On 16 June, the Saratov regional assembly’s industry committee raised the possibility of convening a session on the fuel shortage. Stanislav Denisenko, a deputy of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDNR), argued against it.

The problem, he said, was being artificially inflated by “hostile YouTube channels.” He had personally checked the filling stations. There was no shortage. His proposed solution was to block VPN access so that Russians could not reach the channels spreading panic.

Denis Bulanov, a Communist Party of the Russian Federation (KPRF) deputy, replied that the Kommersant article documenting the national fuel crisis was available without a VPN.

Two weeks later, Olga Alimova, a KPRF deputy in Russia’s State Duma, told a Saratov party meeting that residents were tired of having their real problems “either silenced or replaced with formal reports.”

On 30 June, by which point more than 55 of Russia’s regions were reporting fuel supply problems or government-imposed restrictions, according to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s Siberia.Realities—the Samara regional assembly voted on whether to put the crisis on its agenda. Deputy Maxim Fedorov had proposed the discussion. The vote was 14 in favor, 19 against, and one abstaining.

Assembly speaker Gennady Kotelnikov explained that the government was already handling it, that committees had discussed it, and that “the situation has stabilized, but problems remain.” The region had been under a rationing order for six days: 40 liters of gasoline per car, 100 liters of diesel. Sales into canisters were suspended.

Manual mode

For most of the past four years, Vladimir Putin largely managed to shield the population from the immediate economic consequences of the war, Politico wrote on 2 July.

About 20% of Russians have income tied to military service or war production, Euromaidan Press has reported—wages in that sector have risen while the rest of the population absorbed inflation and cuts to civilian services. The fuel crisis is different—it is immediate and personal for civilians with no connection to the front.

In Irkutsk Oblast, governor Igor Kobzev published a post on Telegram explaining the problems but not the cause, merely stating that there are disruptions across the country and that his region had shifted to “manual mode,” determining fuel volumes for each recipient individually. Siberia.Realities reported that the original post contained a reference to the Ukrainian drone strikes, which was later removed.

What followed in Kobzev’s public communications was logistical: 6,000 tons of fuel from refineries across the country were moving to the region under existing contracts, to be distributed across more than 20 districts with few or no Rosneft filling stations.

He declared a state of heightened readiness on 28 June, called on residents and organizations to reduce driving, and flew to Moscow to brief Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak. He returned without saying how the crisis would end. “Honestly,” he wrote on 1 July, “despite all the measures taken, the situation with fuel in the region continues to be very difficult.”

Siberia.Realities reported that in late June, an ambulance leaving Baykalsk—a town of 13,000 without a maternity ward, 150 kilometers from Irkutsk—needed a pickup truck carrying a fuel drum to follow it, because the stations on the route had run dry. The baby was born on the highway.

In Pskov Oblast, Mikhail Vedernikov sent his own staff to verify whether the stations actually had fuel, then publicly reported what they found. The worst single-day queue documented by his team: nearly 100 cars backed up simultaneously in the Kuninsky district in the far south-east of the oblast.

Vedernikov negotiated a dispensation for holders of boat registration documents to fill jerry cans and announced that, from the following day, residents could purchase five liters in certified containers for household use—a regional emergency staff decision binding on all stations.

Irkutsk activist and Yabloko party member Pavel Kharitonenko posted on Telegram that Kobzev’s emergency flight to Moscow pointed at the structural problem: Irkutsk Oblast sits on oil fields and hosts the Angarsk Petrochemical Company (ANKHK), one of the country’s largest refining facilities, which should supply the region’s needs and send the surplus elsewhere. Instead, Rosneft—the refining monopolist in the oblast—supplies fuel only through its own station network, squeezing independent operators out of the market.

“Why can’t the governor sort this out?” Kharitonenko asked. “It’s very simple: he was installed here by Moscow in uncontested elections and works for Moscow bosses, not for the residents of the region.”

Russian economist Sergei Aleksashenko, quoted by Siberia.Realities, stated: “We must understand and accept that the main cause of what is happening is the war. As long as the war continues, Ukrainian drone strikes on Russian refineries will only intensify.”

30 liters, if you’re lucky

A reporter from the Samarska Gazeta joined the queues over the weekend of 28–29 June. At a Rosneft filling station, the limit was 30 liters per fill. The AI-95 grade was unavailable; the reporter took AI-92 instead. Two nearby Tatneft stations had their nozzles marked as broken.

When the pump moved to the next driver in line, it ran dry. “Another thing we noticed,” the paper wrote, “fewer cars on the roads. This may be connected to the vacation season, or to drivers deciding to wait out the hard times.”

In the week of 23–29 June, Samarastat recorded a 10% rise in AI-92 prices, to 73.68 rubles ($0.95) per liter, and an 8.74% rise in AI-95, to 78.50 rubles ($1.02). At smaller independent chains—Olvi, Roza Mira, Irbis—the T-Bank price-tracking app showed AI-92 at 112 rubles ($1.45) and AI-95 at 116 rubles ($1.50) per liter.

Governor Vyacheslav Fedorischev said on 29 June that rationing could be lifted early if the situation stabilized. The regional Ministry of Industry advised residents who considered the prices unreasonable to contact the Federal Antimonopoly Service. The Antimonopoly Service said companies set prices based on market conditions.

Into the kindergartens

In occupied Sevastopol, governor Mikhail Razvozhaev told a 30 June government session that the city had reduced the number of working kindergartens from 74 to 24. The cause was not budget pressure. It was fuel and electricity constraints. The remaining 50 could not be kept running.

Food prices on the peninsula have roughly doubled at some stores, with goods being repriced at the checkout counter every few hours as supply chains fail to keep pace, according to Ukrainian media monitoring Crimean social media.

Ukraine’s Center for National Resistance documented shortages of sugar, flour, cereals, salt, and pasta in stores across Crimea as early as 8 June, with some retail chains introducing purchase limits per person.

Gasoline at official filling stations—when available—has passed 200 rubles ($2.59) per liter in Sevastopol. The fuel station chain TES dispenses 20-liter allocations by QR code—obtaining one, the outlet noted, is “an internet lottery with minimal winners.” Resellers charge 400 rubles ($5.17) or more.

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The market the state left behind

In Irkutsk, a black market for fuel opened at 150 rubles ($1.94) per liter at the start of the shortage and reached 350 rubles ($4.53) by the end of it, according to Ukraine’s Foreign Intelligence Service.

In Sevastopol, two residents lost nearly 90,000 rubles ($1,164) in one day to scammers offering fuel without a queue: a 33-year-old woman transferred 5,500 rubles ($71) to a supplier who vanished after receiving payment; a 32-year-old man lost 83,000 rubles ($1,074) in the same scheme.

In the Penza region, Sberbank’s deputy chairman warned businesses of fraudulent commercial offers impersonating major oil company suppliers; the bank said it had already prevented 18 million rubles ($233,000) in corporate losses.

Into the loan book

The fuel shortage has reached Russia’s corporate loan book. Sberbank CEO German Gref told Russia’s Financial Congress that his credit committee had become “a committee on problem assets” as more companies sought debt restructuring.

The Bank of Russia’s April data put problem corporate loans—including risky restructurings—at 11.2 trillion rubles ($145 billion), or 11.6% of the entire corporate portfolio, with the oil and gas sector among the hardest hit.

Gref linked the mounting pressure directly to the war. Central Bank of Russia (CBR) governor Elvira Nabiullina described the fuel situation as “of course, concerning” but “temporary,” saying the CBR would watch for secondary inflationary effects—rising fuel prices causing people to expect broader price increases across the economy—before deciding on further rate moves.

At its 19 June meeting, the CBR cut its key rate by only 25 basis points to 14.25%, half the reduction markets had expected, citing pro-inflationary risks from the fuel market.

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Ukraine carried out at least 30 strikes on Russian oil assets in May alone—16 of them on fuel-producing facilities, hitting eight of Russia's 10 biggest refineries—the highest monthly toll since the full-scale invasion began. The Ukrainian Ministry of Defense said 11 refineries were struck in June.

Before the June strikes, Energy Intelligence estimated that around one-third of Russia’s refining capacity had been knocked out. Repairing the damaged equipment is complicated by Western technology sanctions: Ukraine has targeted specialized imported components, and sourcing replacements around the restrictions has made repairs slow and expensive, Euronews reported.

On 2 July, Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin signed a decree permitting the sale of lower-grade Euro-3 gasoline—with sulfur content up to 150 mg per kilogram, against the previous Euro-5 standard—through the end of 2026. The government described it as a “preventive measure to prevent destabilization of the domestic motor fuel market.”

Ukraine’s Foreign Intelligence Service has reported widespread accounts of engine damage in newer turbocharged cars, particularly Chinese models, from lower-grade fuel already in circulation.

Italy has joined Bulgaria in objecting to a proposed EU visa ban on Patriarch Kirill, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church and a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, according to three EU diplomats, Politico reported.

