police checked their IDs on the spot and didn’t take the friends to the station. “We got lucky, that rarely happens,” he says.

One such fight, he says, ended in a death. He says he watched a crowd beat a 19-year-old man to death as punishment for raping a 13-year-old girl. The Telegram channel Podslushano Kitay-Gorod was among those that carried accounts of the incident; Bereg could find no other corroboration. Mark thinks the “nefors” “did the right thing.”

On the way to the “puck,” Mark keeps spotting friends and greeting them by name. He says this is what teenagers value about Kitay-Gorod — “it’s easy to connect with someone for a bit, but you can find good friends too.” Mark’s test of a good friend is whether they’d be willing to get him home when he’s “absolutely shitfaced.”

‘They take you in for looking alternative — you have to explain why you’re dressed like that’

Twenty minutes later, we’re at the “puck.” It’s a tiny courtyard on Pokrovka, with a huge circular flower bed in the center, edged by a wide curb. Menu booklets from a nearby café are neatly arranged all along the curb.

Within minutes, the courtyard fills with teenagers. Three boys notice the menus, grab the booklets, and try to tear them up, but can’t — the pages are laminated. Instead, swearing loudly, they rip pages out of the booklets and start throwing them in all directions. After destroying several menus, they settle down and move over to a bench.

I take out my cigarettes, and teenagers immediately surround me. Among them is a short boy in a beige jacket. Mark says he’s 12.

The teenagers boast to each other about what cigarettes they usually smoke — the stronger the cigarettes, the cooler you seem. Mark, too, smokes the strongest ones in his brand’s lineup: “I’ve smoked so much, nothing gives me a buzz anymore,” he says. Asked how he buys alcohol and cigarettes as a minor, he says he gets older friends to help.

“I can tell you’re kind people, good souls. Can you spare a cigarette?” A boy with peach-colored hair appears out of nowhere. He looks at least 18.

Beside him is a friend dressed in black, with long dark hair, tattooed hands, and a large silver-colored pendant around his neck. “Sorry, that was the last one,” I say truthfully, showing him the empty pack.

Mark starts making excuses, and the boys laugh at him.

— What’s with the flashy fit, bro? the boy in black suddenly asks, his expression changing as he looks at Mark’s jeans, which are covered in white marker drawings.

— I did these myself, can you believe it?

“You did?!” the boy shrieks, reaching out to shake his hand. “Get [over] here, you fucking designer! Fucking designer shit!”

— I’ll do your jeans for a pack of cigarettes! I’ve got acrylic markers with me.

— Damn, no, I don’t want to mess these up, they’re my brother’s — my brother died, I wear his jeans.

The boys discuss whether it’s a good deal and ask what exactly Mark can draw; it’s hard to tell whether they’re joking.

— Can you slap a fucking swastika on there?

— On the ass, sure.

“By the way, this is my personal bodyguard,” the boy in black says, abruptly changing the subject and turning to his peach-haired friend. “Man, show us what you’re packing! Kid, get that shit out.”

His friend unzips his jacket and takes a signal pistol out of an inside pocket. Half the cylinder is already empty.

A siren gives a low-pitched warning blast from the street. Everyone at the “puck” turns to look: A police car is escorting a motorcade of several black foreign-made cars. “Whores!” one of the “nefors” shouts at the police car, to approving cries from the crowd.

At the far end of the courtyard stands a man in a bright orange jacket. He looks about 40 and stands out sharply from the teenage crowd. From time to time, teenagers approach him, exchange a few words, shake hands, and walk away.

“Some guy, a bro of mine, tried to sell me Lyrica today, can you believe it? One blister pack — 2,500 [rubles] cash,” Mark suddenly says, catching my eye. The peach-haired boy is interested in the offer. Their conversation suggests it’s a good deal: The drug usually costs much more on Telegram channels.

— My bro works at a hospital. They write prescriptions in old people’s names, then sell the stuff, Mark says.

“Any way to hook up with them and start dealing?” asks the boy in black. “I’ve got zoliki, tramadol, alprazolam, shit like that — I’ve got everything.”

— So do they.

— Seriously, any way to hook up with them and build a drug-dealing empire?

— I don’t know, ask him!

The boys get the contact information and leave to buy beer. Someone is holding a half-liter (17-ounce) plastic bottle of some cheap fruit-flavored cocktail; a group of boys nearby drinks liqueur from 200-milliliter bottles (about 7 ounces) and discusses where else to go in Kitay-Gorod.

— Remind me, what’s the name of that fucking sleazy dive you love so much? a boy with short hair and a black track jacket asks his friend.

— Klub Klub. But they’ve renamed it Knizhny [Book] now.

— Book club? Does anyone actually read there? the boy in the track jacket laughs.

Mark complains that he’s starting to sober up. He excuses himself and walks over to the lawn, where he throws up on the grass. When he returns, he says he won’t drink any more — at least not today.

A short girl with long black hair, a pale face, and burgundy lipstick enters the courtyard. She looks no older than 16. She’s carrying a yellow “Caution: Wet floor” sign, the kind usually put out in shopping malls during cleaning. She proudly says she stole it from the nearest “McDonald’s” (now Vkusno — i Tochka, the chain that replaced McDonald’s in Russia), then runs into the teenage crowd, declaring, “I’m the fucking coolest person here.”

A tall, thin young man with very short hair and a black windbreaker stands out in the crowd. He invites various groups back to his place, but says that “unfortunately, there’s no mephedrone” at home. He’s a local TikTok celebrity who calls himself Lyokha Neforyuga. He’s 19.

Lyokha used to have long hair and belonged to PMC Redan, but at the end of the summer he decided to give up his alternative look. He cut his hair, switched to more neutral clothes, and began saying he was now a “normie.” Lyokha has repeatedly been detained and held in jail for drinking in public and fighting. He also says he is registered as a patient at an addiction clinic, which he claims is why the military enlistment office refused to let him enlist as a contract soldier.

Teenagers nearby discuss Lyokha Neforyuga, saying “half of KG [Kitay-Gorod — Bereg] wants to smash his fucking face in.”

— What for? one boy asks another.

— He does stupid shit: yells at everyone, gets drunk.

— Well, let him drink. So he drinks — big deal.

— And yells!

— Nah, the yelling’s not cool.

Right now, Lyokha is very drunk. He looks as though he’s taken drugs as well: His movements are jerky, and he grinds his teeth and bites his lips.

— Lyokha, what did they cut your hair off for? the boy in the track jacket calls out to him.

“Who are you?” Lyokha replies suspiciously. “I got it cut myself, bro. How do you know me?”

— You’ve got a TikTok.

“Oh, yeah, I’ve got 2.5 million [views],” Lyokha says, relaxing and starting to smile. “Damn, he actually knows me!”

Someone distracts Lyokha, and he heads back into the crowd. Another siren blasts a warning from the street. Several police cars are patrolling the neighborhood, and the officers inside can be seen scrutinizing the people at the “puck.” The cars drive past, but a few minutes later they return and pull over. Several officers get out of each car.

“They take you in for looking alternative — you have to explain to the cops why you’re dressed like that,” a male voice tells someone behind me.

— We’re leaving! Mark commands.

— Stay put, stay put, stay put, I don’t think they’re here for us, the boys on the next bench say, trying to reassure everyone.

— No, they’re definitely here for us, I tell the boys, meaning everyone in the courtyard.

— But you’re at least 18, aren’t you? one of them asks, puzzled. It turns out this is his first time here, and he doesn’t yet know that police can detain anyone.

Mark suggests heading to Chistoprudny Boulevard. He says “nefors” gather there too, but usually no one gets detained. Other teenagers follow his lead, but as before, the crowd splits up: Some walk down Pokrovka, while others cut through residential courtyards. We’ve barely left the “puck” when someone in the crowd lights a joint.

— Was anyone at the “puck”? asks a boy in a white T-shirt with light, wavy hair who has been at Chistye Prudy this whole time.

— Yeah, the cops just showed up.

— Were there even any people there?

— Thirty, at least.

— Ah. Well, I guess most of the others are at Ustinsky Square. There are skins there now, though. Other than that, nothing interesting.

Less than a minute later, next to the boy who complained about skinheads, a group of boys starts discussing how many times each of them has beaten up migrant workers from former Soviet countries. The boy in the white T-shirt gives them a sidelong glance and moves farther away.

“I’m right-wing too,” a fair-haired boy with a short haircut says, approaching the group. He boasts about his experiences in detention. He says he recently got out of a pretrial detention center — though it’s unclear whether he’s confusing it with a temporary police holding facility or a jail for administrative offenses.

