The same charge had been cited at the hearing on his pretrial detention, the paper noted. On Friday, April 10, Roldugin was remanded in custody until May 10. At that time, he was classified as a suspect. Novaya Gazeta said he is now being held at the temporary detention facility on Petrovka 38 in central Moscow.

Roldugin was detained on April 9 after a series of raids, first at his apartment and then at the Novaya Gazeta newsroom, the latter of which lasted 13 hours, ending around 1 a.m. local time. Russia’s Interior Ministry claimed the searches were part of an investigation into the collection of citizens’ personal data from “private storage resources” and the subsequent use of that information in publications that it described as “negative in nature.”

While being questioned as a witness, the journalist said he ran a Telegram channel with exclusive information that, in his words, “could not be used in journalistic work.” Officers seized his laptop, computer, hard drives, and press credentials. Security personnel also reviewed his Telegram correspondence, including chats with bots. The criminal case in which Roldugin became a defendant was opened on March 10 against a number of unidentified persons.

Midar was detained in August 2025 at the Palanca checkpoint on the Moldovan-Ukrainian border while traveling on a Chisinau-Odesa bus. A kilogram of RDX was found in his luggage. He was arrested by Moldovan authorities, and the case against him is still under investigation. Little Country said it had obtained access to the case materials.

According to Sergei Midar’s written testimony, which The Insider has reviewed, he went to Kaliningrad in 2004 for work, where he was involved in transporting undeclared goods across the Polish border. In 2010, he was stopped at the border by an FSB officer identified as Dmitry Dubrovsky. “He explained that I could avoid punishment if I cooperated with him. At first I refused. But he explained that I would receive the harshest possible punishment and, in addition, that my relatives would suffer. I had to agree to work as an FSB source,” Midar told Moldovan law enforcement.

At the same time, Moldovan authorities have information suggesting Midar did not have the documents required to stay legally in Russia and was pressured into cooperation under threat of punishment for illegal residence. Later, according to the Little Country investigation, the Moldovan man obtained a Russian passport. Midar said that for several years he passed information to the FSB about smuggling on the Polish-Russian border, and also about illegal crossings and forged documents. He typically received between 5,000 and 15,000 rubles per assignment.

In 2022, after the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Midar returned to Moldova and, according to his account, stopped cooperating with the FSB. Then, in July 2025, Dubrovsky contacted him again. Knowing that Midar was involved in cargo transportation, the FSB officer offered him a job delivering a package from Poland. According to Midar’s testimony, he brought the package, which contained explosives and detonators, into Moldova, kept it at his home for some time, and then attempted to transport it by bus to Odesa.

This is not the only case in which Russian security services have recruited Moldovans to commit crimes in Ukraine. In February, Moldovan and Ukrainian law enforcement uncovered a group suspected of preparing assassination attempts against officers of Ukraine’s military intelligence agency (HUR), as well as Ukrainian journalists, public figures, and the head of a strategic enterprise. Authorities detained the group’s alleged leader, a 34-year-old Moldovan citizen whom the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) described as an agent of Russian intelligence, along with accomplices from Ukraine, EU countries, and Transnistria.

Using data from the Starboard Maritime Intelligence ship tracking service, The Insider found that on April 9 the Russian tanker Foton (IMO: 9893618), operated by Novorossiysk Petroleum, passed near the suspected site of the spill.

According to the service’s data, the vessel does not have shipowner civil liability insurance, meaning any damage in the event of an accident could not be covered. The tanker also periodically disappears from tracking maps due to its AIS signal being turned off.

Over the past week, Foton entered the port of Novorossiysk three times — on April 9, 10, and 12. Late in the evening on April 9, Reuters reported that oil loading resumed in Novorossiysk after a major Ukrainian drone attack. There have been no reports that this particular vessel was damaged in the strike.

Authorities in Russia’s Krasnodar Region had earlier reported a new oil slick in the Anapa area and suggested that it was the likely result of Ukrainian drone attacks. That same evening, on April 11, the region’s emergency response headquarters said more than 200 dead and oil-stained birds had been found on shore over the previous two days. That post, however, disappeared from the agency’s Telegram channel on the morning of April 13. 

The outlet said that on the morning of April 13, several dozen Petro-Hehua employees gathered for a second consecutive day at the gates of a local oil refinery, where security personnel were stationed. No detentions were reported. By midday, the workers returned to the camp, after which authorities sealed off access to the site.

A day earlier, on April 12, more than 100 Petro-Hehua employees marched through the streets of Komsomolsk-on-Amur carrying signs in Russian and Chinese while appealing to Vladimir Putin and Rosneft CEO Igor Sechin. Khabarovsk Region Internal Policy Minister Sergei Dmitriyev said the trigger for the unrest was the termination of the contract between Rosneft and Petro-Hehua after the Russian oil giant accused the contractor of missing deadlines and performing poor-quality work in a project to modernize one of its refineries. The workers are demanding that the contract be reinstated and that they be granted a meeting with management, which is outside Russia.

The prosecutor’s office in Komsomolsk-on-Amur has opened an inspection into the issue of compliance with labor law in connection with the wage arrears. Russia’s Foreign Ministry and the Chinese Consulate General in Khabarovsk have been brought in to help resolve the conflict.

This is not the first labor dispute involving Petro-Hehua employees. In the fall of 2021, workers also repeatedly took to the streets demanding unpaid wages.

After the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Alta formally exited a portion of its Russian assets. Two of the four companies were sold to lawyer Alexei Panin, who continues to represent the company in Russian courts to this day. A number of indicators suggest the transactions were fictitious: the sold firms use the same domains, the same customs broker, and the same suppliers as Alta’s entities. Two other legal entities are still directly controlled by Alta. Companies linked to Alta continue to service Uralvagonzavod, as well as the main producer of Russian tube and rocket artillery, the Motovilikha Plants.

How Alta Invest helped rebuild Russia’s military-industrial complex

The Czech industrial group Alta was founded in 1991 by Vladimír Plášil, a Ukrainian-born Czech citizen. The group’s parent company is Alta Invest, which is owned by VPI a.s., with annual revenue of $3.24 million.

Plášil is a close business partner of Rosatom. Starting from 1995 at the latest, he has represented the Russian nuclear corporation in the Czech Republic and Slovakia. In 2007, Plášil and Sergey Shmatko, president of Atomstroyexport, signed a memorandum on creating a joint venture in nuclear energy engineering. In 2012, Plášil set up a joint venture with the Russian state-owned corporation TVEL to export Russian nuclear fuel to the European market.

In addition to working for Rosatom in Eastern Europe, Plášil exported European industrial technologies to Russia. His Alta group focused on the heavy industry sector, boasting some of the largest enterprises in the CIS among its clients. In 1998, the group launched a sales office in Minsk, where Alta carried out modernization of the BelAZ plant. In 2002, an office was opened in Yekaterinburg. Soon after, this office launched a project to modernize the Federal State Unitary Enterprise Uralvagonzavod, along with projects to supply galvanizing and paint lines for Irkut Corporation.

In 2007, the group established its first Russian legal entity, Alta Ural LLC. That company’s successor, Alta Rus LLC, or A-R, specializes in the supply and servicing of machine tools and machining centers.

In 2011, Alta concluded a major deal to acquire Škoda Machine Tool. Although the plant was resold to a new owner in 2015, the import and servicing of Škoda machine tools remained an important part of Alta’s business. An Alta Invest report published in July 2022 stated that Alta Rus is the official representative of Škoda Machine Tool in Russia. After receiving a journalistic inquiry, the company removed the presentation from its website; however, a cached version remains available. In addition, A-R is a distributor of metalworking equipment produced by TOS Kuřim, ČKD Blansko, TOS Čelákovice, and the hydraulic press plant TS Plzeň a.s. (formerly Škoda Heavy Engineering).

In 2019, A-R acquired Ulyanovsk Heavy Machine Tool Plant LLC (ZSTU), expanding its capabilities in the production and repair of heavy machine tools. Built in the 1950s, the plant specializes in machining large, highly complex components that conventional machine tool factories cannot handle. ZSTU is equipped with a unique machine fleet and cranes with lifting capacities of up to 150 metric tons. Its main clients include several Russian defense enterprises: Lavochkin Research and Production Association, the M.V. Protsenko Start Research Production Center, Proletarsky Plant PJSC, Kalinin Machine-Building Plant PJSC, and Perm Machine-Building Plant, among others. Plášil’s role in Czech industrial exports to Russia is also reflected in his position as chairman of the Brno Chamber of Commerce for CIS countries.

How the Czech corporation maintained ties with Russian partners

As of early 2022, Alta Invest owned four companies in Russia: A-R LLC, Gudaktiv LLC, T21 LLC, and Ulyanovsk Heavy Machine Tool Plant LLC (ZSTU). In 2022, ZSTU was sold to T21 LLC, which in turn was acquired by Alexei Panin, a lawyer who has represented Alta in court proceedings since 2013. Notably though, a number of indicators suggest that the transaction was fictitious.

First, Panin had not previously founded any companies, and it is unlikely that a salaried employee would have sufficient funds to purchase a firm that had an annual turnover approaching $13 million. Second, Panin continues to represent Alta’s interests in Russian courts. On March 10, 2026, at a hearing in the Commercial Court of Sverdlovsk Region, Panin acted as a representative of A-R under a power of attorney dated December 10, 2025.

Third, the domains of Alta’s Russian subsidiary and the allegedly independent entities linked to Panin are registered to one another: A-R owns the domains alta-energo.ru, tr21v.ru, and ztsu.rf. T21, in turn, owns the domain a-r.ru, which was registered only after the company was sold to Panin.

In addition, A-R (which is owned by the Czech corporation Alta) and Panin’s T21 both import machine tools for a single customer: the Ulyanovsk-based ZSTU plant. The two allegedly independent firms bring machine tools from the same Chinese manufacturer into Russia, process them through the same customs broker, and list contact addresses on the same domains. On January 20, 2024, A-R imported a motorized belt conveyor from Verich (Shenzhen) Trading Co. The customs clearance was handled by SVTS Service Group LLC, and the contact details listed email addresses altaural@altaural.ru, fxr@alta-rus.ru, and office@alta-rus.ru. Six days later, on January 26, 2024, T21 imported a coordinate boring machine, also from Verich (Shenzhen) Trading Co. The customs clearance was again handled by SVTS Service Group, and the contact details listed email addresses on the same Alta domains: tr21@altaural.ru, tr21v@alta-rus.ru, and tr21v@altaural.ru.

Although both A-R and T21 are based in Yekaterinburg, the orders for both companies listed Ulyanovsk as the place of shipment. The delivery terms indicated in the customs data — DAP Ulyanovsk — mean that the seller delivered the goods, cleared them through customs, and made them available to the buyer on a vehicle ready for unloading in Ulyanovsk. Such a chain of coincidences strongly suggests that A-R and T21 act as intermediaries in supplying the Ulyanovsk plant.

In response to an inquiry about the operations of its Russian enterprises, Alta Invest representatives stated that they do not maintain contact with Russian companies but that they chose not to sell these entities in order to avoid paying an increased tax to the Russian budget.

However, these claims are difficult to reconcile with the fact that senior management of the Czech group continued to travel to Russia and take direct part in managing Russian companies. Alta Invest Business Development Director Jiří Šalk made several trips to Russia, the most recent in September 2023. In 2023, Šalk personally signed the financial statements of Gudaktiv LLC for the previous year. The owner of the Alta group, businessman Vladimír Plášil, also continued to visit Russia after the start of the full-scale war. According to leaked border-crossing data, he last departed Moscow for Istanbul on December 14, 2022.

In addition to ownership and management, Alta directly supplied the Russian enterprise. On May 28, 2022, the Czech company delivered a Škoda CNC horizontal milling and boring machine to A-R. The total revenue of Alta’s enterprises for 2022–2024 amounted to 4 billion rubles ($52,510,700).

Czech machine tools for Russian defense plants

The revival of Russia’s military-industrial complex took place with active financial support from the EU. In 2009, the state-owned Czech Export Bank committed to providing €2 billion in loans over a period of up to 10 years for investment projects in the Sverdlovsk Region. Half of this amount was intended for the Uralvagonzavod research and production corporation, with Alta stepping up as one of the largest contractors for these projects. Due to the onset of the financial crisis, the allocated amount was ultimately reduced, and in April 2010, Alta confirmed the allocation of €280 million to Uralvagonzavod.

UVZ is Russia’s main tank manufacturer, producing T-90 tanks and upgraded T-72 tanks, Terminator fire support combat vehicles, BREM-1 armored recovery vehicles, and other heavy tracked equipment. The company has been under U.S. sanctions since July 17, 2014, and shortly after February 2022, the EU and most other Western countries imposed sanctions against it as well.

Yet neither sanctions nor the full-scale invasion compelled Alta to break with the tank plant. Formally sold to Panin but still linked to Alta, ZSTU continues to service machine tools at the Nizhny Tagil enterprise, as evidenced by court documents. A ruling by the Commercial Court of Sverdlovsk Region states that on February 10, 2023, ZSTU concluded a contract with Uralvagonzavod for the capital repair of a CNC turning and milling machining center. The cost of the repair was estimated at 60.2 million rubles ($790,300).

The importance of ZSTU for Russia’s defense industry can be illustrated by the case of the Wagner DDKSS-150 machine tool — as the plant reported on its repair via social media. Produced by the German company Wagner in 1931, the lathe has been operating at the Uralmash plant in Yekaterinburg ever since. Over time, it was equipped with new control and monitoring systems, but the original metal structure also required repair. For this purpose, the 250-ton machine had to be transported from Yekaterinburg to Ulyanovsk (likely because no plant in the Urals had the capacity to process such large equipment).

Uralmashzavod has been under U.S. sanctions since July 2023 and under UK sanctions since November 2023. In 2023, ZSTU upgraded another heavy machine tool for Uralmashzavod — a Schiess-Froriep RS 35/500S gear shaping machine for 84.6 million rubles ($1,110,700).

ZSTU repairs machine tools not only for Russia’s main tank producer but also for a leading Russian artillery manufacturer. As stated in a ruling of the Eleventh Commercial Appellate Court in Samara, on June 21, 2022, ZSTU signed subcontract agreement No. 710 with Perm-based Motovilikha Plants JSC. Under this agreement, ZSTU carried out a capital repair of a UF 5201 longitudinal milling machine worth 35.9 million rubles ($471,000). Motovilikha Plants JSC is part of Rostec and is the main Russian producer of tube and rocket artillery. The enterprise manufactures Tulpan self-propelled mortars, Giatsint-B guns, D-20 and Msta-B howitzers, Nona artillery systems, and Grad, Uragan, and Smerch multiple rocket launch systems.

In 2025, ZSTU filed a lawsuit against the Promtekhaero Research and Technology Center to recover 6.2 million rubles ($81,400) for the repair of a machine table, columns, and guides. Promtekhaero is engaged in modernizing radio-electronic airspace control systems for civil aviation and carries out upgrades for air defense and anti-space defense systems for the Russian Ministry of Defense. Since 2002, the company has had a separate office in premises leased from the “2nd Central Research Institute of the Russian Ministry of Defense.” Since March 23, 2024, Promtekhaero has been under EU sanctions.

Alongside the ZSTU plant, which was formally sold to Panin, Russia’s Alta subsidiary, A-R LLC, also works with sanctioned enterprises. According to a ruling issued by the Commercial Court of Sverdlovsk Region, A-R LLC entered into a contract and later a supplementary agreement with Chelyabinsk Forging and Pressing Plant PJSC (ChKPZ). Alta’s Czech subsidiary undertook to deliver a Skoda MT WT 200 GNR NC horizontal boring machine, manufactured in 1978 and modernized in 2008. A-R LLC delivered the machine and commissioned it on July 2, 2024, and subsequently continued servicing it, installing an angular milling head on May 27, 2025.

ChKPZ does not produce weapons as such but forms an important link in the military-industrial supply chain. The plant manufactures hot stampings and forgings for components of artillery systems, missile engines, and aircraft engines, as well as stamped wheel rims for special-purpose vehicles. ChKPZ has been under U.S. sanctions since February 2024 and under EU sanctions since June 2024.

Due to deliveries of Škoda machine tools, A-R sued the ZiO-Podolsk Machine-Building Plant JSC. According to a ruling by the Commercial Court of Moscow Region, A-R LLC, acting under a supply contract, undertook to sell and install an angular and universal milling head for a SKODA HCW 3-225 machine tool, manufactured in 2023. A-R delivered the equipment, but had to go to court to recover payment from the Rosatom-affiliated enterprise. The Podolsk plant is part of Atomenergomash and produces steam generators and heat-exchange equipment for nuclear submarines.

Another Czech machine tool has yet to find a buyer. On social media, ZSTU advertises a Škoda W200H horizontal boring machine equipped with a Siemens Sinumerik 840Dsl control system, modernized in 2010.

Machine tools for Luhansk and support for the “special military operation”

In October 2025, ZSTU reported the shipment of a UF 5212 longitudinal milling machine to Lugamash LLC in occupied Luhansk — a railway plant that is now part of Transmashholding and is announcing new railway rolling stock production.

According to ZSTU’s page on the Russian social network VKontakte, in March 2024 the plant’s team donated one day's wages in support of Russian armed forces fighting in Ukraine. In April 2024, ZSTU employees, in the presence of Ulyanovsky Regional Security Council Secretary Gennady Nerobeev, handed over three drones, video goggles, and batteries to the military. 

Joint investigation with VoxPot. A video version of the investigation is available in Czech. The investigation used Tools of War and NorthData aggregators.

When they asked Durov what he saw himself doing in the future, he broke the silence and said, smiling, "Totem.” His desires, passions and skills had converged to shape this vision. Everything uninteresting and unnecessary had been eliminated. Those around him dismissed his words as a joke, but the formula determined everything that happened in his life thereafter. 'I want to become an Internet totem.'

PART II. 

CRYPTORIOT

CHAPTER SIX

I met Durov for the last time in Russia in January 2014; he fled a month later. We set off on foot from Singer House, heading for one of St. Petersburg's most luxurious restaurants, Terrace. Durov was dressed all in black, wearing padded trainers and a baseball cap similar to those worn by Kendall Roy in Succession.

As always, Totem was unrecognisable on the crowded Nevsky Prospect, but everything else had changed.

Durov had already launched Telegram and was rapidly gaining millions of users. He had also sold his stake in VK. Although he was still in charge of the social network, he made no secret of the fact that he would be resigning within a month or two.

What was most surprising was the alteration in his behaviour. He was acting more suspicious than ever before. On the street, he occasionally gazed around. At pedestrian crossings, he cautiously watched the cars slowing down in front of us. When the elevator took us to Terrace, he chose a table in the corner rather than in the open air as usual.

Taking his seat, Durov pulled back the curtain, making sure that no one was behind it and that we were not being overheard.

As I later learned, he was afraid of being spied on. Totem wanted me to hear about the moment he decided to not only get rid of VK, but also to move Telegram out of Russia to avoid jail.

According to Durov, the story went like this. He received an invitation to a meeting with Putin and “entrepreneurs” — or, more accurately, oligarchs. Durov accepted and, at the appointed hour, he and his senior VK shareholder Usmanov found themselves jostling in the gilded hall of the Kremlin, having had their smartphones taken by security guards. Various people came up to greet them, including Sergei Chemezov.

Chemezov, a tall, charismatic and folksy man, created the impression that his power was boundless. This was not unreasonable: he served alongside Putin in the same intelligence department in Dresden in the 1980s. Their families lived in the same building and shared a car. Once in the Kremlin, Putin appointed people he knew well to the highest positions, and Chemezov was no exception. By the time he met Durov, Chemezov was heading Rostech, a state corporation comprising fairly innovative plants and factories.

He told me that had heard about Telegram's unique data transfer protocol, Durov recalled. Chemezov pointed to a man some distance away and said bluntly, “Here's the director of our cryptography institute. Transfer him the keys to your protocol.”

Twirling his Kendall cap in his hands, Durov told me that at that moment he realized immediately that it wasn't worth arguing with anyone in that hall.

He nodded and smiled gently but did not even try to explain to Chemezov that the point of the Telegram protocol is its lack of “decryption keys”. Data can’t be transmitted or intercepted because the decryption code is generated on the recipient's smartphone or laptop. Decryption occurs only between the sender and the recipient for each of the billions of messages sent in secret mode.

After four hours, the exhausted oligarchs, who had sprawled on the chairs during their forced digital detox, abruptly picked themselves up, adjusted their ties, and lined up along the walls. Putin entered.

Once the official proceedings had concluded, Usmanov managed to sneak up to the president and introduce Durov to him. Suddenly, Putin seized the initiative.

According to Totem, Putin lectured him in such a way that it was difficult to interrupt. He said, “You have pornography and illegal cinema there, but we don't need such things in Russia. We don't need all this illegal entertainment here.”

For some reason, he repeated, “If you want to do this kind of business, do it in Israel,” twice. Putin had probably remembered the biographies of Totem's co-founders, or perhaps his own relationship with Mirilashvili Sr. in 1990s gangster St. Petersburg, where the future president worked as international relations manager in the mayor’s office.

Durov felt that no matter what he said to Putin, he wouldn't be heard. A guy from the last generation of KGB officers who believed that the Internet was invented by the CIA and everything on it was a hoax, stood before him, ranting.

Totem objected, of course, saying that he planned to show the world the greatness of the Russian programming school, blah blah blah, but there was no longer any hope for garnering Putin's favor.

Simultaneously, Durov realised that his reasons for staying in Russia were weakening and melting away like last year's snow.

The second man in the state reached him later. Prime Minister Medvedev, who often posted cringe-worthy content on Twitter, approached Durov, held out his hand for a handshake and whispered, “I saw it. I saw. [My press secretary Natalia] Timakova has your Telegram. Congratulations on your success.” For some reason, he added: “As a user, I appreciate it, but as an official, I can't.”

Soon, as if he had visited bizarro-land, Durov left the Kremlin with a kind of fatigue and went on his way.

It later emerged that Chemezov and Usmanov had been considering merging their corporations into one holding company. Perhaps Usmanov wanted to cement Durov's decision to leave VK by buying his stake and pushing him to resign as CEO.

Alternatively, perhaps the oligarch genuinely believed that Durov would charm Putin.

I did not fully believe the story I heard from Totem, but it would have been pointless to try to speak with the other characters in it. Usmanov would never confirm such a thing, to say nothing of Medvedev, Chemezov or the director of the Institute of Cryptography, who remained off limits to independent journalists.

Eventually, more than a decade later Putin himself confirmed that there had been a meeting with Durov.

At a press conference in August 2024, Putin was asked whether it was true that Durov, who was incarcerated by the French authorities, was supposed to have met with him shortly before his arrest, in Baku. “No, he should not have,” he replied.

“I have only seen Mr. Durov once,” Putin added. “It happened many years ago. I don't even remember exactly when. He was just telling me about his plans. It was in the Kremlin, at a meeting with businessmen.”

Finally, Durov himself revealed in an interview with Le Point that, when asked about the meeting with Putin, the top official “insisted that, in his opinion, social networks should become instruments of power.”

***

Three months after our last conversation in St. Petersburg, the Kremlin's strategy for nudging Durov to leave VK became clear. As in the card game 'Mafia', Totem woke up, wiped his eyes, and saw that the shareholders sitting around the table were utterly different from his school mate Slava and Lev.

It soon became clear that Yuri Milner — whose investment strategy Wired detailed in “The Web Is Dead. Long Live the Internet” — had left a legal loophole in the contract with VK. Either for the sake of his future needs or due to an oversight.

According to the contract, if any of the shareholders intended to sell their shares, they were obliged to offer them to the other shareholders first. Therefore, there could be no outsiders among the social network’s owners . But if the sellers were companies owned by the shareholders, rather than the shareholders themselves, then there could be no such buy-out offer.

It was 39-year-old Ilya Scherbovich who first squeezed through this loophole.

Scherbovich called himself an investment banker, but in fact he acted as a connoisseur, acquiring different entities on behalf of third parties or generating income through successful interventions in shareholder conflicts.

This person was much more emblematic of Putin's era than the Durov brothers. To understand this character's role in the drama of Putin's Russia, we need to take a brief look at its historical context.

Firstly, the idea that Putin wants to turn his country into a modernised Soviet Union is a myth that has proved remarkably resilient around the world. It is based on the fact that Putin worked in the KGB from 1975 onwards and is nostalgic for the agency’s heyday, when it considered itself a kind of nobility or an enlightened class. At the same time, this theory goes, Putin’s ambitions can be seen as imperial: he wants to regain control of the former Soviet republics, which he believes have little legitimacy.

While these arguments have some merit, all of Putin's other actions and values suggest that he despises both communism and socialism. He is completely comfortable with capitalism. This is evident in the laws that have altered the political system since Putin came to power.

Putin promptly lobbied for a mineral extraction tax, and many people hoped that money from the sale of oil and gas would benefit citizens. However, over time, it became clear that the super-profits were flowing into private pockets.

What about gasification of villages and small towns, universal access to sewage systems, a significant improvement in the quality of medicine, and an increase in social payments? Failed. What about the mining tax? It was partly settled in Russia's Stabilisation Fund and partly given out as bonuses and dividends to Putin's friends. It was also used to strengthen the repressive apparatus that protects the bureaucratic mafia's prosperity.

In addition, Putin granted citizens a flat taxation scale. The stated aim of this measure was to stimulate entrepreneurship: fewer dependents — more successful businessmen. Citizens were outraged at this tax game, but the media and liberal intelligentsia explained to them that it was businessmen who were building a new beautiful life, and we should be grateful to them.

Putin then went even further and lobbied for a simplified system of taxation, which was a real gift for the entrepreneurs: 6% on income of up to several million roubles a month stimulated business. Have you ever faced anything similar anywhere in “developed countries” (Russian propaganda loves colonial cliches) that the revenue of an ordinary entrepreneur earning a hundred thousand dollars per month would be taxed at 6%?!

Before the 2014 annexation of Crimea and the subsequent collapse of the rouble, Putin's gifts encouraged political apathy among active citizens. After the tumultuous 1990s, businesspeople were willing to overlook Putin's shortcomings in light of his generosity. Many excuse him to this day, despite the rumble of caterpillar tanks and the roar of missiles.

Thus, during Putin's years in power, the Soviet economic and social system has been completely dismantled, with free healthcare as its only remnant. And even in that case, more and more citizens are turning to private clinics. Money rules everything. In Russia, if you have wealth, you can literally buy anything: a classified database, a weapon, a position, a court judgement or an audience with any official.

Putin and his cronies have created a sort of capitalism, with a formally regulated but, in reality, Darwinian free market where only the strongest survive. No money or corrupt friends? You are nobody.

Over time, medium-sized businesses started to complain, as companies that had grown to a reasonable size in Russia were either nationalised or taken over by the “siloviki” and their associates. Gradually, Darwinian capitalism turned into outright mafia capitalism.

Wiser entrepreneurs have moved their brands elsewhere or been forced to sell their assets in an attempt to avoid hefty discounts. The rest have become state-owned or fallen under the control of the mafia, acting as nominal holders.

Until the 2010s, the endless redistribution of property was not a concern for internet businesses. However, as companies and the entire social network economy grew, graduates of KGB and FSB schools appeared in that sector too. Ilya Scherbovich, who knocked on Durov's door, was one of them: a typical hero of the Putin era — a “solver”.

Scherbovich remained an investment banker while acting as an intermediary in the transfer of large properties. With Igor Sechin's blessing, he approached Durov and his company.

Sechin served in the intelligence services in Angola in the 1980s. He then became Putin's chief of staff in the 1990s and figured out how to wrest control of the Yukos oil company from oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky in the 2000s. Finally, he headed the state oil corporation Rosneft and solidified his position as one of Putin's closest confidants.

At first, Durov did not believe that Usmanov was not involved in his latest issues. However, when he saw the amazed reaction of his senior shareholder, he accepted that Scherbovich was not the oligarch's creation. While negotiating with Slava and Lev for their shares, Usmanov overlooked negotiations with Scherbovich behind his back.

At the same time, Durov did not believe that Scherbovich was operating independently, and he wondered who had sent him.

I was preoccupied by this question, too. Following a series of confidential discussions with various insiders, I became convinced that Sechin was involved. For one thing, Shcherbovich once sat on Rosneft's board of directors.

The owner of one of the last independent oil companies in Russia told me that Sechin would always prosecute the seller to finalise an M&A deal. The aim was to prevent the seller from backing out or reducing the price. To this end, Sechin knew FSB General Oleg Feoktistov and recruited him to work at Rosneft.

Having learned all this, I decided to write an article for Hopes & Fears, where 1 was an editor. To this end, I arranged an interview with Scherbovich himself. Before the visit, I looked at photos of him — he always posed in a suit and was only filmed a few times wearing fishing overalls and a knitted hat. On his personal website, he boasts about his piscatorial successes: “Among my most outstanding records is catching a 30.4 kg taimen on a fly.”

Scherbovich received me in his unremarkable office near Paveletsky railway station in Moscow. Through the dusty windows, I watched freight trains on the tracks outside. Scherbovich spoke vaguely, trying to convince me that he had exploited his personal acquaintance with Mirilashvili and Leviev to pursue his own financial goals. He insisted that no one was backing him.

After the article was published and widely quoted by media outlets, including some global ones, Scherbovich called on me. Although Hopes & Fears only had a five-person editorial team and half a million readers, Durov's new partner was keen to approach us personally. I switched on the speakerphone and asked my colleagues to record the conversation.

Having made some trivial complaints about sensationalist journalists and demanded that we remove the article, Scherbovich took a more menacing tone. He suggested meeting in court and asked me where I had found out about Sechin's involvement. I replied that I wasn't going to delete anything, nor was I going to reveal my sources. “You have no sources! You made it all up!' Scherbovich exclaimed before saying farewell.

A few years later, Durov confirmed to me that Putin's right-hand man had been involved in the takeover of VK. He hinted that another oligarch had informed him of this. Through a process of elimination, I concluded that it was probably Roman Abramovich. Abramovich had become acquainted with Durov and had sought his advice on investing in promising start-ups.

The oligarch asked Putin directly who was muddying the waters surrounding the social network. The president nodded towards Sechin’s office and said that “Igor was in charge of the situation.”

By this point, Durov had already left Russia, albeit temporarily. 'It may well be that I am already being gradually boiled,' he wrote to me. 'My return to Russia is not expected. They can remove me if Putin says so. In this regard, all the current stir may be necessary psychological preparation to stop me from doing something unexpected.”

Durov remained relatively calm because Usmanov had promised to try to resolve the conflict, and the developers had already spent a year working on the code for the messenger. They had not only crafted the protocol for data transmission, but also polished the app itself in its beta version.

“At some point, I will switch to global tasks, as I'm not interested in Russia due to its locality, and because I only own a 12% stake in VK,” explained Durov. “However, if they behave well, I will help them to prevent things from falling apart here so quickly. I am unlikely to live and work in the Russian Federation long term, as political storms and censorship are on the horizon. I used to demonstrate neutrality rather than loyalty, but today, that is no longer appropriate.”

In order to facilitate “switching to global tasks,” Durov was granted citizenship of the island nation of St Kitts and Nevis, as this made it easier for him to enter two of the most visa-restrictive states: England and the US.

Totem's outward calm remained unshaken until autumn 2013. Nothing seemed able to faze him, including the attacks by Scherbovich and his associates at shareholder meetings, and the attempts by the prosecutor's office to summon Durov to Russia to testify. The developers were perfecting Telegram, and it wasn't until the messenger was released in app stores in August that the shitstorm began.