The visa ban, proposed by EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas as part of the bloc's 21st sanctions package against Russia, needs the backing of all 27 member states to pass. Bulgaria's opposition was already on the record; Italy's "reservation"—diplomatic language for a concern short of a veto—makes Rome the second capital standing between the EU and the cleric who has repeatedly praised and justified Moscow's full-scale invasion. Rome's unease, one diplomat said, stems from the Vatican and its discomfort at sanctioning the leader of a Christian denomination.

A patriarch long shielded from EU sanctions

The 21st package, unveiled on 9 June, targets Russia's military-industrial and financial sectors. Kirill was kept off earlier sanctions lists for years by Hungary, whose veto fell away after Viktor Orban lost power to Peter Magyar in April; Brussels added the patriarch's name once that block lifted. Under Kirill, the Russian Orthodox Church has framed the war as a holy one and moved to purge clergy who refuse to bless it.

The oil price cap and the combatants ban

The Kirill objection is not the only friction inside the package. EU diplomats are also discussing a proposal to freeze the price cap on Russian oil, set at $44 per barrel—delaying a mid-July review that would otherwise raise the cap automatically. Greece, Malta and Cyprus, all with sizable shipping sectors that service Russian vessels, have objected to the delay. The same three previously stalled a proposed ban on providing maritime services to Russian ships.

A separate measure, barring former Russian combatants from entering the EU, has drawn concerns from France and Italy.

Why the holdouts matter now

The horse-trading comes as the sanctions regime and Ukraine's long-range strikes on Russian refineries squeeze Moscow together: two-thirds of Russia's 83 regions are now reporting fuel-supply problems. Ukraine's drone campaign has idled a large share of Russian refining capacity, pushing rationing across dozens of regions and forcing Moscow to import gasoline by sea. Because the EU requires unanimity, a single reservation from Rome or Sofia can hold the whole package—energy measures included—until it is resolved.

Russia's border city of Belgorod lost electricity and water across several districts early on 3 July after a Ukrainian strike hit a city energy facility, in what Ukrainian military sources described as a missile strike on a substation at a combined heat and power plant. A woman was killed in her car and five vehicles were damaged, Belgorod officials said.

The strike landed a day after Russia's deadliest assault on Kyiv this year — a missile-and-drone barrage that killed at least 30 people and put the capital under a day of mourning on 3 July. It fits the blackout-for-blackout logic Ukraine has followed since autumn: for every strike on Ukraine's grid, one on Russia's. Belgorod has been among the most repeatedly hit, and Moscow, in turn, framed its own Kyiv attack as retaliation for Ukrainian strikes on Russian refineries.

What was hit

Open-source analysts identified the target as the Michurinskaya gas-turbine plant, with the strike falling on its 110-kilovolt station substation. The plant supplies power to Belenergomash-BZEM, a large industrial enterprise producing pipes and metal structures for Russian industry, the Ukrainian outlet RBC-Ukraine reported. Belgorod regional authorities confirmed an attack on the region and a fire at an infrastructure object, with emergency crews sent to the site.

A city in the dark, again

Power and water went down in southern and central parts of the city of more than 320,000, alongside problems with cellular service and internet, local channels and the mayor said. The city has been through this repeatedly: Ukrainian forces struck its power plants and substations through the autumn and winter, and in January the regional governor reported 600,000 residents temporarily left without electricity, heat, and water. EP has tracked the recurring hits on the city's grid.

The wider campaign

The Belgorod strike sits inside a broader Ukrainian push against Russian and occupied energy and fuel infrastructure. In the 48 hours before it, Ukrainian drones hit power substations across occupied Crimea and struck a refinery in Russia's Nizhny Novgorod Oblast. The campaign against Russian refineries has driven a domestic fuel crisis and forced Russia to import gasoline. Ukraine has cast the grid strikes as a proportional answer to Russia's years of attacks on Ukrainian energy — the same reciprocity Moscow invoked, in reverse, to explain the Kyiv barrage.

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Two of Russia's most senior economic figures publicly linked the country's mounting economic pressures to the war in Ukraine last week — an unusual departure from the official silence that has surrounded Kremlin war costs since 2022. German Gref, chief executive of Sberbank, and central bank governor Elvira Nabiullina both spoke in separate settings as Ukraine's drone strike campaign against Russian oil infrastructure compounds the fiscal strain from record military spending.

Russia's military and classified spending reached 46% of all budget expenditure in the first quarter of 2026 — a surge of roughly 30% over the same period in 2025 — while the National Wealth Fund buffer has fallen from about 7% of GDP before the war to 1.7% as of April 2026, Russia's Finance Ministry confirmed.

What each of them said

Gref told Sberbank's annual shareholders meeting that investments had already fallen over 14% and could drop a further 3% this year. He then addressed the war directly.

"I don't believe there is anyone in this country whose primary concern is anything other than an end to military hostilities as soon as possible," Gref said.

For the chief executive of Russia's largest state-controlled bank to frame the war as the country's overriding problem — not "the special military operation," not a security challenge to be managed — marks a notable break from the language Kremlin officials have enforced since February 2022.

Nabiullina's public position is more constrained, but the Bank of Russia's own press release on her June rate decision said fiscal policy had become more accommodative than previously expected and that pro-inflationary risks had worsened — the same dynamic that Kluge's analysis traces directly to the gap between military outlays and tax revenues.

The fiscal picture behind the exchange

The 46% military spending figure comes from analyst Janis Kluge of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, drawn from Finance Ministry data and cited by ISW. Russia is now covering an increasing share of the deficit through borrowing, with liquid National Wealth Fund assets depleted to a fraction of their pre-war level and no longer functioning as a meaningful cushion.

Ukraine's strike campaign is compressing the revenue side simultaneously. Bloomberg counted 38 Ukrainian strikes on Russian refineries from January through May 2026, with 16 in May alone — the highest monthly figure of the war. Two strikes on 16 and 18 June disabled both primary processing units at the Kapotnya refinery in Moscow — the capital's main fuel source — leaving it unable to process crude until at least early 2027.

Russia has responded by banning gasoline and jet fuel exports, drawing down strategic reserves, allowing lower-grade fuel blends, and importing gasoline from India and Belarus, while negotiations with Kazakhstan are complicated by the fact that a Ukrainian strike disrupted the feedstock supply to one potential Kazakh supplier.

Russian President Valdimir Putin publicly admitted queues at filling stations while summoning top officials to manage the crisis. Parliament passed legislation subsidizing gasoline imports from abroad.

Kommersant’s Crimea correspondent reported on 1 July that gasoline in Russian-occupied Crimea was selling for 185–200 rubles ($2.37–$2.56) a liter at filling stations when fuel was available. In Sevastopol, the pump price had reached 199 rubles ($2.54) a liter. Resellers were asking 250–400 rubles ($3.20–$5.12).

On 30 June, Crimea’s Russian-installed leader Sergey Aksyonov said on Telegram that large volumes of fuel would not reach the market soon, despite authorities’ ongoing efforts to resolve what he called the fuel crisis. He asked residents to be patient.

At the top of that range, gasoline costs more than twice as much as at a station. Kommersant described a market split between intermittent retail sales and a separate resale trade, with drivers paying sharply different prices depending on where they can buy fuel.

Stations open without warning

Kommersant said some filling stations were opening only briefly and without notice, leaving price boards blank. Where fuel was available, gasoline sold for 185 rubles ($2.37) per liter and diesel for 199 rubles ($2.54) per liter. Drivers have begun queuing from early morning, standing for hours in summer heat, and many still leave without filling their tanks.

Aksyonov said that public transport and municipal services had been fully supplied with fuel. His post did not explain how long those protected supplies would last.

Russia’s Energy Ministry warned on 2 July that online services claiming to track fuel availability at filling stations could not be considered reliable. The ministry said such platforms had become more active since late June and that more than 30 Russian regions had imposed limits on gasoline and diesel sales since early May.

National averages miss the local shock

Rosstat’s weekly price release recorded a 1.6% nationwide increase in gasoline prices and a 2.2% rise in diesel prices during the week of 23–29 June. Gasoline was 6.69% more expensive than at the end of May and 11.58% above its end-2025 price. Diesel had risen 6.94% since the end of May and 11% since December.

Rosstat’s index is based on weekly price checks for 110 goods and services in 280 Russian cities. Kommersant’s Crimea correspondent reported a different part of the market: whether drivers can find an open station at all, and how much they pay when they turn to resellers.

Moscow acknowledges wider shortages

Kommersant reported on Wednesday that Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak acknowledged fuel shortages at some Russian filling stations, blaming logistical changes. He maintained that Russia’s domestic market was supplied overall and said he hoped the disruption would have only a limited effect on price growth and inflation expectations.

The Bank of Russia says the fuel-market disruption may have a longer-lasting effect on inflation than in the past, as higher gasoline and diesel prices can filter through to other goods and services via transport and production costs.