“No fucking way!” “Fuck, for real? You’re the man!” “What a guy!” “White pride!” — the boys shout over one another, shaking their new acquaintance’s hand and clapping him on the shoulder.

“Glory to Rod, death to the freak!” shouts the boy who recently “got out of a pretrial detention center,” raising his right arm. The group takes up the slogan and gives Nazi salutes too.

A bottle shatters nearby, and I start to feel uneasy — almost everyone here has talked about fights involving weapons, and there have been repeated stories about broken bottles used as weapons too.

The rain gets heavier, and I decide it’s time to go home.

— Haven’t there been fewer people in KG since the school year started? I ask Mark as we say goodbye.

— Yeah, there have. But I still get drunk every day.

— How’s school going?

— Loving it! I can do both.

— So if there are fewer people, it’s not because school’s started and their parents won’t let them out anymore?

— Oh, that’s only how it works for dumbasses. People who want to get drunk come here to get drunk. We’ve got goals.

Related reading

• Moscow police grabbed dozens of teenagers off the street last Friday, then used stun guns on them in custody
• ‘AUE is an information bubble’ Anthropologist Dmitry Gromov on how ‘moral panic’ fueled widespread fears about a ‘criminal network’ influencing Russian youth

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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Bereg

Russia’s Justice Ministry has added Diana “Naoko” Loginova, the vocalist for the band Stoptime, to its registry of “foreign agents.”

The ministry also added Loginova’s fiancé, Stoptime guitarist Alexander Orlov, to the list.

Another new addition to the registry is the Malinovy Klin Nezavisimaya Kuban (Raspberry Wedge Independent Kuban) movement.

Stoptime is a street band from St. Petersburg that became known for covering songs by musicians designated as “foreign agents.”

In the fall of 2025, the band’s members were detained and subjected to a series of “revolving-door arrests” for allegedly organizing a mass gathering in a public place. In total, the musicians spent more than a month in a detention center. After their release, Loginova and Orlov left Russia. They recorded their first album while living abroad.

More from Meduza

• A Russian lawmaker offered to make Stoptime’s teenage frontwoman a patriotic star — if she’d repent on camera. Diana Loginova chose exile instead, and the band just released its first album.
• ‘I thought, what could they do to me?’ Russian street singer Diana Loginova, jailed for performing anti-war songs, gives first major interview in exile
• Nothing but the anti-Kremlin hits Performing songs by blacklisted musicians made this Russian street band famous. Then it landed them in jail.

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 Turkish criminal gang known as the Daltons may have been involved in the arson attack on a Starlink satellite ground station in the village of Wola Krobowska in Poland’s Masovian province, Der Spiegel reported, citing sources.

The ground station caught fire on September 23. Polish authorities called the fire a deliberate act of sabotage and blamed Russia. According to Spiegel, Russian intelligence services may have hired the Daltons to carry out the attack.

On October 12, two Turkish citizens suspected of involvement in the arson attack were arrested in the German town of Nürtingen at Poland’s request. Spiegel identified the men as 38-year-old Ümit E. and 34-year-old Müslüm T. The outlet said they likely belong to the Daltons — or at least may have acted at the direction of the gang’s supporters.

A court in Stuttgart is expected to decide in the coming days whether to extradite the two men to Poland.

Spiegel reported that Russian intelligence services have so far relied primarily on “low-level agents,” such as petty criminals who took on jobs for small amounts of money, to carry out sabotage in Europe. If it is confirmed that Daltons supporters were involved in the arson attack on the Starlink terminal in Poland, that would signal a shift in Russian intelligence strategy, the outlet said.

The Daltons gang was formed in 2024. According to the Azerbaijani news site Haqqin.az, its members were mostly young people born in 2000 or later. In Turkey, the Daltons were involved in the killing of Serdar Öktem, a prominent lawyer and member of the Nationalist Movement Party, who was shot dead in his car in Istanbul. Gang members also operated in Germany and other European countries, where they engaged in extorting protection money, arms trafficking, and contract killings.

The leader of the Daltons, Beratcan Gökdemir, was arrested in Russia in 2024, Spiegel reported. Turkey demanded his extradition, but Russia never handed him over. Experts speculated that the Kremlin might have hoped to get something from the Daltons in return. It remains unclear whether Gökdemir is still in Russia.

Plots and attacks in Europe

• U.S. uncovers network that plotted assassinations of Russian ‘dissidents’ in Washington and Vilnius. Among the suspects: an ex-colonel with Putin ties, his FSB officer son, and a Cuban dancer.
• Russia is escalating its hybrid attacks on the West. Moscow will make Europe’s life ‘hell’ for supporting Ukraine, Kremlin insider tells Bloomberg.
• Unmasking Moscow’s sex toy bombers Journalists expose the operatives behind Russia’s European package plot

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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On October 9, Shortparis released “Iliada” (“Iliad”), their first album since vocalist Nikolai Komyagin died in February 2026. Its sound is unusual for the band, and its lyrics are probably the most candid in their catalog. Music critic Artyom Makarsky explores how “Iliada” differs from the band’s earlier recordings and how some of its lyrics might be interpreted.

There aren’t many Russian-language posthumous albums. Records by Andy Cartwright and Yung Trappa came out almost immediately after their deaths — both musicians left plenty of finished, unreleased material. In rock, collaborators usually spent a long time finishing the musicians’ work, and most of these recordings revealed a different side of the artist: Kino’s “Cherny albom” (“Black Album,” 1991) drew on house and electronic music, while Yanka’s “Styd i sram” (“Shame and Disgrace,” 1991), completed by Yegor Letov, was more jittery and tense than her other work. There was also Sergei Kuryokhin’s “Detsky albom” (“Children’s Album,” 1998), on which he sang for the first time and ventured into dance music.

Shortparis also change their style on “Iliada.” Acoustic keyboards increasingly replace synthesizers, with horns appearing here and there as the band moves toward epic rock. In 2018, their cover of the glam rock song “All the Young Dudes,” written by David Bowie, was an anomaly in their catalog. After “Iliada,” that experiment seems like a logical step — Shortparis are now releasing music in the vein of early Sparks, Bowie himself, or the unfairly overlooked Soviet art rock band Aprelsky Marsh. Only “Gvozd” (“Nail”) and “Zanovo” (“All Over Again”), with rhythms more typical of the band, recall the old Shortparis.

Still, this change will really surprise only those who missed everything the band has released since keyboardist Alexander Galyanov left in 2023. The tenderness of “Kolybelnaya” (“Lullaby”) and “Proshchalnaya” (“Farewell Song”) has its roots in their soundtrack to Anna Melikyan’s film “Chuvstva Anny” (“Anna’s Feelings”). Straightforward rock was already there on the EP “Grozdya gneva” (“Grapes of Wrath,” 2023), and horns appeared on “Rodnaya zemlya” (“Native Land”), a song from Kirill Serebrennikov’s film “Ballada ob Edichke” (“Limonov: The Ballad of Eddie”).

The band released nothing in 2024 — perhaps they had probably already begun work on ‘Iliada’ by then. They seem to have devoted the past two years to the project, with a pause after Komyagin’s sudden death in February 2026. That summer, the magazine Pravila Zhizni tried to get drummer Danila Kholodkov to open up about what would happen next, but he said only that “right now, nobody’s even trying to think about [new releases].” Still, the band released an album: “Iliada” became their final statement, a monument to Komyagin, and a way to work through their grief.

“Iliada” has three main lyrical themes: death (and, with it, war), silence, and doubt.

Death appears in the opening song’s very first line: “The dead will no longer fall into line.” The theme develops in “Poy so mnoy” (“Sing With Me”), which describes two scenes: birch trees stained with soldiers’ blood and advertisements featuring dead soldiers in the subway. And though fireworks go off — perhaps for Victory Day? — nothing lets you forget death.

Yet the world of “Iliada” is largely closed off: everything that happens to the album’s narrator takes place in Russia. The soldiers have already returned — they lie buried in their native soil. “Russkaya toska, ili Pesnya slabaka” (“Russian Melancholy, or a Weakling’s Song”) recreates a storyline from Alexei Balabanov’s film “Gruz 200” (“Cargo 200”). Another coffin arrives in “Pobeda” (“Victory: Song for a Children’s Funeral Orchestra”) — this time carrying a father rather than a fiancé — as jubilant propaganda contrasts with a sense of catastrophe. Here, too, Ukraine is evoked through allegory: “There the banks are jelly, there the sand is sugar, but the river flows not with water, but with bitter boiling water.” This place promises a soldier certain death.