***

“I waited three years for similar figures on daily VK registrations and only three weeks for Telegram. Maybe my brother and I have been focusing on the wrong things these past few years”. That's what Durov confessed after the public launch of the messenger.

Telegram was far from the ideal online universe — unlike WeChat in China, whose users can pay bills, order goods and services, and request documents from various institutions. However, thanks to Nikolay Durov and his team, Telegram was fast enough to deliver messages, photos and videos on weak mobile coverage and slow protocols such as EDGE.

When I passed on to Totem the readers’ question from Hopes & Fears, “How is Telegram better than WhatsApp?”, his response was, “They don't have the cloud, security, speed of the app, or the ability to handle big data in large group chats.” Back in 2014, it was true.

Telegram was flooded with thousands of users from Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Support services were led by Michael Ravdonikas, a former marketer who answered all questions in English. Then came the wave from Kuwait and Libya. According to Durov, many people asked whether it was safe to transfer sensitive data. By autumn, Telegram had more users from Asia than from Russia.

That's when the first dangerous call from Scherbovich rang.

Scherbovich viewed the launch of the new project as an avenue to criticise Durov. As Totem remained a shareholder and head of VK, Scherbovich believed that he was not entitled to develop a competing product or recruit employees from his company.

Understandably, Durov was angered by this logic, but he did not suspect that this was merely the prelude to the clash.

Curses flew at Totem from the other tower of the Kremlin as well, and the situation was becoming increasingly tense. The scandalous Moscow mayoral election was approaching. The re-elected mayor, Sergei Sobyanin, had insisted that Alexei Navalny, who was popular, be permitted to run.

The aim was to boost the mayor's popularity. Otherwise, the elections were at risk of becoming a victory for the opposition. The authorities once again started trying to shut down groups they disliked on VK.

The arrangement was simple. “If you don't ban Navalny's groups, you go to jail,” Durov explained to me. “If you ban them, you'll ruin your reputation around the world.” I clarified: “Have you already received demands for a ban?” “They hinted that we might need help,” he replied.

Eventually, the situation resolved itself. Navalny lost to Sobyanin and accused him of electoral fraud. Instead of taking to the streets, he chose to fight for the truth legally by filing a complaint with the Supreme Court. The Muscovites did not dare to build barricades and the VK issue was put on hold.

Not for long, though. Soon, Usmanov summoned Durov to a meeting with businessmen and the president of the country.

A few months later, at Terrace restaurant, Totem spent half an hour telling me about it. I also asked him why he had agreed to go to the Kremlin if he had no illusions about Putin. Or did he?

Our old interview came to mind.

— Nikolai told me that, in a university questionnaire asking 'Which politician do you like the most?', you mentioned Putin. What was your reasoning?

— At first, I wrote 'Roosevelt', but then I realised it wasn't patriotic, so I thought further. This was in 2002, before Khodorkovsky s case. Putin also liked Roosevelt, and now it's clear why. After Yeltsin, he seemed to be a very constructive figure. Who else could I mention?..

But this time, Durov just shook his head and explained everything in terms of the pragmatics of the moment. Usmanov and his cronies did not want to quarrel with Sechin. They initially discouraged Durov from an open confrontation and urged him to resolve all issues behind the curtain. An important part of this process was the meeting in the Kremlin.

After fleeing Russia amid a criminal case involving an injured policeman, Durov realised that only Usmanov could resolve the matter. 'Whether or not I can go back to Russia to see my friends depends on his efforts,' he wrote to me at the time.

However, the meeting with the pudgy oligarchs and their supreme boss in the Kremlin made Durov despondent. He did not expect to meet such dull, archaic, and inept characters at the top of the hierarchy. His despondency was indeed about the fate of his homeland, not just his personal plans.

The deadline for Usmanov's offer to buy back his shares had not yet expired. So, when Durov received the clear signal that Putin considered him not only to be running a porn hosting company, but also a traitor taking Telegram's unique technologies to the United States, he quickly sold his stake in VK.

Estimates of how much of Usmanov's money ended up in Durov's accounts vary — from one-and-a-half to three hundred million dollars. Neither Durov nor Usmanov provided any definitive numbers.

Totem had no intention of leaving VK in a hurry and became CEO, ostensibly to hand over management responsibilities to someone else. However, he did not remain in this position for long.

In late autumn, Ukraine rose up and the first Maidan protests broke out. As 2014 got closer, there was a sense that the pro-Russian President Yanukovych would be ousted. There was also a sense that the majority's desire for European integration would be realised.

Meanwhile, in Russia, Navalny was inspiringly setting up cells of his decentralised network across the country. By spring, the pressure on independent media had intensified. A wave of persecution began when Maidan overthrew Yanukovych and Russia annexed Crimea with the help of “polite” soldiers.

In mid-March, the owner ofLenta.ru, the largest Russian online publication, dismissed the editorial team responsible for reporting news to its hundred million readers. Durov had become the last independent editor-in-chief of a major Russian online media outlet who was not reporting to Kremlin officials. They could not order him to remove a post or edit a video.

“Send requests, and we will consider them fairly. I’m not going to do anything illegal,” Durov responded to officials’ attempts to scare or persuade him.

The intonations of Totem were deferential, while the altercation with Shcherbovich was harsh. Political censorship was just beginning to strengthen. “Now they are dealing with everyone who did not prove themselves sufficiently reliable in the Bolotnaya situation, it's not just Navalny and the others” — Durov wrote to me before the Maidan riots in Kyiv.

April arrived. While the rest of the world mocked the golden toilet in the residence of Ukraine's fugitive president, a war sponsored by the Kremlin was already raging in the east of the country.

Durov published one of his most desperate posts yet. He was still maneuvering as best he could, not mentioning the annexation of Crimea, but clearly indicating that he himself would soon be repressed.

On March 3, 2014, the Prosecutor's Office demanded that I shut down Alexei Navalny's anti-corruption group, threatening to block VK. However, I didn't close the group in December 2011, nor have 1 closed it now.

Over the past few weeks, I have been under pressure from various sides. I managed to win more than a month using various methods, but now it's time to say that neither I nor my team will carry out political censorship. We are not going to remove any anti-corruption reports, Navalny's community, nor hundreds of other communities that we are required to block. The freedom to disseminate information is an inalienable right of a post-industrial society. Without this right, VK's existence wouldn't make sense.

After reading this text, I asked the author: “Why do you need an open conflict with the authorities?”

Durov replied: “This is all more important than my tactical goals right now. A generation needs a point of reference. Someone had to stand up and say something during this widespread submission to idiocy.”

Totem spoke frankly, but, as was often the case with him, he didn't provide the context. In addition to the pressure from the secret services, the Kremlin finally acted and struck at Durov's most precious possession: Telegram.

_________________________________________

Nikolai V. Kononov. The Populist. 

Who is charged under “terrorism” and “extremism” statutes

Most of those involved are civilians. Researchers counted 1,366 civilians (60% of the total) and 912 servicemen of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Among the military personnel, at least 280 people are linked to the Azov Brigade and 79 to the Aidar Battalion. However, the largest group, according to the authors, consists of participants in combat operations in the Kursk region in 2024–2025 — no fewer than 381 people.

Of the 2,278 defendants, 1,882 are charged under terrorism-related statutes, and another 396 under extremism statutes. At the same time, the report notes, such charges are often combined with articles on treason and espionage, allowing prosecutors to ask the court for even more severe sentences.

Most of the Ukrainian citizens who feature in the count have already been convicted — a total of 1,521 people. Of these, 1,146 have been sentenced to terms of physical imprisonment, 76 have received penalties that do not involve the deprivation of liberty, and 299 have been convicted in absentia and placed on wanted lists. Another 325 people are under investigation, most often in pretrial detention. For 399 defendants, there is almost no available information beyond the fact that they have been included on the Russian government’s “list of terrorists and extremists.”

Exchanges remain the exception

A separate section of the report is devoted to exchanges, and it is here that the gap between the scale of prosecution and the chances of release is most evident. Of the 8,669 people who have been returned to Ukraine via exchanges, as of mid-March 2026 only 56 were defendants in “terrorism” and “extremism” cases, less than 1% of the total number released.

Notably, the situation of civilians is even more difficult than that of military personnel. The authors of the study note that international humanitarian law does not provide provisions demanding that civilians receive the privileges afforded to prisoners of war, meaning that standard exchange mechanisms frequently do not apply to them. As a result, criminal prosecution under such statutes effectively prevents their return.

For this reason, Parubets Analytics does not publish a full list of defendants. The study explicitly states that the authors have grounds to fear that such lists could be used by the Russian side to complicate exchange procedures and exert additional pressure on those being held. However, the researchers say the full data has been provided to Ukraine’s Coordination Headquarters.

879 people are considered missing

According to the study, 879 defendants are included in Ukraine’s official register of missing persons. Another 47 people have been removed from it — typically after being freed, including through exchanges.

The largest number of such cases is recorded in the Donetsk region, primarily in Mariupol, where there are at least 266 disappearances. The second major cluster is linked to Russia’s Kursk region, where researchers counted 298 cases. Another 74 cases are attributed to the Zaporizhzhia region.

By examining the timing of the disappearances, the authors were able to identify two waves. While only 21 cases were recorded in the database before February 24, 2022, the number rose to 369 in 2022. After declining to 77 cases in 2023, there was another surge in 2024, with 355 recorded disappearances. In 2025, researchers documented a further 104 such cases.

The lists compiled by human rights organizations include fewer than half of the total known defendants

The authors of the report draw particular attention to the fact that a significant share of these cases is virtually absent from the public record. The database of the human rights project “Support for Political Prisoners. Memorial” contains information on 1,045 defendants, while the OVD-Info database lists 498. The study itself concludes that more than half of the defendants are not represented in any human rights lists at all.

Among the accused are teenagers as young as 16 and elderly defendants as old as 87. The authors of the study note separately that at least 11 of the accused were minors at the time of analysis.

Still, the bulk of the accused are middle-aged, with the average age of defendants coming in at 41.8 years, with a median age of 41. The largest group falls between 35 and 44. Most of the accused are men (2,057 people), while 211 women are listed in the database.

How the data was compiled

The study was prepared by Parubets Analytics using its own database, which has been assembled from open sources, court materials, media publications, human rights databases, official statements by Russian agencies, and Ukrainian registries. As a starting point, the authors used the Russian government’s Rosfinmonitoring list, then verified each defendant using additional identifiers, including place of birth, date of birth, origin, and information from human rights sources.

The authors emphasize that in a number of cases, matching had to be carried out using incomplete data, relying on digital reconstruction of a figure’s identity. At the same time, they consider the resulting dataset sufficiently reliable, while acknowledging the inevitable limitations associated with the lack of transparency of the information.

The project was organized by members of the Feminist Anti-War Resistance (FAS). The exhibition features 14 portraits of women who have been persecuted in Russia for their anti-war stance and civic activism. The works were created by artists from Russia and Belarus, with some participating anonymously due to the risk of persecution.

Speaking at the opening, Budapest Mayor Gergely Karácsony linked the exhibition to the elections taking place in the country:

“It would not be an exaggeration to say that Sunday’s elections are, among other things, about whether we will stand with the women in these portraits or with their jailers and tormentors. These elections can help us show that we, Hungarians, have preserved our moral compass — the very compass that Hungary’s government lost at least ten years ago.

We will all have the opportunity to show that Hungary is not its government, which initially only sought to blur the line between aggressor and victim, between good and evil, and then either openly took the side of the aggressor or became a vassal of evil. I am confident that this exhibition will help those who are still undecided to make a decision.

The fact that this exhibition, after Paris and Vienna, is now accessible to anyone in the heart of Budapest is a declaration. It is a stance — a demonstration that we have preserved our moral compass, a silent cry that we are capable of drawing a clear line between good and evil, a quiet but unambiguous statement that we, the residents of Budapest, stand on the side of good.”

Organizers noted that holding the exhibition in Hungary on the eve of parliamentary elections was a political choice. Ties between the government of Viktor Orbán and Kremlin officials had become increasingly obvious by the run-up to the vote, and the exhibition itself was intended to draw attention to human rights violations in Russia and to support public debate.

Co-curator of the exhibition and FAS activist Lyolya Nordic said at the opening that the project is not only anti-war but also anti-authoritarian in nature.

“We believe that the Putin regime poses a threat to human rights, in particular women’s rights, not only in Russia and not only in Ukraine, but worldwide. And it is crucial for us to launch this exhibition in Budapest, as Hungary and Russia have had highly problematic historical ties, especially given the rightward shift in politics, conservative values, and anti-human rights sentiment, and this causes us serious concern. We are here today because we want to build bridges between Russian civil society and Hungarian civil society that both stand for human rights, against fascism, against authoritarianism, against war, and against violence,” she declared.

The activist also cited the recent decision by the Supreme Court of Russia to designate the international Memorial human rights network as an “extremist organization,” noting that this deprives political prisoners of support. Speaking about the elections in Hungary, she added that Russian authorities have an interest in keeping right-wing politicians in power in Europe and have sought to influence election outcomes.

The exhibition features portraits of Oksana Baulina, Yevgenia Berkovich, Maria Bontsler, Ramilya Galim (Saitova), Nadin Geisler, Polina Yevtushenko, Olga Nazarenko, Tatyana Laletina, Lyubov Lizunova, Lyudmila Razumova, Maria Moskaleva, Yelena Osipova, Svetlana Petriychuk, and Maria Ponomarenko.

The works were created by artists Kristina Akhmadiev, Daria Apakhonchich, artemis, p. b., Dasha Burleshina, Alisa Gorshenina, Baba Pasha, Alina Panasenko, Maria Rakhmaninova, and Alexandra Skochilenko, among others. Other artists are participating anonymously.

“It would be good to have a government that deals with the real problems of the Hungarian people. Of course, in that case we would have to sit down at the negotiating table with the Russian president. The geographical position of Russia and Hungary will not change. Our energy dependence will also remain for some time. Diversification must be strengthened, but it will not happen overnight. If necessary, we will negotiate, but we will not become friends.”

Speaking to supporters on the evening of April 12, after the election results were mostly in, Magyar said that Tisza had won because Hungary “wants to become a European country again…a country where no one is persecuted for dissent. Where no one is stigmatized for loving differently than the majority.”

According to data from the National Election Office of Hungary, as of the morning of April 13, 98.94% of ballots have been counted. The agency reports that Tisza has secured 138 seats in the 199-seat parliament, thus earning a constitutional majority. Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz party will hold 55 seats in the new parliament. Another six mandates go to the Our Homeland Movement.

Despite support coming from both Moscow and Washington, Viktor Orbán conceded defeat on election night, congratulating Tisza on its victory. Less than a week before the vote, U.S. Vice President JD Vance visited Budapest. “I did want to send a signal to everybody, particularly the bureaucrats in Brussels, who have done everything that they can to hold down the people of Hungary because they don't like the leader who has actually stood up for the people of Hungary,” Vance said, expressing support for the outgoing prime minister.

Meanwhile, the Kremlin will not send an official congratulatory message to Péter Magyar, given that Hungary is an “unfriendly” country, according to Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov. However, this status did not prevent Vladimir Putin from congratulating Viktor Orbán’s coalition on its victory in the parliamentary elections in April 2022, when the country was also officially listed as “unfriendly.”

“We do not send congratulations to unfriendly countries. And Hungary is an unfriendly country; it supports sanctions against us,” Peskov said as quoted by Interfax.

Due to heavy cloud cover, the available Sentinel-2 images for April 9 do not show this area on the map. However, in images taken by the Sentinel-1 satellite on April 8, the slick is not yet present. It remains unclear exactly when it formed.

The Krasnodar Krai operations headquarters reported the discovery of the oil slick on April 11. At that time, it said that due to wind, the contamination was moving toward the Anapa–Vityazevo coastline. On the evening of April 11, regional authorities reported that more than 200 dead birds covered in oil products had been found on the shore over the previous two days. Although a Telegram post from the Krasnodar Krai’s “Operational Headquarters” Telegram channel disappeared on the morning of April 13, it remains available on the TgStat service.

The regional authorities attributed the cause of the spill to Ukrainian drone attacks on civilian vessels and oil infrastructure. It is unclear which specific attack may have led to these consequences. Krasnodar Krai is regularly subjected to drone strikes, and on April 5 a large-scale attack targeted Novorossiysk, which is located east of the site of the incident.

Earlier on Saturday, the region’s governor, Veniamin Kondratyev, reported at a meeting with Vladimir Putin that all beaches in the region would be opened to vacationers starting from June 1. They had been closed due to the aftereffects of the wreck of the tankers Volgoneft-212 and Volgoneft-239 in December 2024.

According to the report, the risk of a forceful response from Moscow in the event of such a seizure is considered “just too high.” The senior commander said Estonia would avoid such actions, despite efforts by other European countries to detain sanctioned vessels transiting their territorial waters.

The report also cited a May 2025 incident in which, according to Tallinn, a Russian fighter jet entered NATO airspace during an attempt to stop a tanker sailing without a flag. Estonia had sought to inspect the tanker Jaguar (IMO: 9293002), which was operating under a false flag, but the vessel later moved into Russian territorial waters. After the failed attempt, Estonia adopted a more cautious approach, the Reuters source said.

According to the military official, Russia subsequently began conducting constant patrols of the Gulf of Finland, efforts that involved the participation of several armed vessels. As a result, Estonia is considering intervention only in cases of imminent danger, such as oil spills or damage to underwater infrastructure.

“In case of suspicion, the Transport Administration has the authority to board and inspect the vessel”

As previously reported by The Insider, European countries have limited tools for seizing ships, and their restraint is largely shaped by international maritime law. The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) guarantees vessels flying a national flag the right of innocent passage, including through the Baltic Sea. However, the absence of a flag or the use of false registration can serve as grounds for detention, although Russian authorities typically describe these actions as “illegal interference in [the] freedom of navigation.”

Estonia has been one of the few countries to attempt such enforcement against Russia’s “shadow fleet.” In April 2025, several months before the Jaguar incident, Estonia detained the tanker Kiwala (IMO: 9332810), which was sailing under the false flag of Djibouti. The same vessel, later renamed Boracay, was detained again by France on Sept. 27 on the same grounds. Both countries ultimately released the seized ships.

After the incidents involving Kiwala and Jaguar, Estonia’s Defense Ministry told The Insider that the country would continue detaining vessels that violate maritime law, but declined to comment on whether the appearance of a Russian fighter jet influenced the decision to stop pursuing the Jaguar. The ministry described Russia’s “military operation” as evidence of the effectiveness of monitoring measures and sanctions. In correspondence from August 2025, it was explained that:

“If there is a justified suspicion that a vessel is stateless — meaning it has no legal right to sail under any country’s flag, making questions of state responsibility in the event of an incident unclear — the Convention grants every state the right to take such measures. The Jaguar had no nationality, it was also included on the United Kingdom's sanctions list and lacked insurance. Estonia escorted the tanker until it exited the Estonian Economic Exclusion Zone. There was no immediate threat to national security or infrastructure, and therefore any further steps were not deemed necessary. We will continue to assess each situation individually, and our response may vary accordingly.

The Estonian Transport Administration continuously monitors vessel traffic in Estonian waters. If doubts arise regarding a vessel’s flag state or related documentation, officials will contact the vessel and conduct a preliminary verification. Should suspicions remain that the documentation does not meet requirements, the Transport Administration has the authority to board and inspect the vessel.

If issues are identified, the vessel will be directed to the nearest suitable port for a detailed inspection and, if necessary, detained until all deficiencies are resolved (as happened in Kiwala’s case). Such inspections verify compliance with international regulations to ensure maritime safety, security, and environmental protection.

Peaceful passage through territorial waters is permitted; however, the Estonian Navy’s mission is to maintain maritime situational awareness and to safeguard and defend Estonia’s maritime borders.”

The transfer followed the entry into force of a law allowing the FSB to operate its own detention centers, which took effect on Jan. 1, 2026.

Registry data show that in March 2026, founding documents for seven SIZOs were amended, replacing FSIN with the Russian Federation represented by the FSB as the founder. The facilities were also renamed and are now listed as SIZOs of the FSB or its regional directorates.

The changes occurred in two stages. Lefortovo SIZO was re-registered on March 2, 2026, while the remaining facilities were re-registered on March 23.

The facilities transferred to the FSB are:

• SIZO-2 FSIN (Moscow, Lefortovo)
• SIZO-3 FSIN (St. Petersburg)
• SIZO-4 FSIN (Rostov-on-Don)
• SIZO-5 FSIN (Krasnodar)
• SIZO-6 FSIN (Vladikavkaz)
• SIZO-7 FSIN (Chelyabinsk)
• SIZO-8 FSIN (Simferopol)

All of these were centrally managed detention centers, reporting directly to FSIN rather than to regional authorities. After the transfer, only one such facility remains within FSIN — SIZO-1 on Matrosskaya Tishina Street in Moscow.

Leadership changes follow transfer to FSB

Leadership changes were also made at several facilities following the transfer.

At Lefortovo, Dmitry Yelkin was replaced by Alexander Pavlov. Little is known about Pavlov, though leaked data indicate that as early as 2022 he arranged food deliveries to the Lefortovo address, suggesting a possible link to the facility or to the FSB’s investigative department located there.

At the former SIZO-5 in Krasnodar, Yevgeny Grudinin took over as head on March 23, 2026. Available data suggest he previously served in security agencies, including as an operative in the FSB’s Krasnodar region office in Krymsk in 2007. Later data leaks associate his name with FSB internal security units.

At the former SIZO-4 in Rostov-on-Don, leadership changed shortly before re-registration. According to registry data, Mikhail Mukhonkov became head on March 4, 2026. He is believed to have ties to the FSB, having been affiliated in 2020 with Military Unit 02035, part of the FSB’s Rostov Region directorate.

At the former SIZO-6 in Vladikavkaz, Bagir Karsanov was appointed head on March 23, 2026. Data leaks repeatedly link him to the FSB, including its North Ossetia-Alania directorate, particularly in the Prigorodny district.

In some facilities, leadership did not change after the transfer. For example, the former SIZO-3 in St. Petersburg is still headed by Andrei Maksimov. Previously published data indicate that before working at the detention center, he served in the FSB investigative unit for St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Region and was involved in the “Network” case. His move to the SIZO occurred before its formal transfer to the FSB. Similarly, leadership at SIZO-7 in Chelyabinsk remained unchanged.

Information about the leadership of the FSB-run SIZO in Simferopol in Russian-occupied Crimea (formerly SIZO-8) is restricted in the registry. Such restrictions are allowed by law at the request of the legal entity, while similar data for other facilities remain publicly available. Previously, Rauf Idrisov had been listed as the head of the institution.

FSB regains authority over its own detention centers

The law allowing the FSB to operate its own pretrial detention centers came into force on Jan. 1, 2026. It provides for the transfer of centrally managed FSIN facilities to the security service and grants the FSB authority to detain and escort defendants.

In effect, this restores a system that existed before 2005, when detention centers were part of the FSB structure. They were transferred to FSIN as part of Russia’s commitments to the Council of Europe.

In practice, some detention centers had already been effectively controlled by the FSB. This includes Lefortovo, which has traditionally held defendants in cases involving treason, espionage, and terrorism, along with high-ranking officials who face charges of various sorts. Among those held there were former Economy Minister Alexei Ulyukayev, former Khabarovsk Region governor Sergei Furgal, and journalist Ivan Safronov.

Lawyer Ivan Pavlov, founder of the human rights project Pervy Otdel (lit. “Department One”), told The Insider that the transfer was a “professional necessity for the [security services],” citing insufficient infrastructure amid a sharp increase in cases handled by the FSB.

Another lawyer from Pervy Otdel, Yevgeny Smirnov, said the handover of detention facilities to the FSB is already already affecting both the working conditions for lawyers and the treatment of detainees:

“It is still difficult to assess how much harder it will become for lawyers to work and for detainees to be held in these facilities, but there is no doubt things will get worse. Already, defense lawyers report stricter checks at entry and during meetings, though a transition period lasting several months is still underway.

It is important to note that these detention centers were already de facto under FSB control, with their own rules and requirements, and staff were often recruited directly from the FSB. The most well-known example is Lefortovo head Mikhail Svinolup, who worked for many years as an FSB investigator and later moved to the detention center.”

Lawyer and human rights advocate Nikolai Polozov also warned of worsening conditions, saying the transfer would increase pressure on defendants:

“What will change? A lot will change, because this effectively becomes a fully closed system. FSB investigators place people in custody through compliant courts, and then inside the detention center they can operate freely. Their own personnel guard the facility, without interference from FSIN staff. Investigators can hold people as long as they want, invent grounds to prolong cases, extract confessions, use torture.

Everything bad that existed in Russian detention centers can now be multiplied two or three times. This will be the FSB prison system. There will also be problems with access for lawyers: if an investigator does not want to grant permission, how do you get in? Go to court, file an appeal. We all know exactly what kind of courts we're talking about.

What is happening is undoubtedly a crackdown. It is the erosion of all these institutions, the abandonment of even the limited rights that formally remained. In effect, it makes it easier to achieve the desired metrics. What are their metrics? Clearance rates and convictions. That is the path they are taking.”

Following the assassination of Yevgeny Prigozhin in August 2023 and the subsequent dismantling of his “troll farm,” the Presidential Administration has taken on a much greater role in the area of information operations, with private contractors operating under the watchful supervision of Sergei Kiriyenko, Deputy Head of the Presidential Administration, and Sofia Zakharova, an aide in the Presidential Administration’s Information Technology Development Directorate. Meanwhile, the main Kremlin-backed player in Hungary is the Social Design Agency (SDA), controlled by Ilya Gambashidze, with the associated group of companies operating under the banner of “Structura” playing a supporting role.

Gambashidze's involvement in Russian disinformation operations came to light during the FBI's investigation into Russian interference in U.S. political processes. The agency’s investigators gained access to an SDA presentation prepared for the Kremlin, which detailed the inner workings of the factory producing fake news and memes designed to influence the election.

One of the SDA’s typical tactics has been to use a network of bots to spread fake news purporting to come from respected Western publications. The strategy relies on social media users reposting these messages without verifying whether the media outlets actually reported anything of the sort. The tactic has been dubbed “Doppelgänger” in the Western press. Another area of focus for the Kiriyenko-Zakharova team is “memes”: Gambashidze’s team devises ways to package the desired narratives using already well-known and popular memes, then distributes them on social media, hoping they will go viral or be reposted by a popular account with a large audience. Particularly successful cases (for example, if a meme was reposted by Elon Musk) are reported at meetings in the Presidential Administration, which are attended by Kiriyenko.

Content has been prepared in various languages and targeted at different countries, but Kiriyenko’s bots are particularly active during election periods, when it is especially important for the Kremlin to influence public opinion in a range of locales. A similar situation was observed in the fall of 2025 in Moldova, when the country held a referendum and parliamentary elections. At that time, Russia mobilized all its resources and flooded Moldova with disinformation, even if it ultimately failed to play a decisive role in the election results.

The Insider has examined content promoted in Hungary via Meta’s social media platforms (Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and Threads), as well as Twitter and TikTok, and found that both methods were being used by Kremlin actors in Hungary.

Memes on Facebook

Hungarian social media platforms were suddenly flooded with “memes” spread for money by recently registered accounts. For example, a “Sára Kovacsevics,” who registered an account on March 31, 2026, launched over 40 ads targeting the opposition Tisza party. The “memes” claim that “if Tisza wins, candles won’t be so romantic anymore,” that if we “get rid of nasty Russian oil,” the country’s residents will have to travel by horse-drawn carts, and that Tisza’s energy plan will result in water leaking from people’s toilets. Many of “Sára’s” promotional posts weren’t blocked by Meta, and some of them are garnering hundreds of thousands of views.

Accounts like “Sára,” created over the past month, regularly post similar visual content while attempting to circumvent Meta’s restrictions. They do this by trying to avoid certain words that could trigger the platform’s filters for political advertising.

Aside from “Sára” and similar anonymous accounts, ads promoting Orbán’s candidacy or opposing Péter Magyar and his Tisza party are paid for by Hungarian state media outlets belonging to the MTVA holding company — Kossuth Rádió (170,000 Facebook followers as of April 2026) and Hirado.hu (linked to the news program “Híradó” and the M1 TV channel, which has 546,000 Facebook followers as of April 2026). In the Meta Ad Library, one can find several advertising posts launched by these pages on a daily basis since at least early March.

In this case, the activity is no longer so much about memes as it is about straightforward political advertising, but its narratives are, nevertheless, all too familiar. After all, they were among the Kremlin tactics that were exposed in investigations over a month ago.

Back in early March, the Financial Times reported that it had gained access to the SDA’s disinformation plan for Hungary, which included highlighting the contrast between current prime minister Orbán — a “strong leader with global friends” — and his main rival, Péter Magyar, “a Brussels puppet with no outside support.” According to the plan, Magyar and his Tisza party were to be subjected to “information attacks” to portray Tisza as torn apart by “incompetence, internal divisions, and secret agendas.” Kremlin analysts, meanwhile, advised Orbán to build his campaign around his personal ties with Donald Trump and the idea that the U.S. president is Hungary’s best chance to ensure security and economic stability. According to the Financial Times, memes, graphics, and videos for Orbán’s campaign were produced by Russian experts, and Hungarian influencers were tasked with spreading the content. Since February, about 50 bloggers and political analysts have been on the SDA’s radar. Sources at The Washington Post confirmed the existence of such a plan for the Hungarian elections, and today, we can all observe its implementation in real time.

“Matryoshka” on Twitter

Aside from the wave of “memes” on Facebook, the Kremlin has resorted to a familiar tactic: creating fake news stories in the guise of work by legitimate international news outlets. As a result, the Bot Blocker monitoring project has detected countless posts typical of “Doppelgänger,” published by the “Matryoshka” bot network in the names of outlets such as Deutsche Welle, The Kyiv Independent, Euronews, United 24, as well as the French state agency Viginum and the Ukrainian Center for Countering Disinformation — the very organizations that investigate and expose the Kremlin’s propaganda techniques.

And once again, what matters here is not only the format but also the main narrative, which focuses on stoking discord between Hungary and Ukraine. In these Kremlin materials, Orbán is portrayed as a peacemaker and a victim of aggressive Ukrainians dragging Hungary into war and plotting an assassination attempt on the Hungarian prime minister.

Moreover, Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) proposed staging a real-life assassination attempt to “fundamentally alter the paradigm of the election campaign,” the The Washington Post reported in mid-March — right around the time that Matryoshka began spreading fake videos about an assassination attempt on the Hungarian prime minister. As reported by  the independent investigative outlet Agentstvo, the first such video — which bore the logo of German public broadcaster Deutsche Welle — appeared on Twitter on March 17. It claimed that several Ukrainian refugees had died in Hungary “while attempting to detonate a homemade explosive device near Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s office.” Another video, mimicking the style of the Ukrainian media platform United24, claimed that Oleg Tatarov, deputy head of the Ukrainian president’s office, had called on Hungarians to “vote with their blood.” The video also reported that Tatarov had issued similar calls for Hungarians to take up arms and achieve “the liberation of Hungary through bloodshed.” Other videos also linked the alleged assassination attempt on Orbán to Ukrainian intelligence agencies.

Here, the Kremlin hopes to kill two birds with one stone: on the one hand, to help Orbán score points by using anti-Ukrainian rhetoric, and on the other, to stoke anti-Ukrainian sentiment. The Kremlin promoted exactly the same narratives via TikTok as well.