Russia's fourth-largest oil refinery caught fire again on 2 July after a Ukrainian drone strike, days after a separate attack had already knocked its primary crude unit offline. The renewed fire hit the NORSI plant near Kstovo, Russia's Nizhny Novgorod Oblast, according to Ukrainian and Russian Telegram channels.

Ukraine's drone campaign against Russian oil refineries has forced several of the country's largest plants offline in recent months, part of a wider effort to strain the fuel revenues and military logistics sustaining Moscow's invasion.

Fire breaks out at Kstovo again

Drones struck the Lukoil-Nizhegorodnefteorgsintez refinery in Kstovo before dawn on 2 July, Ukrainian Telegram channel Exilenova+ reported. Witnesses filmed thick black smoke rising over the plant's industrial zone as drones were spotted over Kstovo and neighboring settlements shortly before the attack, according to Ukrainian media outlet Militarnyi.

Nizhny Novgorod Oblast governor Gleb Nikitin confirmed the strike on Telegram without naming the refinery, saying debris from downed drones caused "non-critical damage" to one industrial site and several residential buildings, according to NV. Advisor to Ukraine's defense minister Serhii Sternenko said drones hit the Lukoil-Nizhegorodnefteorgsintez plant specifically.

This is not the first time the refinery has burned in the past two weeks. Ukraine's forces last struck NORSI on 24 June, when drones disabled the CDU-5 primary crude unit, a facility that normally processes about 12,000 metric tons of oil per day, roughly a quarter of the refinery's total capacity, two industry sources told Reuters. That shutdown forced the St. Petersburg International Mercantile Exchange to suspend NORSI diesel and gasoline sales.

A refinery hit again and again

NORSI, formally known as Lukoil-Nizhegorodnefteorgsintez, is Russia's fourth-largest oil refinery by processing volume and its second-largest gasoline producer. The plant, located near Kstovo about 450 km east of Moscow, can process up to 17 million tonnes of crude oil a year. Before the recent wave of strikes, it produced roughly 5 million tonnes of gasoline, more than 5 million tonnes of diesel, 2 million tonnes of fuel oil, and about 500,000 tonnes of bitumen annually, along with over 50 other petroleum products.

The plant has become one of the most frequently hit targets in Ukraine's long-range strike campaign against Russian oil infrastructure. Drones struck the facility twice in May, on 18 and 20 May, disabling the AVT-6 primary crude unit and setting fires at two industrial sites. An earlier April strike also knocked out the thermal power plant supplying the refinery's industrial zone. The scale of damage from the 2 July attack has not yet been disclosed.

Starting 15 July, Russians applying for a French Schengen visa will no longer be able to have their paperwork submitted by a third party, according to The Moscow Times.

Under the new rules, applications at France’s visa center in Russia must be filed either by the applicant personally, by a parent or guardian acting for a child under 18, or by a spouse, child, or parent who can present original proof of the family relationship. 

VFS Global, the company that operates France’s visa centers in Russia, announced the change on 30 June, The Moscow Times reported. Applicants over 12 must still appear in person to provide biometric data. 

France is now the fourth EU country to tighten its Russian visa regime in a matter of weeks.

Eleven Schengen nations wrote to the European Commission on 4 June calling for a full ban on Russian tourist entries, The Moscow Times reported.

 EU Commission spokesperson Marcus Lammert has indicated Brussels is considering formal tightening as early as 2027.

The record France is walking back

The Élysée’s new restriction marks a shift from France’s previously permissive approach to Russian visa applicants. Earlier in 2026, France issued 23% more Schengen visas to Russian nationals than the year before, the steepest rise in the EU, even as Brussels was calling for tighter controls.

European diplomats told Euractiv that Paris was politically resistant to publishing those numbers. 

France, Spain, and Italy together accounted for nearly three-quarters of the more than 620,000 Schengen visas EU governments issued to Russian citizens in 2025, up more than 10% from 2024. 

Paris led in both volume and growth, even as the European Commission ended multiple-entry Schengen visas for Russians in November 2025, citing growing security risks.

The third-party ban does not cap France's total visa issuance. Rather, it removes workarounds in the visa process, as many Russian applicants had relied on third-party visa services and travel agencies to handle their submissions. 

Paris’ hardening line on Russia

France’s tightening of visa policy comes as it increasingly treats Russia as a direct security threat. 

Paris has stepped up enforcement against Russia’s sanctions-evasion network, seizing suspected “shadow fleet” tankers used to keep Russian oil moving despite Western restrictions. 

The French government’s latest strategic review, released in 2025, identifies Russia as France’s main security threat, citing its sabotage, espionage, cyberattacks, information operations, and nuclear intimidation as a long-term concern for the country and Europe at large

Latvia's state police will begin checking the documents of everyone who visits Russia's embassy in Riga starting Wednesday, Foreign Minister Baiba Braže announced. She described the measure as a direct answer to how Russian security services treat visitors to foreign diplomatic missions in Moscow. The Russian embassy has already been informed of the new procedure.

Reciprocity at the embassy door

The rule takes effect on 1 July and applies to all visitors to the mission. Braže said it responds to Russian actions in Moscow, where the authorities screen the documents of people entering foreign diplomatic buildings.

The step gives Russia the same treatment it imposes on others, applied at its own embassy in the Latvian capital.

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More restrictions in the pipeline

Latvia is weighing further pressure on Russia and Belarus alongside the checks. The foreign ministry has prepared amendments to ban imports of certain industrial goods of Russian and Belarusian origin.

Officials are also discussing cutting trade links further and reviewing specific exemptions in critical sectors. The screening joins a run of Latvian measures targeting Russian and Belarusian presence, including a ban on the two countries' citizens buying real estate, which parliament classified as a tool of hybrid warfare. Earlier amendments to the Immigration Law also stripped away one route to temporary residence permits obtained through investment programs.

Russia is closing a string of railway border crossings with Latvia, Estonia, and Finland from 1 July, giving no public reason for the decision.

The closures cover seven crossings: St. Petersburg-Finlyandsky, Vyborg, Vyartsilya, Lyuttya, and Svetogorsk on the border with Finland, Pechory-Pskovskiye on the border with Estonia, and Pytalovo on the border with Latvia, according to a government order signed by Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin and reported by TASS. The order suspends the movement of people, vehicles, goods, and cargo through the designated checkpoints; Russia's Foreign Ministry has been told to notify Riga, Tallinn, and Helsinki.

The closures land days after The Guardian, citing sources, reported that Russia is preparing a possible "provocation" against Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, or Poland. Lithuania's Defense Ministry, responding to that report, said there are currently no signs Russia is preparing a large-scale military attack on the Baltic states, but that the threat of sabotage — arson or other action against critical infrastructure on Lithuanian territory — remains high, according to Suspilne, citing Lithuanian broadcaster LRT. The ministry added that such rhetoric from Moscow aims to divert attention from Russian military setbacks in Ukraine and to weaken the resolve of Kyiv's partners to keep supplying military aid.

The rail closures are not an isolated step. Russia doubled railway freight tariffs on cargo bound for Estonia, Latvia, and Finland from 1 June, under a Federal Antimonopoly Service order that also closed off workarounds through Belarus, according to Estonian broadcaster ERR. An Estonian logistics expert told ERR that state carrier Russian Railways, facing a financial deficit, is also using the route to pressure Central Asian nations that ship goods through Russian territory toward the Baltic. Latvia's defense minister has separately said the country is working on a plan to dismantle transportation links at its eastern border if necessary, while Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia have discussed jointly ripping up the Soviet-era "Russian gauge" rail lines that still cross their borders with Russia and Belarus, as part of "counter-mobility" measures against a potential future attack.

The closures also follow weeks of warnings from Western officials about Russian intentions toward NATO's eastern flank once the war in Ukraine winds down. Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski told CBS News on 26 June that the Kremlin could organize a "false flag" operation within the next two years to justify an attack on a NATO member state. NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said in December 2025 that the Baltic states are at risk and are next on Russia's list after Ukraine, and that Russia could potentially attack alliance countries within three to seven years if NATO does not increase defense investment.

Russia has not stated why it is closing the seven crossings, and Moscow's government order does not reference the Guardian report, the false-flag warnings, or the tariff increase.

A senior Russian Orthodox Church lawyer has proposed mandatory coursework in "Christian foundations of traditional spiritual and moral values" for students. Father Vasily Losev argues that they need a religious framework to understand abortion the way the church does, The Moscow Times reports.

The initiative by the Russian Orthodox Church came amid an ongoing campaign to restrict abortions and encourage higher birth rates in response to Russia's demographic decline.

Losev calls for Christian reinterpretation of abortion law

Losev argued that Russia's existing abortion framework is itself unconstitutional, because an abortion does not save, but destroys an emerging life. That is why, according to him, it cannot count as medical care under the constitutional right to life.