Silence is the album’s second major theme. The protagonist keeps recalling how he said and did nothing: “I’ll be peaceful, I’ll be meek, I’ll be faithful, a galley slave”; “Do you remember the tear rolling from your eyes when you kept quiet for the first time?”; “Hear that growling? That’s our silence”; and “In the silence, whispers about the country.” He’s hardly happy about it. He’s forever questioning himself (the record’s third main theme): “Maybe these songs aren’t sung in vain?”; “What if I’ve been singing about all the wrong things? What if we’ve all been going the wrong way?” In the line “I’d sing only of love, but the country doesn’t want that,” Komyagin, who often sang of a coarse, gritty romanticism, suddenly realizes he needs to speak about something else after all. Now he’s gone, and these lines full of doubt have become darker still.

Shortparis never wanted to state their position clearly and directly, and Komyagin’s own interviews left the same impression. But war demands an answer. Komyagin understood that, and so “Iliada” became the band’s clearest album. Its lyrics are still full of contradictions, as in the closing lines of “Zanovo”: “All-o-ver-a-gain! You can’t start again! Start again! Everything all over again!” Or take “Molodost” (“Youth”), a song that touches on a possible revolution while telling the story of someone unprepared for it. But the album depicts such a bleak world that the band’s overall position is clear. Komyagin does, however, seem to mourn the Russian soldiers, asking in “Kolybelnaya”: “Who will remember all their faces? Could even you, Lord?” Not every listener will necessarily share that sentiment.

The band’s aptly named label, Fenix Music, stresses that the album should be heard in full, and its cohesion really does matter. But another contradiction emerges here: “Iliada” is clearly an unfinished album, as the titles of some tracks suggest — “Pervaya” (“First”), “Shestaya” (“Sixth”), and “Sedmaya” (“Seventh”). On “Pervaya,” the words are unintelligible, sounding more like a scratch vocal laid over the music for lack of finished lyrics. The two interludes are much the same, with the nonsense words on “Interlyudiya I” (“Interlude I”) clearly following the rhythm of the lyrics to “Poy so mnoy.” “Shestaya” ends the same way.

This unfinished quality seems to be the greatest strength of “Iliada.” Shortparis’ music used to be polished, perfect in many respects — even the noise was deliberate. Now that close listening reveals missing (or very quiet) syllables in Komyagin’s singing, the band’s songs come alive, feel more intimate, and become easier to understand.

Shortparis like to quote literary classics when talking about themselves. In 2025, for instance, they accompanied the news of their return from a European tour with a photograph of a page from Andrei Platonov’s “Chevengur.” It contained a passage about sparrows that don’t fly off to distant lands because they are proletarian birds. A fairly transparent metaphor. The epigraph to “Iliada” uses the same technique, quoting Nikolai Chernyshevsky’s “Chto delat?” (“What Is to Be Done?”):

It was a bold, spirited little song, and its melody was cheerful — there were two or three sad notes, but they were swallowed up by the tune’s overall brightness, disappearing in the refrain, disappearing throughout the final verse.

This reference is more complicated than it seems. The song in the passage is sung by Vera Pavlovna, the protagonist of “Chto delat?” Shortly after this scene, she learns that her husband has killed himself. The song is the French revolutionary song “Ça ira,” written by a former soldier and also known in Russian as “Akh, poydut dela na lad” (“Ah, Things Will Get Better”). Chernyshevsky freely translated this iconic song, which predated “La Marseillaise,” as follows:

We are coarse, but we ourselves suffer from our coarseness. We are full of prejudices, but we ourselves suffer from them, and we feel it. Let us seek happiness, and we will find humanity and become kind — things will get better — we’ll live on, we’ll live to see it.

That “we’ll live to see it” now feels especially bitter, while “Akh, poydut dela na lad” itself seems to hold the key to the record: despite all the contradictions, there is hope. This text mattered to Komyagin — back in 2023, he read it onstage, putting particular emphasis on “We’ll live on, we’ll live to see it.” And Homer’s “Iliad,” after all, tells of the final days of a 10-year war.

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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Artyom Makarsky

Donald Trump said he had not ordered restrictions on Starshield, the military version of Starlink, in Ukraine.

“Well, I don’t know if it was anybody, because it wasn’t me. And I don’t think it was Elon [Musk],” Trump told reporters.

Trump said he had checked that morning and everything was working as usual. He said he was “not even sure” Starlink had stopped working in Ukraine.

On October 14, Ukrainian military personnel reported restrictions affecting their Starlink satellite communications terminals — specifically, the military version, Starshield. The restrictions caused some Ukrainian military missions to fail.

The following day, a senior U.S. administration official told Axios that the White House had nothing to do with the restrictions on Starlink in Ukraine. However, sources cited by Reuters said the White House had ordered restrictions on Starshield. They did not specify who had given the order.

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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Russia expects to force Ukraine to capitulate this coming winter by disabling its energy system, particularly by leaving Kyiv, Kharkiv, and Odesa without electricity, heat, or water, The New York Times reported. The newspaper reviewed a Russian government plan that Ukraine intercepted and showed to its European allies in September.

According to the plan, Russia would need about 70 ballistic missiles, 720 long-range drones, and 150 guided aerial bombs to cut off water, electricity, and heat to Ukraine’s three largest cities. Russian military planners believe a month of strikes at that intensity would destroy Ukraine’s energy system.

With the war now in its fifth year, previous attacks have left Ukrainian power plants unable to operate at full capacity, and each new strike quickly knocks them offline, the newspaper reported. Before the war, for example, the three combined heat and power plants supplying Kyiv had a total generating capacity of about 1.3 gigawatts. That has now fallen to about 500 megawatts.

If Russia’s plan succeeds, Kyiv, Kharkiv, and Odesa could lose 90% of their power generating capacity and see heat supplies cut by 90%, disrupting water and sewage systems, according to the newspaper.

Russia’s confidence that the plan can work stems largely from Ukraine’s shortage of air defenses, particularly Patriot interceptor missiles, without which Ukrainian forces are virtually unable to defend against ballistic missiles.

Analysts agree that Moscow now has a better chance of succeeding in its air campaign than at any other point in the war. Ukraine’s missile defenses have been depleted by cuts in American aid, Russia’s missile and drone arsenal has grown more powerful and effective, and years of strikes have left Ukraine’s energy infrastructure far more vulnerable.

This makes Moscow extremely unlikely to agree to any version of the energy ceasefire Kyiv has repeatedly proposed. “The only card they have to pressure the Ukrainians are these air attacks. They don’t have anything else,” Harry Nedelcu, a director at the consulting firm Rasmussen Global, told The New York Times.

But history shows that such bombing campaigns, which devastate economies and civilian life, usually fail to force an enemy to surrender, the newspaper reported. The United States failed to achieve its aims this way in Vietnam, during the Persian Gulf War in the early 1990s, and in the current war against Iran.

“Punishing the adversaries’ civilian population and trying to break its will has a very poor historical track record for coercing it to concede defeat,” Seth Jones, a military expert at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, told the newspaper.

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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An immigration raid is underway in central St. Petersburg, where OMON riot police have cordoned off a block on Moskovsky Prospekt near Sennoy Market. The block includes a prayer room attended by about 1,000 worshipers, a law enforcement source told TASS.

Officers are also checking nearby hostels and cafes. Several dozen people have been detained, journalists said. Officers are checking registration documents, migration cards, and work permits.

Enlistment officers are taking part in the raid, checking whether recently naturalized Russian citizens have registered with the military. “So far, several dozen people have been identified and served summonses to report to a military enlistment office for registration,” the TASS source said.

Read more

• Russia is filling its ranks with foreign fighters and treating them as ‘disposable soldiers’
• ‘They’re grabbing everyone’: Russian military enlistment officers are rounding up men en masse in Penza, residents say
• Russian police are raiding gyms, sweeping up men for conscription and deportation

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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Pope Leo XIV spoke by phone with Russian President Vladimir Putin, the Kremlin and the Vatican said.

During the call, the pope expressed “deep concern” about the dire humanitarian situation in Oleshky, in the Kherson region, and called for a ceasefire to allow deliveries of humanitarian aid and the safe, voluntary evacuation of civilians.