Neural networks and TikTok

An information campaign focused on the Hungarian elections was also launched on TikTok around January 2026. By the end of March, the platform had identified and blocked four networks attempting to influence the Hungarian elections in favor of Orbán (as well as two anti-Orbán networks).

The disinformation tracking project NewsGuard estimated that videos posted by networks supporting Orbán garnered at least 10 million views. Some of the videos were clearly generated using AI, while others were presented as authentic, even though they were also AI-generated.

Many of the fake videos focused on scare tactics related to Ukraine: for example, voters were warned that Hungarian men could be drafted to fight for Ukraine in the event that Péter Magyar’s Tisza emerges victorious on April 12.

Other accounts posted AI-generated videos in which Johnny Depp warned Hungarians that gas prices would rise if Magyar became PM.

TikTok noted that five out of six networks of inauthentic accounts were coordinated directly from Hungary, a fact that may be explained by earlier reports about a team of PR specialists sent to Hungary from Russia. However, it has long been no secret that a propaganda network has been operating in Budapest under the watchful guidance of GRU officers working under diplomatic cover.

Fake news from the GRU and Storm-1516

Anti-Soviet dissident and pastor Gábor Ivanyi baptized Viktor Orbán’s children in the 1990s, but the two later parted ways. Although Orbán positions himself as a candidate who defends “traditional Christian values,” Ivanyi opposes him: the pastor does not believe in the combination of Christianity and nationalism promoted by the prime minister. Orbán did not forgive the criticism; in 2022, security forces raided the pastor’s congregation, and charges were filed against him for the alleged “violence” he perpetrated against the government officials who conducted the raid. A trial on this case is scheduled for May.

Not coincidentally, in late February videos began appearing on Twitter and Facebook with fake reports accusing Ivanyi of pedophilia. The videos cited a non-existent media outlet called “Oknyomozó Riport” (“Investigative Report” in Hungarian) as a source. To create the appearance of authenticity, three days before the video was published on social media (on February 18), the attackers registered the website oknyomozoriport[.]hu. A post accusing the pastor was promoted on Facebook by a newly created account of the same name, and the total audience for this disinformation on the social network ended up exceeding 120,000 people — mostly in the over-65 age group.

The Provereno fact-checking project noted that disinformation about Ivanyi was also spread on other similar websites that were specifically created to disseminate fake news: hirekhub24.hu and napihirek24.hu, which are hosted on the same IP address of the Hungarian hosting provider DotRoll and use the same DNS servers. Four of the five analyzed websites — hirekhub24.hu, 24veritas.com, euronews.us.com, and oknyomozoriport.hu — used the same paid WordPress theme (Soledad, with an almost identical set of plugins). Three of the websites — hirekhub24.hu, euronews.us.com, and 24veritas.com — were registered within a single week.

The Gnida Project discovered other “reports” from non-existent media outlets circulating in the Hungarian-language segments of Twitter and Facebook. One of them, Times of Ukraine, published fake news claiming that Péter Magyar was involved in the theft of 40 million euros intended as EU financial aid for Kyiv. The fake Times of Ukraine website appeared on February 1, three days before publications about the Hungarian opposition candidate went live. Similarly, the website of the non-existent European Center for Investigative Journalism began posting news about Magyar’s involvement in fraud involving European aid to Ukraine just a few days after its registration. Videos about these “investigations” were promoted on Twitter.

These schemes — creating non-existent media outlets and using them to publish fake reports — are characteristic of the Russian propaganda network known as Storm-1516. Moreover, the Hungarian fact-checking agency Lakmusz noted another characteristic feature of this network’s content: articles discrediting Orbán’s critics are written in clumsy language, suggesting they were translated using AI. To promote content on Twitter, the network uses retweets with links to videos or materials on a fake website. In this manner, it tricks the algorithms into showing the videos to a larger audience. For example, a post by an account registered in Nigeria (of all places) about Pastor Ivanyi garnered over half a million views. Promoting content through comments is another hallmark of Storm-1516.

The Storm-1516 campaign (a name given to it by the U.S. tech giant Microsoft) has been active since 2023. It is linked to the Foundation to Battle Injustice (R-FBI), founded by late Wagner Group head Yevgeny Prigozhin six months before his death. Although the campaign’s original goal was most likely to discredit the Ukrainian government, Storm-1516’s resources were subsequently also used to spread disinformation during election campaigns in Germany, the United States, and France.

The French government agency Viginum, which investigated the Storm-1516 campaign, considers it a proven fact that key figures in the operation include John Mark Dougan (an American police officer who fled to Russia in 2016) and Mira Terada, head of the Foundation to Battle Injustice. The money was transferred to Dougan by GRU officer Yuri Khoroshenky, and documents confirming the transaction were reviewed by The Washington Post.

Yuri Khoroshenky (also known as Khoroshevsky) was previously an employee of the GRU’s infamous Unit 29155, which gained notoriety for the Salisbury poisoning and for organizing sabotage operations in Europe. However, since Unit 29155 personnel became “barred from travel” in 2018 following The Insider’s publications, the unit began operating remotely from Russian territory, recruiting foreigners for their activities.

In Hungary, the GRU is also able to operate through its own officers acting under diplomatic cover. In Budapest, this was initially military attaché Oleg Smirnov, who, among other things, established active contacts with “friendly” local journalists.

According to the publication Direkt36, it was acquaintance and contacts with Oleg Smirnov that helped one of Orbán’s chief propagandists, Georg Spöttle, travel to Moscow for a conference organized by the Russian Ministry of Defense. In correspondence on the matter, Spöttle wrote to the Russian military attaché that he would publish materials in Hungarian newspapers and on television channels based on the information he received in the Russian capital — and he kept his promise. Moreover, in Russian media outlets including state news agency RIA Novosti or newspaper Pravda, the propagandist was referred to as an “internationally renowned political scientist from Hungary,” even though little was known about him in Hungary itself, according to Direkt36. Spöttle is now referred to as one of the “favorite ‘security policy experts’” referred to by Hungarian state media.

On March 6, 2024, Colonel Smirnov, who was still serving as the military attaché at the Russian Embassy, sent two English-language propaganda memos to several recipients. These multi-page documents, printed on the letterhead of the Russian Embassy in Budapest and marked as “unofficial,” were titled “On the Role of Western Countries in the Ukrainian Conflict” and “Situation Around Ukraine,” writes Direkt36. An analysis conducted by the publication, which reviewed the documents, showed that statements later made by Spöttle in the conventional press and on social media matched the received guidelines almost exactly. For example, the materials claimed that the war in Ukraine had been provoked by the West, that Ukraine is being used merely as a tool, that Zelensky is a puppet of the West, and that Western military support only prolongs the suffering of Ukrainians.

In September 2025, Spöttle traveled to Belgorod in western Russia, where he filmed the inside Russian bunkers, speaking with the soldiers there. The Insider established that the tour was led by Magomed Khiytanayev, a former deputy mufti of Chechnya and now a member of the Akhmat special forces unit led by Apti Alautdinov. Spöttle posted videos with Khiytanayev on his TikTok and YouTube channels. Earlier, as The Insider discovered, the Hungarian propagandist traveled to occupied Mariupol in the company of propagandist Vittorio Rangeloni, a correspondent for the “African Initiative” news agency, which has links to projects run by Yevgeny Prigozhin and the GRU. Following the trip, Spöttle delivered a “moving report from Donbas” on the Ultrahang podcast, while on his VK page, he wrote an article about “attacks by Ukrainian Nazis on civilians.”

Immediately before the parliamentary elections, Spöttle began publishing articles on topics identical to those of state media and the ASD’s guidelines described by the Financial Times: the weaknesses and contradictions of Magyar’s Tisza party, and the importance of friendship between Hungary and the U.S.

In the fall of 2024, when Colonel Smirnov left the embassy in Budapest, it was a GRU colonel named Alexei Zarudnev who replaced him. Zarudnev had been working at the embassy since at least 2014 and was already serving as deputy military attaché in October of that year when two GRU officers from Unit 29155, Alexei Kapinos and Evgeny Kalinin, traveled to Budapest under diplomatic cover with diplomatic mail as part of an operation to blow up weapons depots in the Czech Republic.

The Insider recently discovered that Colonel Zarudnev regularly speaks on the phone with another conduit for Kremlin narratives: Tigran Garibyan. Garibyan is a diplomat who has been working at the embassy in Budapest for nearly 20 years. In 2022, he was appointed Minister Counselor, the second-in-command at the diplomatic mission after the ambassador. Reporting by The Washington Post has shown that Garibyan regularly meets with pro-government Hungarian journalists and provides them with talking points — in particular, that Orbán is the sole candidate capable of defending Hungary's sovereignty.

With the participation of the Gnida project.

Blinov is charged with five counts, including organizing an assault against Leonid Volkov, an associate of the late Alexei Navalny. That incident took place in the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius in March 2024 and involved two Polish citizens spraying Volkov with pepper spray before striking him several times with a hammer. Prosecutors also allege that Blinov incited another attack on Volkov in late 2023, which the victim said took place in New York.

The attack against Volkov was not an isolated incident. Blinov also faces charges related to an assault that occurred in Buenos Aires on Sept. 1, 2023, when assailants attacked Alexandra Petrachkova, the wife of Russian economist Maxim Mironov, “with the aim of forcing her to cease political activity in support of the Russian opposition.”

In addition, Blinov stands accused of involvement in the arson of a replica of Alexei Navalny’s prison cell in Vilnius and the forgery of a driver’s license.

Shortly after news of the indictment against Blinov broke, Volkov wrote on his Telegram channel:

“In all these incidents, Blinov appears as the organizer, meaning the person who, acting on behalf of the client (Nevzlin), recruited the perpetrators, gave them instructions, handed over the money, and so on. What links all five of these very different incidents is that they are all discussed in detail in the correspondence between Blinov and Nevzlin; moreover, no one knew about two of these episodes (the attempted attack in 2023 and the forgery of documents) and would never have found out about them without this correspondence. It seems that all those who claimed that this correspondence was ‘fabricated by the FSB’ should be ashamed — but, unfortunately, these people are never ashamed.

These are not all the incidents; investigations into a number of others are ongoing.

In any case, this is a major step forward in this case. Soon, all the correspondence will be read out in court, and Anatoly Blinov will have to explain why he suddenly decided to organize all these attacks, how much money he received for doing so, and on whose orders he was acting. I mean, we know the answers to all these questions — they’re in our investigation, and they’re in the case files — but in the coming months, they will be heard in the courtroom as well.”

Blinov faces up to five years in prison. He was detained in the fall of 2024 and has remained in pretrial detention since then. According to correspondence published by Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation (ACF), Blinov acted on instructions from billionaire Leonid Nevzlin, a former co-owner of the Russian oil major Yukos, who allegedly used him to organize attacks on several Russian opposition figures in exile. Blinov reported back to Nevzlin on at least two “successful” attacks — those against Volkov Petrachkova. Notably, Petrachkova’s husband, economist Maxim Mironov, is closely associated with Navalny’s team and published unfavorable comments about Nevzlin on Twitter three months prior to the attack on his wife.

The Insider analyzed the screenshots of the correspondence between Blinov and Nevzlin and concluded they are highly likely to be authentic.

Nevzlin has denied organizing the attack on Volkov. The businessman said the correspondence in question — the existence of which he did not dispute — was initiated by Blinov.

Roldugin was detained the previous day, April 9, after searches first at his apartment and then at the Novaya Gazeta newsroom, the latter of which lasted 13 hours. The state news agency RIA Novosti published a video of the journalist’s arrest.

Security officers seized equipment and documents, and all staff present in the newsroom were questioned and required to sign non-disclosure agreements. Lawyers were not allowed to see the journalist until the evening.

The Interior Ministry said the searches were part of an investigation into the collection of citizens’ personal data from “private storage resources” and the subsequent use of that information in publications described as “negative in nature.”

At the hearing, the lead investigator asked the court to place Roldugin in custody, citing items found during a search that allegedly “indicated unlawful activity,” as well as the apparent risk that he could flee abroad. The prosecution supported the request.

The journalist denied any wrongdoing and said he had “assumptions” about which investigation was being used against him, though he expressed “serious doubts” that it involved a recent report about the nephew of Chechen head Ramzan Kadyrov. Novaya Gazeta ran Roldugin’s investigation, titled “How a former aide to Kadyrov’s nephew acquired one of Russia’s most expensive penthouses,” on Feb. 21.

Roldugin’s lawyer, Marina Andreeva, argued for a softer measure, saying the case contained “no objective factual basis.” Judge Alexandra Lashina nevertheless ordered Roldugin sent to a pretrial detention center.

During questioning, Roldugin said he ran a Telegram channel containing exclusive information that, in his own words, “could not be used in journalistic work.” Law enforcement officers seized the journalist’s laptop, computer, hard drives, and press credentials. Security personnel also reviewed his Telegram correspondence, including chats with bots. The criminal case in which Roldugin later became a defendant was opened on March 10 against and involves a number of unidentified targets.

It is not a surprise that Roldugin’s journalistic activities caught the attention of the authorities in Moscow. Five of his most notable investigations are outlined below.

1. On the multibillion-ruble property holdings of Agriculture Minister Dmitry Patrushev

At Sobesednik, which was shut down in 2024 under pressure from Russian authorities, Roldugin served first as deputy editor in chief and later as editor in chief. In 2022, the paper published his investigation into the real estate holdings of Agriculture Minister Dmitry Patrushev, the son of the Russian Security Council’s then-Secretary, Nikolai Patrushev. The investigation found that the younger Patrushev and his family owned property worth more than 3 billion rubles ($39 million). One of the estates is located inside the protected Serebryany Bor (lit. “Silver Pinewood”) park in northwest Moscow; notably, information about this particular property is absent from both cadastral maps and the state registry. Journalists managed to photograph cars parked in the yard with license plates registered to Patrushev and his civil partner, Marina Artemyeva.

2. On funds collecting millions in donations for the invasion of Ukraine without oversight

Before that, Roldugin reported on “support funds” for Russia’s so-called “special military operation” that collected millions of rubles in donations without transparent reporting. One of them, called “Blagodeteli” (lit. “Benefactors”), was founded by pro-war blogger Roman Alekhin, who at one time was an adviser to the now-former governor of the Kursk Region, Alexei Smirnov, who on April 6 was sentenced to 14 years in prison after he pleaded guilty to charges that he had accepted bribes “of a large size” in connection with the construction of defensive fortifications in the region. According to official data from Russia’s Federal Tax Service, the “Benefactors” fund with which blogger Alekhin was associated collected 12 million rubles in 2024 but spent only 50,000 rubles ($650) on charitable activities, while its wage bill tallied up to 2.6 million rubles ($33,700).

3. On Viktor Yanukovych’s Sochi estate

Roldugin also uncovered a mansion in Sochi belonging to former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, who fled to Russia after the Revolution of Dignity in 2014. The ownership became clear thanks to extracts from Russia’s property registry, which listed the company Sofina as the lessee of the land on which the estate sits. Sofina was at various times run by Milana Lozovskaya and Konstantin Kovalenko. Kovalenko worked for a company involved in finishing Yanukovych’s Ukrainian residence in Mezhyhirya, while Lozovskaya works for Shchedrodar, a company controlled by Yanukovych’s civil partner, Lyubov Sadykova (Polezhai).

4. On Putin’s secret bunkers

Roldugin also authored an investigation into underground shelters built for Vladimir Putin. One of them, located in the closed city of Mezhgorye in the Ural Mountains, was built by Construction Directorate No. 30 — the same company that built Putin’s palace on the Black Sea. Several other similarly secret facilities are hidden beneath central Moscow.

5. On a former aide to Kadyrov’s nephew who bought elite property in Moscow

In February of this year, Novaya Gazeta published Roldugin’s investigation into how Ruslan Alisultanov, a former aide to Chechya head Ramzan Kadyrov’s nephew Ibragim Zakriyev, bought an elite penthouse in Moscow. The property is located in a building directly opposite the Kremlin and has an area of more than 1,000 square meters. Another luxury Moscow property owned by Alisultanov is a 200-square-meter apartment in the Reka residential complex near Sobytie Park on the banks of the Ramenka River. Alisultanov also became the owner of the Russian assets of French multinational food corporation Danone after the company withdrew from the Russian market following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Popov was stripped of his state awards and his rank of colonel general. He was also fined 85 million rubles ($1.1 million). Prior to sentencing, prosecutors requested that Popov receive a 22-year sentence in a maximum-security penal colony and a fine of 130 million rubles ($1.7 million). The 69-year-old former officer took part in the hearing remotely, as he is currently hospitalized. In connection with his poor health, Popov was allowed to remain in bed during the announcement of the sentence.

Popov was detained and arrested in the summer of 2024. The hearing on his pretrial detention was held behind closed doors due to the “risk of disclosing investigative secrets and information about the course of the special military operation.”

According to the prosecution, between 2021 and 2024 Popov compelled contractors from Patriot Park to carry out renovation work at his country home without pay. Investigators consider Patriot Park director Vyacheslav Akhmedov and Vladimir Shesterov, head of the Defense Ministry’s Main Directorate for Innovative Development, to be accomplices in Popov’s crimes. They were previously sentenced to six and five years in prison, respectively.

Rather than selling its Russian assets, UniCredit has opted to dispose of individual assets and sharply cut costs. According to one source cited by the newspaper, the bank has already shut down its retail business in Russia’s regions and is now scaling back its corporate segment. Another source said the company’s goal is to reduce operations to a minimum, capitalize on profits, and ultimately relinquish its license.

Selling its banking assets had initially been UniCredit’s main strategy for exiting the Russian market after the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. However, as a company headquartered in a country that Russia classifies as “unfriendly,” UniCredit would have had to sell at a discount of around 60% while paying an additional 35% of the final asset value into the Russian budget as a “voluntary contribution.” The funds received by the bank would be frozen in so-called Type C accounts and would only become accessible later, potentially as part of exchanges involving Russian assets frozen in the European Union. Under those conditions, the owner would ultimately receive only about 10% of the bank’s capital, making a sale highly unattractive.

A sale is also complicated by UniCredit Bank’s inclusion on a list of organizations whose transactions require special approval from Russian authorities. However, Kommersant noted that these restrictions would not apply to the sale of individual assets, such as parts of the bank’s loan portfolio.

As a result, the requirement for the company to exit the Russian market would still be met, but in a way that is more financially lucrative for UniCredit.

UniCredit Bank is one of two Western banks still operating in Russia, and it is included on the country’s list of systemically important credit institutions. The other foreign firm is Raiffeisenbank, a subsidiary of the Austrian Raiffeisen Bank International (RBI).

The European Central Bank urged UniCredit to accelerate the sale of its Russian assets as far back as 2024. In early 2025, company management said firms from the United Arab Emirates had shown interest in the Russian assets, though it later emerged that Alfa Group — the parent company of Russia’s largest private commercial bank, Alfa Bank — could ultimately become the end beneficiary of such a deal.

According to the newspaper, Richard Hermer, the Attorney General for England and Wales, had clarified that special forces personnel and officers from the National Crime Agency could board such vessels. However, this did not lead to action when two tankers listed under UK sanctions — Universal (IMO: 9384306) and Enigma (IMO: 9333412) — passed through the English Channel on April 8, escorted by the Russian Black Sea Fleet frigate Admiral Grigorovich.

British authorities chose not to stop the vessels due to concerns about breaching international law, which imposes strict legal requirements on states seeking to board foreign ships. In the event of a boarding, officials would later be required to present a legally sound justification for each interception and prove that the vessel had indeed violated UK sanctions.

These legal constraints undermined Starmer’s pledge, made two weeks earlier, to crack down on the “shadow fleet.” At the time, he authorized British military and law enforcement personnel to detain sanctioned vessels located in the country’s territorial waters. The government had hoped that the announcement would force operators to reroute sanctioned vessels along longer and less profitable paths.

Tankers have indeed increasingly opted for routes that avoid UK waters, with some entering the Atlantic Ocean by sailing around Ireland. In early April, an unprecedented number of these vessels was observed off Ireland’s west coast.

Since January, more than 300 vessels linked to Russia’s “shadow fleet” have passed through UK territorial waters, according to The Telegraph. Experts cited by the newspaper also noted that seizing such a large number of tankers would require significant resources, and British ports have a limited number of berths capable of accommodating vessels of that size.

Greek outlet Voria reported on April 7 that law enforcement had thwarted the planned killing of a 46-year-old Russian activist — a native of one of Russia’s republics who had been granted political asylum in Lithuania. Those details match Gabbasov’s biography.

Gabbasov said the Lithuanian intelligence services had disrupted preparations to kill him more than a year ago, though in the interest of the ongoing investigation, details were not disclosed at the time. After the recent media reports, Gabbasov said he could now confirm that Russian intelligence services had been preparing an attempt on his life. He also claimed that there had previously been Kremlin efforts to compel him to return to Russia, including via pressure exerted on his brother.

In 2023, Gabbasov’s brother, Rustam Fararetdinov, was arrested in Ufa on charges of assisting terrorist activity. At the time, Gabbasov said Russian security services had effectively proposed an exchange: his brother’s release in return for his own return to the country.

Gabbasov said that on the day the attack was allegedly planned, a hitman was waiting for him near his home as he returned with his wife and 5-year-old son. He linked the plot to his political activities, including his involvement in the Free Nations League and his advocacy in favor of the decolonization of Russia.

He also wrote on his Facebook page that he had found an Apple AirTag tracking device under the hood of his car. According to the activist, the group used it to monitor his movements.

Ruslan Gabbasov is a political activist and one of the leaders of the Bashkir national movement abroad. He is the founder of the Bashkort organization, which has been designated as “extremist” in Russia. Gabbasov himself faces criminal charges in Russia and has been added to the country’s register of “foreign agents.”  He was granted political asylum in Lithuania in 2022.

Earlier this week, the Greek outlet Voria and the Lithuanian outlet Delfi reported that a 55-year-old man had been detained in Thessaloniki on suspicion of involvement in preparing a double killing in Lithuania in the interests of Russian intelligence services. According to the report, he helped finance the operation by transferring €5,000 through intermediaries. Investigators believe the perpetrators were to be paid up to €40,000.

According to investigators, members of the group conducted surveillance on the intended victims, gathered information, and installed tracking devices. A court in Greece has already approved the suspect’s extradition to Lithuania, but he is appealing the decision. The investigation is ongoing.

Since mid-March, U.S. President Donald Trump has issued several ultimatums to Iran’s leadership demanding the establishment of a peace agreement and the lifting of the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. The most notable of these came on April 7, when Trump escalated his rhetoric to include threats regarding the “destruction of an entire civilization.”

Some politicians in the West interpreted this as a threat to take the conflict nuclear, but a few hours before Trump’s “deadline,” the U.S. administration announced a two-week ceasefire and the start of negotiations on a long-term settlement in exchange for the immediate lifting of the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz.

As the basis for negotiations, the White House statement cited Iran’s ten-point proposal. According to the official version, its terms include:

• renunciation of further aggression against Iran,
• Iran retains control over the Strait of Hormuz,
• Iran may continue uranium enrichment,
• lifting of all primary sanctions,
• lifting of all secondary sanctions,
• termination of all UN Security Council resolutions,
• termination of all IAEA Board of Governors resolutions,
• payment of compensation to Iran,
• withdrawal of U.S. troops from the region,
• cessation of hostilities on all fronts, including against Hezbollah in Lebanon.

However, Trump later said that the talks are in fact proceeding on the basis of a 15-point American plan, proposed as early as March 25 and, as far as is known, entirely at odds with Iran's proposal. The 15 American proposals are known only from leaks, but they are believed to include demands that Iran abandon uranium enrichment along with existing stockpiles, fully dismantle its military nuclear program, cease support for allied movements in the region, and limit its missile capabilities.

Given the contradictions between the two versions of the peace plans, an agreement was unlikely in any case, but even before the end of the first day of the two-week ceasefire, Iran announced that its terms had been violated in the form of Israeli strikes on Hezbollah targets in Lebanon. In response, Tehran once again closed the Strait of Hormuz. Fighting now appears set to resume, and it cannot be ruled out that the U.S. military is prepared for operations on Iranian territory.

On April 7, Trump wrote on social media that military objectives had been “met and exceeded,” which he cited as the reason for the ceasefire. At the start of the war, he outlined the following key goals:

• “raze to the ground” the missile industry,
• annihilate the navy,
• neutralize “terrorist proxies” in the region,
• undermine the current regime’s ability to obtain nuclear weapons,

According to estimates, around 70% of Iranian missile launchers and roughly two-thirds of the country’s defense-industrial capacity have now been destroyed. Iran’s navy, according to information from U.S. Central Command, has lost more than 140 ships, boats, and auxiliary vessels, effectively ceasing to exist as a fighting force. However, Tehran’s “terrorist proxies,” including Hezbollah and Shiite movements in Iraq, continue combat operations against the United States and Israel, while the fate of Iran’s stockpiles of enriched uranium and the state of its nuclear program remain unknown.

At the same time, more than a month after the start of the joint U.S.–Israeli military operation, Iran’s leadership has shown no willingness to de-escalate on U.S. terms, despite the critical damage inflicted on its armed forces and the destruction of a significant portion of its military-political elite.

Iran’s leadership is not yet ready to de-escalate on U.S. terms

Meanwhile, America’s 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit has been deployed to the region, led by the amphibious assault ship USS Tripoli (LHA-7) and numbering about 3,500 Marines and sailors. It is soon to be joined by the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit (with more than 2,000 personnel). In addition, units of the 82nd Airborne Division (up to 3,000 troops), the 75th Ranger Regiment, and U.S. special operations forces are arriving in the region. It is already known that the Pentagon is working out options for a multiweek ground operation in Iran.

Option 1: Seizure of Iranian islands in the Persian Gulf

This is the most realistic option, but offers no clear idea for what comes next.

The primary target would be Kharg Island, through which about 90% of Iran’s oil exports pass, as the country’s shallow coastline does not allow supertankers to be loaded elsewhere. Around half of Iran’s government revenue comes from the oil and gas sector. Strikes on military (but not oil export) infrastructure on the island were already carried out in mid-March as a form of pressure, but without success.

Seizing Kharg Island would not be especially difficult for U.S. Marines. The main risks are tied to the need to maintain control through constant air cover, to establish supply routes by air or sea, and to identify and destroy Iranian positions along the coastline. The complexities of such an operation are understood, at least in part, from the 2022 battle for Snake Island in the Ukrainian theater of operations.

Kharg lies just a few dozen kilometers from Iran’s mainland, meaning that U.S. forces occupying the island could be targeted even with conventional and rocket artillery. In addition, Iranian forces would likely begin carrying out retaliatory strikes against oil and gas infrastructure in the Arab states of the Persian Gulf.

Another option is linked to the seizure of Iranian islands in the Strait of Hormuz: Qeshm, Abu Musa, Greater and Lesser Tunb, Hengam, Larak, and Hormuz. But here too, securing any U.S. forces stationed there would require some form of buffer zone along the coast. In other words, without an amphibious operation on Iranian territory itself, troops on the islands would become targets for constant shelling. Moreover, control over the islands would do little to change the situation in terms of control over the strait, since strikes can be launched from deep within Iran’s mainland territory.

Ultimately, if the objective of an operation on Kharg Island is to pressure Iran’s leadership by targeting its oil export revenues, there is no need to seize and hold the island at all. It would be enough to target the tankers that are loaded there — in effect, to act in the same way Iranian forces do with foreign tankers in the Strait of Hormuz.

Option 2: Raiding operations on Iranian territory

These are extremely difficult to carry out and are fraught with enormous risks.

In this case, the focus would be on limited operations with limited objectives, such as the forcible removal of Iran’s stockpiles of enriched uranium. Prior to the campaign in June 2025, Tehran’s stockpile of uranium enriched to 60% was estimated at 440 kg — enough to produce at least 10 nuclear warheads.

Since the uranium stockpiles are likely dispersed across multiple sites and partially inaccessible due to destroyed entrances to underground facilities, their safe extraction would require a presence deep inside Iranian territory lasting days, if not weeks. It would also necessitate the creation of a large security perimeter, the deployment and operation of heavy engineering equipment, the involvement of specialists in handling radioactive materials, and, ultimately, the establishment of a full logistical hub based on an existing or newly constructed field airstrip.

The forcible removal of enriched uranium would require a weeks-long military presence deep inside Iran

In 1994, the United States carried out the secret operation Project Sapphire to remove up to 600 kg of enriched uranium from Ust-Kamenogorsk in Kazakhstan. Its preparation and execution, even in the absence of any military threat, took several months.

In early April 2026, the U.S. military demonstrated what such an operation might look like in a hostile environment during the rescue of the crew of an F-15E fighter that was shot down over Iran. Despite the successful evacuation, two transport aircraft and several light helicopters were lost at the scene, even though the mission involved extracting just one person rather than several hundred kilograms of enriched uranium.

Another option would be raids along the coast targeting forces responsible for strikes on tankers — including launch sites for aerial and naval drones and anti-ship missiles. However, from the Iranian side, attacking tankers does not require maintaining positions directly on the coast, as regular drone launches from deep within Iranian territory would be sufficient.

Option 3: Invasion of Iran

Impossible without a tenfold increase in the forces and resources involved.

An invasion of Iran would be an extremely difficult undertaking, as the country’s mountainous terrain objectively limits the use of large mechanized formations. These geographic constraints have served as one of Iran’s key military advantages since the time of the Roman campaigns.

Given the country’s size (roughly four times that of Iraq), effective control over occupied territory would require a force significantly larger than the 300,000 troops assembled in 2003. For now, the total number of U.S. forces operating in the region is estimated at around 50,000, rising to about 70,000 with the arrival of additional Marine, airborne, and special operations units.

Importantly, a ground invasion of Iran would be feasible for U.S. forces only if carried out from the territory of Turkey or Iraq. However, for Turkey, participation in the war is politically unacceptable, while deployment in Iraq carries significant risks due to the activities of pro-Iranian armed groups active there.

Should a ground invasion be expected

The most realistic options appear to be the seizure of one or more islands in the Persian Gulf in order to limit Iran’s government revenues from oil exports or to pressure Tehran into lifting the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. However, the Trump administration has instead eased sanctions on Iranian oil in an effort to stabilize global prices.

Meanwhile, raiding operations along the coast make little sense, while the removal of enriched uranium stockpiles would most likely require lengthy and careful preparation. And a full-scale ground invasion of Iran is entirely unrealistic.

According to rough estimates, five weeks of an air-only campaign have cost up to $31 billion and significantly depleted U.S. weapons stockpiles. In addition, opinion polls show that an overwhelming majority of Americans oppose sending troops to Iran. Therefore, if Trump does decide on a ground operation, it will almost certainly be limited in time and scope and designed to keep projected losses to a minimum.

April 9 marked exactly 40 days since Ovchinnikov was abducted by FSB officers. That is a record period for the unofficial detention of a Russian citizen by security forces outside the North Caucasus.

Ovchinnikov was first detained on Jan. 27. His mother said that during the search, FSB officers beat him, leading to his hospitalization with an abdominal injury. The next day, a court sentenced him to 15 days of arrest on a charge of disobeying police. However, when that term ended on Feb. 12, he was not released. Instead, he was detained again, taken to Gelendzhik, held for a day at a police station, and then given another 15-day arrest on the same charge.

According to a ruling by the Gelendzhik City Court, Ovchinnikov had traveled to the city on his own and, once there, “disobeyed” police officers. His mother considers that version implausible: Ovchinnikov had no reason to travel from Anapa, where he lives, to Gelendzhik immediately after his release. He also had no documents, money, or phone with him.

