Ukraine marked the 35th anniversary of its independence on August 24. The leaders of Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Finland, Romania, Moldova, and Luxembourg traveled to Kyiv for the occasion, as did Britain’s new prime minister, Andy Burnham, on his first official visit to Ukraine.

A Russian drone guided entirely by an experimental artificial intelligence system killed three civilians in Zaporizhzhia, according to an article in The New York Times (NYT).

Russian President Vladimir Putin has extended Alexander Bastrykin’s term as head of the Investigative Committee, Russia’s top investigative agency, until August 27, 2027, according to a decree published on the government’s official legal information portal.

Dmitry Menyaev, a 21-year-old ethnic Chechen who was born in Russia and moved to Georgia in 2022, was found dead in his apartment in Batumi on August 15, according to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s Russian service.

The Gazprom Arena stadium in St. Petersburg said on August 24 that the venue had not signed any rental agreement for concerts by the rapper Kanye West, also known as Ye, and that the event would not take place as a result.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Russian forces would answer the attacks on Ozon’s warehouses with new strikes on Ukrainian territory.

Russia’s Interior Ministry regularly publishes guidance for Russians on how to protect themselves from threats around them. But alongside reasonable and important warnings (like not sending money to strangers), these guides regularly include dubious, and sometimes downright absurd, advice. Here is a portrait of the law-abiding Russian the Interior Ministry would find satisfactory.

Volodymyr Zelensky denied that Ukraine played any role in the 2022 bombing of the Nord Stream gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea.

Russia struck Odesa with missiles and drones, Oleh Kiper, head of the region’s military administration, said.

Web designer and IT entrepreneur Yovan Savovich died at 43 after a long illness. According to people close to him, he had multiple sclerosis. Savovich is best known as the creator of the Leprozorium and of Dirty, one of the first collective blogging platforms on the Russian-language internet. It’s fair to say he was one of the people whose projects shaped Runet before the age of social media. Meduza looks back at what Savovich will be remembered for.

Police in Saratov detained Nikolai Bondarenko, a Communist Party (KPRF) candidate for Russia’s State Duma and a former lawmaker in the Saratov regional legislature, on Friday, August 21.

A Moscow court sentenced comedian Semyon Slepakov in absentia to 400 hours of community service under Part 2 of Article 330.1 of Russia’s Criminal Code for violating the requirements imposed on “foreign agents,” the independent Russian outlet Mediazona reported.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said Germany should drop its prosecution of suspects in the 2022 bombing of the Nord Stream gas pipelines.

The human rights organization Kovcheg (“The Ark”) has seen a sharp rise in inquiries about leaving Russia.

This summer in occupied Crimea has been one of the hardest in decades: Crimean cities are regularly shelled by Ukraine, there are few tourists, prices are rising, and there are regular outages of electricity, water, and gasoline. The Bereg cooperative talked to Crimean residents living in different parts of the region, from Dzhankoi to Alupka, about how they’re surviving and why they don’t even consider leaving. Meduza is publishing this piece in full.

Russia struck Ukraine’s Odesa region with drones overnight on August 21, hitting the Tabaky international checkpoint on the border with Moldova, Ukraine’s State Border Guard Service reported.

Perm declared a drone threat alert on the morning of August 21, as sirens sounded and residents reported explosions. The city’s airport suspended all flights.

As of August 2026, renouncing Russian citizenship from abroad costs nearly 10 times as much as it used to. The change was set out in a government decree.

Jovan Savović, the creator of Leprosorium and the group blogging platform Dirty, has died. He was 43.

Dmitry Oganyan, a former bassist for the Russian rock band Kukryniksy, died in St. Petersburg. He was 45. His body was found in a pond near Michmanskaya Street. His clothes and shoes were found on the bank, along with an ax and a severed hand. Oganyan is believed to have severed his own hand before walking into the water. No evidence of foul play was found.

Russians are rattled by a new wave of rumors about a possible freeze on bank deposits. Last week, The Washington Post reported on that risk. The paper linked the scenario to the growing volume of cash in circulation.