Putin gave the pope “comprehensive explanations of the Kyiv regime’s responsibility” for “the humanitarian situation that has developed in Oleshky,” the Kremlin said. “Support was expressed for the Vatican’s intention to help create conditions that would keep the city’s residents safe and allow essential supplies to be delivered. The two sides agreed to cooperate on this,” the Kremlin press service said in a statement.

The pope is in the hospital after being diagnosed with lung adenocarcinoma. He has undergone surgery and is recovering but remains under medical supervision.

Residents of Oleshky (known in Russian as Alyoshki), in the Kherson region, have lived under Russian occupation since 2022, but this fall conditions there have become dire, verging on a humanitarian catastrophe. Constant drone attacks have left residents without food, electricity, or adequate medical care. They cannot safely leave the city and sometimes cannot even bury loved ones who have been killed.

Read more

• ‘The smell of death is everywhere’: Inside the humanitarian catastrophe unfolding in Russian-occupied Oleshky, where hundreds are trapped without food, electricity, or medicine
• A humanitarian crisis is gripping Russian-occupied Oleshky as food deliveries stop and safe evacuation becomes nearly impossible
• Pope Leo XIV urges European leaders to be willing to make concessions to help end Russia–Ukraine war — but doesn’t say what should be conceded

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European leaders did not press Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to tone down his remarks about U.S. President Donald Trump during their meeting in Brussels, diplomatic sources told Politico.

“What do you expect him [Zelenskyy] to do? He’s desperate, and the situation is as bad as it can get,” one of the sources told the outlet.

The previous day, the Financial Times reported that EU leaders planned to urge Zelensky to tone down his criticism of Trump, fearing that the Ukrainian president’s increasingly sharp remarks could further damage the already strained relationship between Washington and Kyiv.

Read more

• Trump calls for Ukraine to choose a new president as relations with Zelensky hit their lowest point since Oval Office clash
• European allies publicly back Zelensky after Trump says Ukraine needs a new president
• Zelensky has a message for Washington: Don’t call peace impossible while refusing to put more pressure on Putin

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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Moscow’s Zamoskvoretsky District Court has ordered Oleg Shorin, the former director of the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Library for Natural Sciences, held in custody on charges of large-scale fraud, Kommersant reported.

The basis for the charges is unknown.

Shorin stepped down as the library’s director in December 2023. In June of that year, Moscow’s Khamovnichesky District Court fined the library 141,000 rubles for misusing 2.8 million rubles in public funds, according to Kommersant.

The library told Kommersant it did not know why its former director was being prosecuted.

Shorin graduated from the Faculty of Computational Mathematics and Cybernetics at Lomonosov Moscow State University. From 2011 to 2018, he worked at the National Library of Russia in St. Petersburg. He then became director of the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Library for Natural Sciences, where he worked on digitizing the library. In 2023, he left that position and became director of digital transformation at Rently, where he was responsible for the strategic development of a cloud-based software-as-a-service platform.

More from Meduza

• Russia’s Institute of Philosophy raided over fraud case tied to Aristotle translation project — the institute had previously been accused of disloyalty to the Kremlin.
• The case against Russia’s ‘extremist librarian’ How the head of Moscow’s Ukrainian literature library landed in court

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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In its dispute with Volodymyr Zelensky, Donald Trump’s administration quickly used its strongest leverage. It did more than threaten to halt military aid to Kyiv — it immediately restricted the most important part of that aid: U.S. satellite communications. On the morning of October 14, Ukraine’s military command reported that drones equipped with Starlink terminals (more precisely, their military counterpart, Starshield) had begun losing their connections at speeds above 160 kilometers per hour (about 100 mph). This caused several operations to fail. The next day, the speed threshold at which connections cut out fell to 60–80 kilometers per hour (about 37–50 mph). This created even more serious problems for Ukraine’s armed forces, whose command and communications depend directly on satellite links. A day later, however, the speed limit rose again. It remains unclear exactly how the White House is making these decisions (sources cited by Western media say the Trump administration is behind the restrictions). All that is clear is that Washington is not seeking to cripple Ukraine’s military command system immediately. Even so, Ukrainian commanders should consider finding a replacement for this crucial system, which depends entirely on the United States.

What has happened to Ukraine’s military satellite communications in recent days?

The first speed limits on satellite terminals using Starlink, a service operated by Elon Musk’s SpaceX, took effect in early 2026. At the time, the stated purpose was to help the Ukrainian military. The limits came in response to Russian drone units’ widespread use of the terminals to strike deep inside Ukraine. In particular, in late 2025, the Russian Defense Ministry’s Rubikon special unit set up a system for attacking moving targets on the Pokrovsk–Dnipro highway with drones guided by video feeds. The highway is the Ukrainian military’s main supply route in western Donbas. Ukrainian terminals continued to work because they had access to the protocols used by Starshield — SpaceX’s military division, created specifically to fulfill contracts with the U.S. Department of Defense (or, officially, the Department of War).

A separate SpaceX subsidiary established in late 2022 to take part in military programs. The U.S. government helps oversee the company, which has received Pentagon contracts. Musk hopes Starshield will become the main contractor for Golden Dome, the megalomaniacal missile defense system Trump is promoting.

About 180 dedicated satellites have also been launched for military use. Unlike Starlink satellites, they use cameras operating in different spectral bands to monitor Earth’s surface. In particular, the new satellites are believed to have already become part of the early-warning system for ballistic missile launches, though there is no precise information on this.

Starshield’s military satellite communications, however, still rely on the much larger civilian Starlink constellation. Software separates military communications functions — stronger encryption, protection against electronic warfare, and the ability to bypass restrictions — from civilian functions.

The speed limits were followed by a complete shutdown of all terminals in Ukraine that were not listed in a special Defense Ministry registry. According to sources cited in media reports, Ukraine’s then-defense minister, Mykhailo Fedorov, reached an agreement with Musk to create this system, cutting off Russian forces’ access to satellite communications through smuggled terminals. The Russian military, which had also come to rely on Starlink for both aerial and ground operations, had to scramble for alternatives. It largely solved the problem, but access to Starlink gave Ukraine’s armed forces an advantage in communications and command that they retain to this day. More on that below.

Now the Trump administration, which, unlike Joe Biden’s administration, does not consider itself obliged to support Ukraine unconditionally, has used this dependence on SpaceX’s services to pressure Kyiv.

• First, Zelensky suspects that the United States deliberately stopped supplying Ukraine with information about Russian ballistic missile launches (Starshield is part of the launch detection system). The White House is also threatening to cut off other intelligence.
• Second, on October 14, speed limits were imposed on Starlink/Starshield terminals used by the Ukrainian military.

According to Ukrainian military personnel and politicians, the speed limit changed over the following 24 hours. Some drones lost their connections for 20 seconds at speeds as low as 60 kilometers per hour (about 37 mph). Finally, former Defense Minister Fedorov said on X that, as of October 15, satellite connections were working reliably at speeds up to 160 kilometers per hour (about 100 mph). He thanked Musk personally for the fix. The SpaceX owner immediately declined to take credit, saying that all Starshield decisions are made by the U.S. Department of War and President Trump himself.

How and why does Ukraine’s military use U.S. satellite communications?

Starlink/Starshield technology has long underpinned Ukraine’s military command system and is deeply integrated into many aspects of the war. Individual infantry units use satellite communications, including units that are effectively surrounded. Many units buy terminals themselves or receive them from volunteers, then register them in the special registry mentioned above. Headquarters at various levels use satellite connections to access shared command systems and coordinate directly with other units.

Ukrainian drones equipped with Starlink terminals operate over the front line as relays, providing connections for other drones and radio-controlled ground vehicles. Another, less common way to control these ground “robots” is to install a terminal directly on each one. Without an airborne relay or a terminal of their own, these vehicles, which have become absolutely indispensable for supplying troops in recent months, cannot be controlled: They almost always operate below the radio horizon of any ground-based communications antenna.

Starlink terminals are also installed on attack drones and other weapons. Starshield communications are essential to Ukraine’s campaign of strikes on Russian forces at medium depth behind the front lines. At least some of the drones attacking Russian transport in occupied territory 50–150 kilometers (about 30–95 miles) from the front — for example, on the highway running along the Sea of Azov toward Crimea — carry Starlink terminals and act as relays for other attack drones. Ukrainian long-range drones equipped with terminals and video cameras have also long been used to strike targets in Crimea.