On Feb. 27, one day before the end of his second arrest, he was taken away again by FSB officers. There has been no contact with him since.

Ovchinnikov’s mother believes the persecution may be linked to her son’s anti-war views and comments on social media. She filed missing-person reports and appealed to various agencies, but has been unable to establish her son’s whereabouts.

Human rights defenders familiar with the case told The Insider that Ovchinnikov’s mother recently received a reply from the Krasnodar regional branch of the FSB stating that Ovchinnikov “was not detained” by officers of the directorate. By contrast, in response to a complaint about the first detention and search, she had been told that the regional FSB directorate had carried out operational-search measures in relation to her son.

Previously, cases of unofficial detention outside the North Caucasus and Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine were generally limited to several days, rather than weeks.

The longest known period of unlawful detention in central Russia involved defendants in the 2017 St. Petersburg metro bombing case — the Azimov brothers and Mukhammadyusup Ermatov, who said they were held in an unofficial FSB “secret prison” for more than a month. According to them, they were kept in basements, cut off from  contact with the outside world, and tortured into giving confessions. Russia’s Investigative Committee refused to open criminal cases over those claims.

Longer periods of unofficial detention have been documented in the North Caucasus. In 2017, Novaya Gazeta reported on a network of secret prisons in Chechnya where, according to eyewitnesses, people were held for months without any formal paperwork while being subjected to torture. Russian authorities denied that such facilities existed.

In Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine, the practice of extrajudicial detention followed by the later “legalization” of prisoners has long been used in various forms. According to testimony from former Ukrainian female detainees published by The Insider, after being abducted, people were held for weeks and months in basements, in the Izolyatsia prison, and in other unofficial detention sites, without access to lawyers or contact with relatives. Detainees were beaten, tortured with electric shocks, strangled, deprived of sleep, and forced to sign the required testimony. They were then transferred to pretrial detention centers or penal colonies. Frequently, they faced charges involving alleged “espionage” and “extremism.”

Healey said the group monitored by British forces included a Project 971 Shchuka-B submarine, known in NATO as the “Akula” class, as well as two submarines belonging to the Russian Navy’s Main Directorate of Deep-Sea Research, known as GUGI. According to the minister, the first submarine was “a likely decoy to distract” from the two GUGI submarines, which were operating above “critical infrastructure relevant to us and our allies.”

Healey did not disclose exactly what the Russian submarines did or attempted to do in British waters, saying only that the Russian covert operation had failed thanks to the fact that the British government had “completed [our] first duty” to protect the country. The surveillance operation involved the frigate HMS St Albans, the fleet tanker RFA Tidespring, and Royal Navy Merlin helicopters.

At the same time, the defense secretary’s remarks made clear that the target of the operation was underwater communications. “We see you, we see your activity over our cables and our pipelines,” Healey said, directly addressing Vladimir Putin. He stressed that any attempt to damage the UK’s cables or pipelines would not go unanswered, adding that the seabed had become a primary target for Moscow. Underwater pipelines supply half of the gas used to heat homes in Britain, while undersea cables carry 99% of international telecommunications traffic.

To reach the underwater cables, submarines are required to carry so-called “midget submarines” (“autonomous nuclear deep-water stations”, or “AGS” in Russian). The Telegram channel MilitaryRussia.Ru notes that the only AGS carrier submarine still in service with the Russian Navy, the BS-64 Podmoskovye, is currently absent from its base. Satellite imagery confirms that the vessel is not at the pier in Olenya Guba in Russia’s northern Murmansk Region. The BS-64 Podmoskovye is operated in the interests of GUGI.

Healey also said the number of Russian vessels threatening British waters has risen by 30%. The UK government has allocated an additional 100 million pounds ($134 million) for aircraft that search for submarines and for the launch of the “Atlantic Bastion” program to create “British hybrid naval forces.”

The UK imposed sanctions on GUGI in June 2025. British authorities accuse the directorate of developing Russian maritime intelligence-gathering operations.

However, starting around 2008–2009, Orbán changed his rhetoric, and the former critic became a reliable partner and advocate of Moscow and its ideas. During this period, Orbán served the interests not only of Putin personally, but also of Russian oligarchs and even criminal bosses. This turn to the East was driven by a combination of factors — from Hungary’s deep dependence on Russia in the energy and financial spheres, to Orbán’s past ties with criminal networks, which  the Kremlin could exploit for its own purposes.

On the gas needle

In his more than fifteen years in power, Orbán has deepened Hungary’s dependence on Russia in the energy sector. While the European Union has sought to completely phase out imports of Russian oil and gas, Budapest, on the contrary, has steadily increased its purchases of hydrocarbons from Russia. In 2021, Budapest signed a new contract with Gazprom for the supply of natural gas for a period of fifteen years. As a result, between 2021 and 2025 the share of Russian oil among Hungary’s imports rose from 61% to 93%.

One of the key beneficiaries of Orbán’s cooperation with Putin’s regime is the Hungarian oil and gas company MOL, which owns three large refineries and thousands of filling stations across Europe. Thanks to this company, Hungary has become one of the main European hubs for processing Russian hydrocarbons. Taking advantage of low purchase prices, MOL effectively acts as an intermediary, enabling petroleum products from Russia to reach Western European countries despite the EU embargo.

Taking advantage of low purchase prices, MOL acts as an “intermediary,” enabling petroleum products from Russia to reach Europe

Notably, MOL is not only helping Russia to circumvent European sanctions, it is also working to relieve Moscow’s U.S. sanctions burden.. In January it became known that the Hungarian company intends to buy out Gazprom Neft’s stake in the Serbian oil company NIS in line with American demands. This objective, again, fully aligns with the Kremlin’s interests, as Moscow also uses low energy prices as leverage over the regime of President Aleksandar Vučić in neighboring Serbia. At the very end of March, Putin promised the Serbian leader to extend their gas supply contract at a price lower than that offered to virtually any other customer except Belarus.

Most importantly, Orbán has used Hungary’s dependence on Russian energy resources — a dependence that he himself has helped create — in order to pressure the EU on issues related to support for Ukraine. In particular, the Hungarian prime minister has been blocking European tranches for Kyiv over the halt in oil supplies through the Druzhba pipeline (which Ukraine points out was damaged by a Russian strike). According to Orbán, Hungary will continue to block EU decisions on Ukraine until oil transit via Druzhba is resumed. He has also threatened to stop gas supplies to Ukraine from Hungary.

Orbán has even built a large part of his election campaign around the controversy surrounding the pipeline, naming Volodymyr Zelensky personally as the main source of ordinary Hungarians’ problems. In the final weeks before the election, he has been portraying Ukraine as the principal external enemy threatening Hungary’s independence, including in the energy sphere. This rhetoric is aimed at a domestic Hungarian audience, but it is hardly a coincidence that it echoes the talking points of Russian foreign policy propaganda, which likewise seeks to discredit Ukraine’s leadership by any means necessary.

In reality, if there is any oil shortage in Hungary, it is linked not to the Russian pipeline but rather to the war waged by the United States and Israel against Iran. The fact is that Hungary and Slovakia (another country connected to Russia by the “Druzhba pipeline”) today have the option of receiving fuel through Croatian ports — in fact, the Croatian pipeline is partly owned by MOL, and in February, Hungary and Slovakia purchased their first batches of oil via this route.

On the one hand, this means they can do without Druzhba. On the other, the war against Iran has made these alternative supplies significantly more expensive. It is therefore no surprise that Orbán, despite having found a substitute for Russian oil, continues to insist to voters that their future is under threat as a result of Ukraine’s supposed stoppage of oil supplies via Druzhba.

Atoms for kickbacks

Oil and gas are not the only elements of the mutually beneficial partnership between Moscow and Budapest. Hungary remains the only EU member state where a truly large-scale project of the Russian state corporation Rosatom is being implemented. The chairman of its supervisory board is Sergei Kiriyenko, first deputy head of the Presidential Administration of Russia. In the Kremlin, Kiriyenk oversees both domestic policy and the use of Russia’s “soft power” abroad. In addition at the end of 2025, former Rosatom manager Vadim Titov became head of the Kremlin’s directorate for strategic partnership and cooperation, which in practice is responsible for external influence and propaganda.

As part of the expansion of the Paks Nuclear Power Plant, built in 1974 according to a Soviet design near the city of Paks in central Hungary, Rosatom has pledged to construct two new power units as part of the “Paks II” project. Rosatom received the right to implement this project without an open tender, immediately raising suspicions of corruption. Construction is financed by a preferential Russian loan of €10 billion (out of a total cost of €12.5 billion). One of the main Hungarian subcontractors, oligarch Lőrinc Mészáros, is a longtime associate of the prime minister,

Before the start of Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine, Rosatom had a network of offices across Europe that the Kremlin used as an instrument of “soft power.” The company supplied nuclear fuel to numerous Soviet-built reactors in Eastern and Central Europe, serviced them, and was preparing to construct new power units. However, virtually all of Rosatom’s European projects have since been terminated (many of them even before February 2022).

For example, as early as spring 2021, the Czech Republic removed Rosatom from the list of bidders for the construction of new units at the Dukovany Nuclear Power Plant. This came amid a spy scandal in which Prague accused Russian GRU agents of blowing up ammunition depots near the village of Vrbětice in 2014, an incident that killed two Czech citizens. (The Insider later managed to confirm the validity of these accusations).

Then, in May 2022, Finland terminated its contract with Rosatom for the construction of the Hanhikivi Nuclear Power Plant. In addition, even European states considered relatively close to Russia, such as Slovakia, have been seeking to diversify their nuclear fuel supplies in order to reduce their dependence on Russian uranium.

Nevertheless, thanks to Orbán’s efforts, the Paks Nuclear Power Plant remains the focal point of Russia’s nuclear interests in the EU. If Rosatom succeeds in completing the Paks II project, Budapest will be obliged to repay the loan to Moscow, along with interest. In addition, Hungary will have to purchase nuclear fuel from Russia and pay Russian specialists for the servicing of the plant.

For Moscow, this serves as a guarantee that Orbán will not allow Rosatom to be added to EU sanctions lists, thus enabling the Russian state corporation to procure everything it needs in Europe. It also ensures a long-term financial and technological dependence of Hungary on the Kremlin.

Money from the mafia and possible kompromat

Notably, Orbán’s sharp shift toward pro-Russian rhetoric in the late 2000s coincided with the arrest of one of the most significant figures in the organized criminal underworld: Semyon Mogilevich, who was taken into custody in Moscow in January 2008. In Russia, Mogilevich is best known as the man who controlled the Solntsevskaya organized crime group, and also as one of the organizers of a corrupt scheme involving the export of Russian gas through the company RosUkrEnergo. From the 1990s to the mid-2000s, Mogilevich controlled dozens of criminal groups around the world, from Russia and Eastern Europe all the way to New York. Mogilevich himself lived in Budapest in the 1990s, and according to numerous accounts, he not only paid bribes to the head of the Hungarian police but also helped finance Viktor Orbán’s 1998 election campaign.

The evidence of that relationship did not begin emerging until 2016, when one of Mogilevich’s associates, German citizen Dietmar Clodo, stated in an affidavit that in the mid-1990s he had delivered Mogilevich’s money to various recipients, and that one alleged recipient was the election campaign of the Fidesz party, which Clodo says received a sum of 1 million Deutsche marks (close to $600,000 at the time). Also according to Clodo, everything that took place in his home was recorded by a hidden camera disguised as a book — which the Hungarian press even published a photo of in 1999.

Clodo is not a man whose statements can be taken at face value, even if they were made in an official affidavit. However, these claims were recently confirmed by László Kovács, who was part of Igor Korol’s organized crime group in Budapest during the period in question. According to Kovács, his duties included transporting Mogilevich’s money, and although he never personally met Orbán, some of the sums he delivered in the mid-1990s were intended specifically for the man who is now Hungary’s prime minister. Kovács says Mogilevich spoke about this explicitly in conversations with him.

In the context of the above, a striking coincidence stands out: in 2008, Mogilevich was arrested in Moscow as part of the Arbat Prestige case, but was released in July 2009. Then, in November 2009, Orbán traveled to St. Petersburg and met Putin for the first time, returning to Hungary as an openly pro-Russian politician.

Mogilevich may have rendered another service to the Kremlin, this time in 2013. According to a source cited by The Insider, the agreement between Russia and Hungary on the construction of Paks II was reached “not without his efforts.”

Instructions from Moscow

The Kremlin’s influence over Budapest’s domestic and foreign policy is not limited to Orbán’s anti-Ukrainian rhetoric. For years, his government has given Moscow the opportunity to monitor “sensitive discussions” within the European Union. Russian hackers have been allowed to use the computer networks of Hungary’s Foreign Ministry, and in the run-up to this Sunday’s election, the Kremlin even proposed staging a “self-attack” — a fake assassination attempt against Orbán — as reported by The Washington Post.

In addition, Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó has regularly called his counterpart Sergey Lavrov to provide “operational reports,” as The Insider and its reporting partners recently found. This effectively allowed Moscow to be present at the negotiating table during every EU Council of Ministers meeting, as well as to slow down or even block sanctions.

Intercepted phone conversations between Lavrov and Szijjártó, obtained by The Insider in March, indicate that the Hungarian authorities not only lobbied on behalf of the Kremlin’s interests in Europe but also helped resolve the personal issues of Russian oligarchs, in particular Alisher Usmanov. Moreover, Lavrov did not merely act as an intermediary, but referred to himself as a “friend” of the Russian  billionaire.

Specifically, in August 2024, Péter Szijjártó promised to help Lavrov secure the removal of Gulbakhor Ismailova — Usmanov’s sister — from EU sanctions lists, and the European sanctions against her were indeed lifted at Budapest’s insistence in March 2025. In addition, Szijjártó and Lavrov discussed means of shielding a number of Russian banks from sanctions, along with the company 2Rivers, which is involved in selling Russian oil through the infamous “shadow fleet” of tankers.

By Szijjártó’s own admission, he succeeded in removing 72 Russian entities from the sanctions list. However, he was unable to protect 2Rivers — despite asking that the Russians come up with an explanation for the EU as to why such exemptions would serve Hungary’s national interests.

Moscow’s advisers in Budapest

Parliamentary elections are scheduled to take place in Hungary on April 12, and according to independent polls, the ruling Fidesz party is trailing the opposition badly. But the Kremlin is not losing hope. For several months now, Moscow has been conducting an active campaign in the country, engaging in disinformation seeded through bot networks on social media and controlled Telegram channels while also coordinating with local media loyal to Orbán.

Part of this propaganda effort is being coordinated by Tigran Garibyan, minister-counselor at the Russian embassy in Hungary, who work with Russian propagandists in the country while regularly holding meetings with pro-government Hungarian journalists, where he assigns them tasks and instructions. Notably, Garibyan’s brother heads the project finance directorate at the Russian state-owned Promsvyazbank, which has been used as a channel for funding Russia’s recent unsuccessful efforts to subvert elections in Moldova. 

There is also another, less conventional channel through which influence is exerted on Orbán: the Russian Orthodox Church. As The Insider has reported, Orthodox priests at times act as spies and couriers, while church compounds are turned into “safe houses” for Russian agents.

In Budapest between June 2022 and the end of 2024, the Russian Orthodox Church was represented by the former head of the Department for External Church Relations, Hilarion Alfeyev — who was not only the head of the Budapest–Hungarian diocese, but also a key intermediary between the Kremlin, various oligarchs, and representatives of Orbán’s government. According to the account of his former cell attendant, Georgy Suzuki, Hilarion transported suitcases of cash from Dubai to Hungary and lobbied for the lifting of EU sanctions against Patriarch Kirill and multiple Russian billionaires. He maintained particularly frequent contact with Hungary’s deputy prime minister, Zsolt Semjén, a friend and close associate of Orbán. (Last year, Semjén found himself at the center of a scandal involving abuse of minors in a correctional facility.)

Hilarion himself was also accused of harassment by his former attendant, after which Patriarch Kirill reassigned the metropolitan to Karlovy Vary in the Czech Republic. Notably, the first thing Hilarion did in Karlovy Vary was to transfer Russian Orthodox Church property to a Hungarian legal entity, effectively placing it under Orbán’s protection and thereby shielding it from sanctions.

The Telegraph’s journalists tracked the Russian flotilla from aboard the British vessel Royal Charlotte, which was positioned about 15 kilometers (9 miles) off the port of Dover. According to a diagram published by the newspaper, the Admiral Grigorovich accompanied the tankers Universal (IMO 9384306) and Enigma (IMO 9333412). A British Royal Fleet Auxiliary vessel — the tanker RFA Tideforce — also followed the Russian frigate.

Starmer said in late March that he had granted British military personnel and law enforcement officials the authority to detain ships listed under UK sanctions while they are located in the country’s territorial waters. He said the move was necessary to “starve Putin’s war machine of dirty profits.”

So far, however, British forces have not detained any vessels from the “shadow fleet.”

Both Universal and Enigma were added to UK sanctions lists in 2025. In January, the Universal departed from the oil port of Vysotsk in Russia’s Leningrad Region, while the Enigma sailed from the Russian port of Primorsk.

According to analysts cited by The Telegraph, more than 300 vessels linked to Russia’s “shadow fleet” have passed through UK territorial waters since the start of 2026. Experts note that seizing such a large number of tankers would require significant resources, and that British ports have a limited number of berths capable of accommodating vessels of that size.

The Irish Times recently reported that, following Starmer’s announcement, ships from Russia’s “shadow fleet” began avoiding the English Channel, instead taking a longer route into the Atlantic by sailing around Ireland. According to the Irish newspaper’s sources, a significant number of these tankers have been observed off Ireland’s western coast since late March.

The reason for the raid is unknown. It is reported that the newspaper’s lawyers are not being allowed into the office, where several staff members remained as of the time of publication.

Lawyer Kaloy Akhilgov suggested on his Telegram channel that the raid may be related to a criminal case involving Novaya Gazeta’s publications. Investigators from the Moscow Investigative Committee were present during the search.

“I went to the editorial office. Masked individuals didn’t let me in —they said I’m too notorious to be allowed inside. Not a joke. (Not my style to jostle with them),” Akhilgov wrote.

State-owned outlet RIA Novosti, citing a source in law enforcement, reports that the raids are connected to an investigation into the illegal use of personal data.

Novaya Gazeta was founded in 1993. After the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the newspaper stopped printing issues, and in September 2022, a court revoked its media license.

Novaya Gazeta is being investigated for links to Novaya Gazeta Europe, an outlet that was founded by former Novaya journalists who left Russia, TASS reports. Novaya Gazeta Europe has been designated an “undesirable” organization in Russia.

As IStories writes, the newspaper is also being scrutinized for ties to the Russian Antiwar Committee, labeled as a “terrorist organization” by Russia’s Supreme Court in 2026. The committee includes Kirill Martynov, editor-in-chief of Novaya Gazeta Europe.

The country’s Ministry of Internal Affairs has stated that the criminal proceedings against Novaya Gazeta under Article 272.1 of the Criminal Code (illegal use of personal data) were initiated on March 10.

According to the ministry, police “identified a circle of individuals who requested personal data from illegal information resources.”

Authorities accuse the newspaper of preparing materials “of a negative nature regarding Russian citizens.” It is unknown whether there are any specific suspects in the case.

The Telegram channel “Lentach” has published a RIA Novosti video claiming to show Novaya Gazeta journalist Oleg Roldugin being loaded into a van by masked men wearing civilian clothes.

Reports have also emerged that an ambulance arrived at the offices of Novaya Gazeta. A man was carried out of the building on a stretcher. He is currently receiving medical assistance. The reason for his hospitalization is unknown.

Searches at the newspaper’s offices are still ongoing at the time of publication.

He wrote:

“I left the territory of the Russian Federation under pressure from the Federal Security Service. Twice — in December and in early February — they came to my home with direct threats. The reasons were my refusal to cooperate and my refusal to obtain Russian citizenship. Pressure was applied despite the fact that I possess information sensitive to the state.”

As proof, Olevich published contact information for three alleged security service officers whom he said were involved in the pressure campaign. He said he is now in Greece and is seeking assistance from U.S. authorities.

The Insider was able to confirm that one of the phone numbers does in fact belong to Dmitry Konstantinovich Ushakov, an FSB employee. Another number belongs to Alexander Yevgenyevich Monaenkov, a former volunteer and member of the ruling United Russia party who is now an official in Moscow’s Strogino District.

On Russian television, Olevich was known as a regular commentator on U.S. affairs. In one program in 2021, he said he had moved from the United States to Russia “against his material interests.” As early as 2023, the authors of the Telegram channel Obyknovenny Tsarism (lit. “Ordinary Tsarism”) publicly denounced Olevich, recalling his phrase, “Victory means the swiftest possible end to the special military operation,” which they described as betrayal.

Born in Odesa in 1978, Victor Olevich graduated from the Russian studies department at Temple University in Philadelphia and moved to Moscow in 2010.

In 2023, Ukrainian national Yanina Sokolovska, who had also appeared on Russian propaganda talk shows, faced criminal prosecution and was forced to leave the country. Other prominent talking heads, most notably Sergei Markov and Tetiana Montian, have also faced pressure from the Kremlin. 

European embassy staff attended Thursday’s hearing, RIA Novosti reported. Leonid Solovyov, the lawyer representing Memorial, was not allowed to participate in the proceedings and was removed from the courtroom, the Slovo Zashchite project reported.

On the eve of the possible designation of Memorial as “extremist,” the Norwegian Nobel Committee condemned the then-potential move. The organization urged the Russian authorities to withdraw the corresponding lawsuit, stating: “To designate such an organisation as extremist is an affront to the fundamental values of human dignity and freedom of expression.”

The request by the Russian Ministry of Justice to recognize Memorial as an “extremist organization” became known at the end of March.

This is not the first time the organization has faced persecution from the Kremlin. In 2021, the Memorial Human Rights Center and the International Memorial educational society were liquidated by Russian court decisions. The judge sided with the Prosecutor General’s Office, which accused the organizations of failing to comply with Russia’s law on “foreign agents,” and, in the case of International Memorial, of “distorting historical memory, creating a false image of the USSR, and besmirching the memory of the Great Patriotic War.”

Established in Geneva in 2023, the International Memorial Association was the successor of Memorial’s liquidated Russian entities. This past February, Russia placed it on its list of “undesirable organizations.”

In response to the Supreme Court’s decision, Memorial Human Rights Center has announced a complete cessation of its activities in Russia. The organization emphasizes that no such “International Memorial Public Movement” actually exists — none of the actual structures within the Memorial network bears that name. At the same time, the Center does not rule out that the extremist designation will become a tool for persecuting participants and supporters of various Memorial-related organizations.

According to a statement by the Center’s Council, the organization currently has no staff, no members, and no volunteers in Russia, and it has stopped accepting donations from Russian bank cards in order not to put donors at risk. Outside Russia, the Center intends to continue its human rights work regardless of any decisions by the Russian authorities.

Boris Nadezhdin

Former presidential candidate Boris Nadezhdin was among the first to announce his preparations for the parliamentary campaign. In October 2025, he wrote on his Telegram channel that he was launching a campaign for both the State Duma and the Moscow regional legislature, stating that he would collect signatures in single-mandate districts, as “it is unlikely that any party will risk nominating a candidate” with his platform. He plans to run in the Mytishchi District, No. 123, which includes the Moscow suburbs of Dolgoprudny, Korolyov, and Mytishchi.

On April 6, Nadezhdin said his campaign had effectively begun in February: a campaign headquarters had started work, offices opened in several cities, a supporter base was being built, and events and focus groups were being held to gauge public opinion on issues such as inflation, internet shutdowns, the forced rollout of the state-backed Max messaging app, and the ongoing four-year-long  “special military operation” against Ukraine.

Yekaterina Duntsova’s Rassvet party

The Rassvet party of former presidential candidate Yekaterina Duntsova intends to support candidates with similar views, a party source told The Insider. “There is an intention, but we will be able to say more precisely by the end of April. We need to determine which candidates have reached agreements with parties that can run without collecting signatures,” the source said.

The problem is that Rassvet is not registered with Russia’s Ministry of Justice — in fact,it was denied registration in 2024. Rassvet reapplied in March 2026, but the chances of registering an opposition political structure in Russia are effectively zero.

Rassvet opposes internet blockages, organizes letter-writing evenings in support of political prisoners, takes part in environmental and urban preservation protests, and seeks to operate strictly within the law.

Duntsova herself cannot run in the election due to her designation as a “foreign agent.”

The Yabloko party

The social-liberal party Yabloko, whose history dates back to the early 1990s, announced its intention to take part in the State Duma elections last December. A decision by the party’s federal political committee said the 2026 election is needed not only to preserve its party status and ability to run in federal elections without collecting signatures, but also to promote “the values of peace, humanity, and respect for people, dignity, and human rights.” Since the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the party has run under the slogan “For Peace and Freedom.” In comments to The Insider, a party member confirmed that Yabloko plans a major nationwide “for peace” campaign and will also raise the issue of internet disruptions as being one of the direct consequences of the war.

In March, the newspaper Kommersant reported that Yabloko’s federal list could be headed by the party’s 73-year-old co-founder, Grigory Yavlinsky, who received 1.05% of the popular vote in Russia’s 2018 presidential electionю The newspaper said the option was being considered in part because the party’s current chairman, the more charismatic 47-year-old Nikolai Rybakov, has lost the right to run due to an administrative penalty, while some other prominent figures cannot participate due to their own “foreign agent” status or criminal cases.

However, a party source told The Insider that, to their knowledge, Yavlinsky does not plan to run: “We intend to participate, but the configuration of the list is still unclear — different options are being discussed. We are unlikely to disclose them before nominations, which will take place in late June or early July. But as far as I know, Grigory Alexeyevich himself did not plan to run.”

This year, Yabloko does not need to collect signatures, as the party has deputies in three regional legislatures. Asked about the possible nomination of candidates like Nadezhdin or representatives from Rassvet, the source said all candidates are considered individually and must share the party’s values and program.

Notably, at the end of March, controversy erupted around a campaign clip by one of Yabloko’s members. Moscow politician Sergei Mitrokhin posted a video filmed near the Novokuznetskaya metro station in which he criticized what he called the “Asianization” of Moscow. “It feels like Moscow is gradually turning into some kind of Asian city. There’s shawarma everywhere, sherbet, doner bistros, all with a strongly Eastern flavor. I believe Russia is still a European country, and Moscow is one of the European capitals, and Muscovites should receive the full range of services that meet that European standard, not slide into some kind of ‘Asianization,’” Mitrokhin said. The video was later deleted from his channel but it has been reposted by the outlet SOTA.

Mitrokhin later said he had “not expressed his thought very adequately,” explaining that he meant large businesses were displacing neighborhood shops. He added that he has never been a nationalist and considers nationalism harmful to Russia. Yabloko told The Insider that Mitrokhin’s voters differ from typical Yabloko supporters.

The “Candidates’ Headquarters” project

Another initiative focused on the 2026 election, the “Candidates’ Headquarters” project, plans to carry out public opinion research, assess real levels of trust in political parties and lawmakers, and use the data to identify the strongest challenger to the authorities in each district before making recommendations of support. The head of the project, 29-year-old Konstantin Larionov, has already said he is considering running for the State Duma from the Kaluga Region.

Political analyst Mikhail Komin, commenting on the electoral atmosphere, toldThe Insider that a campaign by anti-war candidates makes sense, as it normalizes anti-war positions within the country, demonstrates the existence of a significant anti-war electorate, and undermines both the domestic and international narrative promoted by the Kremlin that Russian society fully supports the war.

“By operating within the legal political field, having a clear anti-war position and making it the foundation of their campaign, each candidate normalizes that position and its expression for part of the Russian electorate.

You don’t have to look far for an example. There is Boris Nadezhdin, who ran in 2024 as an anti-war candidate. He was not allowed to register, but during his campaign many people saw that there are quite a lot of anti-war citizens in Russia and that their views are not as marginal as Russian propaganda and the authorities try to portray them. They also gained experience of collective action by standing in lines to sign their names in support of Nadezhdin.

The mere presence of an anti-war candidate (even one who is not registered), along with the fact that he was supported by both exiled and domestic opposition forces, gave the anti-war discourse a certain degree of legitimacy. This led to a rise in sociological indicators and an increase in the number of people who believe the war should be ended. Independent polling shows that during Nadezhdin’s campaign, the share of people who thought the war should end increased. We see that the anti-war message works and breaks the silence of those who had previously remained quiet.

The second aspect concerns the international dimension of the 2026 State Duma elections. The presence of anti-war candidates — who are determined enough to run despite harsh repression — and of Russians willing to place signatures in support of them shows people in the West that the Kremlin’s narrative of a monolithic pro-war society, which it has promoted since 2022, is not entirely accurate. The more such candidates there are, and the more creatively they demonstrate the number of anti-war Russians, the greater the damage to the image the Kremlin is trying to project — that all of Russian society supports the war and is ready to tighten its belt and keep fighting for territories such as the Donbas or others that Russia has written into its constitution. This primarily damages the Kremlin’s image in the eyes of Western countries and the Global South.”

Although the election campaign has not yet officially begun, the main candidates are already known. Unsurprisingly, all credible polls put Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and his Civil Contract party in first place. Why unsurprisingly? Because in Armenia, the incumbent has been considered the favorite in every election cycle.

As for the upcoming vote, 24% of respondents in a poll conducted by the International Republican Institute (IRI) said they were ready to support the prime minister and his political platform. Pashinyan’s current level of support — a mere 13% — may represent an all-time low, but his opponents’ ratings are even lower.

The surprise of this election campaign — even for the Armenian public — is that the leading opposition figure on the eve of the vote has been Russian billionaire and philanthropist Samvel Karapetyan, owner of the Tashir Group, a Moscow-based business conglomerate with assets in retail, real estate, and construction. A year ago, he was barely visible on Armenia’s political scene.

Karapetyan had always taken an active part in the life of his historic homeland. He met with the country’s leadership, invested money, donated significant sums for the construction and renovation of various facilities, and promoted athletes and cultural figures abroad.

That remained the case until June 17, 2025, when the businessman said:

“What opinion can I have when a small group of people, having forgotten Armenian history and the thousand-year tradition of our Church, attacks it and the Armenian people? I have always stood with the Church and the people and will take a direct part [in resolving the conflict between Pashinyan and the Armenian Apostolic Church]. If politicians fail to deal with this challenge, we will take part in our own way.”

Karapetyan was speaking about the conflict between Nikol Pashinyan and the Armenian Apostolic Church (AAC). Since the 2020 war with Azerbaijan (more on this below), Armenia’s prime minister has sought to remove Catholicos of All Armenians Garegin II — the head of the AAC — from office. The formal trigger for Pashinyan’s criticism was information that the head of the Armenian Apostolic Church allegedly has a child, which would amount to a serious violation of church canons.

But the conflict goes far beyond personal accusations. The real reason for the standoff is that the church has consistently refused to support the secular government’s foreign policy line on Nagorno-Karabakh and has regularly issued political statements criticizing the authorities’ actions. The AAC, an influential force inside the country, openly opposed recognizing Nagorno-Karabakh as part of Azerbaijan.

A few hours after his statement in defense of the church, Karapetyan was detained, ultimately spending six months behind bars. In addition, one of the largest companies belonging to him, Electric Networks of Armenia, was nationalized. As a result, the Armenian political game acquired a new player — one who very quickly secured the image of the main opponent of the authorities and of Nikol Pashinyan personally.