For an Orthodox believer, Losev said, it is easy to reason that life begins at conception. For secular people, that is not obvious, so future doctors and lawyers should study the concepts of life, death, and abortion through the prism of the Christian worldview.

"At that point, the scientific findings take on a different meaning..." he said. 

Losev also said Russian legal tradition, rooted in Christian values, historically treated abortion as killing an unborn child, and that the absence of that grounding in students today produces dangerous legal interpretations.

Losev frames Russian society as split into two camps: those who consider abortion murder and those who consider it a woman's right, and says this is a systemic contradiction the Constitution must resolve.

Russia intensifies anti-abortion campaign amid demographic decline

Meanwhile, Russia's birth rate has fallen to levels last seen before 1999, and 2025 figures show roughly 1.6 deaths for every birth nationwide, with the ratio reaching three to one in some regions.

State Duma Family Protection Committee chair Nina Ostanina has called for a "special demographic operation," language echoing the Kremlin's own term for the war, according to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

An anti-abortion film produced by a church-linked media channel began screening in Russian cinemas, schools, and government offices in November 2024.

Health Ministry data cited in Losev's own remarks show the campaign already shows results: pregnancy terminations fell 5% in 2025 to 321,000, with abortions performed at a woman's request down 9.9% to 120,600.

At least 30 Russian regions have adopted laws banning coercion to abortion, with 24 of those regions imposing fines reaching roughly $6,335 for institutions.

Half of Russia's primary oil refining capacity is now offline, according to Ukrainian energy analyst Mykhailo Honchar, president of the Centre for Global Studies "Strategy XXI," after a year of intensifying Ukrainian drone and missile strikes on the country's refineries.

Honchar's calculation, published 30 June in ZN.UA, puts the figure higher than independent trackers — the International Energy Agency and Reuters-cited industry sources have put offline capacity at roughly 33-40% through June — but the trajectory all sides agree on is the same: the second quarter of 2026 was the most intense and damaging phase yet of Ukraine's campaign against Russian fuel production.

The losses are forcing Moscow toward decisions it spent over a year avoiding. Gasoline and jet fuel exports are already banned. A diesel export ban was floated by Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak on 23 June, then walked back within days — Russia's Energy Ministry advised against it "for now" after a 27 June meeting, even as Novak admitted the country had "maxed out capacity across all oil refineries" and shortened repair timelines to cope. The reversal shows a government caught between a fuel crunch severe enough to consider cutting off one of its last major export earners and a fuel crunch not yet severe enough to justify the economic hit of doing so.

What changed in the second quarter

Honchar dates the campaign's symbolic start to 22 June 2022, when a Ukrainian drone first struck the Novoshakhtinsk refinery in Russia's Rostov Oblast — production capacity 7.5 million tonnes a year, knocked offline for only a few days at the time, but the first proof that a cheap drone could reach a target generating billions in war-funding revenue. Four years later, almost to the day, that same refinery was hit again, this time by two RK-360MTs Neptune cruise missiles converted for land-attack use, destroying both of its primary processing units — two-thirds of its total capacity — in a single strike on 31 May.

That shift from drones to missiles is, in Honchar's reading, the real story of the quarter. A drone warhead weighs tens of kilograms; the Neptune's weighs in the hundreds. Heavier ordnance means longer, costlier repairs — and Honchar argues that is the only way to permanently cripple Russia's largest refineries, pointing to Ukraine's own three-year campaign against its Kremenchuk refinery, which finally stopped operating in June 2025 after absorbing 260 drones and 60 missiles, a tally Energy Minister Denys Shmyhal gave the Verkhovna Rada in March.

The Moscow region has already felt what a single heavy strike can do. The Kapotnya refinery — Gazprom Neft's plant that supplies roughly 40% of the capital's gasoline and around half its diesel — was hit twice in 72 hours in mid-June, disabling both of its primary crude-processing units. Reuters reported the plant will not resume operations until 2027.

The next target: Russia's tankers

Honchar's piece is as much prescription as report. With drone strikes alone unable to permanently disable the heaviest infrastructure — pumping stations on Russia's pipeline network use 100-150-tonne pump assemblies that drone-delivered warheads cannot meaningfully damage — he argues Ukraine's logical next phase is maritime: a sustained campaign against tankers loading Russian crude and refined products in Black Sea and Sea of Azov ports, extending to the Mediterranean and beyond.

That escalation is already underway in smaller form. A Ukrainian naval drone struck the Arctic-class tanker Arctic Metagaz, reportedly carrying Yamal liquefied natural gas, in the central Mediterranean on 3 March. Honchar wants that scaled into a systematic blockade: burn storage tanks in port zones from the air, strike tankers and product carriers approaching Black Sea and Azov ports, then extend to cargo and container vessels carrying Russian exports outward.

Why this matters

Russia branded itself an energy superpower — what Honchar calls, in the piece's recurring shorthand, a "petrostate." He argues that identity is now being dismantled by the same tool that built it, with cheap Ukrainian drones doing in reverse what Russian missiles spent four years doing to Ukraine's power grid. Whether the numbers back his most dramatic claim or land closer to the more conservative 33-40% range tracked by the IEA and Reuters, the direction is not in dispute: Russia is rationing fuel in dozens of its own regions, importing gasoline by sea, and now debating — and for the moment declining — whether to choke off one more of its own export lifelines.

The EU bans aluminum exports to Russia—but not alumina, the powder from which aluminum is smelted. On 26 June, B4Ukraine and five partner organizations formally demanded that gap be closed in the next EU sanctions package, citing evidence that Ireland’s largest alumina refinery ships hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of the material to Russian smelters whose customers include weapons manufacturers.

Ireland’s Aughinish Alumina refinery—Europe’s largest—is owned by Russian aluminum giant RUSAL, whose controlling shareholder is Oleg Deripaska, sanctioned by the EU following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. RUSAL itself is not sanctioned, a distinction that has allowed intra-company alumina shipments to continue uninterrupted.

The six signatories—B4Ukraine, the Economic Security Council of Ukraine (ESCU), the Independent Anti-Corruption Commission (NAKO), the State Capture Accountability Project, the Dekleptocracy Project, and the International Partnership for Human Rights—represent a coalition of more than 100 civil society organizations.

They want the EU to add alumina under HS code 2818.20 to the restricted-goods list under Council Regulation 833/2014 and introduce controls against rerouting through third countries.

The call arrives days before Ireland assumes the rotating Presidency of the Council of the EU on 1 July 2026, giving Dublin direct influence over Council discussions, including negotiations on the next sanctions package.

Almost $308 million shipped to Russia

According to trade data compiled by ESCU and published by B4Ukraine, Aughinish shipped 540,497 tonnes of alumina worth more than $307.85 million to three RUSAL entities between April 2024 and March 2025: RUSAL’s Krasnoyarsk Aluminum Plant, RUSAL Trading House, and the Bratsk Aluminum Plant. Russia’s share of Aughinish’s exports rose from 23% in 2020 to 68% in 2024, as Euromaidan Press reported in May.

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Alumina requires no export license under EU or Irish law, and Ireland has no unilateral mechanism to restrict it—trade policy with third countries is an EU competence. The coalition argues that Ireland’s most effective lever is therefore political: pressing the European Commission and fellow member states to include alumina in future sanctions.

Supply-chain evidence

The coalition traces a supply chain from Aughinish’s RUSAL smelters to Moscow-based aluminum trader ASK LLC. Since 2022, more than 100 Russian defense-sector companies have purchased aluminum from ASK, including 40 entities currently sanctioned by the EU.

One ASK customer is the P.I. Plandin Arzamas Instrument-Making Plant, which manufactures BDG-1M damping gyroscope units—precision guidance components of the Kh-101 cruise missile, used extensively by Russia in strikes against Ukrainian cities and civilian infrastructure.

The link between Irish alumina and the Kh-101 is circumstantial, not direct. Because smelters continuously blend alumina from multiple sources, reporters working on an OCCRP-led investigation that informed the coalition’s call could not match a specific batch of Irish alumina to a specific weapon.

“Although this evidence constitutes a supply chain inference rather than direct proof of end-use,” B4Ukraine said, “the convergence of trade data, procurement records, and technical specifications establishes a compelling basis for regulatory action.”

Ireland faces pressure

The coalition is also asking Irish authorities to examine a 2024 restructuring that transferred ownership of the refinery operator, Limerick Alumina Refining Ltd, from Libertatem Materials Ltd to Libertatem Investments Ltd, and to determine whether it triggered obligations under foreign investment screening or corporate ownership disclosure rules.

Aughinish has said it complies with all applicable EU sanctions, export-control, and trade rules; Irish authorities have maintained that alumina is not a sanctioned product and that its export to Russia is therefore not restricted.

The EU’s 20th sanctions package, adopted on 23 April, expanded restrictions on Russian banks, energy infrastructure, and military suppliers but did not add alumina to the restricted-goods list.