Read more

• Putin claims that Ukraine has no ‘antidote’ to Russia’s new jet-powered drones. Kyiv has already shown it can shoot them down, but doing it at scale could cost billions.
• Ukrainian troops lost Starlink access for a day. Elon Musk and the Trump White House both deny responsibility.
• Russia was never supposed to have Starlink, so why did SpaceX wait so long to cut it off?

After the United States introduced the speed limits, Ukrainian sources reported that satellite communications were also being used on a new generation of interceptor drones capable of taking on Russian jet-powered drones. In recent months, Russia has used large numbers of these drones to attack targets far behind Ukraine’s front lines. The sources did not specify how the interceptors use these connections.

Before the Trump administration began its latest pressure campaign against Kyiv, Ukraine had been trying to persuade Musk or the Pentagon to enable Starlink service over Russia — naturally, only for terminals held by Ukrainian forces. The idea was to equip long-range drones striking Russia’s rear areas with video cameras so operators could attack mobile targets as well as fixed ones with known coordinates, such as factories, warehouses, and data centers. This would allow Ukrainian forces to strike targets such as Iskander-M ballistic missile launchers and fighter-bombers at air bases.

Kyiv’s request was denied, so Ukrainian long-range drones — apart from those attacking Crimea and other occupied territories — still use inertial navigation systems combined with GPS satellite navigation rather than being controlled by operators.

What would restrictions on Starlink/Starshield use mean for Ukraine?

That depends on the speed limit.

• Cutting off connections at speeds above 160 kilometers per hour (about 100 mph) makes it extremely difficult for drones to strike mobile targets, such as trucks, at medium depth behind the front lines: Attack drones generally fly faster than that. There are ways to adapt, however, such as using slower relay drones. Satellite communications would also become completely unusable on interceptor drones capable of taking on jet-powered drones: These interceptors need to fly several times faster than the limit.
• If the limit is set at 60–80 kilometers per hour (about 37–50 mph), drone operations across the front will be disrupted, including “Baba Yaga” multicopters. Satellite communications terminals will have to be installed on all unmanned ground vehicles, substantially increasing the cost of front-line operations. Ukrainian forces will have to forgo a large share of long-distance FPV drone strikes, which are currently possible mainly thanks to relay drones.
• Finally, a complete shutdown — unlikely, but still possible if the dispute between Trump and Zelensky worsens — would deprive Ukraine’s armed forces of their established communications and command system altogether. This threat means Ukrainian commanders need to start looking for a replacement for Starlink now.

What could the Ukrainian military use instead of Starlink?

No system outside the U.S. administration’s control is available to Ukraine as a direct replacement for Starlink. Its European counterpart, Eutelsat OneWeb, has been through bankruptcy proceedings; EU and British authorities are now working to incorporate the OneWeb constellation, which has 600 satellites in orbit, into a new system called IRIS². Even if the new program goes ahead, it will have less bandwidth than Starlink. It is quite possible that the Chinese systems Guowang and Qianfan will become available to the Russian military before IRIS² becomes available to Ukraine’s military.

However, the Russian military’s experience shows that alternatives to satellite communications exist. Within a few months of the unexpected shutdown of all the smuggled Starlink terminals Russian forces had been using in Ukraine, those forces built a communications system based on mesh networks.

A technology built around computer nodes that can each act as a switch for other devices on the network.

For the military, this means a system of airborne and ground-based communications relays that can be used to control drones tens of kilometers from their operators’ positions.

The Russian military has managed to replace some of the satellite communications provided by smuggled terminals both at the front and on long-range drones. Its mesh system is, of course, inferior to Ukraine’s Starlink-based system: Mesh relays are unevenly distributed among Russian units, and much of their equipment comes from private “volunteers” rather than the Defense Ministry. The ground antennas that act as the network’s main nodes are vulnerable to detection and strikes by Ukrainian forces.

Ukraine has even threatened strikes against Belarus, where, Kyiv says, the Russian military has installed antennas used to control the mesh networks of drones attacking the Ukrainian capital. Even so, mesh networks could serve as a makeshift substitute for a Starlink-based system if satellite communications were cut off completely.

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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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky declined to discuss his relationship with U.S. President Donald Trump at a news conference in Brussels.

A Sky News reporter asked Zelensky whether he believes Trump is using him as a scapegoat for his own low approval ratings ahead of the U.S. congressional elections.

Zelensky fell silent for a few seconds, then smiled pointedly. When other reporters in the room started laughing, too, he said, “This is my answer.” He then left the news conference.

Earlier in the news conference, Zelensky said Starlink service in Ukraine has not yet been fully restored and again reported a “significant shortage” of Patriot missiles. He said he had asked the United States for additional interceptors to cover the period during which Ukraine would refrain from striking oil refineries in Russia, but the United States refused.

In recent weeks, Donald Trump has demanded that Ukraine stop striking oil refineries in Russia, claiming the strikes — not the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, caused by the war the United States and Israel started against Iran — are driving up global diesel prices.

Under pressure from Trump, Ukraine agreed not to strike Russian oil refineries on the understanding that Russia should reduce its attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure. That did not happen, and three days into the pause, Zelensky said Ukraine’s armed forces are resuming their strikes.

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A group of U.S. congressmen has proposed that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky halt strikes on Russian oil refineries in exchange for an expanded Starlink coverage zone for Ukraine’s armed forces, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The lawmakers raised the idea at a meeting in Kyiv last Friday. Under the plan, the U.S. would extend the Starlink coverage zone 300 kilometers (186 miles) into Russian territory in exchange for Ukraine halting the strikes, allowing Ukraine’s armed forces to destroy Russian launch systems.

Zelensky signaled he was willing to accept the proposal and halt strikes on Russian oil refineries for 100 days, WSJ reported.

The newspaper did not say whether the congressmen were acting as envoys for U.S. President Donald Trump or were advancing the proposal on their own initiative.

Trump has publicly demanded for several weeks that Ukraine halt strikes on Russian oil refineries. In mid-October, he said Moscow and Kyiv had agreed to an “energy truce,” meaning a mutual halt to attacks on oil refineries.

Ukraine did refrain from striking Russian oil refineries for several days, Kyiv said, but on October 15, Zelensky announced that the strikes would resume because Russia, he said, had continued to attack Ukraine’s energy infrastructure. Moscow claimed there had never actually been a moratorium on Kyiv’s part.

Starlink service is currently limited to Ukraine’s internationally recognized territory. The Atlantic reported in August that former Ukrainian Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov had unofficially tried to persuade SpaceX owner Elon Musk to expand Starlink’s coverage zone for Ukraine’s armed forces so Ukraine could strike Russian missile launch systems. Musk refused, warning of the risks of escalation, according to the magazine.

Ukrainian authorities are looking for ways to strike Russian missile launch systems amid a critical shortage of Patriot missiles, which has left Ukraine effectively defenseless against Russian ballistic attacks. Zelensky, who announced yesterday that strikes on oil refineries would resume, stressed that he is willing to soften his position if allies supply Kyiv with more Patriot missiles.

War in photographs. Kharkiv

On the morning of October 16, Russian drones attacked an outdoor market in Kharkiv. Two vendors — a 71-year-old woman and a 58-year-old man — were killed and 13 other people were injured, authorities said.

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Cover photo: Florian Gaertner / Photothek / Getty Images

Dozens of court hearings in Russia were disrupted due to “technical malfunctions” after strikes by Ukraine’s armed forces on Yandex data centers, the independent Russian news outlet Verstka reported.

Hearings began to be canceled on October 8, when Ukraine struck a Yandex data center in Sasovo, Ryazan region. PravoTech, the company that services the electronic system for Russia’s arbitration courts, sent out notices about a “mass outage” at the Yandex Cloud data center.

The outage affected arbitration courts in the Sverdlovsk, Smolensk, Tula, Kostroma, Ivanovo, and Yaroslavl regions, as well as Altai Krai and the Volga district. The courts could not hold online hearings, make audio and video recordings, or process documents in the “Moy Arbitr” (“My Arbitrator”) system.

As a result, dozens of hearings had to be postponed or interrupted between October 8 and 14, and some petitions were left unconsidered. By October 16, the problem had not been fully resolved, the outlet said. Case files on the courts’ websites are not opening, and files containing rulings cannot be downloaded.

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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Ukrainian drones struck Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug–Yugra, Governor Ruslan Kukharuk said.

The drones hit an industrial facility in the Surgut district, where a fire broke out, he said.

“Emergency services are working at the scene. Specialists are currently assessing the scale and nature of the damage caused. I am personally overseeing the situation,” the governor said. He did not provide further details, including which enterprise was hit.

Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug lies more than 2,000 kilometers (1,200 miles) from Ukraine.

The Ukrainian monitoring Telegram channel Exilenova+ says the Surgut Gas Condensate Stabilization Plant named after Viktor Chernomyrdin (a Gazprom subsidiary) was hit.

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Russian President Vladimir Putin transferred the Russian business of French flooring maker Tarkett and four other major companies with combined revenue of 53 billion rubles to the management of Marat Mirkhaidarov, a former deputy premier of Zabaikalsky Krai, the independent Russian investigative outlets The Insider and Agentstvo found.

Control over the companies passed to Center Capital Management Company LLC. Two companies registered in Russia carry that name, and one belongs to Mirkhaidarov, The Insider found.

Mirkhaidarov served as deputy chairman of the Zabaikalsky Krai government until March 2025. In January 2024, he volunteered to fight in the war against Ukraine with the Chechen battalion “Akhmat,” spending four months at the front. He resigned afterward, citing the need to recover from a battlefield injury.

Mirkhaidarov personally confirmed receiving the assets in a conversation with Agentstvo. He called the decision “the political will of our president” and said he was ready to return the assets at Putin’s first request.

He asked journalists not to report on the transfer of the companies.

Right now we’re giving our enemies a chance to discuss what was transferred, to whom it was transferred, and why it was transferred. We’re giving our enemies, the psy-ops crowd, a chance to dig around. To dig around in my life story, in my family.

Asked whether the change in management might interest Russian businessmen, Mirkhaidarov replied that the business “still belongs, as it always did,” to its foreign owners.

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People visiting Tbilisi for the first time are sometimes surprised by how often they can smell cannabis in the city. That’s because Georgia has effectively allowed the legal use of marijuana since 2018. In addition, acquiring and possessing the drug, even in large quantities, has often not resulted in prison sentences. The situation changed dramatically in 2025, when Georgian authorities tightened the country’s drug laws for both residents and visitors alike. As a result, in the first nine months of 2026 alone, Georgia’s Prosecutor General’s Office registered more than 200 drug-related crimes committed by Russian citizens, some of whom are already serving time in Georgian prisons. Meduza tells their stories — and explains exactly how Georgia’s laws have changed.

“They have a stadium there, so you can exercise. There are animals — rabbits, cats — and the women take care of them. There’s a store, so you can buy things. The shower is shared, each cell has a toilet, and everyone takes turns cleaning. There’s a library, and she reads a lot. You can take part in concerts. You can work, but it’s not mandatory,” said Kristina (name changed), describing her friend Masha Ova, who is serving a two-year sentence in a women’s prison in Rustavi. Kristina said Masha generally describes her life there as a “strict-regime sanatorium” and doesn’t complain about anything.

In 2022, Masha left for India because of Russia’s war with Ukraine, and in 2023 she moved to Georgia. In Tbilisi, she worked at a tattoo studio and sang in the rock bands MÖRÖCÖLI, PUNKI, and NECROFEST, occasionally performing solo acoustic concerts. In early May 2026, she suddenly disappeared, and a few days later a court-appointed lawyer contacted one of her friends on Instagram and said that Masha had been detained.

Friends later learned that police had searched her apartment. According to Kristina, officers found four grams of marijuana. Masha, her friend said, was what’s known in slang as a “helper.”

“For example, your friends want to smoke. And you know where to get it. You go to buy some for yourself, and naturally they say, ‘grab me some too.’ Masha would agree, but only for friends, and she’d take a cut for it. Basically, she wasn’t even a dealer, just a helper. But she admitted guilt right away,” Kristina explained. According to her lawyer, David Lagadze, Masha maintains that police found four grams of marijuana on her, not 9.5 grams as was later written in the case file. But Masha decided not to contest this, so as not to worsen her situation.

David Lagadze told Meduza that, along with the marijuana, police seized scales with traces of narcotic substances from Masha’s home, and that “in such cases, Georgian courts already find a person guilty of aiding distribution, regardless of the amount of drugs seized from them.” The Article on “aiding distribution” was added to Georgia’s Criminal Code in 2025 as part of a sweeping tightening of drug policy initiated by the ruling Georgian Dream party.

How Georgian authorities changed the country’s drug laws

“Nothing could be more anti-national and anti-Georgian than the extremely serious effects caused by liberal drug policy,” Mamuka Mdinaradze, then the leader of the parliamentary majority from the Georgian Dream party, said in 2025, announcing amendments to the country’s anti-drug legislation. Authorities justified toughening penalties for marijuana-related crimes by citing the spread of “hybrid cannabis strains,” which they said “have a more harmful effect on the human body.”

The changes took place in two stages. In April 2025, they primarily affected Article 45 of the Administrative Offenses Code, which regulates the acquisition, possession, and use of small quantities of drugs (the article applies to all drugs except marijuana and several substances for which there is no “small quantity” threshold). Under this article, penalties were tightened, liability was introduced for refusing to take a drug test, and the list of penalties involving deprivation of rights was expanded.

Lawmakers removed Article 273(1), which had regulated actions involving cannabis or marijuana plants in large and especially large quantities, from the Criminal Code in July of that year. Possession and other marijuana-related criminal offenses now fall under Article 260, which carries harsher penalties.

A small quantity is up to 5 grams for dried marijuana, up to 10 grams for raw.

A large quantity is 5 to 70 grams dried, or 10 to 140 grams raw. Beyond that is an especially large quantity.

Small quantities are regulated by the Administrative Offenses Code. The rest fall under the Criminal Code.

For example, under Article 273(1), illegal acquisition, possession, or transportation of a large quantity was punishable by a fine, community service, or up to two years in prison. Under the new version of Article 260, the same offense now carries five to eight years in prison. Authorities also split Article 260 into four separate articles, which created the new Article 260(4) on aiding distribution.

The Georgian human rights organization the Social Justice Center says one of the main changes is the restoration of the possibility of sentencing people to prison for acquiring, possessing, and growing marijuana for personal use in large amounts.

The amendments effectively allowed authorities to circumvent rulings by the Constitutional Court, which had eased penalties for marijuana-related offenses over the past decade.

The Constitutional Court’s first major ruling on drug-related cases came in 2015, in the case of Beka Tsikarishvili. Police found 69 grams of marijuana on him for personal use. Under the law in effect at the time, he faced seven to 14 years in prison. Tsikarishvili challenged the sentencing provision in the Constitutional Court as violating the constitutional ban on cruel and degrading punishment (his lawyer managed to prove that a disproportionate punishment does not serve the goal of restoring justice but instead turns a person into a tool for intimidating society to prevent future crimes).

The court ruled in Tsikarishvili’s favor, and it became impossible to send someone to prison for possessing up to 70 grams of marijuana for personal use. Tsikarishvili himself was ultimately sentenced to a fine of 2,000 lari (just under 50,000 rubles). After the Tsikarishvili case, the Constitutional Court issued a whole series of similar rulings on penalties for growing marijuana for personal use, using marijuana, and acquiring and possessing small amounts of other drugs.

“When the Constitutional Court issues a ruling, it must be taken into account in subsequent proceedings, and laws must change in accordance with that ruling. Instead, they [Georgian authorities] used legal maneuvering to circumvent these rulings and ended up detaining drug users again,” lawyer Lasha Tkesheladze told Meduza.

Formally, the Constitutional Court’s rulings remain in force. But they were incorporated into specific legal articles, and it was exactly those articles that the 2025 reform removed from the Criminal Code or rewrote.

One Constitutional Court ruling untouched by the new amendments effectively legalized the use of marijuana. In 2018, in a case initiated by leaders of the opposition Girchi party, the court ruled that fines for marijuana use, when it does not pose a threat to others, violate the constitutionally guaranteed right to the free development of personality. That ruling was incorporated into the law, and marijuana use stopped being considered an offense. But possession, acquisition, transfer, production, and sale remained administrative or criminal offenses, and the amendments passed in 2025 deepened this paradox.

The legal changes have already led to a doubling in the number of arrests. Prisons are almost out of space.

In 2024, the Interior Ministry registered 5,598 drug-related crimes under the Criminal Code; in 2025, that figure was almost twice as high, at 10,475; and in the first half of 2026, it was 7,533. More than half of these crimes involve possession and acquisition (Article 260). However, the Interior Ministry attributes the rapid rise in registered drug crimes to more active efforts to detect them.