Russia’s Supreme Court — the country’s highest court of general jurisdiction — has ruled that a school unlawfully refused to let a student continue his education after ninth grade. “Successfully completing a general education is not grounds for expulsion,” the court said in its explanation.

The oil refinery in Perm has halted operations following a Ukrainian drone attack, two industry sources told Reuters. The sources said repairs could take up to two weeks.

Former Pussy Riot member Rita Flores (real name Margarita Konovalova) said she began cooperating with Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) in 2023, helping the agency gather information on contemporary artists and political activists, including members of Pussy Riot.

Former Ukrainian Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov placed third with 16% support in an unpublished poll on a hypothetical presidential election in Ukraine, according to The Economist, which has seen the results.

Ozon shares dropped 12.7% to 2,600 rubles after the Moscow Exchange’s main trading session opened. The exchange’s benchmark index fell to 2,092 points at the start of trading, down 2% from the previous session’s close.

78.ru, a news outlet controlled by Izvestia, reported on the evening of August 22 that security officials had raided the private punk festival Day x Night near Vyborg, in Russia’s Leningrad region. According to the outlet, officers cordoned off the forest, searched tents, confiscated drones, and detained about 100 people.

Russia’s 3rd Combined Arms Army posted footage on its Telegram channel showing an FPV drone attacking an unarmed man riding a bicycle along a road near the village of Vasylivska Pustosh, in the Kramatorsk district of the Donetsk region.

As of the morning of August 21, only one gas station in Gelendzhik was selling gasoline: a Lukoil station in the village of Arkhipo-Osipovka. The other stations had only diesel, the city administration said.

The Rodina party has filed a lawsuit with the Pskov Regional Court seeking to remove Yabloko’s candidate list from the election to the Pskov regional parliament, Yabloko’s press service said.

The French mathematics journal Revue de la filière mathématique has published an article by Russian political prisoner Azat Miftakhov, “La conjecture de Chui dans un cadre hilbertien” (“Chui’s Conjecture in a Hilbert Space”).

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Ukraine’s decision to ban the Russian animated series Masha and the Bear “demonstrates the ugliness of the Kyiv regime.”

A strike on a shopping mall in Kryvyi Rih killed two people and injured 15, reported Dnipropetrovsk Regional Administration Head Oleksandr Hanzha.

Russia’s Justice Ministry has designated the news outlet Mediazona a “foreign agent,” essentially for the second time.

Some Russian publishers have stopped printing new titles and are cutting print runs following Ukrainian drone strikes on Wildberries warehouses, two sources at major retail chains told the Russian business daily Kommersant.

Russia’s Federal Security Service announced it had detained a foreigner in the Murmansk region on suspicion of preparing a terrorist attack in Moscow on orders from Ukrainian security services.

Vasily Nebenzya, Russia’s permanent representative to the UN, said Russia has no plans for mobilization.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has signed four decrees enacting a decision by Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council to impose sanctions on Russian defense manufacturers, companies in the Rusal aluminum group, and the animated series Masha and the Bear.

Gasoline prices rose in 40 Russian regions between August 11 and 17, according to Russia’s state statistics agency, Rosstat. The steepest increase, 8.1%, came in Krasnoyarsk Krai. Prices fell in 20 other regions, with the sharpest drop, 3.6%, in Tyva. From the start of the year through July 12, the average price of AI-92 and AI-95 gasoline at Russian gas stations rose 7.4%, the Russian business daily Kommersant reported, citing data from Russia’s Central Dispatching Department of the Fuel and...

Germany’s Federal Prosecutor’s Office said it had detained a teenager identified as Kai M, who is suspected of belonging to two “right-wing extremist” criminal organizations.

For a third straight night, Ukraine’s military has struck warehouses belonging to the Russian online marketplace Ozon. The first drone strike, overnight on August 22, targeted the company’s warehouse in Chapaevsk (Samara region); the building caught fire and several people were injured. Ukrainian forces attacked a warehouse in Orenburg overnight on August 23. Overnight on August 24, warehouses in Adygeysk (Adygea), Nevinnomyssk (Stavropol Krai), and Makhachkala (Dagestan) came under attack. F...