Ukraine's FP-5 Flamingo cruise missiles hit the Titan-Barikady defense plant in Volgograd, Russia, on the night of 27 June, starting a fire on the facility's grounds, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy confirmed on 27 June.

The plant is one of the core enterprises of Russia's military-industrial complex. It produces launch systems, artillery systems, and components for the Iskander-M, Yars, and Topol-M missile complexes and has been under international sanctions since 2022, Ukrainian OSINT project Exilenova reported.

What the plant makes

According to Zelenskyy, Russia manufactures artillery systems, specialized military equipment, and elements of missile launch systems at the facility. Liga.net reported that the plant is involved in the Iskander-M operational-tactical missile complex program — ballistic missiles that have caused significant damage across Ukraine — and also produces launch systems for the Topol-M and Yars complexes, large-caliber heavy artillery systems, naval artillery installations, and coastal anti-ship systems. The enterprise is under sanctions from the US, EU, Ukraine, Canada, Japan, and other countries.

In January 2026, Ukraine's Defense Intelligence (HUR) said eight of more than 40 enterprises in the Iskander-K cruise missile production chain were still not under any sanctions, Liga.net reported. In June, Ukrainian Armed Forces sources told Liga.net that Russia is modernizing its ballistic Iskanders and that without foreign components it cannot hit any aerial target.

Strike confirmed after regional denial

Volgograd Oblast Governor Andrii Bocharov reported damage to production facilities at one of the city's enterprises in the Krasnooktyabrsky district and said 10 people were injured in the region, without specifying the target. He described the incoming weapons as "high-speed aerial targets" and said Russian air defenses repelled the attack.

Russian Telegram channel Astra and Ukrainian OSINT projects subsequently identified the target as Titan-Barikady and the weapons as Flamingo cruise missiles. Zelenskyy's confirmation followed at 10:45 on 27 June.

"The geography of Ukrainian long-range sanctions is constantly expanding. And it is precisely our pressure that every day lays the foundation for a dignified peace to ultimately be achieved," Zelenskyy wrote on Facebook.

The European Union renewed its economic sanctions on Russia for another 12 months, to 31 July 2027, the Council of the EU said on 25 June. The decision keeps the bloc's full economic regime against Moscow in place over the war on Ukraine. It follows the agreement EU leaders reached at their June summit.

What the renewed measures cover

The sanctions span trade, finance, energy, and dual-use technology, the Council said. They include the ban on importing or transferring Russian seaborne crude oil and certain petroleum products into the EU.

They also bar transactions with several Russian financial institutions and crypto service providers, including some based in third countries, and suspend the broadcasting licenses of several Kremlin-backed disinformation outlets in the EU. Other tools let the bloc counter attempts to circumvent the sanctions.

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Part of a wider sanctions push

The renewal builds on a regime that now spans 20 sanctions packages adopted since the February 2022 invasion. The bloc's leaders had agreed to the 12-month extension at the European Council on 18–19 June, when one member state's pro-Russian leader had vowed to veto the next batch.

EU leaders also called for swift adoption of a 21st sanctions package, aimed at further cutting Russia's energy revenue, curbing its shadow fleet, and constraining its banks. The renewal lands as enforcement draws scrutiny elsewhere: Washington has removed a string of Russians, ships, and firms from its own blacklist in recent months, giving no public reason.

Alongside the economic measures, the EU keeps separate restrictions on occupied Crimea, including Sevastopol, and on the Russian-occupied parts of the Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk, and Zaporizhzhia oblasts, plus asset freezes and travel bans on a broad list of individuals and entities.

Two of the European Union's biggest members are slowing a plan to bar Russia's war veterans from the bloc, according to Bloomberg. Italy and France back the idea of keeping ex-soldiers out but worry the proposal could widen into a ban on all Russian citizens. Member states sit down to discuss the wider sanctions package on Friday, 26 June.

What France and Italy object to

The entry ban is one piece of a proposed 21st sanctions package against Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Rome and Paris are not against barring Moscow's former combatants, sources told Bloomberg. They fear the current wording could open the door to a blanket prohibition on Russians.

Both governments argue a targeted travel ban fits better in visa policy than in a sanctions package. They also raised a practical snag. The proposal would leave each member state to decide who has and has not fought, a determination the sources called far from simple.

The friction sits awkwardly against the travel numbers. France, Italy, and Spain drew nearly three-quarters of all Schengen visa applications filed by Russians last year, when Russians lodged more than 670,000 such requests.

The rest of the package is stuck too

The veteran ban is not the only holdup. The package also aims to freeze the EU's price cap on Russian oil, squeeze Moscow's energy income, and hit banks, crypto operators, and tankers that help Russia dodge restrictions.

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The oil cap is its own tangle. EU rules now adjust the cap every six months to sit 15% below the average price of Russian Urals crude, which has pushed the limit to $44.10 a barrel. With the Iran war lifting fuel prices, a July review could send the floating cap to at least $65, above the old $60 ceiling. Officials are weighing whether to freeze the cap where it is or reset it to $60. Maritime nations have reservations about both.

Another contested clause would extend the rules used against tankers carrying Russian oil to ships moving its liquefied natural gas. The goal is to stop Moscow building a second shadow fleet for gas, as it has done for oil. Some members want a longer transition. A handful of capitals also have concerns about limiting imports of certain Russian fish.

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The package carries other measures too: trade restrictions on some critical minerals, metals, and ores, plus export controls on about two dozen firms in China, India, Türkiye, and Central Asia accused of supplying Russia's weapons makers. It would add 30 more vessels to the shadow-fleet blacklist.

Ukrainian drones set a fuel depot ablaze in southern Russia's Krasnodar Krai overnight, the latest blow in Kyiv's campaign against the supply lines behind Moscow's war, according to Russian regional officials and Ukrainian monitors. Russian authorities blamed falling drone debris, while Ukrainian and Russian channels say the site was struck directly. The same night, drones also reached occupied Crimea and the approaches to Moscow.

What burned

The target was the Poltavskaya oil depot in the Krasnoarmeysky district, the Krasnodar Krai operational headquarters stated. Officials there once again claimed falling drone debris sparked the blaze—Moscow's standard phrasing for hits on its energy sites. Residents filmed three large fires and thick black smoke, footage the Ukrainian monitoring channel Exilenova+ posted.

The depot is not a refinery. It takes in fuel from regional plants and feeds filling stations across part of Krasnodar Krai and the neighboring Republic of Adygea. Russian channel Astra counts about 28 storage tanks at the site. The depot sits roughly 80 km west of Krasnodar and about 385 km from the front. District head Aleksandr Kharitonov stated that a road linking Poltavskaya to the hamlet of Trudobelikovsky was closed.

A hub in a region already dry

Ukraine has hit the Poltavskaya depot before. Drones struck it on 16 June, setting off a major fire, and the site feeds networks that began running dry in early June, when Krasnodar followed occupied Crimea into shortage. By Astra's count, the overnight raid was the third on the depot this month.

A wider night of strikes

The depot was one target among several. Ukrainian drones hit occupied Crimea again, targeting power infrastructure. Near Moscow, Mayor Sergei Sobyanin claimed air defenses downed two drones heading for the capital.

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The fuel crisis behind the strikes

The strikes land on an oil sector already under strain. Ukrainian drones have idled refineries across central Russia, and gasoline output now covers only about 80% of domestic demand, Reuters reported. Authorities in 25 Russian regions have restricted fuel sales, from the European part of the country to Siberia.

The United States has quietly trimmed its Russia sanctions list, clearing a group of Russians, ships, and foreign companies, according to the US Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC). The agency gave no public reason for the move. It adds to a months-long run of unexplained American delistings tied to Russia's war on Ukraine.

Who came off the list

On 24 June, OFAC—the federal office that runs US sanctions by freezing assets and barring American firms from dealing with targets—deleted names from its Specially Designated Nationals (SDN) list, the roster of parties Americans cannot do business with. 

The cleared parties include:

• Seven Russian nationals, among them Ivan Potanin, son of Vladimir Potanin, the oligarch who controls the metals giant Norilsk Nickel, plus several executives of the sanctioned banks Novikombank, Sovcombank, and Bank Otkritie
• Two Russian-flagged cargo ships, the Vyacheslav Arshinov and the Gennady Egorov, both linked to Russia's State Transport Leasing Company
• Two Turkish companies, including the elevator maker IDA Asansor

All had been designated under Executive Order 14024, the main legal authority behind US penalties on Russia's war.

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A firm once accused of arming Russia

One Turkish name stands out. IDA Asansor had been flagged for evading sanctions and supplying goods to Russia's defense industry, the original US listing alleged. Now that the listing is gone. The step echoes a removal last December, when Washington cleared firms accused of supplying Russia's military and offered no explanation then either.