Georgia’s Prosecutor General’s Office told Meduza that criminal prosecutions under drug statutes against Russian citizens in Georgia also increased in 2025 and 2026. The office opened 119 such cases in 2024, 196 in 2025, and 234 in the first nine months of 2026 alone.

Among drug crimes committed by Russians in Georgia, as in the country as a whole, “possession and acquisition” ranks first. In 2026, the agency opened more than half of all prosecutions (124 of 234) under this article.

Among foreign nationals facing criminal prosecution under drug statutes, Russians rank second, behind Turkish citizens (274 cases in 2026), while Ukrainian citizens rank third, with 196 cases.

As the crackdown on drug crimes intensified, prison overcrowding also began to rise. According to data from Giorgi Burjanadze, Georgia’s former deputy public defender, the number of inmates in Georgian prisons grew by 43% over the past year and a half. Georgian prisons held 12,344 people in June of this year, a record in nearly 14 years of Georgian Dream rule. Burjanadze calculated that only 12 free spaces remained in Georgian prisons in June.

The number of Russian citizens imprisoned in Georgia also grew by 50% in just over a year. Georgia’s Penitentiary Service said Georgian correctional facilities held 214 Russian citizens at the end of August 2026. In June 2025, before the reforms, that number was 141.

How many Russians are serving sentences for drug-related crimes is unknown. In response to a request from Meduza, the Penitentiary Service said it does not keep statistics on defendants or convicts broken down by article of the Criminal Code. But many Russian émigrés in Georgia have learned from personal experience that police have stepped up their fight against drugs.

From a vegetarian café to prison. Police have started stopping Russians on the street much more often.

In late July, Polina Riske, who lives in Georgia and helps Russian drug users, posted a reel titled “A Message to Weed-Smoking Émigrés in Tbilisi.” In the video, she says she learns about another arrest on drug charges every two weeks. Riske also urges people who use marijuana or are involved in distributing it to stop, because raising money for lawyers and fines has become too difficult. Within a few weeks, the video had drawn more than 150,000 views.

Russian émigrés regularly write on social media about increasingly frequent street checks in Tbilisi. Sergei, a programmer from St. Petersburg, rents an apartment in Saburtalo, a district popular with Russians. He told Meduza that police have stopped and searched him on the street four times over the past year while he was walking his dog: “A car pulls up somewhere in the courtyard, sometimes just black, sometimes with ‘police’ written on it, and several men get out and ask you to show what’s in your pockets. They also take photos, look at the recent photos on your phone, and write down your address,” Sergei said.

He attributes the police attention to the graffiti near his home, which advertises drug drops and “drug shops” in Russian: “It makes sense to pay attention to people who look Slavic. And I really have seen people picking up drug drops several times while walking my dog.”

“The last time was the scariest,” Sergei said, “because at some point they started saying that an investigator was about to arrive and we’d all go to my place together for a search. We know how that can end from the case of Zinovkina and Gribul. But in the end they looked at my phone and changed their minds.”

Discussing these checks, Russians in Georgia speculate about what exactly might arouse police suspicion: a fanny pack, a dog, walking in a deserted area, or an appearance that police consider unconventional, such as piercings, tattoos, or colored hair.

A check on another Russian émigré ended with a search of his home. “On Russia Day, June 12, he was supposed to come to a meeting, but he didn’t show up,” said Anton about his friend Pasha (names changed). “Usually, if something’s going on with him, he lets us know; he doesn’t just disappear. So we immediately suspected something was wrong.”

Anton met Pasha back in Russia. Both were into music, and “Pasha played in bands himself and helped organize events.” After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began in 2022, Pasha moved to Georgia. At first he worked at vegetarian cafes founded by fellow émigrés. But, as Anton said, “the situation there is pretty sad.” At some point Pasha started looking for work on the local market and became a food delivery courier. His earnings improved, and over time he even saved enough for a motorcycle.

However, amendments to Georgia’s Law on Labor Migration that took effect at the start of 2026 required foreigners to obtain work permits and capped the number of permits available in different sectors. For foreign couriers, the quota was zero.

Pasha went back to working in food service and tried to save up money to leave for Europe. When he failed to show up to a meeting without warning, his friends immediately went to his home and discovered that it had been searched. “He was planning to leave in July, but he was arrested in June,” Anton said.

Anton doesn’t want to go into detail about the circumstances of the detention. “They seized about 60 grams of weed, a few thousand lari, electrical tape, and scales from his home. According to his lawyer, that’s considered sufficient evidence that a person is involved in distribution,” he explained.

Anton doesn’t believe that scales and electrical tape found in someone’s home can be evidence of distribution, and he doesn’t understand why investigators didn’t look for witnesses or buyers, or seize Pasha’s phone or computer to identify the people he allegedly sold drugs to and prove the distribution charge.

Pasha was charged under the same article as Masha: aiding distribution, which carries a sentence of five to 10 years in prison.

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Authorities often offer Russians a deal, and for money they can reduce a sentence. But not everyone manages to raise the money.

Pasha’s lawyer, Zaza Kachibaia, told Meduza that cases of foreigners, including Russians, being detained on drug charges have become more frequent over the past year and a half: “In our practice, among the lawyers we work with at our firm, roughly seven out of 10 cases involve citizens of a foreign country.” At the same time, Kachibaia said he hasn’t noticed discrimination against migrants.

Anna (name changed) runs support groups for people dependent on cannabis in Tbilisi. Anna said police attention toward drug users increased starting in the fall of 2025, a couple of months after the new amendments took effect, while émigrés from Russia “had relaxed after several years of living in Georgia and didn’t have time to adjust.” Masha, for example, according to her friend, simply “wasn’t following local news,” didn’t track changes in the law, and wasn’t too worried, because “it’s just marijuana in Georgia.”

Anna said police sometimes detain people during a random street check: “A guy with a suspicious appearance, a hipster, roughly speaking, walks by, and he’s stopped. And he has a few grams on him for personal use. In that situation, everything depends on the weight.” Sometimes detainees say they bought marijuana “for friends,” and the outcome can depend not only on the weight but also on the packaging: “If it’s several one-gram bags, they can already pin a distribution charge on you,” Anna said.

Sometimes police come straight to someone’s home for a search, acting on a tip. That’s apparently what happened with Masha. Police staked out her building and searched her apartment, even though she had nothing on her at the time. According to her friend Kristina, Masha also believes a tip explains why police “tacked on” an extra 5.5 grams during the search. “If the apartment turns out to be empty, at least plant that,” Kristina said, explaining the police’s possible logic.

News about the detention of users or small-scale dealers from the émigré community sometimes appears in chats: acquaintances write that a person has stopped responding, and then he’s found in prison. Sometimes, while someone is still being searched for, news of the case reaches the media.

“If you realize that an acquaintance of yours, say, went to get ‘stuff’ and hasn’t been in touch for several hours, given the current climate, he might have been detained. So we find a lawyer right away,” said Anna, who has helped arrested acquaintances more than once.

Anna said that when someone faces charges under a criminal statute, investigators often offer the option of admitting guilt and entering a cooperation agreement. In some cases, this lets detainees pay a fine and go free: “I know guys who’ve already been released, and of course they’re all in a hurry to leave the country.”

In other cases, a procedural agreement makes it possible to reduce the sentence set out by a given article. Anna sent Meduza a “price list” circulating in chats that explains “how much it costs” to reduce a sentence through a cooperation agreement with investigators. Pay 50,000 lari (approximately 1,350,000 rubles), and you go to prison for eight years (instead of, say, the maximum of 20). Pay 100,000 lari (2,700,000 rubles), and you get four years. Pay 200,000–250,000 lari (5–7 million rubles), and you get deported from the country. The “price list” doesn’t specify which articles or specific crimes these fines apply to.

According to lawyer Zaza Kachibaia, there’s no single “price list” for fines. The prosecutor’s office determines the amount case by case, based on the article, the circumstances of the crime, and the defendant’s resources: “If it’s just possession, the fine might be five to ten thousand lari, but for distribution it could be ten times more,” the lawyer said.

Kachibaia urged against generalizing that everyone enters into procedural agreements. He advised taking a deal only when there’s enough evidence and no real chance of winning the case in court.

In the lawyer’s view, sentencing practices in émigré cases tend to be more lenient, because deportation can be applied as a punishment in Georgia: “It’s a completely logical and rational approach. Why sit in Georgian prisons for 10–20 years when you can impose some sentence or fine and deport the person to a third country with a ban on entering Georgia for a certain period of time?” Kachibaia said.