A Moscow court handed a four-year suspended sentence to Leonid Stepanov, an employee of Russia’s federal communications regulator Roskomnadzor, on charges of financing extremism, according to the independent news outlet Mediazona.

Authorities in Russia have opened a treason case against Svetlana Golovatenko, a Russian citizen who lived in Ukraine for more than a decade, after she flew to Moscow to renew her documents.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed a decree allowing the authorities to place critical infrastructure facilities under temporary management when their owners fail to protect them from security threats, including Ukrainian drone attacks.

Finland has deported 155 Russian nationals since the start of 2026, Chief Superintendent Janne Lepsu of Finland’s National Police Board told the Russian-language outlet Vot Tak — up from more than the 104 people expelled in the first nine months of 2025.

Military exercises rehearsing mobilization procedures were held in Russia’s Kaliningrad region in July, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing Western intelligence officials.

Russia’s Finance Ministry has submitted a package of support measures to the government for RWB Group — the merged company formed by Wildberries & Russ — as well as for sellers whose goods were destroyed in Ukrainian drone attacks.

Two children were killed in Krasnodar overnight on August 24 during a Ukrainian drone attack, Governor Veniamin Kondratyev said.

The Russian military attacked Kryvyi Rih’s largest shopping mall, said Oleksandr Vilkul, head of the city’s defense council. Videos posted on social media indicate the target was Sonyachna Halereya (“Sunny Gallery”), where a major fire broke out after the strike.

By the end of 2026, a major new international treaty will be submitted to the State Duma for ratification: the United Nations Convention against Cybercrime. Russia does not agree with every provision in the document — even though Russia was the one that initiated it. So the convention will be ratified with reservations. How substantial those reservations will be, we don’t yet know.

Ukraine’s military drew up plans to strike Moscow’s airports with a swarm of 1,000 small AI-guided drones, two sources told The Atlantic on condition of anonymity.

Serhiy Rebrov, the former head coach of Ukraine’s national football team, apologized on Instagram for playing padel with Vasily Berezutsky, a former player for the Russian national team.

Since mid-June, mass roundups have been taking place in Russia’s Penza region: men are grabbed right off the street, forced to sign contracts with Russia’s Defense Ministry, and sent to fight in the war in Ukraine. Authorities are using a range of methods: deception, bribery, threats, and force. Behind the quotas for rounding up potential contract soldiers may be Tamara Pavlutkina, head of the Bashmakovsky District administration and the local branch of the United Russia party, according to i...

Latvia’s border guard has discovered an underground tunnel used for illegal border crossings on the border with Belarus.

Business closures in Russia’s beauty services sector jumped 52.5% to 12,300 between January and July compared with the same period last year, according to calculations the data firm Kontur.Focus prepared for the Russian business daily Kommersant.

VK has sued Apple in the Moscow Arbitration Court, the Russian news agency Interfax reported.

The Russian government has submitted a bill to the State Duma, Russia’s lower house of parliament, that would impose fines for failure to comply with decisions by regional heads and regional task forces.

Yabloko’s election campaign became Russia’s biggest political story of the summer before it had even properly begun: the Supreme Court removed the party from the ballot, and hundreds of young people came out to support Yabloko. Meanwhile, one of Yabloko’s leaders, Lev Shlosberg, was sentenced to 11 years on trumped-up charges. Amid all that, the party is riding an unprecedented surge of popularity: thousands of people have already submitted applications to join, and Yabloko has picked up hund...

Russia struck Kyiv with drones again on the evening of August 20 — after a massive combined attack the night before.

Anton Astakhov, the son of Pavel Astakhov, a lawyer and Russia’s former children’s rights commissioner, has been named in two criminal cases — one involving fraud, the other the illegal awarding of military decorations during the war.