A series of earthquakes near Crimea is steadily weakening the Crimean Bridge, a Ukrainian seismologist says. The Russian-built crossing sits on unstable ground with its own fault system, and repeated tremors are causing irreversible damage that could eventually bring it down, Dmytro Hryn of Ukraine's Subbotin Institute of Geophysics told RBC-Ukraine.

The bridge is Russia's main land link to occupied Crimea and is a symbol of Russia's occupation war. 

Hryn's account points to a second threat Moscow cannot shoot down: the ground beneath the piers. If he is right, the crossing is being undermined by the same geology Russia ignored when it chose where to build.

Bridge sits on unstable ground

Hryn says building in this zone broke safety standards from the start. The strip between the Kerch and Taman peninsulas has very poor soils and its own network of faults, he explains.

"This construction was a political decision," he adds.

Tremors weaken structure

The damage is not instantaneous but permanent, Hryn says. Each quake adds a cumulative effect that gradually weakens both the bridge and the soil beneath its supports, and the strain building inside the structure cannot be reversed.

"Irreversible processes are underway for this bridge. Ukrainian earthquakes will finish it off, even without our missiles," he believes.

Strikes already strained crossing

Ukraine has battered the bridge and its approaches for years. The SBU hit it in 2022 and 2023 and again in June 2025, when an underwater blast, the agency said, left the crossing in a critical state. Kyiv's drones have since worked to sever Crimea's other supply links, leaving the Kerch Bridge the main route Moscow relies on.

Quakes hit Crimea repeatedly

Crimea has shaken repeatedly this week. Ukraine's seismic monitoring service registered six quakes on 22 June, the strongest at magnitude 4.5, and more tremors on 24 June.

Hryn says a fault near the peninsula keeps reactivating, and he warns of a serious risk of a major earthquake around 2027, on the scale of one that struck a century ago, destroying 70% of Yalta's buildings.

Ukrainian drones struck the Orenburg gas processing plant and the adjacent Orenburg helium plant overnight on 24 June, setting off fires at a complex more than 1,200 kilometers from the line of contact, Ukraine's General Staff confirmed.

The two sites form a single industrial complex whose output runs into Russia's war effort. The gas plant produces sulfur used in explosives and black powder, while the helium plant supplies helium for liquid-fuel rocket engines and guidance systems and ethane used in solid rocket fuel, the General Staff said.

That is the same facility EP reported on in August 2025 as Russia's only helium producer and a fixture of its military-industrial complex — not merely a Gazprom revenue stream.

What was hit

Local residents reported at least three impacts in the plant's industrial zone, according to Ukrainian monitoring channel Exilenova+. Satellite fire-detection data from NASA FIRMS and footage shared by locals recorded several active fires at the site.

Yevgeny Solntsev, governor of Orenburg Oblast, said the region came under a massive drone attack and that air defenses downed several drones over the industrial facility. He reported no casualties. The extent of the damage is still being assessed.

Airports in Orenburg, Orsk, and Yasny suspended flights under Russia's "Kovyor" air-threat protocol. Authorities in the region barred the publication of photos and videos showing drones.

Russia describes the Orenburg plant as the world's largest gas chemical complex, with an annual processing capacity of about 37.5 billion cubic meters of gas. It is Gazprom's only producer of the natural odorant that gives gas its smell, and it processes feedstock from Kazakhstan's Karachaganak field under the KazRosGaz project.

A repeat target deep in the Urals

The complex has now been hit at least four times in under a year. Ukraine's military intelligence (HUR) struck the helium plant in August 2025; drones hit the gas plant in October 2025; and in May 2026, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Ukraine had struck gas-industry targets in Orenburg Oblast.

The strikes fit Ukraine's deep-strike campaign against Russian energy and military-industrial sites, which has triggered fuel shortages across several Russian regions and aims to cut both the revenue and the materiel sustaining Moscow's war on Ukraine.

Russia built two power plants in occupied Crimea to free it from blackouts. They run on gas piped from Russia, so the Ukrainian drone strike that cut electricity across all of Sevastopol on 24 June hit a dependency Russia engineered into the peninsula.

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Sevastopol is the home port of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, and the blackout was the latest in a week of strikes that have left much of Crimea rationing power. The reason the damage sticks is Western sanctions: the plants run on turbines Russia can no longer properly repair, so each hit compounds the last.

The independence that runs on gas

The two plants at the center of the project—Balaklava in Sevastopol and Tavrida in Simferopol—were built to end Crimea’s reliance on imported electricity and opened by Vladimir Putin in 2019. Together, they were meant to cover about 90% of consumption, a figure Russian authorities promised at the time, and both were gas-fired, built around Siemens turbines that were transferred to Crimea and installed in breach of EU sanctions.

The gas the plants burn arrives from Russia, and that is the second dependency. Crimean Tatar Resource Center head Eskender Bariiev told RBC‑Ukraine that the peninsula’s main plants run exclusively on gas, so strikes on gas distribution and compressor stations paralyze electricity generation.

Ukraine said it struck the Simferopol gas distribution station and a Crimean substation on the night of 22–23 June, and power outages have begun reaching critical equipment at the peninsula’s state water utility, ISW reported.

Energy analyst Hennadii Riabtsev told Suspilne that occupied Crimea is an energy dead-end with no grid ring of its own, dependent on a single artery from Russia and backed only by small local stations sized for morning and evening peaks. He put the money Russia has poured into the peninsula since 2014 at levels comparable to Chechnya, with little to show for it in everyday life.

Sanctions keep the damage in place

The Siemens units remain under sanctions and out of proper service, and Russia is already planning new generators to cover a forecast Crimean deficit, turning to Russian and Iranian turbines because Western parts are out of reach, according to Global Energy Monitor.

Russian state media says a new block at the Tavrida plant will make it the most powerful in Crimea. It will burn the same gas piped from the mainland—more generation hung on the very supply the strikes can choke.

Even occupation officials concede the peninsula could face chronic electricity shortages by 2031, Euromaidan Press reported in December. Each strike lands on a grid that cannot be quickly or fully rebuilt.

An economy that runs on a season

Crimea’s occupation economy rests on two supports: federal subsidies and the summer tourist season. Now the season is being shut down by decree.

Russian-installed head Sergey Aksyonov announced a halt to all civilian fuel sales from 21 June, then, a day later, he suspended children’s camps and tourist stays for minors until 1 September. A season closed by order hits an economy that leans on it, on top of subsidies Moscow has to keep raising.

When Putin opened the two power plants in 2019, the promise was that Crimea could meet almost all of its own power needs. The peninsula now rations electricity by the hour and waits on gas and parts it cannot guarantee.

Ukrainian forces destroyed three Russian sea drones before they reached the coast. The Ukrainian Navy reported on 24 June that the unmanned surface vessels were destroyed in a coordinated action with the Defense Intelligence Directorate (HUR).

Ukrainian military units detected the vessels before they reached the coastline. The interception allegedly took place in the Black Sea near the Kinburn Spit, south of Ochakiv, along the Mykolaiv-Kherson coastline.

Beskrestnov says Starlink onboard because Russia has no alternative

"As I explained earlier, Starlink was installed on the destroyed boats because the enemy has no other long-range control systems," Beskrestnov said.

Russian forces have been unable to develop their own functional long-range satellite communication system for naval drones, with various alternatives either failing or proving too unstable for practical use. 

The Ukrainian Navy said the destroyed vessels were detected and destroyed through coordinated action with the Defense Intelligence Directorate.

"Every such successfully repelled attack saves lives and is another blow to the aggressor's plans," the Navy reported.

The Navy did not specify the exact area of detection in its statement.

Russia's 2026 naval drone campaign collapsed before it began

Russia had planned a major campaign in 2026 involving unmanned surface vessels, but those plans were disrupted after SpaceX, at Kyiv's request, blocked Russian access to Starlink satellite communications in February 2026, per Euromaidan Press citing Beskrestnov in May 2026.

Russia has obtained Starlink terminals through third-party supply chains despite the service not being officially available in Russia, per Maritime Executive.  

Black Sea USV warfare now goes in both directions

Ukraine has extensively used naval drones in the Black Sea since 2022, targeting Russian warships, patrol vessels, and military infrastructure in occupied Crimea. Ukrainian USV operations forced parts of Russia's Black Sea Fleet to relocate from occupied Sevastopol to ports farther east. Russia began studying and replicating Ukrainian USV designs in 2024-2025.

The Black Sea USV space is no longer one-sided. Russia is now contesting it with its own naval drones. 

At a private dinner during last week's G7 summit in Évian-les-Bains, US President Donald Trump told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy that he was impressed by Ukraine's recent battlefield results, the Financial Times reported on 23 June, citing two people briefed on closed discussions among leaders.

Trump was described as "hugely impressed and enthusiastic" about Ukraine's recent campaign of long-range strikes on targets deep inside Russia, the sources told the FT. At the summit, Trump also agreed to increase sanctions on Russian energy. Those strikes have since intensified, with attacks on military targets near Moscow and on an oil refinery on the city's outskirts, and are supported by US intelligence, which western allies have urged Washington to continue providing.