According to the aforementioned IRI poll, 9% of respondents are ready to vote for Samvel Karapetyan and his Strong Armenia party. But there is a problem: Karapetyan cannot run for prime minister and will not even be able to obtain a parliamentary seat. The reason is that, in addition to his Armenian citizenship, the businessman holds Russian citizenship and, according to some reports, a Cypriot passport as well. In addition, he has not lived permanently in Armenia in recent years, as required by the country’s Constitution for parliamentary candidates.

Despite this, Strong Armenia says it will still be able to make Karapetyan prime minister. The businessman’s nephew, Narek Karapetyan, who heads the party’s list in the election, said Strong Armenia expects to win the parliamentary vote and amend the relevant article of the Constitution, which would give Samvel Karapetyan the right to be elected.

Strong Armenia expects to win the parliamentary vote and amend the Constitution to give Samvel Karapetyan the right to be elected PM

According to the polls, one candidate who has virtually no chance of becoming the country’s leader is Armenia’s second president, Robert Kocharyan. His current rating is 3% — this despite winning 21% of the vote as Pashinyan’s main rival in the 2021 elections.

Despite the noticeable decline in his numbers, Kocharyan has elected not to help  Karapetyan improve his standing by pulling out of the race. If Kocharyan’s bloc fails to clear the 8% threshold set for alliances, its votes will in effect be redistributed in favor of political forces that do enter parliament.

The candidates’ trump cards

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Nagorno-Karabakh was internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan, but in practice it existed outside Baku’s control. When Pashinyan came to power in 2018, his government initially tried to preserve the previous negotiating framework, but when open hostilities broke out in 2020, the war ended in a serious defeat for Armenia that saw part of the territory come under Azerbaijani control.

The total loss of Karabakh in 2023 after the fighting resumed strengthened the view in Yerevan that Moscow was no longer willing to provide its Armenian ally with military support. Against that backdrop, Pashinyan agreed to base the peace process on mutual recognition of territorial integrity within the borders of the former Soviet republics. As a result, the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan began meeting without intermediaries. After initialing a peace agreement, they said the period of conflict between the two countries had come to an end.

It was clear from the beginning that Pashinyan and his ruling Civil Contract party would make the agreements reached with Azerbaijan a centerpiece of the election campaign. But few expected their rhetoric to be so harsh. One need only look at Pashinyan’s statement that if the opposition came to power, a new war would supposedly begin, with all the consequences that would entail:

“There are certain circles in Armenia that, if they come to power, intend to revise the peace agenda. All these forces speak from the position of revising peace, which means an inevitable war shortly after the election, at the latest by autumn.”

The prime minister also appealed to the second main campaign message of the ruling party:

“All these forces themselves do not understand what they are saying. They are voicing texts written by others and cannot claim any official status in Armenia.”

Who those “others” are in the case of Samvel Karapetyan and Robert Kocharyan is not difficult to guess. Armenia’s authorities, at the highest level, are effectively saying that the country’s opposition is controlled by and fully subordinate to Russia. Whether that is true or not is another matter. The fact is, with that statement, official Yerevan is showing that it no longer shies away from confrontation with Moscow and is in effect openly saying that the Kremlin is trying to bring about a change of power in Armenia.

That the authorities are doing everything they can to tie Samvel Karapetyan’s name to Russia and keep that issue at the center of public attention is evident not only from official statements, but also from pro-government media and Telegram channels, where the businessman is often called “a Kremlin agent on a special assignment” and “a pro-Russian oligarch.”

The Putin-Pashinyan meeting

Against that backdrop, with the main players having laid all their cards on the table nearly two months before the election, a communiqué appeared announcing that Nikol Pashinyan was traveling to Russia on a working visit. The news surprised many people, and not only in Armenia. The leaders of the two countries have been meeting and speaking less and less frequently. But, as it turned out, there was plenty to talk about.

First, Vladimir Putin, speaking in the context of a question about Armenian-Azerbaijani relations, reminded Pashinyan that he had recognized Nagorno-Karabakh as part of Azerbaijan. In response, Pashinyan told Putin that he himself had already done so twice. 

Then the Kremlin leader openly began saying that all pro-Russian forces ought to be allowed to take part in Armenia’s election:

“There are many political forces that are pro-Russian... We would very much like all these political parties and politicians to be able to take part in this domestic political work during the elections. Some, I know, are in places of detention, despite the fact that they have Russian passports.”

Although he spoke in the plural, everyone understood that he was talking about one person: Samvel Karapetyan. Pashinyan did not stay silent on that point either, saying that Armenia’s Constitution does not allow a person with dual citizenship to become prime minister.

It was as if the journalists in the room had been allowed to observe the closed-door portion of the talks, and that they had been allowed to record disputes that rulers typically try not to conduct in public. For the first time, the Russian side openly expressed its interest in the Armenian election issue, and there were not even the usual ritual phrases saying that any outcome would be acceptable to the Kremlin.

The talks also showed that Russian official rhetoric has hardened considerably on the eve of the election. If earlier Moscow tried not to make any abrupt moves and did not pay much attention to some of Yerevan’s actions, circumstances have now changed. Nikol Pashinyan was directly warned both about a possible rise in the price of Russian gas and about potential problems with Armenian imports into Russia. Armenia’s prime minister was also told that membership in the Eurasian Economic Union rules out deep integration into the European Union.

And yet Armenia has effectively mapped out a course toward Europe. Pashinyan himself has said so repeatedly.

No Karabakh, no leverage

Pashinyan’s response to the Russian president’s remarks suggests at a minimum that Yerevan is not going to yield to pressure from Moscow, the intensification of which now seems beyond doubt. But is this merely pre-election bravado by Pashinyan, or does Yerevan really have the resources to resist Russia’s influence?

Most likely, one does not exclude the other. Pashinyan clearly wants to show his voters that, even in Moscow, he can say what he says at home in Armenia, where pro-government media blame Russian peacekeepers and the Kremlin for the departure of the Armenian population from Nagorno-Karabakh and write that Russia views Armenia as an outpost while maintaining agents of influence among the opposition.

But Pashinyan’s rhetoric is not driven by domestic political expediency alone. For many years, Armenian-Russian relations were shaped by the Karabakh issue. By winning the first Karabakh war of 1988-1994, Yerevan gained control over territory, but the unrecognized republic also became a lever of influence over Armenia itself. Economically and geopolitically dependent on Moscow, Yerevan could not go against the Kremlin’s wishes without risking a renewal of the hot conflict.

Now, however, Armenia has officially recognized Nagorno-Karabakh as part of Azerbaijan. The so-called Russian peacekeeping forces and the Armenian population have left. The OSCE Minsk Group, in which Russia, the United States, and France had tried jointly to find a peaceful solution, has been dissolved. And absent the very particular problem of the disputed region, there is no main lever of pressure for Russia to exert on Armenia.

Still, Yerevan remains vulnerable economically. About 25% of Armenian exports go to Russia. That includes agricultural goods and value-added products — in other words, sectors that employ large numbers of people. In addition, Armenia receives natural gas and nuclear fuel from Russia.

Yerevan remains vulnerable economically, as close to 25% of Armenian exports are sent to Russia

At the same time, more as a result of the war in Ukraine than of anything else, Armenia has also in practice rid itself of its former dependence on Russian weapons. Russia’s inability to supply outside arms markets has meant that, over the past few years, Yerevan has completely changed the list of weapons it purchases and, accordingly, its choice of suppliers.

Moreover, Armenia has for the first time received weapons from two NATO countries — France and the United States. Against that backdrop, official Yerevan clearly has no intention of returning to the Russian market.

That is, unless there is a change of power in the country.

Distant European prospects

Against the backdrop of the confrontation between Yerevan and Moscow, which has lasted for more than five years, the European Union has significantly strengthened its position in the South Caucasus. During that time, Armenia has received hundreds of millions of dollars for reforms in various sectors, political support in addressing the Karabakh conflict, and assurances of readiness to begin a process for the country’s accession to the EU.

That does not mean Yerevan will have a chance of becoming a full member anytime soon, but the process has clearly begun. The country’s parliament has even adopted a law “On the beginning of the process of the Republic of Armenia’s accession to the EU,” and Pashinyan has repeatedly said that his country is ready to deepen its ties with Europe to whatever extent the EU itself considers appropriate.

It is notable that against that backdrop, as well as because of the outcome of the 2020 war in Karabakh, the number of pro-European citizens in Armenia has grown. The logic is simple: if Armenia, after gaining independence, placed its bet on Russia and built its security system around it, but ultimately lost the 2020 war, then that was the wrong policy. The number of citizens in favor of Europe and against Russia rose further after September 2021, when Azerbaijan attacked Armenia’s sovereign territory and Yerevan appealed to the Collective Security Treaty Organization for help but did not receive it. Since then, the country has effectively frozen its membership in the military bloc.

Russia’s standing in Armenia dropped sharply precisely after the 2020 war. As recently as 2019, about 93% of citizens described relations with Russia as good. Five years later, however, 41% of respondents said Russia was a threat to political security.

In 2024, 41% of respondents in Armenia said Russia was a threat to the country’s political security

This shift in attitudes toward Armenia’s former main ally is especially important on the eve of the election. The broader fear that, if Samvel Karapetyan’s political platform wins, Armenia will once again reorient itself toward Russia may well work against him — and most likely will.

On the other side, Pashinyan’s pro-European rhetoric is likely to bring his party additional votes. By February 2026, support in Armenia for joining the European Union had reached a record 72%,  the highest figure recorded since the International Republican Institute began polling in Armenia.

The U.S. and Turkey factors

If six years ago the United States was considered a complete outsider in the struggle for influence in the South Caucasus, the picture is now the exact opposite. In August of last year, the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan traveled to the White House, where they signed a special declaration in the presence of Donald Trump. The document not only set out the Armenian-Azerbaijani agenda, but also marked the beginning of the “Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity” initiative, or TRIPP. The route is meant to connect Azerbaijan with its exclave, the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic, via a special road running through Armenian territory.

The implementation of that project could also help Armenia normalize relations with Turkey. The border between the two countries has been closed for more than 30 years, a legacy of Ankara’s support for Baku all the way back in the first Karabakh war. Now, however, with the conflict over, Yerevan wants all the region’s borders opened, and the two neighbors have already begun reconstructing customs infrastructure and have signed several agreements.

So far there has been no landmark breakthrough in Turkish-Armenian relations, but Pashinyan’s Civil Contract party says there will be one if it manages to remain in power. The “Trump Route” and the Turkey factor, contrary to long-standing stereotypes, are also important political assets for Pashinyan as the election approaches.

The “Trump Route” and the Turkey factor are also important political assets in Nikol Pashinyan’s hands in the upcoming election

Whatever the outcome, Armenia’s June vote is shaping up as a contest not just between individual politicians, but between competing visions of the country’s foreign policy orientation for years to come. Pashinyan is asking voters to stay the course he has already set: close the chapter on Karabakh, complete the peace process with Azerbaijan, reduce dependence on Moscow, and speed up Armenia’s rapprochement with Europe and the United States. His opponents argue for a different path: a review of what they see as overly rapid concessions, the preservation of traditional ties with Russia, and a more cautious approach to the new regional order.

For this very reason, the campaign is unfolding in an atmosphere in which domestic debate has almost completely merged with a geopolitical choice. For the first time in many years, the struggle for parliamentary seats in Yerevan has in effect turned into an argument over what kind of country Armenia will be after Karabakh: part of a new Western configuration for the South Caucasus, or a state that will try to rebuild an allied relationship with Russia.

The six defendants are:

• former coordinator of Vesna’s St. Petersburg branch Yevgeny Zateyev, who received 6 years and 2 months;
• Anna Arkhipova, a former employee of the movement’s media department, who received 12 years;
• Yabloko activist Vasily Neustroyev, who received 10 years;
• Pavel Sinelnikov, the former “executive secretary” of the movement, who received 7.5 years;
• Yan Ksenzhepolsky, a former member of the movement’s Federal Coordinating Council, who received 11 years;
• And activist Valentin Khoroshenin, who received 6 years and 2 months.

The youth movement Vesna was founded in St. Petersburg in 2013. After Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, its members called on Russians to take part in nonviolent anti-war protests. Later that year, the movement was designated “extremist” by the Russian authorities, allowing the state to accuse the defendants in the Vesna case of taking part in an “extremist” community, along with several other charges ranging from the alleged spread of “fake” information about the Russian army to public calls for activity endangering national security.

As noted by the human rights project OVD-Info, the most serious charges were brought against activist Anna Arkhipova. State investigators accused her under seven criminal charges at once, including spreading false information about the Russian army, organizing the work of an extremist community, and incitement to mass unrest.

The first investigative actions in the Vesna case began in May 2022. The six former Vesna activists sentenced earlier today were placed in custody in 2023 due to anti-war posts published on the movement’s social media accounts. One of the defendants, Valentin Khoroshenin, admitted guilt and gave testimony against the others, according to media reports. In total, about 20 people are involved in the case, including some who managed to leave Russia before being arrested.

According to the agency, the price of Urals crude loaded at the Baltic port of Primorsk reached $116.05 a barrel on April 2. That price, which does not include transportation costs, is nearly twice as high as the average price of $59 a barrel that is built into Russia’s state budget for this year.

Prices for cargoes loaded at Primorsk are the highest for the crude since 2013, when it traded at $113 to $115 a barrel.

The price for oil loaded at the Black Sea port of Novorossiysk was slightly lower, at $114.45 a barrel.

In February, before the start of the joint Israeli-U.S. operation against Iran, the average export price of Russian oil was $41.5 a barrel.

Amid the current energy shortage, the United States also temporarily lifted restrictions on deals involving Russian oil loaded onto ships before March 12. Economist Vladislav Inozemtsev recently told The Insider that Russia is “benefiting from this war in every respect." Meanwhile, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak said in late March that the country was selling oil and petroleum products at zero discount, or even at a premium due to stronger demand.

The price of Brent crude has also jumped above $100 a barrel, with futures trading above the $110 mark on Tuesday. In late March, Reuters reported that traders have been “piling into options betting Brent crude will surge to an all-time high of at least $150 a barrel by the end of April” amid the escalating conflict in the Middle East.

Economic observer Maksim Blant told The Insider that developments in the market can already be seen as the start of an energy crisis, and that its consequences could affect the entire global economy:

“There is a risk that global inflation will continue and that developing countries will run out of dollars to buy energy and service their foreign debt. That could lead to a crisis similar to the one in 1997-1998. The risk is growing of faster global inflation and a drop in industrial production — first in energy-intensive sectors, and then in the rest. There is a risk of a financial crisis because of a wave of sovereign and corporate defaults. Social and political upheavals are possible, along the lines of the Arab Spring, along with the rise of radicals to power, including in Europe. Ultimately, a deep global economic crisis will also crush demand for raw materials. In short, nothing good for anyone.”

The document does not specify any potential adversaries, but the mention of aircraft and drones clearly points to the source of the threat. After all, no one other than the United States uses combat aviation to strike targets on Iraqi territory.

The order was published shortly after the Americans bombed the local headquarters of the Popular Mobilization Forces in Iraq’s Anbar Province, killing at least 15 people. Pro-Trump American media outlets described the victims as “terrorists” and blamed them for recent attacks on the U.S. embassy in Baghdad and several other American facilities in Iraq. Official Baghdad, however, insists that the dead were active-duty regular army personnel, unlawfully attacked by the Americans without any declaration of war.

Paradoxically, both Washington and Baghdad are right. Kataib Hezbollah, a group within the Popular Mobilization Forces that is ideologically close to the original Hezbollah, claimed responsibility for a recent FPV drone attack on an American base near the Iraqi capital, and this group plus its allied factions (including, most likely, those whose members were killed in the bombing of Anbar Province) have carried out dozens of attacks on American targets in the country. From the American perspective, they are indeed terrorists.

At the same time, Kataib Hezbollah and more than 60 similar groups officially belong to the Popular Mobilization Forces, which are part of Iraq’s national armed forces. That means officials in Baghdad are also correct when they say that the Americans are bombing active-duty soldiers and officers of the Iraqi army. It may be difficult to remember, but only 10 years ago, the Americans were fighting alongside them against a common enemy: the Islamic State.

Echoes of the civil war

After the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the civil war that followed, the Americans dismantled the Iraqi army and intelligence services and purged Saddam-era officials at all levels. As a result, Iraq became weak, decentralized, and fragmented. The federal authorities were unable to restore order even in areas near Baghdad, let alone in more distant provinces.

The situation was further complicated by the hostile relations between Iraq’s various ethno-religious communities: Shiites, Sunnis, Kurds, Yazidis, and Christians. These communities largely assumed the functions of the state, including when it came to issues of security and defense. Every village and every city neighborhood sprouted their own militias, mini-armies tasked with protecting residents from hostile neighbors and criminals.

Some of these groups came under American patronage, most notably Sunni militias collectively known as the “Sons of Iraq.” The main mission of these groups was to counter Al-Qaeda, which was then rightly seen in Washington as the main security threat in the region as a whole.

Iran, meanwhile, sought to expand its influence in Iraq as part of an effort to prevent the neighboring country from becoming a satellite of the United States. For this reason, Iran also invested in Iraqi militias and even made them one of its main tools for manipulating Iraqi politics.

The ayatollahs bought weapons and equipment for the Iraqis, paid militants’ salaries, and trained them — mostly fellow Shiites, of course, but also several Christian, Yazidi, and even Sunni groups.

There were also some curious overlaps. Local authorities sent large numbers of Shiites from pro-Iranian movements into the “Wolf Brigade,” an American-created police special forces unit that included members of the openly anti-American Badr Organization. Most Shiite groups, however, were fully oriented toward Tehran right from the outset.

In effect, these were units of Iran’s armed forces made up of Iraqi citizens. The Iraqi government, led for many years by the pro-Iranian prime minister Nouri al-Maliki, simply turned a blind eye to Tehran’s activities in its rear.

In effect, the Badr Organization is a unit of Iran’s armed forces made up of Iraqi citizens

Incidentally, many in Iraq accuse the Shiite Nouri al-Maliki of pursuing policies that marginalized Sunnis, thus contributing to the rise of the Islamic State — a group that portrayed itself as a force protecting Sunnis from “lawless heretics.”

The advance of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria in 2014 changed the fate of the entire region, in addition to that of the Iraqi militias. The Iraqi government quickly got rid of the toxic al-Maliki and called on the numerous militias to support the federal army and join a new formation, known as the Popular Mobilization Forces.

The supreme leader of Iraq’s Shiites, Ali al-Sistani, declared that his fellow believers should heed the government’s calls. And they did, increasing the size of the Iraqi army by tens of thousands of troops and giving the top military command the ability to deploy them as it saw fit.

The Popular Mobilization Forces, together with units of the Iraqi army, the Kurdish Peshmerga militia, and Western allies, fought heavy battles against Islamic State for several years. In a number of critical operations, such as the offensive on Mosul in 2016, the Popular Mobilization Forces acted alongside American troops, forming a united front with them.

Also in 2016, Iraq’s federal government ordered dozens of militias to be incorporated into the national armed forces as a separate military structure, officially making the Popular Mobilization Forces part of the national army.

In exchange for submitting to Baghdad, the groups within the Popular Mobilization Forces received legal status, army salaries, ranks, pensions, state compensation for injuries, and free medical care in military hospitals. Although they accepted that offer from Baghdad, the Popular Mobilization Forces did not turn away from Tehran.

As a result, Iraq’s armed forces came to include units that were officially under Baghdad’s control, yet ideologically and politically aligned with Iran, all while retaining an unprecedented degree of autonomy. The aforementioned Kataib Hezbollah warned shortly before the American-Israeli strike on Iran that it would defend the Islamic Republic — even though official Baghdad maintains a stance of strict neutrality and non-intervention in conflicts beyond its borders.

Almost like IRCG

As a result, the Iraqi government and its current prime minister, Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, to whom the Popular Mobilization Forces are formally subordinate, are in a difficult position. Al-Sudani cannot order the Iran-aligned and generously funded militias to stop attacking American targets, despite his clear desire to keep the country from being drawn into another large-scale war.

Even though he can issue the orders, he knows full well that they will be ignored — at least by the largest and most combat-capable militias. Not even the risk of losing Iraqi benefits and salaries will stop them. Iran and the businesses run under its protection by fighters from pro-Iranian militias in their downtime fully compensate them for any losses.

Similar to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), which controls the most profitable sectors of its country’s economy and profits from smuggling and other illegal activities, the Popular Mobilization Forces in Iraq have become more than just an armed formation.

The conglomerate Muhandis General Company, created by Kataib Hezbollah, is involved in construction, logistics, and agriculture. It also launders money for its parent organization and for the IRGC. Because of this, the conglomerate has been placed under U.S. sanctions.

Falih al-Fayyadh, the commander of the Popular Mobilization Forces, is also under sanctions. The Americans have accused him of “gross human rights abuses” in connection with the extreme brutality shown by his subordinates while suppressing anti-government protests.

The Americans are doing everything possible to prevent the Iraqi parliament from passing a long-standing bill to grant al-Fayyadh a ministerial post in the federal government and legalize his business entities. Under this law, the Popular Mobilization Forces would also gain the right to earn off-budget income — in very significant amounts.

While around $3.5 billion is allocated annually from the state budget to the Popular Mobilization Forces, their business activities — including illegal ones — generate roughly $10 billion. This money goes toward weapons and equipment for groups that the Americans consider a threat to their national security.

While the Popular Mobilization Forces receive around $3.5 billion annually from the state budget, their business activities, including illegal ones, generate roughly $10 billion

Under U.S. pressure, the Iraqi government is dragging out the adoption of the new law. However, officials also have no desire to quarrel with the Popular Mobilization Forces either — which helps explain why they have allowed them to return fire in response to American attacks, even if this permission was little more than a symbolic gesture.

If the Popular Mobilization Forces could shoot down American aircraft, they would do so even without government consent. For Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, this was a safe opportunity to demonstrate his resolve to the largely anti-American population, as the Popular Mobilization Forces simply do not have air defense systems capable of countering modern American aviation.

Everyone out!

On their own, the Popular Mobilization Forces do not have the manpower or the equipment to wage a full-scale war against U.S. forces in the region. But at the same time, radicals from pro-Iranian militias are clearly trying to draw Iraq into a larger war with the Americans by launching missile and drone strikes on U.S. targets. If the Americans begin large-scale bombings in Iraq, other branches of the armed forces could end up being pulled into the conflict — and eventually the entire nation.

This scenario plays right into Iran’s hands, diverting U.S. forces and attention towards a new major front and threatening the Americans with another protracted war in the Middle East. Prime Minister al-Sudani does not want war, but he cannot get rid of the Popular Mobilization Forces, which are pushing the country toward open confrontation with the Americans.

These militias enjoy the support of the country’s Shiite majority, have representatives in parliament, and are perceived as heroes who defeated the Islamic State. Any attempt to dismantle them could spark a new civil war. As surprising as it may seem, the Iraqi government finds it easier to pressure the Americans than the fighters of the nominally subordinate Popular Mobilization Forces. The cabinet rightly believes that if there are no U.S. military facilities on Iraqi soil that could be targeted by the Popular Mobilization Forces, Iraq will not face the risk of being drawn into a new full-scale war.

A few years ago, Baghdad and Washington agreed on schedules for the withdrawal of American troops sent to Iraq in 2014 to fight the Islamic State. Under these plans, the last American soldier is set to return home in the fall of 2026. The prime minister is now pushing to accelerate the process and evacuate all U.S. troops from Iraq ahead of schedule. He also emphasizes that since January all remaining U.S. personnel in the country have been stationed in Iraqi Kurdistan, an area where the federal government’s authority is limited.

The Iraqi prime minister insists on accelerating the early evacuation of all U.S. troops from Iraq

The Americans have not commented on the updated withdrawal schedule of their troops (although other NATO forces have already been quickly redeployed from Iraq to Italy). U.S. units remain near the city of Erbil in Kurdistan, but they are not engaging in large-scale combat against the Popular Mobilization Forces and apparently have no plans to start. Instead, American forces are relying on targeted strikes against the headquarters of the most radical militias in order to contain the activity of pro-Iranian forces in Iraq without escalating the situation to a full-scale confrontation.

Despite all the risks, this third American-Iraqi war will most likely remain a low-intensity conflict, without cities flattened by carpet bombing or large-scale guerrilla movements. It will amount to exchanges of missile and drone strikes and ominous statements from both sides, ending on its own once the American forces leave Iraq again.

In late 2022, an elderly man from North Carolina returned home from Nepal, where he had been visiting family. He soon fell ill with what seemed to be a routine bacterial infection. He was treated at one of the best clinics in the United States, and doctors gave him their strongest antibiotics. But the E. coli that caused the infection turned out to be resistant to all available drugs. The man died. “Antibiotic resistance is a real problem that, with little or no warning, can affect the lives of any of us at any time,” Vance Fowler, the man’s treating physician and an infectious disease specialist at Duke Health, said. “We don’t have enough drugs.”

This is far from the first such case. In 2017, in the state of Nevada, a 70-year-old woman died from a Klebsiella bacterium that proved resistant to all 26 antibiotics available in the United States. Doctors could do nothing.

Stories like these no longer shock infectious disease specialists. “I have had the sad duty to have to tell a patient that we couldn’t [offer] chemotherapy for their cancer, or [give them] a joint replacement or a heart transplant, because they had an infection that was resistant to antibiotics,” says Helen Boucher, dean of the medical school at Tufts University School of Medicine.

All of this resembles a dystopia, but it is the reality of the past decade. Now, the scale of the problem has been precisely measured.

Every sixth infection is untreatable

As early as 2023, roughly one in six bacterial infections worldwide did not respond to treatment with standard antibiotics. This figure was first established by experts from the WHO’s Global Antimicrobial Resistance Surveillance System (GLASS), who analyzed more than 23 million confirmed cases of infections from 104 countries.

In 2023, roughly one in six bacterial infections worldwide did not respond to treatment with standard antibiotics

In other words, if 60 bacterial infections are identified in a hospital in a given day, around 10 of them are caused by bacteria against which standard antibiotics no longer work. Doctors are being forced to look for emergency alternative treatment options — and these are becoming increasingly scarce.

Previously, specialists possessed only partial assessments of the situation: reports from individual countries and hospitals, data on specific bacteria, or mortality projections. However, in 2015, the World Health Organization created the global GLASS surveillance system, which has since been collecting and systematizing data worldwide.

What was measured and how

GLASS specialists examined 23 million confirmed cases of infections from 104 countries. They focused on eight main types of bacteria that cause four common types of infections: bloodstream infections (sepsis), intestinal infections, urinary tract infections, and gonorrhea.

In simple terms, when a person was admitted to a hospital with an infection, doctors first determined which bacterium had caused the illness. They then tested which antibiotics worked against it and which no longer did. All these data from dozens of countries were transmitted to the international GLASS system, which collected them in one place.

In total, experts obtained 93 “infection type – bacterium – antibiotic” combinations and, using statistical modeling, calculated adjusted estimates of resistance to 22 antibiotics. It is precisely on this vast database – more than 23 million cases – that the figure emerged: every sixth confirmed bacterial infection worldwide turned out to be resistant to antibiotics.

Where the problem is most acute

Antibiotic resistance varies significantly by region. The worst situation is in Southeast Asia and the Eastern Mediterranean countries,where around every third recorded infection is resistant, while in Africa, roughly every fifth infection is resistant. According to a 2024 study in The Lancet, the largest number of deaths from antibiotic-resistant infections is expected in South Asia – in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, where 11.8 million deaths from such infections are projected between 2025 and 2050.

The World Health Organization directly states that antibiotic resistance is more common and grows faster in areas where healthcare systems lack the capacity for diagnosis and treatment.

Antibiotic resistance is more common and grows faster where healthcare systems lack the capacity for diagnosis and treatment

Why is the situation worse in some regions than in others? First, weak laboratory capacity: when it is not possible to quickly determine which bacterium caused the illness, doctors prescribe antibiotics “blindly,” thereby accelerating the emergence of resistant bacteria. Second, medications: even if a diagnosis is made, a patient may be prescribed an antibiotic that already works poorly against local bacteria simply because there is no alternative. Third, weak oversight: in hospitals where hygiene rules are poorly observed and infection control is lacking, resistant bacteria spread more quickly.

“Nightmare bacteria”: E. coli and Klebsiella

Among all resistant bacteria, two worry doctors the most: E. coli (Escherichia coli) and Klebsiella pneumoniae, a bacterium that can cause pneumonia and bloodstream infections. These two alone are most often responsible for severe infections that do not respond to treatment.

Both bacteria belong to the so-called Gram-negative group, meaning that they have a special protective outer membrane that many antibiotics struggle to penetrate. According to global estimates, more than 40% of isolated E. coli samples and over 55% of Klebsiella samples are already resistant to third-generation cephalosporins — the sort of antibiotics that doctors have long used as the main treatment for such infections, a kind of “first line of defense.”

In Africa, resistance to these drugs already exceeds 70%. Even more alarming, however, is the fact that “last-resort antibiotics” are also becoming ineffective. This refers to carbapenems, which are reserved for the most severe cases, in which standard treatments are powerless.

In September 2025, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) published an alarming report: the number of carbapenem-resistant infections in the United States rose by 69% from 2019 to 2023. An especially dangerous type of such bacteria — those carrying the NDM gene, which destroys even carbapenems — showed an increase of 461%. Doctors have dubbed them “nightmare bacteria” due to the fact that there are virtually no effective drugs left against them.

Gonorrhea, one of the most common sexually transmitted infections, also risks becoming incurable. According to World Health Organization data from November 2025, resistance of gonococcus to ceftriaxone, the last recommended antibiotic, increased from 0.8% in 2022 to 5% in 2024. In some countries in Southeast Asia, the increase has been sixfold. At present, only one class of antibiotics remains effective against gonorrhea.

Not just a problem for the seriously ill

Antibiotic resistance is a common problem that affects routine medical procedures. Antibiotics are needed for any surgery: cesarean sections, cancer treatment, organ transplants — any instance in which the body is weakened and vulnerable to infection. If antibiotics stop working, all these routine medical procedures become life-threatening.

If antibiotics do not work, routine medical procedures become life-threatening

Here is a simple example: urinary tract infections (cystitis) are one of the most common reasons for visiting a doctor, especially among women. In the past, such infections were easily treated with a pill. But in the United States, the resistance to antibiotics of bacteria causing cystitis increased by more than 50% from 2013 to 2019. More and more patients with ordinary cystitis now have to be hospitalized and treated with intravenous antibiotics.

The World Health Organization emphasizes that without effective antibiotics, medical interventions such as organ transplants, cesarean sections, chemotherapy, and diabetes treatment would become significantly more dangerous.

The economic implications are enormous. In the European Union alone, antibiotic resistance costs about €11.7 billion per year due to treatment expenses and productivity losses.

39 million deaths by 2050

In September 2024, The Lancet published the largest study in the history of the problem — an analysis of data from 204 countries over 30 years. The results were alarming: from 1990 to 2021, more than one million people died each year from antibiotic-resistant infections. By 2050, if nothing changes, the annual death toll will increase to 1.91 million. In total, more than 39 million people could die from such infections between 2025 and 2050. Already, more people die from antibiotic-resistant infections each year than from HIV/AIDS and malaria combined.