The prosecutor’s office also offered Pasha a procedural agreement: a fine of 200,000 lari (6.4 million rubles) and deportation, or three years in prison. His friends, like the friends of other detainees in similar cases, launched a fundraiser immediately after his detention. But they raised only about 15,000 lari (485,000 rubles), enough to pay for a lawyer and support their friend in prison. On September 24, Pasha was sentenced to three years in prison.

Masha also entered into a procedural agreement. Prosecutors offered her a fine-and-deportation option, but her loved ones couldn’t raise the 200,000 lari, so she was sentenced to two years in prison, to be followed by deportation from Georgia and a 20-year entry ban. According to her friend, having seen what other convicted women went through, Masha considers this a very good outcome and feels lucky: both the cost of legal representation and the sentences of some of her cellmates are many times higher.

After sentencing, she was moved to a cell with more lenient conditions: she can move around the prison grounds, attend classes, and work. Kristina said Masha is holding up well and tries to think of this experience as a creative project. She reads a lot, draws illustrations inspired by the books she’s reading, and her loved ones post letters and drawings on Instagram whenever she manages to get them out.

“Whatever happens, I accept everything happening to me fully, and with gratitude for the chance to be human. Different, alive, capable of change. Only now do I feel my true strength. Yes, in a cramped cell with heavy bars on the window, in uninterrupted, clear consciousness,” Masha wrote from prison.

How effective is Georgia’s new drug policy

In 2023, Alternative Georgia, a Georgian nongovernmental organization that studies addiction, published a study on Russian drug users living in Georgia. David Otiashvili, an addiction specialist and the director of Alternative Georgia, explained to Meduza that their study can’t be used to draw conclusions about how widespread psychoactive substance use is among migrants in general, but that it does reveal certain patterns.

According to the study’s findings, the stress of forced migration increases the risk of psychoactive substance use. “What was common to everyone was that the initial shock, depression, and confusion mostly contributed to erratic use of depressants. But all of that passed after a few months,” Otiashvili said.

Use of stimulants among study participants, by contrast, declined somewhat in the initial stages. Otiashvili attributes this decline to people’s tendency to stick with substances they’re already used to, even though not all of them were available in Georgia. Context also matters for stimulants, he said: “It’s about mood, pastime, having fun, and migrant status doesn’t really contribute to that.”

In Otiashvili’s view, migrant drug users are distinguished by their isolation: as a rule, they don’t interact with locals. “If drug use happens in groups, it’s a Russian-speaking group,” he said, adding that they also almost never use local harm-reduction and prevention services.

“When problems arise, they try to solve them within their own migrant circle or through online consultations with Russian-speaking specialists. If people prone to risky behavior have no contact with services that could reduce potential risks, that’s not a good thing,” Otiashvili said.

In conversation with Meduza, Otiashvili said there currently isn’t enough systematic, up-to-date information, not just about migrants, but about drug use in Georgia overall. “Mechanisms and platforms for cooperation between the academic community, nongovernmental organizations, and government bodies haven’t worked for the past two years, starting from spring 2024,” the expert said.

Zurab Sikharulidze, an addiction specialist and member of the opposition Federalists party, also told Meduza that there’s little information about the “Russian segment” of drug users, but he considers it a major problem for Georgia. According to Sikharulidze’s assessment, there are many users among migrants overall, and NPS and chemsex are widespread. At the same time, except in severe cases, émigrés don’t seek addiction treatment or medical help, and no separate diagnostic or prevention programs exist for them, such as for HIV or hepatitis C.

Many addiction specialists fear that migrants will affect the HIV situation in the country, Otiashvili said. According to him, these concerns stem from the gap between a high prevalence of injection drug use in Georgia and a low rate of HIV, both nationwide and among injection drug users (unlike, for example, in Russia).

At the same time, migrants, in Sikharulidze’s view, are already affecting the local drug market. “After the war began and Russian and Ukrainian populations relocated, cocaine became very popular,” the expert said. On the darknet in Georgia, “the largest marketplaces are Russian and Kazakh.” Otiashvili agrees that migration affects the popularity of certain substances, but cites other examples: crystal methadone and certain synthetic stimulants.

Both experts agree that the reforms Georgian Dream has carried out solve neither the problems linked to drugs and migration nor the broader problems of drug use or drug trafficking. In Sikharulidze’s view, current drug policy, especially when it comes to addiction treatment, increasingly resembles Russia’s repressive model, and the changes in drug policy fit a broader trend: “Georgia has established an autocratic regime that copies laws from the [Russian] State Duma,” the expert argued.

Otiashvili said that, in reforming drug policy, Georgian authorities are, first, engaging in populism: “They try to show society that they care about public health, that they’re taking measures to protect the next generation, reduce crime, and so on.” Second, in his view, decisions on drug policy often disregard expert opinion or scientific data and are instead based on the personal convictions of the people making them. Third, Otiashvili said, “these laws are needed to maintain control over a large mass of people,” and he added that they also serve as a tool of blackmail, control, or political pressure.

Georgian Dream appears to be pleased with the results of the drug policy reform. In May 2026, at a meeting of the European Coalition to Combat Drugs, Georgia’s Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze described how Georgia stepped up anti-drug-trafficking measures in 2025: arresting a record number of drug traffickers, increasing crime detection rates, and seizing an unprecedented amount of drugs. Georgia’s Interior Ministry also reports on anti-drug successes almost daily, with press releases typically featuring news about the interception of large shipments.

Experts don’t trust the authorities’ reports of success in fighting drug trafficking. “Every day they show on TV how they catch huge drug shipments, but there’s no shortage on the black market, and prices haven’t gone up,” Sikharulidze said. In his view, the Interior Ministry is boosting its numbers by detaining ordinary users. “Any use can end in a hefty fine, the loss of certain rights, a suspended sentence, or prison,” the addiction specialist warned.

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In her counseling sessions and conversations with acquaintances, Anna actively encourages people to quit using drugs. “It’s better to quit now while you’re free than to be forced to quit in prison,” she said. “Take our friend, who they’re trying to pin a twenty-year sentence on. Do you think she’s smoking now? No, she’s not smoking. She quit, because there’s no way to do that there. You can do it while you’re free; you have a unique chance.”

After Pasha’s case and similar stories, many of Anton’s acquaintances really did quit, he said: “Those who used any drugs have stopped, or they do it in other countries when they travel, because it’s become too dangerous. In that sense, the law really does work.”

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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Olga Alexandrova

More than 30 people have gone on hunger strike at the El Valle immigration detention facility in Texas, the mother of one of the protesters told Vot Tak.

She said 15 women began the hunger strike October 11, and 20 men, including Russians, joined them later. The protesters say they face poor detention conditions and a lack of medical care, and are demanding that their rights be upheld.

The husband of one of the hunger strikers told journalists that, contrary to the rules, prison administrators are not monitoring the health of those refusing food: “The administration tells them straight out that there’s only one way out of this detention — deportation. They say, if you want, go ahead and sit there, starve. If you croak, we’ll take you away and bury you.”

El Valle Detention Facility has become the third immigration detention center where detainees have declared a hunger strike. In early October, asylum seekers at the D. Ray James immigration detention facility in Georgia filed a collective complaint about detention conditions and announced plans to begin a hunger strike. According to Vot Tak, detainees at the Winn immigration detention facility in Louisiana have also started a hunger strike.

Russians held at D. Ray James complained about poor food, communication problems, and being unable to see a doctor even with acute pain. Facility administrators threatened the detainees with deportation and with sending them “to your cozy Gulag.” They were seeking a transfer to another facility.

According to Georgia Public Broadcasting’s estimate, about 500 people are taking part in the hunger strike at D. Ray James. On October 11, Agentstvo, an independent Russian investigative outlet, reported that one of the organizers of the hunger strike in Georgia, Russian citizen Idris Makhmudov, was deported from the US. About 40 protest participants ended up in solitary confinement, sources told Agentstvo.

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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Russian drones struck Rivne, a city in western Ukraine, overnight on October 16.

The strikes hit civilian infrastructure, including residential buildings, said Oleksandr Koval, head of the Rivne region administration.

Seven people sought medical attention after the strikes.

Drones continued attacking Rivne the morning of October 16.

Ukrainian media reported that drones hit the “Ekvator” shopping center and the “Demaks” home improvement hypermarket. Footage posted online shows the buildings destroyed.

Russian drones last attacked Rivne on October 13, when a strike hit an academic building at Rivne State University of the Humanities and injured 30 people.

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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