Patriot licences and weapons production

Zelenskyy said after the meeting that Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio had "responded positively to the issue of licences" for Patriot interceptor missiles "for the first time." He said all technical capabilities needed for licensed Patriot missile production already exist and that Trump's personal approval is the remaining requirement. Trump, Zelenskyy added, "plans to ask US defence companies to establish licensed production of air-defence missiles in Europe and Ukraine."

One Ukrainian official said further negotiations between Rustem Umerov, secretary of the National Security and Defense Council, and US officials would determine the details of any Patriot agreement.

Senior Ukrainian administration officials told the FT they see signs Trump is moving toward stronger support for Kyiv and may be more willing to pressure Russia to end its war. They remain sceptical about follow-through, noting his prior unfulfilled commitments, but were cautiously optimistic following the summit meetings.

Russia accuses US of abandoning mediator role

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, speaking at a Moscow foreign policy conference on 24 June, claimed the US was "seemingly stepping back from the role of an objective mediator" and had "forgotten" Trump's own statements from the previous year that had moved toward Moscow's position. Russia would, Lavrov said, "focus on achieving the goals of the [invasion] on the basis that all hopes the US could be an honest mediator collapsed long ago."

He also appeared to question the Alaska summit held between Putin and Trump last August, which ended contentiously after the parties discovered they were considerably further apart than expected. "I don't even want to suspect that Alaska, just like Europe's actions, was conceived to win time to keep arming the Kyiv regime," Lavrov claimed. "But what happened happened."

Western diplomats and people involved in back-channel efforts told the FT that Russian frustration with the US has been building since last summer. Moscow felt Trump envoy Steve Witkoff had misconstrued Russia's position ahead of the Alaska meeting; the White House denied this. The White House released a statement after Alaska in which Trump abandoned his push for an immediate ceasefire and appeared to endorse Putin's demands for a permanent settlement, but the US has since returned to its earlier position, per the FT.

NATO official: Russian lines are not impenetrable

European capitals have used the apparent shift in Trump's reading of the conflict—and in particular his acknowledgment that a Russian victory is not inevitable—to push for increased support to Kyiv. "When Ukraine is properly supplied, they can generate real operational effects," one senior NATO military official told the FT. "The Russian defensive lines are not impenetrable."

Rubio told a Senate hearing this month that Russia would not achieve the objectives it set out on day one of the invasion. "They may not even be able to militarily ever achieve the objectives they're demanding now in negotiations," he said.

Russia started rationing gasoline in Siberia this week, carrying a fuel crisis driven by Ukrainian strikes into the country’s heartland, thousands of kilometers from the front. Omsk and Irkutsk restricted fuel sales on 22 June, and Novosibirsk signaled it would follow.

Novosibirsk had no shortage of its own, Governor Andrei Travnikov said. Yet on 23 June he announced the region would restrict sales because its neighbors already had—the shortage now jumping from one region to the next, not only where the strikes land. It started in Russia’s southern and border regions and occupied Crimea, the product of a Ukrainian drone campaign against refineries and fuel logistics.

From the border to the heartland

By mid-June, the limits had gone national. Chains operating at least 7,000 of Russia’s roughly 29,000 gas stations—about one in four—had capped sales, analysis by the independent Russian outlet Agentstvo found.

Omsk’s governor, Vitaly Khotsenko, banned canister filling and capped purchases at 40 liters of gasoline per car, casting the curbs as a stand against “artificial hype” and “speculation.”

Irkutsk went further, switching to what its governor, Igor Kobzev, described as a “manual mode” in which authorities set fuel volumes “for each recipient individually.”

In Novosibirsk, officials reported stable reserves, no queues, and a 0.3 percent rise in gasoline prices in May. By 20 June, a station in the region’s Chanovsky district had hit 99 rubles ($1.33) a liter.

Occupied Crimea runs dry

Crimea has gone furthest. From the morning of 21 June, Russian-installed authorities halted all fuel sales to individuals and businesses—by cash, card, or coupon—keeping what was left for, in the words of Crimea’s Russian-installed head, Sergey Aksyonov, “the state services that ensure the functioning and security of the Republic of Crimea.” He asked residents to “remain calm and trust only official sources.”

The next day, his administration suspended children’s summer camps and tourist stays for minors until 1 September, citing “public safety,” while repeated overnight strikes knocked out power across much of the peninsula.

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The strikes behind the crunch

By April, with strikes forcing major plants offline, Russian refinery runs had fallen to their lowest level since 2009, and the campaign has reached deep into the country—drones struck a Tyumen refinery some 2,000 kilometers from Ukraine on 20 June.

The cumulative damage has pushed Russia, one of the world’s largest oil exporters, to import gasoline by sea.

Finland's Foreign Minister says Europe should not rush into negotiations with Russia, even as the European Union debates reopening contact with Moscow, according to Yle. Helsinki ties any future talks to one condition it says Russia has not met. Meanwhile, disagreement on the timing of such talks with Russia runs through Finnish leadership itself.

Helsinki says the moment has not come

Foreign Minister Elina Valtonen told Yle it is not yet the time to negotiate with Russia. She acknowledged that the EU is discussing how to restore contact. Europe must first agree on its own goals and methods, she argued. Europe has come fairly far on that question, she added.

Valtonen linked any contact to the front-line situation and to Ukraine's position overall. Above all, she said, it depends on a real Russian desire for peace. No such signs have appeared. That holds despite Russia's sharply worse military and economic position. She expects Moscow to show readiness sooner or later.

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Finland's leaders disagree on timing

President Alexander Stubb earlier urged Europe to establish contact with Russia within two months. Most EU leaders take the opposite view, including Finnish Prime Minister Petteri Orpo. They argued at an EU summit that the timing is wrong. The question had already reached the leaders' table.

"Just stalling for time"

In May, Valtonen said Putin was starting to show genuine interest in peace talks. She quickly qualified it. The Russians are "just stalling for time," she said. She pointed to July's NATO summit in Türkiye as a place to take a wider view.

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Kyiv and Washington weigh in

On 20 June, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he expects talks with Russia and wants partners involved. At the UN Security Council, US deputy envoy Dan Negrea said Russia must reach a deal, and that time is not on Moscow's side. Ukraine's UN envoy Andrii Melnyk said Kyiv could change its proposal on a ceasefire along the current contact line.

The leaders of the EU's member states have agreed to keep their sanctions on Russia in place for a full year rather than the usual six months, according to Reuters and Euronews. The decision, taken at a Brussels summit on 18 June, marks the first time the bloc has stretched the rollover that long. Yet a pro-Russian Bulgarian PM is already threatening to block the EU's next round of measures.

A year instead of six months

The bloc's national leaders renewed the economic sanctions for 12 months at the Brussels summit on 18 June. The measures hit certain sectors of the Russian economy and had always been rolled over every six months. That short cycle handed any single member a regular chance to bargain or threaten a veto. The rollover is the first stretched to a full year. The 27 leaders also backed joint conclusions on Ukraine, the first such agreement since March 2025, when Hungary balked.

Bulgaria threatens the next package

Bulgaria's prime minister, Rumen Radev, vowed to veto the EU's next sanctions package on Russia. He said it could hurt Bulgaria's economy and pointed to the risk to Lukoil, the Russian oil company that runs the country's only refinery at Burgas. Radev wants Lukoil struck from the list. He also cited possible disruptions to Sofia Metro spare parts and fertilizer supplies. Reuters describes him as a pro-Russian eurosceptic who won April's parliamentary election.

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Bulgaria’s defense minister banned weapons to Ukraine. It’s not that simple

Objection over a Russian bishop

Radev also opposes sanctions on a bishop of the Russian Orthodox Church. He argued the war should not reach into religion after spreading to culture and sports. 

"In what way have these sanctions so far stopped the war?" he asked.

Still, Radev said Bulgaria would not block the EU's broader decisions on Ukraine and backs its accession talks.

The packages behind the threat

The next round, the EU's 21st package, would bar Russian soldiers from the bloc and add 30 more tankers to its shadow-fleet blacklist, alongside new curbs on Russian banks and the defense industry. The EU has imposed 20 packages since it first sanctioned Russia in 2014 over Crimea, with the twentieth lifting the tanker list to 632 ships. Brussels gained room for the new measures after Hungary's government unblocked steps its predecessor had stalled. Days earlier, on 15 June, the EU expanded its list with 34 individuals and 47 entities.

A large fire broke out at an oil storage facility in Gukovo, Rostov Oblast, following a reported Ukrainian drone strike overnight, according to OSINT analysis by ASTRA.

Gukovo is a town in Russia’s Rostov Oblast, close to the border with Ukraine’s Luhansk Oblast. It lies near key cross-border transport routes and is located behind the Russian-controlled section of the frontline in occupied eastern Ukraine, making it part of the broader logistics belt supporting Russia’s operations in the Donbas area.