The greatest burden will fall on the elderly, as mortality from resistant infections among people over 70 has increased by more than 80% over the past 30 years and will continue to rise. Among children under five, however, the situation has improved, with mortality cut in half thanks to vaccination and improved sanitation. According to researchers’ estimates, improving the quality of medical care and access to antibiotics could save up to 92 million lives over the same period.

The GLASS report shows a global trend, but it is still too early to determine whether it provides a complete picture worldwide. From 2016 to 2023, the number of participating countries increased more than fourfold from 25 to 104, but nearly half of the world’s countries still have not submitted any data at all. And among those that have, many still lack sufficiently developed surveillance systems for the data to be considered fully reliable.

The paradox is that the most affected regions produce the poorest data, simply because they lack laboratories and specialists. This means that the real situation is most likely even worse than the report suggests.

What is being done: new drugs and early signs of hope

Amid all these alarming data, there is some encouraging news. In December 2025, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved Zoliflodacin – the first new antibiotic for treating gonorrhea in decades. It belongs to an entirely new class of drugs and works differently from all existing antibiotics. This is important because gonorrhea has already learned to withstand all currently available medications.

However, the development of new antibiotics is lagging behind the pace at which resistance is spreading. According to a 2026 report by the Access to Medicine Foundation, only 60 antibiotic development projects are being conducted by major pharmaceutical companies in 2026, compared to 92 in 2021. And there is a particularly acute shortage of medicines for children: only 5 of the 35 drugs in development are intended for those under five.

Why accurate data matter

It may seem that precise figures are a concern only for scientists. In reality, they determine which antibiotics a country will purchase, what recommendations doctors will receive, and where funding allocated to address the problem will go.

Surveillance data allow countries to more accurately procure antibiotics and diagnostic tools, revise clinical guidelines, and establish rational antibiotic use. This is precisely why the World Health Organization is developing the GLASS system: it sets unified standards, ensures data are comparable, and makes it possible to track where and in which bacteria resistance is growing most rapidly.

Antibiotic resistance is not only a concern for doctors and scientists. And there are a few simple steps everyone can take in order to mitigate the problem:

• Refrain from taking antibiotics for every cold or acute respiratory viral infection. Antibiotics do not work against viruses – they help only with bacterial infections. Every unnecessary use of antibiotics “trains” bacteria to become resistant.
• If a doctor prescribes antibiotics, complete the full course. Do not stop treatment as soon as you feel better. An incomplete course allows the most resistant bacteria to survive.
• Do not share antibiotics with others.
• Get vaccinated. Vaccination prevents infections and therefore reduces the need for antibiotics.

Time to act

In the past, antibiotic resistance was discussed in abstract terms — everyone knew it existed somewhere, but there were no precise figures quantifying the scale of the problem. Now there are, and they show that this is not some distant threat of the future, but a reality that doctors are already facing today when treating pneumonia, intestinal infections, cystitis, gonorrhea, and postoperative complications.

“Antimicrobial resistance is outpacing advances in modern medicine, threatening the health of families worldwide,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, head of the World Health Organization, said. From this point on, the conversation about the future of antibiotics will be a conversation about the present of medicine.

The party did not specify the reasons for the decision. In March, however, Krieger-Dadaev was in Russia’s Chechnya, visiting the capital city of Grozny and his native village of Samashki. As IStories previously reported, he attended a session of the republic’s parliament with head of Chechnya Ramzan Kadyrov and presented a Luftwaffe dagger bearing a Nazi-era swastika to Chechnya’s deputy prime minister, Akhmed Dudaev.

Krieger also met with Zamid Chalaev, commander of the Akhmat Kadyrov Police Special Regiment. Chalaev has been linked by the media to extrajudicial killings in the region. In addition, Krieger participated in an automatic rifle training session with Chechen special forces instructor Husen Alkhanov.

It is unknown whether Krieger-Dadaev remains in Chechnya or if he plans to return to Germany. He previously claimed to hold dual citizenship of Russia and Germany.

This past December, Noah Krieger was the subject of an investigation by IStories and Correctiv. Journalists established that Krieger’s real name is Murad Dadaev and that he is a native of Chechnya. He used to promote pro-Kremlin narratives within the AfD and ran a popular Instagram blog. After the investigation was published, he was evicted from a rented villa in Hanover, where local party cell meetings were held. As it turned out, he had not been paying rent and had occupied the building without the owner’s consent.

Murad's brother, Suleyman Dadaev, was convicted in Austria in the case of the murder of former Kadyrov bodyguard Umar Israilov, who was killed in Vienna in 2009. According to IStories, in Germany Krieger also maintained contacts with members of the Chechen diaspora who are connected to Kadyrov’s circle and criminal networks.

In 2025, the AfD had already taken disciplinary measures against other party members over their ties to Russia. Hamburg parliament member Robert Risch was expelled from the faction after attending a congress of far-right and neo-Nazi organizations in Saint Petersburg that was organized by billionaire Konstantin Malofeev, who helped sponsor the Russian forces that invaded Crimea and Donbas in 2014.

According to the case files, the GRU targeted routers that did not comply with modern security protocols. After gaining access to the devices, the hackers redirected their traffic through a pre-established network of DNS servers. The devices were then used to collect passwords, authentication tokens, and other sensitive information, including emails. During the operation, more than 100 servers were blocked and hundreds of routers in Ukraine alone were removed from the control of the Russian intelligence service.

“The enemy intended to use the obtained data in cyberattacks, information sabotage, and for intelligence gathering. Of particular interest to Russian intelligence was correspondence between employees and military personnel of government agencies, units of the Ukrainian Defense Forces, and enterprises in the defense-industrial complex,” the SBU stated.

Meanwhile, the FBI stated that personnel from the 85th Main Special Service Center of the Russian Defense Ministry (Military Unit 26165), described as the GRU’s hacking division, have been collecting login credentials and exploiting router vulnerabilities worldwide since at least 2024. The FBI noted that this activity has been carried out by the hacking group APT28, also known as Fancy Bear and Forest Blizzard.

Last year, the United Kingdom accused APT28 of conducting a large-scale cyber operation aimed at tracking deliveries of Western aid to Ukraine. According to a joint report by the UK National Cyber Security Centre, U.S. intelligence agencies, and several European countries, GRU hackers gained access to more than 10,000 cameras located near military facilities, railway hubs, and border crossings.

In 2017, The Insider proved that the APT28 group included personnel from GRU Military Unit 26165. A year later, this was confirmed by the U.S. Department of Justice, which formally indicted the hackers. APT28’s most infamous operation was the 2016 hack of Democratic Party servers, carried out to help Donald Trump defeat Hillary Clinton in that year’s presidential election. Trump did not hide the fact that he had used information obtained through the hack for his own political purposes.

APT28 carried out cyberattacks against the White House and other targets in the United States, as well as against the foreign ministries of the Czech Republic, Poland, Germany, Italy, Latvia, Estonia, Ukraine, Norway, the Netherlands, and other countries, along with the defense ministries of Denmark, Italy, and Germany, plus the Bundestag, NATO, the OSCE, the IOC, WADA, the investigative team examining the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17, and several foreign media outlets, including TV5Monde and Al Jazeera. The same hackers also targeted dozens of Russian opposition figures, NGO members, and journalists, including staff of The Insider, as independently confirmed by four information security companies.

According to the Lithuanian investigation, the group targeted two people: a 46-year-old Russian activist from an “independent Russian republic” who had received political asylum in Lithuania, and a Lithuanian political adviser known for anti-Russian statements and actions. Neither killing took place. Lithuanian police detained several suspects on March 12, 2025, before the plan could be carried out.

Investigators say members of the group gathered information on the potential victims, followed them, photographed them, and filmed them. Under the hood of the car of the Lithuanian political adviser, Voria reported, investigators found a tracking device that had been used to monitor his movements. In addition, according to the investigation, one of the suspects may have gained unauthorized access to the Russian activist’s electronic systems.

The indictment reviewed by Voria names several citizens of multiple countries, including one Georgian citizen, one Ukrainian citizen, two Belarusian citizens, two Lithuanian citizens, and at least four people linked to Greece (three Greek citizens and one person holding dual Greek and Russian citizenship). Voria separately noted that the Greece-linked suspects, judging by the case materials, were not the main organizers. The 55-year-old man detained in Thessaloniki is described as an ethnic Greek originally from Georgia, but his citizenship was not reported.

Investigators consider the main suspects to be the people who coordinated surveillance of both targets and prepared the killings. According to the investigation, the direct perpetrators were to be paid 40,000 euros. The reports differ, however, on the payment promised to the organizer. Voria said it was 10,000 euros, while Delfi reported 50,000 euros. Both reports agree that 5,000 euros had already been transferred for the initial stage of preparation, which involved documents and travel to Lithuania.

The 55-year-old man detained in Thessaloniki is accused of arranging the transfer of that money through intermediaries. In addition, according to Voria, on Feb. 20, 2025, two Greeks from Georgia sent money through an international transfer system with an office on Aristotelous Square in Thessaloniki to another ethnic Greek from Russia. One of those senders was later detained.

Another suspect with a Greek name is said to have helped recover part of the money. And a different Greece-linked suspect is alleged to have found and contacted a Lithuanian who was supposed to obtain a weapon for the killing, though that plan was never completed. A more important role, Voria reported, may have been played by the suspect with dual Greek and Russian citizenship.

According to the Greek outlet, a key participant in the case may be in another European country, believed to be Germany. The investigation is continuing elsewhere in Europe, and Lithuanian law enforcement agencies have not ruled out further arrests.

A court in Greece has already approved the detained man’s extradition to Lithuania, but he is challenging the decision and plans to appeal to Greece’s Supreme Court. He denies the accusations and says his life would be in danger if he were extradited to Lithuania.

British cybersecurity experts have observed that alleged Russian threat actors are targeting routers manufactured by MikroTik and TP-Link. Once they gain access to the devices, the hackers modify their settings so that outgoing internet traffic is routed through servers under their control. Attacks of this kind put victims at risk of credential theft, data manipulation, and broader system compromise, the NCSC warning states.

Paul Chichester, the center’s chief operating officer, said the malicious activity clearly demonstrates that vulnerabilities in widely used network devices can be exploited by hostile actors. Alongside the NCSC publication, the U.S. company Lumen Technologies released its own study of APT28’s router-hacking campaign. Experts identified thousands of potential victims residing in at least 120 countries. The report states:

“These operations primarily targeted government agencies — including ministries of foreign affairs, law enforcement and third-party email providers.”

As Bloomberg reports, last month the U.S. Federal Communications Commission banned the sale of new foreign-made consumer routers in the country, calling them a “supply-chain vulnerability” that could pose a “severe cybersecurity risk that could be leveraged to immediately and severely disrupt U.S. critical infrastructure and directly harm U.S. persons.”

Last year, France accused GRU hackers from the APT28 group of attacks on its critical infrastructure, as detailed in the CERT-FR report covering 2021 to 2024. It was established that the group is linked to GRU unit 26165 — information later confirmed by the U.S. Department of Justice, which filed official charges against its members.

Colonel Zarudnev was born in 1977 in the city of Volzhsk in Russia’s Volgograd Region. He began his service in the GRU’s 232nd Separate Special-Purpose Radio Battalion (Military Unit 30734), located in the city of Ostrogozhsk in the Voronezh Region. The unit’s personnel engaged in electronic intelligence and supplied intercepted data to the General Staff. In 2011, he enrolled in the Frunze Military Academy, and enforcement orders from Russia’s Federal Bailiff Service regarding loan debts and traffic fines were sent to his address at the officers’ dormitory, address 4 Devichye Pole Lane. After graduating from the academy, Zarudnev successfully passed tests and special screenings before enrolling in the 2nd Faculty of Agent-Operational Intelligence at the Military-Diplomatic Academy (MDA), which trains officers for service in military attaché offices. As shown by flight records, Zarudnev began flying regularly to Hungary starting in 2015.

Over the course of 10 years of espionage, Zarudnev has built up a large network of agents within the Hungarian army and intelligence services, as well as among politicians and public figures. A source from the GRU shared some details with The Insider about the resident agent’s life in Budapest:

“As far as I know, Alexei Alexandrovich has very good operational results in this country, and they value him at Khoroshevka [GRU headquarters]. I think that if Orbán wins, Zarudnev will be promoted to general — even if he had a very hard time learning Hungarian. Misha Zhevagin from our residency in Hungary tutored him, and they were, as they say, thick as thieves. They would often gather over a cup of tea and sing ‘And on his chest shone a medal for the city of Budapest.’ Unfortunately, Misha messed up somewhere along the line and was transferred to Kyrgyzstan as an advisor to the ambassador.”

Military Attaché Zarudnev is often seen at official events at the Russian Embassy — laying wreaths at the graves of Soviet soldiers and greeting holiday guests alongside Ambassador Yevgeny Stanislavov. He is also involved in restoring military burial sites, building ties with Hungarian officials and military personnel in the process.

Among the local activists who regularly attend events featuring Colonel Zarudnev are the leader of the “Hungarian Circle of Peace” Endre Shimo, who promotes pro-Kremlin narratives. Others include the head of the Hungarian League of Anti-Fascists, Tamás Hirschler, as well as the former Hungarian ambassador to Russia, György Gilyán.

The latter heads the “Hungary-Russia” Society for Culture and Friendship and participates in the work of the “Russian World” Foundation, led by Vyacheslav Nikonov, the grandson of Stalin’s People’s Commissar Vyacheslav Molotov and the leader of the group of Duma deputies that recently visited Washington. On top of everything else, Gilyán visits Russia as a foreign observer for various elections, noting their “high level of organization and transparency.”

Among the other “friends of the Kremlin,” it is worth noting the head of the local branch of the Imperial Orthodox Palestinian Society (IOPS), Tamás Serbin, and his deputy, Mikhail Shubik, who frequently fly to Russia and report to IOPS head Sergei Stepashin (Russia’s former prime minister and the head of the FSB from 1994 to 1995) on the work they have done.

Meanwhile, as The Insider has discovered, the Zarudnev family has its own skeletons in the closet. In 2009, Colonel Zarudnev’s wife Natalia was listed on Russia’s federal wanted list under two counts of criminal activity: “giving false testimony” and “commercial bribery” (as part of criminal case No. 26451).

The case was initiated by the Tambov Regional Department of Internal Affairs, but it was not possible to ascertain the details. Zarudneva previously worked at Giprozdrav-Region LLC, the Stimul Charitable Society for the Disabled, and Moscow School No. 1409. She is now assigned to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. As for how the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ HR department failed to notice these details, one can only speculate.

Zarudneva’s deputy, GRU Major Vadim Yurchenko (who also graduated from the 2nd Faculty of the Military Academy) is also involved in the campaign. He oversees veterans’ organizations in Hungary and is a frequent guest at the Russian-language “Alphabet” school in Budapest. Yurchenko hands out St. George’s ribbons to children and tells them how bravely Russian soldiers are fighting the “Nazis” in Ukraine. The school receives its funding from the “Alfavit” Foundation, which is headed by one Rita Khasanova, a native of Kazan.

Sergei Lelyuk, the Russian Federation’s trade representative in Hungary, also seems to have been brought into the “election race.” Colonel Lelyuk is actually a career officer in the GRU, beginning his service in the Main Missile and Artillery Directorate of the Ministry of Defense (Military Unit 64176). After graduating from the Military Academy, Lelyuk was sent to Switzerland, then transferred to Budapest as a trade representative. His phone records are full of numbers belonging to other such “trade representatives,” and he himself is listed in his colleagues’ phones as “Sergei Crypto.”

The Insider examined Colonel Zarudnev’s phone records and discovered the numbers of career GRU officers from Military Unit 45807 (i.e. those spying under diplomatic cover at other Russian embassies). The list includes the number of Tigran Garibyan, Minister Counselor at the Russian Embassy in Budapest. He is the son-in-law of the late Viktor Zimin, a long-time head of the Republic of Khakassia who earned the nickname “the Kremlin’s chief huntsman.”

In Khakassia, Zimin built the elite “Karatash” resort, which was closed to outsiders and nicknamed “Disneyland” by locals. Putin, along with an entourage that might include former bodyguard Alexei Dyumin, ex-Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, and various governors, MPs, and intelligence generals, would come to “Disneyland” to hunt, grill meat, and relax in the sauna. Important state matters and personnel appointments were discussed over vodka in the steam room.

Putin, Alexei Dyumin, Sergei Shoigu, and various governors, MPs, and intelligence generals would all come to “Disneyland” to hunt, grill meat, and relax in the sauna

Thanks to his father-in-law’s connections, Garibyan was admitted to the Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO), and after graduation, he was placed in the central apparatus of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Since 2006, he has regularly flown to Budapest, and since 2019, he has consistently served as an interpreter during Putin’s negotiations with Orbán. In 2023, the “hunter’s father-in-law” was appointed Minister Counselor to the Russian diplomatic mission, becoming Putin’s “overseer” for Hungary.

“Thanks to his connections in the Kremlin, Tigran Levonovich is the top dog at the embassy, while Ambassador Stanislavov plays the role of a figurehead. Everyone at the embassy understands that if the opposition wins, Stanislavov will be made the scapegoat, and his long-standing friendship with Presidential Advisor [Yuri] Ushakov, with whom they worked at the UN, won’t help him,” a Foreign Ministry official told The Insider.

A recent article by The Washington Post reported that Garibyan is actively involved in the Kremlin’s campaign to support Orbán and his Fidesz party, instructing pro-government Hungarian journalists on how to convince voters that Orbán is the only candidate capable of defending Hungary’s sovereignty.

In his propaganda work, Garibyan relies on the experience of Ekaterina Nedzvetskaya, an expert on Hungary and the embassy's first secretary. She is the daughter of Valentin Nedzvetsky, a renowned literary scholar and Moscow State University professor who died in 2014. At the embassy, Nedzvetskaya monitors social media and local media outlets and promotes pro-Kremlin content.

Incidentally, Ekaterina's husband, 62-year-old Mikhail Kulyasov, is also in Budapest. Embassy staff call him “the most mysterious figure” and do not know what he does, but both Colonel Zarudnev and Garibyan appear to treat him with great respect. Kulyasov does not hold any official position at the diplomatic mission, yet he has been assigned a personal vehicle.

This is because, as The Insider has discovered, Kulyasov is a foreign intelligence officer and heads the SVR’s residency in Hungary. In 1993, he graduated from the SVR Academy (Military Unit 21247) and spent several years spying under the cover of a Russian trade representative in EU countries. After that, he was assigned to Rosoboronexport, Russia’s state-owned intermediary for international trade in military and dual-use products.

Hungarian counterintelligence may have identified Kulyasov long ago, but it appears to have been barred from taking operational action against him.

Garibyan’s team also includes TASS correspondent Ivan Lebedev and VGTRK correspondent Denis Davydov, who broadcast reports about how the “courageous” Orban refused to take part in Europe’s wave of so-called anti-Russian hysteria. Both had previously worked in the United States before being reassigned to Budapest. In 2024, Putin awarded Lebedev the Medal of the Order “For Merit to the Fatherland,” Second Class, “for his major contribution to the development of Russian journalism.”

Davydov, another pro-Kremlin journalist, began his professional career in Kazan, then worked for the propaganda outlets Life.ru, the Mir TV channel, the Izvestia newspaper, and the Daily Storm internet portal. He directed the documentary “People of Alpha” about the FSB’s eponymous special forces section. He recently received an apartment near the GRU complex on Khoroshevskoye Avenue in Moscow.

From 1.5 trillion to 180 billion rubles

The name “Sfera” (lit. “Sphere”) was first mentioned by Vladimir Putin in June 2018, the day after Roscosmos presented a project for a multi-satellite broadband internet constellation called “Efir” (“Ether”). Comments quickly appeared online suggesting that the president had simply confused the names and said “Sfera” instead of “Efir.” However, Roscosmos officials hurried to explain that Sfera was an all-in-one comprehensive system — internet, satellite imaging, and navigation — while Efir was only its internet component. It seemed that Roscosmos had decided to gather virtually all new civilian satellite projects into Sfera, regardless of their purpose, design, or orbit.

The first cost estimates for Sfera were initially announced at 300 billion rubles, but this appears to have been an estimate for Efir alone, because Roscosmos said it expected to attract “extra-budgetary financing,” meaning the project’s real cost would have been higher. The estimate for Sfera later rose to 1.5 trillion rubles, which was meant to cover the production and launch of 640 satellites by 2030. Later, the amount was cut to 800 billion rubles. Throughout the prewar years, the expected funding for Sfera kept shrinking, as did the promised number of satellites.

Roscosmos saw Sfera as one of the pillars of its development over the coming decade, and the project was expected to keep design bureaus, industrial enterprises, and rocket production facilities busy. But the ambitions of the space sector were constantly restrained by Russia’s Finance Ministry.

By 2022, Roscosmos had estimated the project’s cost at 180 billion rubles for 162 satellites through 2030. The government promised to allocate 95 billion rubles, but has so far managed to provide only 40 billion over three years.

Efir is dead, long live Sfera

The planned 162 satellites were roughly equal to the number of active Russian spacecraft already in orbit. In other words, Sfera could more accurately be described as a 10-year program to renew Russia’s satellite constellation, rather than as a monumental new unified system.

Usually, a constellation refers to satellites with the same function and design, controlled by a single operator. However, the Roscosmos Sfera project also included, for example, Yamal and Smotr spacecraft from the formally independent Gazprom Space Systems project. The Ministry of Digital Development-operated Express satellites were also part of the plan, even though that ministry is separate from Roscosmos. Some of the projects placed inside Sfera duplicate one another, while others compete with one another.

From the moment Sfera was announced, the proposed makeup of the system was constantly changing. First, the navigation system GLONASS was excluded from the project, apparently because of its military role. Given the success of Starlink and OneWeb on the one hand, and the sanctions imposed on Roscosmos after the 2014 annexation of Crimea on the other, it became clear that Efir had no commercial prospects on the world market. Russia’s domestic market, meanwhile, was too narrow for the system to ever pay for itself. Even such supposedly “extra-budgetary” investors as VEB and Gazprom refused to invest in Efir, and the project was effectively shut down in 2021.

Even such supposedly “extra-budgetary” investors as VEB and Gazprom refused to invest in Efir

Roscosmos hoped that Sfera would receive financing from new national programs tied to Russia’s digitalization and Arctic development. At the same time, when asked directly about whether the project could ever survive without government subsidies, Roscosmos representatives responded with vague talk about new jobs, an infrastructure project, and its multiplier and synergy effects. In other words, even at an early stage and in peacetime, Sfera was never intended to become a commercial rival to Starlink.

Although Efir failed to win support, the task of broadband internet access remained within Sfera, as did satellite imaging projects. By the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Sfera consisted of 10 projects: five telecommunications systems and five for Earth observation.

Roscosmos did not disclose how the 40 billion rubles allocated to Sfera were spent, but the most likely explanation is that the money was put toward building and launching geostationary Express satellites for the Digital Development Ministry. Even so, the first launch was the small Skif-D prototype. When it finally went up in October 2022, Roscosmos rushed to report that Sfera was beginning to move from concept to reality.

The death of Skif

The Skif satellite constellation project emerged on the initiative of Zond-Holding LLC as a Russian version of the international O3b system. The difference lay in orbit inclination: the O3b’s orbit is close to the equator, while the Russian version was projected to run “across it” in a near-polar orbit. Plans called for six to 12 satellites, depending on the geographic area of use. If Skif were used only within Russia and other northern countries, six satellites would be enough. If global coverage were the goal, 12 would be needed.

That seems like a very small number compared with Starlink’s thousands of satellites, but there is a major difference in orbital altitude — Starlink operates at 550 kilometers, while Skif satellites were set to orbit at 8,070 kilometers. That height difference also affects the size of ground stations. Skif requires antennas 1.8 and 2.4 meters in diameter, meaning its likely customers are not individual users, but mobile operators, remote settlements, and passenger ships. Such an antenna could not be mounted even on a large drone.

Skif faced obvious obstacles even before the war in Ukraine. The first six Skif satellites could have provided stable communications only to the sparsely populated northern regions of the world, which represent too small a market. Launching the next six satellites would have made sense only if there had been confirmed international demand for the first generation. But the advance of global competitors and the tightening of sanctions in 2022 left Skif with virtually no chance of survival.

The Skif project was not included in the national “Space” project that began in 2025, and it has effectively been shut down.

The fate of “Marathon IoT”

The same fate awaited another ambitious project that Roscosmos once promoted with pride. Reshetnev Information Satellite Systems, a major Russian manufacturer, had been actively working on a Sfera-related project called Marathon IoT — a low-orbit, multi-satellite “internet of things” system intended to transmit small volumes of data, above all telemetry from instruments, aircraft, ships, cars, and the like. The satellites, weighing about 50 kilograms each, were supposed to be assembled in series like Starlink satellites, something no one in Russia had done before.

In 2022, Roscosmos released upbeat videos hailing the start of mass production. After the shutdown of Efir, Marathon IoT was supposed to become the largest constellation within Sfera. The plan called for launching 264 satellites, with the first useful operations in an experimental mode expected in 2025. Last year, however, the project was effectively shut down after being excluded from the national Space project.

After the shutdown of Efir, Marathon IoT was supposed to become the largest constellation within Sfera

What remained were only the high-orbit Express, Express-RV, and Yamal projects, which Roscosmos does not actually own or operate, serving only as a contractor for the Digital Development Ministry and Gazprom.

Express and Yamal are geostationary communications and television broadcasting systems. Their satellites are meant to operate in high circular orbit, about 36,000 kilometers above Earth. At that altitude, a satellite effectively hangs over the planet’s surface and acts as a stationary relay.

Express-RV is a more complex system, requiring movable antennas that track the satellite as it slowly moves relative to Earth along a highly elliptical orbit.

Geostationary communications systems work better in southern regions, while a highly elliptical system is better suited to northern regions and the Arctic. In all cases, using such systems on the ground requires bulky receiving stations that are unsuitable for combat use or for controlling medium-size or small drones. In short, despite having Starlink as a potential model to copy, Roscosmos went in a different direction.

Bureau 1440

In 2020, a company called Megafon 1440 effectively began developing its own version of Starlink. It started as a project office within Russian telecoms operator Megafon, where newly hired specialists worked to determine the most effective and competitive architecture for a satellite constellation. As the project advanced, the team developed a clearer understanding of the Russian industry’s technical capabilities, the space sector’s limits, and the needs of potential customers.

Megafon invested 6 billion rubles in the project over the first two years. That allowed the company to recruit a strong young team and offer salaries that were competitive even when compared with the compensation on offer at Russian IT giants such as Yandex and Mail.Ru. The company’s effective hiring policy led the head of Roscosmos to openly complain in a speech to the State Duma in 2024 that private companies were “taking the best people.”

In 2022, after the start of the full-scale war, Megafon was sanctioned by the U.S. government. As a result, its satellite-building division was turned into a separate legal entity, Bureau 1440, and transferred into the X Holding group. X Holding manufactures and supplies equipment for mobile operators, but it is also involved in internet monitoring and blocking systems in Russia and, according to some reports, is linked to the FSB.

In 2023, Bureau 1440 launched three satellites from the Rassvet-1 series into space as part of an effort to test the performance of its spacecraft, propulsion systems, and telecommunications payload. The tests were successful. The next generation, Rassvet-2, also consisting of three satellites, was launched and tested in 2024. This time, the company was carrying out a trial run for advanced inter-satellite laser communication technology, which is meant to improve the stability of the entire system by making it less dependent on ground stations. The tests were once again successful.

Under current plans, the Rassvet constellation is projected to include 250 satellites by 2027, 750 by 2030, and 900 by 2035. That is significantly fewer than the American Starlink system has now, meaning it would be more accurate to compare Rassvet to the international OneWeb project, which currently has about 650 satellites.

Starlink is aimed primarily at the mass consumer, and the provision of the services it offers requires high capacity from the constellation and the ability to work with large numbers of users on the ground. In order to meet the company’s constantly growing demand, new launches are a necessity. Starlink also offers a small, inexpensive ground terminal, which has proved especially valuable in wartime, including for operating large drones.

OneWeb, by contrast, is oriented toward larger customers: transport and telecommunications companies, along with banks and governments. Its terminals are therefore larger and more expensive, making them unsuitable for combat drones.

Bureau 1440 initially sought to emulate the OneWeb business model, providing services for state-owned airline Aeroflot and railway company Russian Railways. Today, however, the company’s main customer is clearly Russia’s Defense Ministry. It can be expected that plans for Rassvet will be revised in the direction of Starlink, both in terms of the number of satellites and the technology of ground terminals.

Plans for Rassvet will be revised in the direction of Starlink, both in terms of the number of satellites and the technology of ground terminals

After completing tests of the satellites’ key systems, Bureau 1440 scheduled the first launch of a large group of 16 Rassvet spacecraft from Plesetsk for the end of 2025. These were supposed to begin forming a full-fledged constellation. However, the launch was postponed to 2026, reportedly because the satellites were not ready. According to rumors, “captured” parts from OneWeb satellites that Roscosmos left at Baikonur in February 2022 after breaking a launch contract were used to build the first batch.

At the beginning of 2026, after Russian forces in Ukraine lost access to Starlink, the military’s need for domestic alternatives became acute. That means Bureau 1440 can be certain that orders will come.

Financing is also not a problem. Under the national Data Economy project, Bureau 1440 has been promised 102.8 billion rubles from the federal budget. In addition, the company has allocated 329 billion rubles of its own funds to the project through 2030.

Now the well-resourced Bureau 1440 team will have to overcome the next technological barrier: scaling up. Given the prevalence of U.S. and European sanctions on modern microelectronics, and amid a shortage of available electronic components (which are needed first and foremost by Russia’s military industry to make modern weapons), setting up serial production of satellites will be an extremely difficult task.

Today, serial satellite production has been mastered by only a few American and Chinese companies: Starlink and OneWeb, Qianfan and Guowang. Roscosmos never managed to do it with Marathon IoT, even if some of its less-than-successful experiences may provide useful lessons for Bureau 1440.

Still, the pace of Rassvet’s deployment clearly falls short of what Russia’s Defense Ministry needs. At the same time, Elon Musk’s decision to help Ukraine cut off Russian troops’ access to Starlink has made the development of a domestic alternative an even higher priority for the Kremlin.

Meanwhile, the Roscosmos Sfera project, conceived in peacetime largely for civilian use, is receding into the shadows. Such initiatives are of little interest to a militarized state that looks set to remain at war for the foreseeable future. 

Since 2012, the incomes of Russian doctors and teachers have been determined by Vladimir Putin’s “May decrees” of 2012, in which the president ordered that the average salary of school teachers be brought up to the regional average. For doctors, university lecturers, and researchers, an even higher bar was set — 200% of the regional average salary, to be reached by 2018. As early as 2017, Putin reported that at least 93% of the stated targets had been achieved, and the decrees formally remain in force — even if the authorities now prefer not to mention them publicly.

In the 1990s, doctors and teachers fell victim to an empty treasury and had numerous justifiable grievances with the system, and even in the 2000s, despite rising oil prices, schools and clinics still received negligible funding. After the “May decrees,” public-sector wages finally increased, although this was achieved not only through higher budget allocations, but also thanks to a heavier workload: public-sector workers were compelled to put in overtime and deal with constantly changing rules, all under the guidance of strict top-down oversight.

After the “May decrees,” public-sector wages rose, but workers faced overtime, constantly changing rules, and strict top-down oversight

The decrees were part of Vladimir Putin’s 2012 election campaign, and when he sought another presidential term in 2018, he reported that the targets had largely been met, introducing a new set of “May decrees” with different goals. Nevertheless, the previous decrees were never repealed, and official statistical monitoring of their implementation continued. At the same time, both in official rhetoric and in public attention, the “May decrees” lost their former prominence. A chart based on Google Trends data shows that with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, they were largely forgotten. Interest in the topic returned only in 2024, when Putin was again “re-elected” and issued a third series of “May decrees.” Meanwhile, starting in 2020, the ratio of teachers’ and doctors’ salaries to the national average began to slide back toward its previous levels.

After the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the authorities oscillated between periods characterized by the slogans “everything for the front” and “life as usual,” but in 2025–2026 the motto “macroeconomic stability above all” ultimately took precedence. By adopting a 2026 budget featuring minimal spending growth, the Kremlin seemed to identify inflation as the main economic threat and thus declared a freeze on expenditures — even, nominally at least, when it came to military spending. For the private sector, this has meant higher taxes and fewer government contracts, while for those employed in state institutions, it has meant even greater administrative pressure. In real terms, spending on healthcare and education has declined since the start of the full-scale war, making it clear that the requirements of the “May decrees” have been definitively abandoned.

War is no decree

Formally, from 2015 to 2020, the “May decrees” pertaining to teachers’ pay were largely met from 2015 to 2020, and for doctors the same held true from 2019 through 2022. In specific regions, however, the situation varied widely, with some outliers consistently failing to reach the targets.

During the full-scale invasion, amid labor shortages in the industrial sector and massive resources devoted to the defense sector, the national average salary surged by 75%, crossing the threshold of 100,000 rubles ($1,248) per month in 2025.

In order to formally comply with the May decrees, regional budgets would have had to raise doctors’ and teachers’ salaries by the same 75%. However, regional budgets — which account for 73% of school funding while also financing regional hospitals — proved unable to do so.

What has been happening to doctors’ salaries

According to 2025 data, the average monthly salary of doctors in the mandatory health insurance system amounted to 147,000 rubles ($1,834), an increase of 12%. “The indicators correspond to the targets set by the presidential decrees,” claims Ilya Balanin, Chairman of Russia’s Federal Compulsory Medical Insurance Fund. The problem is, Balanin’s statement is not true. In order to meet the decree, the average salary should have exceeded 200,000 rubles ($2,495).

One method of “meeting” the decrees has been the mass exclusion of orderlies and junior nurses from the category of medical workers by reclassifying them as cleaners or technical staff. Formally, this reduces the number of public-sector employees covered by the decrees, making it possible to redistribute the wage fund in favor of doctors. But in the real world, of course, such measures only serve to reduce the quality of patient care.

Rising prices for imported medical supplies and original-brand medicines further limit hospitals’ ability to index wages. In 2025–2026, the budgets of treatment and preventive care facilities finally slipped into deficit.

In addition, higher pay is often achieved simply by increasing doctors’ workload. “On average, a district general practitioner works 1.5 full-time equivalents instead of the recommended 1.2. Each is responsible for 2,800 people — 65% more than the established norm of 1,700. These are people assigned to a single general practitioner within their district,” the project “If to Be Precise” noted.

What has been happening to teachers’ salaries

According to a report by Moscow’s Higher School of Economics, titled “Teacher at the Crossroads of the Russian Labor Market 2025,” in recent years the number of teachers in Russia’s public schools has been declining, while the number of students has been growing, the result of both demographic trends and political decisions.

In the 2010-2011 school year, there were 13.57 million schoolchildren in Russia, and by 2024-2025, that figure had reached 17.99 million, in line with predictable demographic waves. Nevertheless, the increase was not taken into account when hiring teachers, and the peak has already passed. By the start of the 2025-2026 school year, the number of children had declined to 17.54 million, and from now until 2038 it is expected to continue decreasing.

The “May decrees” may have set federally directed salary targets for teachers, but schools are funded primarily at the regional level. In the structure of budget financing for general education institutions in 2024, 73% of such funds came from regional budgets, 18% from local governments, and only 9% from the federal center.

In essence, Vladimir Putin’s 2012 decrees imposed new spending obligations on the regions without giving them the means to generate additional revenue — whether from their own tax intake or from federal transfers.

The regions solved this problem in the simplest way available to them, at least from an arithmetic standpoint: if teachers’ average salaries needed to rise even though funding for wages had not increased, then staff would have to be cut. Needless to say, reducing the number of teachers while the number of students grows increases the workload for those who remain, and the heavier the workload, the fewer people are willing to take such jobs. In 2016, the average Russian teacher was working 1.22 full-time equivalents — already excessive — and by the end of 2024, it had reached an average of 1.44. At the start of the 2025-2026 school year, the figure in large cities was as high as 1.5.

The outflow of teachers is uneven across regions and localities. In the country as a whole the number of teachers declined by only 0.5% between 2016 and 2024, but in rural areas it fell by 9.7%, while in cities it actually increased by 5.2%. The fastest decline has been in Mordovia, where the number of teachers dropped by 17.9%, while staffing levels fell by more than 10% in the republics of Bashkortostan and Komi, as well as in the Kirov, Kurgan, Oryol, Pskov, Smolensk, Tambov, and Ulyanovsk regions, and in the Jewish Autonomous Region and the Nenets Autonomous Okrug.

The Ministry of Education and Science continues to place new obligations on teachers. As the authors of the Higher School of Economics report note, requirements for educators have expanded significantly over the past decade. The professional standard “Teacher,” which codifies these requirements, is constantly being updated, especially in the section concerning homeroom teachers. Teachers are expected not only to conduct lessons, but also to supervise breaks, manage classrooms, and participate in state examinations and methodological activities. There are also requirements related to implementing an “individual approach,” working with parents, educational and upbringing activities, and “innovation,” including digitalization. Even if all this is done at a minimum level, merely for reporting purposes, there is catastrophically little time. A school teacher often works more than 46 hours a week, and up to 17 of those are spent filling out plans and reports.

“Exhausted by an unbearable workload, teachers continue to quit; they are replaced by people off the street whose qualifications at least roughly meet the requirements,” the teachers’ union “Uchitel” commented on this trend.

Looking at specific subjects, the fastest decline has been among chemistry teachers (down 10% nationwide over eight years), as well as physics and computer science teachers (down 6%). The outflow is especially pronounced among mid-career specialists. Over eight years, their share has fallen from 66.8% to 60.9%. At the same time, compared with the 2016-2017 school year, the share of teachers under 35 has barely changed (rising from 22.2% to 22.7%). The proportion of teachers over 60, meanwhile, has increased significantly — from 11% to 16.4%. Across the country as a whole, one in six school teachers is now of retirement age or close to it. In three regions — Pskov, Smolensk, and Kalmykia — the share of such teachers exceeds 25%.

One in six teachers in Russia is either of retirement or close to it

Among subject matter areas, mathematics teachers are the most overburdened. By the end of 2024, there were 1.6 full-time equivalents per teacher, and by September 2025, that figure had already risen to 1.75. In total, staffing schedules at state general education schools provide for 1.6 million teaching positions, even though there are only around 1 million teachers. In other words, the personnel shortage exceeds half a million people. Yet the authorities have no intention of eliminating it: officially, only 16,400 positions are recognized as vacant. The rest are expected to be covered by “multi-role” staff.

Officially, every school is supposed to have at least one teacher of computer science, physics, geography, and biology, and 90% of institutions should also employ a chemistry teacher. In reality, 24% of schools operate without computer science teachers, 15% without physics teachers, 14% without geography teachers, 12% without biology teachers, and as many as 36% without chemistry teachers. The shortage has been noticed even by the authorities: at the end of 2024, State Duma deputy Oksana Dmitrieva stated that 23% of schools lack physics teachers and 43% lack chemistry teachers.

The increase observed over the past year is linked to the recruitment of university students, who are brought into schools before actually completing their studies. This practice began in 2020, but at the time it applied only to teaching majors who had passed intermediate assessments for three years of study. In July 2025, amendments to the law on education extended the practice to all other fields. Students who have completed three years and studied the basics of teaching can now work in schools.

The correspondence between a graduate’s specialty and the subject they teach is determined by the employer — that is, with a school principal’s approval, even a law graduate can be assigned to teach chemistry in the event of a shortage. The amendment entered into force on August 11. The explanatory note to the bill read like a retelling of a Federal Protective Service survey on the shortage of teachers.

Moscow’s largest pedagogical university, Moscow City University, announced that starting from the third year it will introduce a special flexible schedule for students, enabling them to combine their studies with work in schools. In addition, in 2026 around 2,000 university students will, for the first time, be involved in monitoring the Unified State Exam (since 2025, parents of school students have also taken part).

No inconvenient numbers

Since teachers’ workloads likely cannot be increased significantly further, continued growth in their wages is also not possible without an actual increase infunding. Rosstat’s monitoring of the implementation of the “May decrees” on salaries had previously been updated at least four times a year. However, the most recent data available cover only January–June 2024.

This can be explained either by a serious breakdown in statistical data collection or by the authorities’ reluctance to communicate unpleasant news to the public. (Details of this surge in secrecy were compiled by the project “To Be Precise.”)

The average salary of Russian teachers in 2025 can only be estimated, based on data for the “Education” sector and an adjustment coefficient. The average monthly nominal wage in the sector was 63,000 rubles ($786) in 2024 and 71,000 rubles ($886) in 2025. Teachers in state general education schools account for less than half of all employees in the sector (which also includes university and college instructors, as well as administrative and technical staff). In 2024, they earned 9.4% more than the sectoral average — 68,900 rubles ($860) per month.

If we assume that in 2025 school teachers also earned 9.4% more than other education sector employees, their average salary would come to 78,000 rubles ($973) — below the national average monthly nominal wage of 100,000 rubles ($1,248), and thus not in line with the 2012 decrees.

Teachers’ salaries are still below the national average

While Rosstat and the Ministry of Education remain silent, the teachers’ union “Uchitel” is publishing complaints from educators about declining incomes. Since the start of the 2025-2026 school year, additional payments for teachers have been reduced or abolished in eight regions. These include rural bonuses, seniority and qualification payments, and extra pay for managing classrooms or grading assignments. Reports have come from the Ryazan, Tula, Oryol, Orenburg, and Irkutsk regions, from Bashkortostan and Karelia, and from the Khabarovsk and Krasnodar territories.

Overall, both education and healthcare have lost out as a result of the invasion of Ukraine. Before February of 2022, teachers’ salaries stood at 76% of the national average; now they are at 71%. In healthcare and social services, the figure has fallen from 89% to 81%. The figure has increased only in agriculture, clothing manufacturing, and the military-industrial sector. Public-sector workers, meanwhile, are becoming unaffordable for a state that refuses to cut military spending. For Vladimir Putin, undermining his own “May decrees” appears to be the lesser evil.

On March 2, two days after U.S. and Israeli forces began striking targets inside Iran, Hezbollah entered the war by taking the fight directly to Israel, surprising those analysts who had expected the Iranian proxy force to limit itself to statements of support for Tehran. Such assumptions were linked to Lebanon’s domestic situation, a product of the 2023–2024 war between Israel and Hezbollah in which Lebanon had once again been turned into a battlefield, sparking sharp criticism within the country and raising the question of Hezbollah’s domestic legitimacy.

The day Hezbollah resumed its fight with Israel, Lebanese president General Joseph Aoun, together with Prime Minister Nawaf Salam, adopted the country’s first-ever plan to disarm the Shiite group. Lebanon cautiously referred to this process as “transferring” all weapons held by various militias into the hands of the state.

The government claims it had even completed the disarmament in areas up to the Litani River days before the outbreak of the war in Iran. However, as subsequent events showed, its efforts were largely symbolic. Hezbollah managed to retain part of its weapons in the border regions, not to mention its fighters, most of whom are residents of the south — i.e. below the Litani River.

Nevertheless, after the war against Iran began, experts generally believed that Hezbollah would not enter a new conflict, as the wider Lebanese population had not yet forgiven the group for the damage caused by its previous military campaign. Many sources in Lebanon still claim that Hezbollah’s political leadership, including Secretary-General Naim Qassem, may not have known about the military wing’s decision to shell Israel early last month. Given that Hezbollah chose to sit out the war between Israel and Iran in June 2025, there were hopes that the same would hold true this time.

Israel, however, held no illusions. In late January, experts at the Alma Research and Education Center wrote that Hezbollah would enter any fighting if ordered to do so by Iran's supreme leader. In 2025, such a directive never came. Now the situation has changed, and the war has taken on an existential character for both the Iranian regime and for Hezbollah. In Lebanon itself, however, the shock was immense. No one outside of the Shiite movement wanted or expected a war.

Rising from the ashes

By entering the war, Hezbollah gave Israel a reason to finish what was started in the previous round of confrontation (even if Israel had never fully stopped). After the ceasefire agreement was signed in November 2024, the Israeli Air Force continued to carry out targeted strikes against Hezbollah facilities under the pretext that the group was violating the ceasefire.

However, despite Israel’s actions and the Lebanese government’s efforts in recent months, reports are increasingly emerging that Hezbollah is working to replenish its missile capabilities while also reorganizing its military and political apparatus. After all, in 2024 Israel eliminated the movement’s Secretary-General, Hassan Nasrallah, along with several other key figures.

According to Alma, by 2024 Hezbollah had about 75,000 rockets and missiles of all types and ranges — a significant decrease from 2023, when INSS reported that the group’s arsenal included 150,000–200,000 rockets to go along with 50,000 to 100,000 fighters. In 2021, Hassan Nasrallah had spoken of 100,000 rockets.

Current estimates from Israeli think tanks put Hezbollah’s missile and rocket arsenal at around 25,000 units, and most of these are of the short- and medium-range type. In addition, the group possesses a limited number of ballistic missiles capable of covering considerable distances, and there have already been multiple examples of Hezbollah’s missiles reaching the center and south of Israel, up to the Gaza Strip. In addition, the group is estimated to have 1,000-2,000 drones.

Hezbollah’s rocket and missile arsenal is estimated at roughly 25,000 units — mostly of the short- and medium-range variety

Over the past year, Hezbollah has focused on weapons production — an objective necessitated by the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Damascus in December 2024. Before that, Hezbollah had made itself at home in Syria for more than ten years, transporting both drugs and weapons through the country. After Ahmed al-Sharaa came to power, however, Hezbollah was forced to leave.

Obtaining weapons from Iran also became more difficult, although Tehran still found ways to replenish Hezbollah’s arsenal by sea through Turkey, and it continues funding the group. This past November, the Israeli news outlet Ynet, citing the U.S. Department of the Treasury, reported that Iran had transferred roughly $1 billion to Hezbollah since the beginning of 2025.

As for Hezbollah’s fighters, Alma estimates that the group has 40,000–50,000 active combatants, with another 30,000–50,000 reservists who could be called upon. In other words, there have been no major changes compared with 2024. Arab sources indicate that in 2024 Hezbollah lost around 4,000 fighters, while another 1,500 went missing.

Bet on decentralized command

Perhaps the biggest change seen since 2024 has been in Hezbollah’s tactics. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) worked intensively in this area after Israel eliminated the Lebanese group’s leadership in 2024. Since then, the IRGC has effectively taken control of Hezbollah, particularly of its military wing.

According to Reuters, upwards of one hundred IRGC officers were operating in Lebanon until recently, working on reshaping Hezbollah’s strategy in preparation for a new war. In particular, they focused on developing decentralized command in which small units would be ready to operate independently, without relying on orders from the center. Operational secrecy was also increased, and a plan was developed for missile strikes on Israel to be launched simultaneously from Iran and Lebanon — a scenario first carried out on March 11.

Reports of the IRGC’s increased activity in Lebanon are not limited to anonymous sources. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) periodically report the killing of IRGC officers on Lebanese territory. The presence of Tehran’s representatives has also been confirmed by the Lebanese authorities, and one of the Lebanese government’s first decisions at the start of the war was to ban IRGC activity in the country with a demand that all individuals connected to the organization leave, even if they held diplomatic passports. In addition, the visa-free regime for Iranian citizens was abolished, prompting about 150 Iranians to depart Beirut on a Russian flight. Iran claimed that the passengers were diplomats, women, and children, but some were clearly IRGC members.

One of the Lebanese government’s first decisions at the start of the war was to ban IRGC activity in the country

Nevertheless, many IRGC officers remain in Lebanon and continue to oversee the course of the fighting. Some of them even hold Lebanese passports.

Overall, Hezbollah’s new military leadership, which replaced the eliminated old guard, is far more radical than its predecessors. It is prepared to fight to the end. The political leadership has little say in the matter, as it has yet to earn any real authority. Without battlefield victories or political achievements to his name thus far, Naim Qassem does not enjoy the same unquestioned support that Hassan Nasrallah once did. Still, he should not be underestimated.

Limited ground operation

Against this backdrop, in mid-March Israel launched a limited ground operation in Lebanon. Initially, it mainly targeted Hezbollah’s infrastructure in the border areas — primarily weapons depots and tunnels leading from Lebanon into Israel. Progress has been slow and cautious, though in some areas Israeli forces have already reached the Litani River, and in recent days, several operations were carried out north of the Litani.

The main task of the ground forces is indeed to clear territory up to the southern part of the Litani River (approximately 20–30 km from the Israel-Lebanon border line), thereby ensuring the safety of northern Israeli residents. At present, Israel has effectively isolated this area from the rest of Lebanon by destroying the main bridges across the river. “Hundreds of thousands of residents of southern Lebanon who were evacuated will not return south of the Litani River until the safety of residents in northern Israel is ensured,” said Israel’s defense minister Israel Katz.

According to Katz, the operation aims “to create a defensive buffer and eliminate threats to settlements.” It is modeled on IDF actions in the Gaza Strip around Rafah and Beit Hanoun following the Hamas terrorist attacks of October 7, 2023.  Needless to say, creating a buffer zone involves demolishing entire villages.

Israel’s operations are not limited to the border areas. Since the beginning of March, the Israel Air Force has also been striking Hezbollah-linked targets in Beirut and in the Beqaa Valley, located in the east of the country along the border with Syria. The goal is the maximal destruction of Hezbollah’s empire. Strikes target not only weapons depots and headquarters but also economic infrastructure, such as Hezbollah’s bank branches and fuel stations — anything that helps the organization generate revenue and thereby survive. According to Israeli data, Hezbollah has suffered roughly $100 million in direct losses during the current war.

Ultimately, Israel seeks one thing: the complete disarmament of Hezbollah. At the same time, security forces understand that this will not be quick or easy. After the 2024 war, Hezbollah fighters changed their tactics. Instead of concentrating on the frontline at the border as before, its fighters are falling back to the second line of villages in southern Lebanon, preparing to drag out the battle. Hezbollah’s main positions north of the Litani River and in the Beqaa Valley remain, providing strategic depth for operations. South of the Litani, deployments have been concentrated mainly at weapons depots and launch infrastructure for mortars and short-range rockets.

In this context, Israel faces serious questions: how far should it advance into Lebanon, and for how long? Occupying southern Lebanon will require significant effort and could lead to an increase in casualties, as the IDF knows from experience. Meanwhile, even if Israeli troops are present on the ground in the south, Hezbollah will remain in other areas of Lebanon, and airstrikes may not be enough to solve this problem. Israeli analysts increasingly maintain that the presence of the IDF in southern Lebanon “will last at least several months, and possibly years.”

On the Arab side, however, there is some hope — albeit fragile — that Israel is merely threatening occupation in order to pressure the Lebanese government to finally declare Hezbollah illegal. However, the Lebanese authorities cannot deal with Hezbollah on their own. The government’s resources are very limited, even if, unlike in similar situations in the past, the leadership in Beirut has begun to demonstrate some real political will.

Caught between two fires

Immediately after Hezbollah entered the war on March 2, the Cabinet of Lebanon banned the movement’s military activities. In addition, state media were advised against quoting statements from the group and its leaders, and were told to avoid using the term “resistance forces” — the label Hezbollah and other groups connected to Iran adopt to describe themselves, claiming their goal is to fight Israel.

The government also instructed the army and security services to prevent rocket and drone launches toward Israel and to take action in the event of violations. Several Hezbollah members were arrested. But such efforts are nowhere close to enough.

As a result, Lebanon has found itself caught between two fires. On the one hand, even the smallest incident could trigger a civil war. Lebanese armed forces commander Rodolphe Haykal has already warned of a possible split within the army, a significant portion of which is made up of Shiites. This is one of the reasons why the army was unable to clear Hezbollah weapons from the south. In some cases, soldiers made arrangements with militants regarding what they would hand over and what areas should be ignored. On the other hand, Lebanon fears the expansion of the Israeli military offensive and the occupation of the border region.

One of the most telling events in this struggle was the withdrawal on March 24 of the accreditation of Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon, Mohammad Reza Sheibani, who did not even have time to assume his duties, having arrived in Beirut just two days before the war. Hezbollah, along with the Shia movement Amal and the Supreme Islamic Shia Council, opposed this milestone decision by the Lebanese government.

Tehran also refused to comply. On March 30, the Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced that Sheibani would continue his work in Beirut, even though the deadline for his departure had already passed. The question is what steps Beirut will take in response after already having issued a clear challenge to Iran.

The French-language Lebanese outlet L’Orient-Le Jour summed up the situation on March 25, writing:  “For Hezbollah’s opponents, Iran is doomed to lose this war. Even if it manages to reach an agreement with the United States, for Tehran this would mean abandoning its plans in the region and its support for allies. In their view, expelling the ambassador fits this logic. Hezbollah, for its part, sees this as an attempt by some Lebanese forces to anticipate the outcome of the conflict and prepare for the postwar period. This includes recognizing the group as a terrorist organization, dismantling its structure, and banning any political activity.”

Hezbollah was already on the verge of a complete ban by the government. At a dedicated cabinet meeting, a fierce confrontation emerged between representatives of different Lebanese factions. In the end, the ban applied only to military activity, but that does not mean the issue will not return, especially given the international pressure on Lebanon.

For its part, Beirut has asked mediators to persuade Israel to halt military operations for at least a month, promising to resolve the issue of Hezbollah during that time. However, Israel and the United States believed that negotiations made no sense as long as the Lebanese authorities had not declared the group illegal. As a result, the negotiation process stalled. The Israeli side refused to agree to a ceasefire for talks, while Lebanon also faced domestic controversy.

According to Lebanese media, Iran instructed Hezbollah to reject the initiative of President Joseph Aoun to begin direct negotiations with Israel, while Tehran presumably intends to use this war to partially restore its influence, uniting the various fronts by insisting on a regional ceasefire rather than negotiating over a halt to U.S.-Israeli strikes against Iran itself.

Incidentally, Lebanon’s speaker of parliament Nabih Berri told Asharq Al-Awsat that he hoped leaked reports “about the imminent conclusion of an Iranian-American deal prove to be true.” Berri hopes for “a comprehensive agreement that will include an end to the Israeli war in Lebanon.” The publication emphasizes that Tehran gave Beirut “a clear promise” to include Lebanon in any agreement that would end the war with the United States and Israel.

However, Israel and the United States are trying to keep the two fronts separated. Washington is pretending that the developments in Lebanon are of no concern, while in Israel there is hope that even if Washington opts to stop military operations against Iran, this will not affect the Lebanese campaign.

The Arab monarchies of the Persian Gulf are not interested in allowing Tehran to bring peace to Lebanon either, fearing — quite reasonably — that the Iranian regime could once again become the dominant external player in Beirut. All of them hope for the weakening of Hezbollah and are effectively allowing Israel to do the dirty work. However, they also fear an Israeli occupation and an expansion of the ground operation, especially amid rising casualties and other humanitarian consequences.

At present, the death toll in Lebanon has exceeded 1,000 people, according to the country’s Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between Hezbollah fighters and civilians in its casualty lists. Meanwhile, more than one million people have become refugees in a country with an overall population of just under six million.

Rebuilding after the fighting ultimately comes to an end will require an enormous infusion of resources, and dealing with whatever remains of Hezbollah after the current conflict is unlikely to be an easy task. Mediators will pressure Beirut to deal with the terrorists, but at the same time, no one will be in a hurry to invest money in Lebanon amid justifiable fears of another war.

Dealing with whatever remains of Hezbollah after the current conflict is unlikely to be an easy task for the Lebanese government

Declaring Hezbollah illegal on paper is possible, but such a move will do nothing to shrink the movement’s support base among Lebanon’s Shiite population, which accounts for about 40% of the country’s residents. Although the ongoing war is feeding dissatisfaction among Shiites as well, Hezbollah still has tens of thousands of loyalists who, if necessary, would take to the streets and even attempt a coup to alter the political balance of power. Moreover, Israeli strikes on civilian infrastructure and the expansion of military operations could increase support for Hezbollah, creating a vicious circle.

In the end, everything still comes down to Iran. The regime in Tehran is not likely to fall in the near future, but the question remains: will it retain the ability to continue supporting regional proxies like Hezbollah? Sources in the Israeli security services say the results of the campaign against Iran are directly damaging the group, meaning that whatever answer eventually emerges, Hezbollah will not come out of the war in the same form it entered the fighting.

Regional authorities said this morning that 22 drones had been shot down. Ukrainian monitoring channels reported (1, 2) that the port of Ust-Luga itself was among the targets. Ukraine’s General Staff confirmed the strike, saying it targeted a terminal linked to Russia’s state pipeline operator Transneft-Baltika. Preliminary information indicated that three storage tanks were hit.

The Ukrainian open source intelligence project Oko Hora said that nearly a third of the port’s oil storage tanks had been damaged in the series of attacks. Over the past two weeks, the port has been hit six times, driving shipments of Russian oil through the Baltic Sea down to their lowest levels since 2022.

Because of the Ukrainian strikes, the ports of Ust-Luga and Primorsk were unable to receive and load fuel for close to two weeks. However, on April 5, Bloomberg reported that loading of crude oil at Ust-Luga had resumed.

On April 6, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova accused the Baltic states — Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania — of opening their airspace to Ukrainian drones, saying Moscow had issued them a special warning.

“These countries were given an appropriate warning. If the regimes of these countries are smart enough, they will listen. If not, they will face a response,” she said, according to the Interfax news agency.

Russia’s pro-war bloggers reacted mockingly to Zakharova’s statement, particularly against the backdrop of the most recent attack (1, 2, 3).

“We’re waiting for a new special warning, but this time with the spokeswoman making a zigzag exit — that should look scarier,” wrote military blogger Vladimir Romanov.

Over the past month, Ukraine has sharply stepped up attacks on Russian oil infrastructure. Reuters has reported that this has cut the country’s export capacity by about 1 million barrels per day — approximately one-fifth of the total.

Both arrests took place as part of a broad wave of persecution targeting activists advocating for the rights of Indigenous peoples. Leongardt and Egereva are accused of participating in the activities of the “Aborigen Forum” — an informal network of activists and experts representing the Indigenous peoples of Russia’s North, Siberia, and Far East — which the Russian authorities classify as a “terrorist organization” under Article 205.5 of Russia’s Criminal Code, the support team said. The maximum penalty under that charge is 20 years in prison.

On Dec. 18, the court placed both women in custody on charges of participating in the activities of a terrorist organization. Their time in pretrial detention was later extended, and the case remains under investigation.

Natalya Leongardt has spent more than 20 years defending the rights of Indigenous minority peoples of the Russian North, Siberia, and the Far East. Since 2005, she has worked on educational and human rights projects and has taken part in numerous international programs and fellowships. From 2011 to 2013, she worked with the Russian Association of Indigenous Peoples of the North (RAIPON) and completed fellowships at UN-affiliated organizations in Geneva.

In June 2024, Aborigen Forum was designated “extremist” by the Russian authorities. Then, in November of that year, it was designated a terrorist organization. After the first ruling, the group announced that it was dissolving.

Egereva and Leongardt were not the only members of the group to draw the attention of Russian authorities. St. Petersburg publicist Maksim Kuzakhmetov has been arrested in absentia in connection with the same case. Court documents show that the investigation covers several charges at once, including participation in a terrorist organization, calls for separatism, and spreading false information about the Russian army.

Daria Egereva has been recognized as a political prisoner by Russia’s Nobel Peace Prize-winning human rights organization, Memorial.

Those records show that in September 2025 Melnikava bought a one-room apartment in a building on Lyubimova Avenue with an area of 33.8 square meters. Prices for similar apartments in that area range from 208,000 Belarusian rubles (about $71,000) to 240,000 Belarusian rubles (about $82,000).

In January 2026, Melnikava bought another apartment, this one 91.8 square meters in size (though in the documents it is also listed as a one-room apartment). It is located in the Mayak Minska residential complex on Petr Mstislavets Street.

In March 2026, Melnikava also became the sole owner of yet another Minsk apartment, one that she had jointly owned with her now ex-husband. Zerkalo reported that ownership was transferred to her under an agreement dividing the couple’s shared property following a divorce that was filed during Melnikava’s time in Warsaw. The apartment had been placed under arrest in 2024 as part of a criminal case against 257 participants in the then-upcoming elections to the Belarusian opposition’s Coordination Council; however, that measure was lifted in February 2026.

As previously reported by The Insider, about a year after Melnikava abruptly left Poland, where she had lived since 2021, she was photographed at a fitness center in Minsk. The images were posted to Instagram stories on March 16 by trainer Galina Kazantseva, and several people familiar with Melnikava confirmed her identity. A tattoo on her left arm, partially visible in one of the photos, supports their authenticity. Shortly afterward, her father told journalists she had been in Belarus “for quite a while,” though he said he had not seen her or her children in person for a long time.

As The Insider’s investigators previously found, Anzhalika Melnikava disappeared from her home in Warsaw shortly after being elected speaker of the Belarusian opposition’s Coordination Council. After leaving Poland, Melnikava spent several days in London, Sri Lanka, and the United Arab Emirates before returning to Belarus. At the same time, she withdrew approximately $150,000 from the account of the Białoruś Liberty foundation, which had received grants to support the work of the Coordination Council. As The Insider found, since at least 2023 Melnikava had been in a relationship with Belarusian KGB officer Alexei Lobeev, who was using a cover passport in the name of “Aliaksei Hardzeyeu” (or “Alexei Gordeev” in the Russian transliteration).

My name is László Kovács. I was born in 1963 in Ukraine, but my father is Hungarian, and I speak Hungarian fluently. I am a professional athlete, a bodybuilder, but in the 1990s, it was necessary to earn a living somehow, and in 1994 my childhood friend Alexander Kirichanin and I started a small business buying vodka in Hungary and selling it in Ukraine.

We were not allowed to trade in peace for long. At one point, while Kirichanin and I were having lunch in a pizzeria in Budapest, Igor Korol sat down with his men — about eight of them. Then it began: “Who are you? This is our city. We control everything here. Everyone pays us.” I said, “Maybe everyone pays, but we will not.” Korol tried to force my head down to the table, but he failed — at that time I weighed about 110 kilograms. One of his associates stabbed me with a knife. The wound was not deep, but there was a lot of blood. The argument continued, and I had no intention of backing down.

Then Korol told me that my behavior had impressed him. He knew that I spoke Hungarian, while he and all his men had moved from Ukraine without knowing a word of Hungarian, so they needed a translator. In the end, Korol offered me a job.

Korol’s group was mainly engaged in extorting nightclubs for protection money. Almost everyone paid — either to Korol or to a rival Ukrainian group led by Leonid Stitsyura. Both groups were subordinate to Semion Mogilevich — “Seva,” as he was called — who at that time was at the height of his power, the boss of bosses. He lived in Budapest then and hardly ever left his luxurious, lavishly furnished old house on Benczúr Street. Food and women were brought to him there. All information flowed there, and all decisions were made there. Seva had groups everywhere: the Solntsevo group in Russia, as well as groups across Ukraine and in the United States, though I only knew about that from hearsay.

Although Seva was the boss, Korol did not pay him anything. For Seva, protection payments from nightclubs were small change. They did not interest him. He was focused on much more serious operations with profits in the millions. For example, they added dye to diesel fuel and sold it as heating oil, which at the time was not subject to taxation — the dye could later be easily removed, allowing them to save millions in taxes. Seva ran this business together with Hungary’s chief of police at the time, Sándor Pintér.

Seva’s connection with Pintér was not limited to business. As head of the police, Pintér could make any criminal case disappear, and Mogilevich regularly paid him for those services. These payments had to be made often, once or twice a week, because Budapest in the 1990s was like Chicago a century ago. Hardly a week went by without someone being shot or blown up. I know about these bribes very well, because I myself acted as a courier.

Igor Korol and I would go to Mogilevich’s office, where he would hand Igor a small package (usually amounts of $50,000-$100,000, though I never counted it). After that, I had to deliver it to “Shoni Bácsi” — that was Pintér’s nickname, meaning “Uncle Shoni.” I would go to a designated spot: most often on Wesselényi Street, but sometimes on Petőfi Sándor Street. A car would pull up at the corner, usually a dark blue Škoda. I would get into the back seat where Pintér was already sitting, hand him the package, and get out at the next corner. We did not even talk. At most we exchanged a few words.

They somehow arranged in advance what the money was for, and I was not told the details, although sometimes I could guess. A murder would take place, then money would be passed through me. Of course, I drew my own conclusions. For example, I remember a Ukrainian guy named Slavik. He was shot through the window of his car, and when I delivered money to Pintér afterward, I assumed it was to have the case closed. That was only my guess, but the case was indeed closed.

Sometimes I was also instructed to deliver money to another man, named Dietmar Clodo. He was a German of Jewish origin who rented a house in the small town of Szentendre, not far from Budapest. I did not visit him very often, perhaps six to eight times. I would enter the hallway, hand over the money, exchange a few words in Hungarian, and leave. Only later did I learn that he had set up an explosives workshop in his house. When I began to recall the dates of my visits, I realized that each time, within about a week afterward, there was some kind of explosion.

“The biggest explosion in central Budapest was organized by Pintér himself”

At times, Pintér did not just help make cases disappear — he also personally organized killings. In 1995, for example, he had a conflict with the businessman József Prisztás, who was involved in real estate. At the time, Prisztás was one of the richest people in Hungary. Pintér had his eye on one of Prisztás’s buildings, but Prisztás was a very tough and independent man — he never worked with the police, handled all his problems himself, and feared no one. He refused to sell the building, and very tense negotiations began.

Prisztás invited Igor Korol along with a couple of his men for protection. I was there as a translator. This took place in the Fifth District, at the Korona Hotel. On Pintér’s side was his close associate Tamás Portik, who, together with Pintér, had been involved in the diesel scheme and later handled all the dirty work for him. Portik also came with several of his men, and the conversation was extremely tense. Everyone left the table dissatisfied. Portik said there would be serious consequences: “Shoni Bácsi will be very unhappy with your refusal.”

About two weeks later, Prisztás was getting into his car — he had an expensive jeep and traveled without security — and as soon as he opened the door and put one foot inside, a cyclist riding past fired a silenced pistol and shot him in the head. Later, the court established that the perpetrator was József Roháč, a Slovak citizen who worked as Portik’s hitman.

Another victim of Pintér’s was József Boros. He had been an associate of Pintér, Portik, and Mogilevich in the diesel business and knew everything about everyone. In 1998, he gave a video statement in which he laid everything out — with names, events, and dates. At the end, he said that there was one more person, the main participant in all these events, whose name he would not yet reveal. It was clear to everyone that he meant Pintér, the head of the police.

Boros was promised that the recording would not be made public, but within a few days it had spread across Budapest — I had it myself. What followed was the same pattern: Pintér gave the order to Portik, and Portik tasked Roháč. Roháč planted a bomb in an old abandoned Fiat that had long been standing in the city center, not far from Boros’s office. Boros always walked to work along the same route, and when he passed the Fiat, Roháč, who was waiting nearby in the bushes, pressed the button.

The explosion was horrific. Nothing remained of Boros. His lawyer was also killed, along with two passersby, and dozens of people were injured. It was in the very center of the city. The surrounding buildings looked as if they had been bombed from the air.

“Large sums were meant for Orbán”

As I already said, the bundles of money were usually small, but in 1997 much larger sums began to appear: $300,000, half a million, and once Mogilevich handed over a large leather sports bag containing one million dollars. All these large sums were intended for “Vitya” — that is what Mogilevich called Orbán. Orbán and Pintér were already close at that time, and this was no secret to anyone. Still, neither of them ever appeared at Mogilevich’s office — at least, I never saw them there.

In 1998, parliamentary elections were scheduled, and Seva was, of course, counting on Orbán’s rise to power to give him complete freedom of action. At first, it seemed that everything was going according to his plan. In 1998, when Orbán won, he immediately made Pintér minister of the interior.

Seva treated Hungarians in general with open contempt, and politicians in particular. Orbán was no exception. Seva could easily say something like, “That stinking Magyar lives off my money, he’ll do what I say, or I’ll f*ck him up.” I do not know all the details of their relationship — only what was discussed in my presence during meetings between Igor Korol and Mogilevich. Igor was generally very laconic, whereas Seva liked to talk.

When Orbán was running as an opposition figure, all those bombings and killings that outraged society helped boost his ratings. But once he came to power, his former associates and sponsors became an obstacle, and with the help of that same Pintér, he quickly got rid of them, putting them all behind bars. Mogilevich himself was also forced to leave Hungary. As far as I know, he moved to Russia.

Could the Russian authorities have made use of the compromising material that Mogilevich has on Orbán? I do not have reliable information about that, but I think they certainly could.

“The stairs were flooded with my blood”

In 1998, I fell out with Igor Korol. It all started when my childhood friend, Sasha Kirichanin — the same one I had started the vodka business with — called me and, in a trembling voice, asked me to come to him immediately. He named a small town outside Budapest.

I found him badly beaten, with broken ribs. His car, his watch, and his money had been taken, and he had been told to come up with another $100,000, with threats to slaughter his entire family if he didn’t.

Of course, after that I immediately went to Igor Korol and confronted him. I said: “We have a relationship based on trust. You act as if we are friends. I looked after your wife at the maternity hospital. I have always helped you. And you allow this to happen to my friend? He replied in a cynical tone: “That’s how I decided.”

Then I offered him my own car, which was better and more expensive than the one they had stolen, so that he could take mine and return Kirichanin’s. Igor refused and even acted as if my offer offended him.

I knew which one of Igor’s men had taken the car, and I knew where he lived. I went there, dragged him out of the car, got behind the wheel myself, and returned it to Kirichanin.

A few hours later I got a call — not from Igor himself, but from his men. They demanded a meeting. We met, and they said: “Since you think you’re such a hero, then hand over your own car as well.” That’s when I snapped. I said: “You should have taken it when I offered it. Now you will get nothing.”

After that Igor started calling me, threatening me. I told him: “Stop pushing me, because don’t forget that I know a lot. If you keep pushing, you and Pintér will end up in prison.”

I understood that this would have consequences, but I thought the worst they would do was smash my car. Instead, on December 23, two men got into my car. One looped a garrote around my neck, and the other began stabbing me with a knife. At first I resisted, but then it became clear that I would not get out of the car alive, so I pretended to faint. I heard one of them say to the other in Russian something like, “The job is done,” and they left.

“One looped a garrote around my neck, and the other began stabbing me with a knife. It became clear that I wouldn’t get out of the car alive, so I pretended to faint”

They had hit an artery, and the blood was flowing out. With my last strength, I made it to my apartment on the fifth floor. The stairs were flooded with my blood. Once I got inside, I began to lose consciousness. Later I was told it was a miracle that I survived, because I had lost 3.5 liters of blood. For an ordinary person, that would have been fatal, but because I was a bodybuilder, weighing about 120 kilograms, and had a lot of substances in my system — steroids and so on — that saved me.

In the end, I not only survived but recovered, and within a year I was already competing again. I completely shifted to sports: preparing others for competitions, selling sports nutrition products, and earning a decent living. Oddly enough, Korol and his men stopped bothering me.

Then, in 2001, Igor Korol pushed out another close associate of his — Igor Radchenko — and Radchenko asked me to take him into my business. I said I would agree on the condition that he tell me how everything had happened, and he told me everything as it was, including that Igor Korol had been the one who initiated the attempt on my life.

That completely set me off again. I started calling Korol, demanding a personal meeting, hurling the harshest insults at him. Under normal circumstances, even a fraction of that would have been enough for him to kill me, but instead he tried to calm me down, asked me to drop the matter, even changed his phone numbers. Then one of his associates asked me to stop, because our phones were being monitored, and if we actually met, the police would simply swoop in on us. In the end, Korol was prevented from reentering Hungary when he tried to return from abroad. And it was the same for everyone who was involved in organized crime: some were expelled from the country, others were imprisoned.

Eventually it was my turn as well. At the behest of Sándor Pintér, I was sentenced to seven years in prison on a fabricated charge. I was accused of kidnapping, even though there were witnesses who testified in court that I had kidnapped no one. While I was in prison, investigators came to see me and wanted me to tell them everything. I explained to them: “You understand that Sándor Pintér is essentially your superior. If you think you can act on any information I give you, then you are very naive.”

However, when the government in Hungary changes, I will absolutely testify in court. I very much want to look Sándor Pintér in the eyes.

According to Brovdi, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) planned and coordinated the operation, which was executed by the Unmanned Systems Forces. “The extent of the damage is being determined by intelligence,” he said, adding that the self-elevating jackup drilling rig Sivash was hit as part of the same attack.

Brovdi initially wrote that the frigate which came under attack was the Admiral Grigorovich, but later updated the post. The Admiral Makarov, like the Admiral Grigorovich, is a Project 11356R frigate. Russia’s navy has only three such ships in service. The frigates are capable of carrying Kalibr cruise missiles, which are used in strikes on Ukraine.

The third Project 11356R frigate, the Admiral Essen, was damaged during an attack on port infrastructure in Novorossiysk on the night of March 2.

On April 6, Krasnodar Region governor Veniamin Kondratyev reported that the area had been under a massive Ukrainian drone attack since the morning of April 5. Eight people in Novorossiysk were injured, including two children.

The head of Serbia’s Military Security Agency (VBA), Lt. Gen. Đuro Jovanić, said he had been warning President Aleksandar Vučić and the country’s leadership for months about possible attacks on the country’s gas infrastructure, but his warnings were met with skepticism, according to a report by Euronews Srbija. According to Jovanić, the operation to detect explosives near the gas pipeline in the municipality of Kanjiža was preceded by serious intelligence work. The VBA had information that a person with military training “from a group of migrants” intended to carry out an act of sabotage. Jovanić said the suspect would be detained.

“For months, we have been pointing out to the Commander-in-Chief, President Aleksandar Vučić, as well as the state leadership, that something like this could happen today. To be honest, we encountered skepticism, disapproval, disagreement — just as we did when we had to present the relevant data about the threat to gas infrastructure,” he said.

The VBA chief also commented on claims that Serbian authorities had staged the attempted bombing in order to later blame Ukrainians, an allegation raised by Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry and the Hungarian opposition. Ukrainian Foreign Ministry spokesman Heorhii Tykhyi called the incident a Russian false-flag operation aimed at influencing Hungary’s upcoming parliamentary election.

Hungarian opposition leader Péter Magyar, for his part, said many people had predicted in advance that such an incident would occur on a Serbian gas pipeline. Reuters, citing a former Hungarian intelligence officer, also reported that Hungarian security services had in recent days discussed a sabotage scenario in Serbia as a potential tool for influencing the elections. Jovanić rejected those accusations while characterizing any  claims that Serbian military personnel had planted the explosives themselves in order to frame Ukraine as disinformation.

Yesterday, Serbian President Vučić wrote on Instagram that Serbian military and police had found “high-powered explosives” and devices for activating them near the gas pipeline through which Russian gas flows via Serbia to Hungary. After a phone call with Vučić, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán wrote on Facebook that he had convened an emergency meeting of the Defense Council.

After the meeting, Orbán claimed that “according to the available information, sabotage was being prepared,” adding that “Ukraine has been trying for years to cut Europe off from Russian energy.” Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó said directly that the incident “fits into a series of Ukrainian attacks” on the transit of Russian gas and oil to Europe, comparing it to the Nord Stream explosions in 2022.

Belgrade-based political scientist Aleksandar Jokić told The Insider that “it’s all a game; there was no sabotage”:

“It’s simply a way to help Orbán ahead of the elections. Vucic provided a plausible narrative that Orban picked up on. But Vucic didn’t blame Ukraine for this because he doesn’t want to get into a conflict with Europe. The Serbian leader did Orban a favor, but didn’t want to jeopardize relations with Brussels. Orban’s entire campaign is built on bashing Ukraine.”

A source in the Irish security services described the number of “shadow fleet” vessels recently passing through Ireland’s exclusive economic zone, or EEZ, as unprecedented. According to sources in military circles, five of the tankers were moving south in an organized group through the EEZ. The newspaper’s sources believe the ships chose that route to avoid the threat of detention in British waters.

According to figures cited by the Irish Times, the vessels were carrying approximately 4 million barrels of Russian oil. All five tankers are on European Union sanctions lists: Vokki (IMO 9434890), Tiburon (IMO 9283291), Aktros (IMO 9257814), Bullar (IMO 9389679) and Deneb (IMO 9301524). According to the vessel-tracking service Starboard Maritime Intelligence, all of the tankers are currently near Gibraltar. Vokki, Aktros, Bullar, and Deneb are all heading for Port Said, Egypt, while Tiburon is bound for Singapore.

In addition to the group of five, several more sanctioned tankers passed through the EEZ during the week, with the Russian fishing vessel Ester also transiting the zone. In 2023, Norwegian authorities found espionage equipment on board the Ester and accused the vessel of secretly conducting maritime reconnaissance.

The shift in traffic follows from the UK government’s March 25 authorization to allow British military personnel and law enforcement officers to detain sanctioned vessels transiting the country’s territorial waters. “Putin is rubbing his hands at the war in the Middle East because he thinks higher oil prices will let him line his pockets. That’s why we’re going after his shadow fleet even harder, not just keeping Britain safe but starving Putin’s war machine of the dirty profits that fund his barbaric campaign in Ukraine,” commented UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer.

The Irish government has also recently said it intends to begin inspections of sanctioned vessels. Amendments to legislation are now being drafted to give Ireland’s maritime agencies additional powers to inspect ships at sea.

Experts cite the crisis in the Strait of Hormuz as the main reason for the surge, as the blockade of the Middle Eastern waterway removed a significant portion of diesel from the global market. Buyers began actively drawing down stockpiles, with reserves at the Fujairah port (UAE) falling by 36% in March, to 13.3 million barrels.

As RBC reports, an additional incentive for the increase in Russian exports was the temporary easing of American sanctions, after which importers no longer feared being hit with secondary restrictions. Washington temporarily lifted sanctions on Russian oil and petroleum products loaded onto ships before March 12; the license is valid until April 11.

In the meantime, Ukraine is actively striking the ports from which Russian diesel is shipped. Starting from March 23, the ports of Primorsk and Ust-Luga have repeatedly come under drone attack, bringing their current combined oil exports to their lowest level since 2022.

According to Dmitry Kasatkin of Kasatkin Consulting, the need to restore port infrastructure threatens to reduce Russia’s Baltic diesel exports in April by 30–50% compared to March. While Black Sea terminals such as Novorossiysk or Taman offer an alternative, the transition will take time and drive up costs. Kasatkin estimates that at most 15–20% of the disrupted shipments can be redirected, and the remainder will have to be absorbed by the domestic market, putting pressure on wholesale diesel prices within the country.

Meanwhile, Reuters reported conflicting data indicating that Russian seaborne exports of diesel and gasoil fell by 3% in March compared with February, to around 3.06 million tons. Market sources and LSEG attribute the decline to systematic attacks by Ukrainian drones on key port terminals.

Under Orbán, Hungary has turned from a frontrunner of democratic transformation in Central Europe into a semi-authoritarian countermodel — one widely perceived by nationalist and other radical-right forces throughout the West as a blueprint for how to undermine liberal democracy and establish a system of political rule sustained by a skewed political playing field.

Of course, becoming an illiberal countermodel has its consequences: the degradation of democracy has turned Hungary into one of the poorest and most corrupt countries in the European Union, making it a Trojan horse for authoritarian great-power interests, with primary loyalties to the Kremlin, Beijing, and, since January 2025, also to the Trump administration.

In April 2026, however, a historical window of opportunity appears to be opening after 16 years of Orbán’s rule — one promising democratic change, normalization, and reorientation toward the West. With Péter Magyar’s opposition party “Respect and Freedom” (Tisza) holding a double-digit advantage in the polls, it is worth taking a broader look at the Hungarian political landscape, the campaign itself, and the international environment in which it is taking place. All of these factors will significantly influence whether Hungarian society is ultimately able to seize this democratic opportunity, or whether Hungary’s autocratization and strategic geopolitical reorientation toward the East will receive a renewed mandate under Orbán’s rule.

The “Magyar phenomenon” and the renewal of Hungarian opposition

This is not the first time that the Hungarian opposition is topping Orbán’s incumbent Fidesz party in the polls; the same happened in the late summer and early fall of 2021, during the run-up to the 2022 elections.

However, today’s Hungarian opposition could not be more different from the alternative on offer four years ago. This time, Fidesz is not facing a motley crew of small parties ranging from the radical right to progressive liberals and social democrats, entangled in infighting due to their particular interests and led by a prime ministerial candidate without a real party or power base. Instead Magyar’s Tisza is a solid, unified party led by a charismatic leader.

This time, Fidesz is not facing a motley crew of small parties — Magyar’s Tisza is a solid, unified party led by a charismatic leader

Since its establishment in early 2024, Tisza has practically wiped out Hungary’s old opposition. This has been possible for three main reasons.

First, the old opposition had suffered from a growing legitimacy crisis. After failing to pose a serious challenge to Orbán for three consecutive elections, their existence was perceived by a growing number of Hungarian citizens not as a threat to the regime, but as a guarantee of its survival.

Second, due to the country’s miserable economic growth, declining public services, and increasingly unsustainable public finances, the Orbán regime lost its authority in the economic sphere — the main reason why many voters had supported the party in the past. This his given rise to a more widespread protest-vote sentiment in Hungarian society, with millions of people eager to support any reasonably credible challenger to the regime’s continued rule.

Third, the emergence of a talented political entrepreneur fundamentally reshaped political communication and constituency-building in Hungary. Péter Magyar and Tisza succeeded where other opposition parties had failed since 2010 by building a stable support base outside Budapest and the country’s other large urban centers. They have convincingly linked the issue of strategic corruption under Fidesz to the everyday socioeconomic concerns of citizens from all walks of life.

In addition, as a moderate, center-right political force, Tisza has credibly used nationalistic mobilization and appealed to conservative voters in the countryside — something that had long remained out of the reach of progressive, urban opposition parties. This enabled Tisza to penetrate mid-sized and smaller cities — the heartland of the Fidesz electorate.

Based on polling data, Fidesz has only been able to retain its advantage in villages and rural areas, where the system of paternalistic dependencies created by the party provides both motivation and material incentives for voters.  

In short, the slow degradation of the regime, its poor governance, and the revival of Hungarian opposition politics have resulted in the current political opening. However, it is the skillful political performance of Tisza and Péter Magyar that could be the key factor pushing the opposition over the top in 2026 after its failure of 2022.

The take of two campaigns

The election campaigns of Tisza and Fidesz are running as if they are taking place in completely parallel realities, their respective narratives barely reflecting on each other.

The communication of Tisza has a predominantly domestic focus, revolving around the issues of corruption, the incompetence of Fidesz’s governance, economic stagnation, and the desolate state of healthcare, education, and public transportation.

In the field of European and foreign affairs, Tisza’s stated aim is the normalization of relations with Hungary’s key European and NATO allies — abandoning the veto-wielding politics of Fidesz and regaining Hungary’s status as a credible, trustworthy, and constructive player on the international stage. Based on its election manifesto, Tisza would prioritize joining the European Public Prosecutor’s Office and securing the release of suspended EU funds that were frozen due to rule-of-law deficiencies stemming from the high-level corruption of Orbán’s Hungary.

In contrast, the election campaign of Fidesz is almost exclusively internationally focused. It is based on the claim that Ukraine poses a clear threat to the sovereignty and security of Hungary, particularly in the spheres of energy supply security. The ruling party also pushes the narrative that Ukraine, various EU institutions, and the Hungarian opposition are colluding on a plan to manipulate the election results in order to bring a Ukraine-friendly government to power in Budapest. In this context, just like in 2022, the Hungarian opposition is not portrayed as an independent political actor, but is almost exclusively depicted by Fidesz propaganda outlets as a group of foreign agents and puppets. In this context, factual nuances — such as the fact that Tisza and Péter Magyar cannot actually be considered Ukraine-friendly political forces — are deliberately left aside in order not to challenge the internal coherence and argumentative logic of government propaganda.

The election campaign of Fidesz is based on the claim that Ukraine poses a clear threat to the sovereignty and security of Hungary

Since 2014, Fidesz has been campaigning on the concept that Hungary faces an external threat. That year, the “enemy” was the EU, along with international financial institutions such as the IMF. In 2018, it was the EU and the various foundations and civil society organizations linked to George Soros, which were alleged to be fueling mass migration to Europe. In 2022, the war in Europe served as the external threat, with the Hungarian opposition and the EU portrayed as colluding to drag Hungary into the fight on the side of Kyiv.

In 2026, facing the sort of domestic challenge not seen since 2006, Fidesz has reverted to its most recent successful strategy: fearmongering around the war and accusing opponents of dragging Hungary into it. The campaign has included claims that, if the opposition wins at the polls on April 12, they will be ready to send Hungarian men to the front to defend Ukraine.

However, the most interesting aspect of the Fidesz campaign is the fact that it quite simply is not working. While the sudden escalation in Hungarian–Ukrainian bilateral tensions following the hijacking of an official Ukrainian money transport on Hungarian territory threatened to derail the domestically focused Tisza campaign and communication strategy, a look at the polling numbers over the past few weeks suggests that Fidesz’s demonization of the authorities in Kyiv has not aided them domestically.

The almost exclusively Ukraine-focused campaign apparently does not resonate with Hungarian voters, and it is difficult to understand why Fidesz is apparently doubling down on a dysfunctional strategy. The ruling party remains path-dependent instead of reflecting and adapting in light of the underperformance of its campaign strategy. 

The most interesting aspect of the Fidesz campaign is the fact that it quite simply is not working

In a similar manner, while the leaked phone conversations between Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and his Hungarian counterpart Péter Szijjártó shed light on the subservient nature of Szijjártó’s relationship with his Russian counterpart, they are unlikely to significantly change the campaign dynamics in Budapest. The leaks provided very relevant evidence, but they did not offer any fundamentally new information about Szijjártó’s diplomatic qualities. For most opposition voters, Szijjártó’s relationship with Russia amounted to betrayal even before the recordings of his conversations with Lavrov came to light, while for Fidesz voters, the Hungarian foreign minister is still seen as fighting for the country’s real interests, particularly with regard to energy supply security.

The leaks pose the greatest challenge for Szijjártó’s EU counterparts, for whom maintaining a working relationship with him will become an even more uncomfortable task in the event that Fidesz is unexpectedly re-elected.

The international environment of the Hungarian elections

There is certainly some irony in the claims of the Hungarian government, which has actively undermined and hampered Ukrainian national security ever since 2017, when Budapest started blocking NATO-Ukraine Commission meetings. Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of 2022, Hungary has regularly delayed and blocked EU financial aid packages and reimbursements for Member States under the European Peace Facility, watered down sanctions packages against Russia, and increased its fossil fuel dependency on the Kremlin, contributing to the financing of the Russian war effort.

Obviously, the halt in oil transit via the Druzhba pipeline following Russian air attacks on Jan. 27, as well as the resulting unfortunate comment of Volodymyr Zelensky’s that was widely interpreted as a personal threat to Orbán, contributed to the further deterioration in bilateral relations between Hungary and Ukraine. However, with time Kyiv also realized that this escalatory spiral runs counter to its strategic interests, as it is only feeding the Fidesz campaign.

At the EU level, the Hungarian government is currently blocking both a 90 billion euro financial aid package for Ukraine and the bloc’s 20th sanctions package against Russia. While Budapest’s actions are widely perceived as aimed at maintaining leverage over Kyiv as part of an effort to force the relaunch of oil transit via the Druzhba pipeline, in reality the Orbán government’s policies are also serving the strategic interests of the Kremlin.

The Hungarian government is blocking both a 90 billion euro financial aid package for Ukraine and the bloc’s 20th sanctions package against Russia, effectively serving the strategic interests of the Kremlin

A continuation of Fidesz rule would almost certainly mean a continuation of Budapest’s anti-Ukraine initiatives. If Orbán is able to turn the campaign around and win on April 12 without the help of massive irregularities, his main lesson learned will be that his anti-Ukrainian mobilization was successful. Moreover, the situation may be even worse in the event of an authoritarian scenario in which anti-democratic practices succeed in keeping the regime in power. In such a situation, Orbán would become further isolated from the EU mainstream and even more dependent on support and recognition from Russia, China, and the Trump administration. Considering that Russia’s overwhelming interest is to block the loan package to Ukraine, Orbán could have little choice but to continue complying with Moscow’s requests.

A reasonable reset and de-escalation in Hungarian-Ukrainian bilateral relations can only be expected in the case of an opposition victory. Tisza is certainly not a pro-Ukrainian political force, and it will clearly refrain from providing military aid to Ukraine, but a normalization of the relationship is clearly in its interest — particularly if it comes with a relaunch of oil transit via Druzhba and the development of an acceptable and realistic energy diversification plan that could allow Budapest to phase out Russian energy imports in the longer run without the risk of supply or price shocks.

Still, due to the likelihood that a Tisza victory would lead Fidesz to initiate extensive recounting and administrative remedy procedures, Ukraine’s international partners should be prepared to wait for quite some time after April 12 before the new government in Budapest is in a position to reverse Orbán-era policies. 

A reasonable reset and de-escalation in Hungarian-Ukrainian bilateral relations can only be expected in the case of an opposition victory

Regarding future relations with Russia under a Tisza government, the jury is still out. Restoring relations with EU and NATO partners and withdrawing from the blockade and veto policies of the Orbán regime is a central promise of Tisza’s election manifesto. Needless to say, such a shift would certainly result in a cooling of relations with the Kremlin, making Budapest a much less attractive partner in the eyes of Vladimir Putin. The Tisza election manifesto also contains some very bold political objectives, such as the revision of the loan and construction contracts of the Paks II nuclear power plant project. Furthermore, Tisza’s candidate for foreign minister, Anita Orbán (no relation to the prime minister), calls for energy diversification away from Russian sources.

However, even a hypothetical Péter Magyar-led government would not be interested in an abrupt cut of energy relations with Russia, as this could cause supply security issues, particularly in the area of natural gas. Budapest’s interest will remain a managed phase-out of Russian fossil fuel energy, which in some way requires a minimum level of cooperation from Russia. This reality will continue to provide certain leverage for the Kremlin, resulting in a pragmatic rather than overtly anti-Russian foreign policy under a new government in Budapest.

Even a hypothetical Péter Magyar-led government would not be interested in an abrupt cut of energy relations with Russia

The same pragmatism can be expected toward the Trump administration. While the current White House has repeatedly endorsed Prime Minister Orbán during the election campaign, it is clear that the Hungarian public is not impressed by international support for the Orbán regime, whether originating from the European radical-right Patriot party family or from the MAGA universe in the United States. A new Hungarian government will remain dependent on the U.S. — not only as a security provider within NATO, but also as an energy partner during the process of diversification away from Russian resources.

Furthermore, American stakeholders outside the ideologically motivated core of the Trump administration (which views Orbán as a key ideological ally in weakening EU unity) may also recognize that on many issues such as China, a Tisza government may be much more aligned with U.S. strategic interests than the Orbán regime has been. This may be one reason why Washington is not going beyond symbolic endorsements of Orbán and is not betting all its cards on a potentially losing alternative.     

The uneven playing field

With all these strategic calculi in mind, the main question of the Hungarian elections is whether the process will remain reasonably free. Hungary had its last free and fair election sixteen years ago, in 2010, and since then, official election observation missions of OSCE-ODIHR have consistently labelled Hungarian elections as “free but not fair.”

However, in contrast to previous elections, this time dissatisfaction with the Orbán regime appears to be high enough that not even the tilted playing field will be enough to save Fidesz from its political fate.

The first-past-the-post electoral system in single-member districts, along with the so-called “winner compensation” mechanism, provides extra advantages to the political party with the most overall support. In recent cycles, this has been Fidesz; however, based on current polling data, it is now Tisza. The situation is also less clear regarding the gerrymandered nature of the districts. This used to provide a 5% advantage for Fidesz as long as its opponent was a largely urbanized, progressive movement. But when faced with a centrist, conservative, right-leaning political opponent that is able to make inroads into the traditionally Fidesz-dominated countryside, the impact of gerrymandering may also be lower than in the past. Mail ballots from ethnic Hungarians in neighboring countries will continue to serve Fidesz well, as will campaign regulations and political control over the billboard market, but this will not undercut a Tisza government majority provided that the party is able to win with at least a 7% percentage point advantage.

Against this background, if the elections remain free, a democratic change in government is likely. In light of the level of state capture and the amount of public resources placed under partisan control in the form of private foundations, one could conclude that Prime Minister Orbán could risk losing an election while keeping the option open for a democratic return. However, due to their entanglement in high-level corruption, a central question for many oligarchs and acolytes of the regime is whether a change in government would result in their prosecution. With Fidesz-related oligarchs already moving their assets out of Hungary, this is evidently an existential question for many of them. Under these circumstances, it cannot be excluded that the April 12 Hungarian election might become the European Union’s first ever rigged election, with far-reaching consequences for the democratic integrity and decision-making processes of the bloc.

It cannot be excluded that the April 12 vote in Hungary might become the European Union’s first ever rigged election

In such a scenario, reactions from both Brussels and Hungarian society will be crucial in determining Hungary’s future trajectory — democratic or authoritarian. For EU stakeholders, it is essential that they prepare for such an eventuality. Regarding Hungarian society, it is equally essential that any attempts at authoritarian election manipulation face determined social opposition and widespread protests. What opposition politicians need to understand in such a context is that they are entering a marathon.

Prime Minister Orbán may have learned from his close partners in places like Georgia and Serbia that even the most intense social protests can be effectively weathered by incumbents — provided that they have sufficient stamina and external support. This will likely be Orbán’s strategy as well. There will certainly be no Ukrainian-style Maidan revolution in Hungary, as neither Hungarian society nor the police or military will be prepared and motivated to use force.

Therefore, months of Serbia-like peaceful protests are the most likely outcome in the event of election fraud (or of a constitutional coup d’état). Such a movement will only be able to steer Hungary back onto a democratic path if its demonstrations of popular legitimacy are sufficiently strong, determined, and sustained domestically, and if it is accompanied by EU pressure exerted on Orbán in the event that he makes the wrong decision at this critical historical juncture.