Residents of the town reported explosions and a major blaze in the early hours of 18 June. Video published by monitoring channel Supernova+ was used by analysts at ASTRA to geolocate the fire to an oil depot on Karl Marx Street.

Ukraine claims responsibility for strike with help from Russian resistance

Update 19:30: Ukraine’s Special Operations Forces (SSO) later claimed responsibility for the attack, saying Deep Strike units operating alongside the Russian resistance movement Chornaya Iskra struck the Rostovnefteprodukt oil depot and a fuel and lubricants storage base in Gukovo overnight.

According to the SSO, several Ukrainian drones reached their targets, causing fires and damage at the facilities.

The military said the sites formed part of a system used for the storage, transfer, and shipment of fuel products, including gasoline and diesel. It described Rostov Oblast as a key rear area supporting Russian military operations in southern and eastern Ukraine.

The SSO said the targeted facilities served both regional transport infrastructure and Russian military logistics, adding that operations against fuel and logistics infrastructure would continue as part of efforts to reduce Russia’s ability to sustain its war against Ukraine.

OSINT analysis points to oil storage site

ASTRA said open-source imagery and video verification indicate the fire originated at a fuel storage facility containing multiple storage tanks and rail access infrastructure.

The depot is believed to include several large reservoirs used for petroleum products, with rail lines running through the site, according to satellite imagery referenced in the analysis.

Casualties reported by regional authorities

Authorities in Rostov Oblast said one person was killed and two others were injured in the attack, according to statements cited by ASTRA.

Regional governor Yuri Slyusar said the injured were hospitalized in moderate condition. He also reported damage to a locomotive and fires at two commercial sites, with emergency services deployed to the area.

Ukrainian strike campaign on Russian fuel infrastructure

Ukraine has repeatedly targeted fuel storage, refinery, and logistics infrastructure inside Russia with long-range drone strikes, arguing these facilities support Moscow’s military operations in Ukraine.

Russian regional authorities have increasingly reported fires and damage at industrial sites in border and southern regions amid the ongoing strike campaign.

Russia returned the bodies of 522 people to Ukraine on 18 June 2026, the latest handover in the recurring repatriation of soldiers killed in Russia's war on Ukraine. Russian officials claim the remains belong to Ukrainian citizens, including military personnel.

The return was carried out by Ukraine's Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War, which announced the transfer. The Security Service's Joint Center, the armed forces, and other agencies took part, with the International Committee of the Red Cross assisting.

Forensic experts from the Interior Ministry will now begin identifying the dead, and the work is slow. Interior Minister Igor Klymenko said in remarks carried by the National Police that full identification of repatriated remains takes around 14 months, in large part because of the condition in which the bodies arrive.

Russia often hands over the remains of several people in a single bag, Klymenko said, and parts of one person are sometimes found across different bags—or even across different stages of repatriation. Ukrainian specialists run DNA tests on every body and every fragment, and any remains found not to belong to Ukrainian defenders are sent back to Russia.

The bodies frequently arrive without identification: of one earlier batch of 6,000, only 15% came identified, President Zelenskyy said. Once DNA tests confirm a body is that of a Ukrainian defender, it is released to relatives to be honored and buried.

The 18 June handover is the latest in a steady cadence of returns. Ukraine received 528 bodies in a near-identical operation in May, and 1,000 last November, then the third large-scale return in two months.

The exchanges stem from the June 2025 talks in Istanbul, where Russia and Ukraine agreed to repatriate the remains of 6,000 fallen on each side. Ukraine took back more than 6,000 bodies in the weeks that followed; Russia, by its own account, received only dozens.

Russia is set to receive a seaborne gasoline cargo via one of its western ports this month—a rare step for one of the world's largest exporters of oil and refined products—as months of Ukrainian drone attacks on refineries, pipelines, and fuel storage facilities have created widening domestic shortages, four industry sources told Reuters on 17 June.

The scale of the supply disruption marks a measurable shift in Russia's energy position: Ukrainian strikes have reduced domestic refining capacity to the point where neighboring countries cannot compensate and crude oil exports are being maximized as strikes cut domestic refining and free up unprocessed crude for shipment—a dynamic now confirmed by multiple international energy monitors.

Scope of shortages

The gasoline will be shipped from Asia, one source said, without specifying volumes or suppliers. Russia had considered seaborne fuel imports in 2025, another source noted, but domestic supply proved sufficient at that time.

Media reports of fuel shortages have been recorded in around a dozen Russian regions, according to data compiled by Reuters. Russian-held Crimea and two Siberian regions have officially confirmed shortages. Russian independent outlet The Bell reported on 16 June that 53 Russian regions and all five occupied regions of Ukraine are implementing gasoline sale restrictions for private vehicles, with gas stations in 11 regions experiencing shortages despite no formal restrictions. The Bell noted that 18 Russian regions and all of occupied Ukraine have restricted individual purchases to 50 liters (13.2 gallons).

To reduce pressure on domestic supply ahead of the peak summer driving season, the Russian government announced a ban on gasoline exports for producers through the end of July. Russia has also imported fuel from Belarus and previously sourced small volumes from Kazakhstan; however, industry sources said neither country has sufficient spare capacity to address a deeper supply crisis.

Production and export pressures

The strikes are also affecting Russia's upstream operations. The International Energy Agency reported on 17 June that Russian crude oil production in May 2026 fell to 8.7 million barrels per day—approximately five percent below May 2025 levels and 10 percent below Russia's own May 2026 target. The IEA stated that Ukrainian strikes are forcing Russia to prioritize domestic oil product supply and maximize crude oil exports.

Bloomberg reported on 16 June that Russian average crude oil shipments between 17 May and 14 June reached 3.83 million barrels per day, the highest figure recorded in 2026, though shipments declined slightly in the most recent week. Bloomberg cited OPEC data showing Russian oil output in May 2026 averaged 9.01 million barrels per day—a higher figure than the IEA's crude-only estimate, reflecting OPEC's different methodology—690,000 barrels per day below Russia's production target under the OPEC agreement. Bloomberg also reported that Russia has just above 120 million barrels of oil on vessels at sea ready for export, a roughly 25 percent increase from April 2026. A Kremlin-affiliated Russian milblogger acknowledged on 17 June that the increase in crude exports is partly a consequence of declining domestic refining capacity.

The US sanctions waiver for Russian oil and petroleum products on vessels at sea expired on 17 June without renewal by the United States, a development that will likely intensify Russia's challenges with exporting crude oil already at sea, according to ISW's assessment of 17 June.

The most recent drone attacks targeted the TANECO refinery and the Moscow refinery, leading to the suspension of processing at both plants. Russia exported nearly 5 million metric tons of gasoline in 2025, or approximately 117,000 barrels per day, according to industry sources. Russia's Energy Ministry did not reply to a Reuters request for comment.

Ukrainian drones struck the railway bridge over the North Crimean Canal near the village of Rozdolne, Sovetskoye district, in occupied Crimea overnight on 18 June, setting off a large fire, the Crimea-monitoring Telegram channel Krymsky Veter reported. Residents heard around 20 explosions in the area.

The bridge carries the Kerch–Dzhankoi line, the rail route Russia uses to move freight and troops onto the peninsula from the Kerch Bridge. If it is disabled, trains from Russia could reach no farther than the Vladyslavivka junction or Feodosia, according to the channel—though the degree of damage is not yet known.

Satellite data also showed a fire along the railway near Vladyslavivka station, a key junction in eastern Crimea, the channel said. Drones struck a road bridge beside the rail crossing at Rozdolne and, on the Arabat Spit in Kherson Oblast, two road bridges over the Promoina strait.

A campaign that moved from the land corridor inward

The strike extends a June campaign that had focused on the crossings linking Crimea to mainland Ukraine. On 11 June, drones hit four bridges at the peninsula's northwestern entrance near Armiansk; on 13 June, a strike on the Dzhankoi checkpoint also damaged a railway bridge and a pontoon crossing at Chonhar.

Ukraine hit the Chonhar and Henichesk road bridges again on 15 June, and on 17 June the General Staff confirmed fresh strikes on bridges in occupied Kherson Oblast used for military logistics. Russian-installed Kherson Oblast head Vladimir Saldo has reported drone attacks on the crossings repeatedly this month.

On the mainland side, the open-source group Dnipro Osint published satellite imagery on 18 June showing fresh damage to the Henichesk road bridge to the Arabat Spit, which it said was hit by at least three FP-2 and "Behemoth" drones. A pontoon crossing had already been set up beside it.

The "island" claim

Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov said this week that drones are turning Crimea into an island, part of a supply-interdiction push he calls Logistics Lockdown. Unmanned Systems Forces commander Robert Brovdi, call sign Madyar, has separately vowed to isolate the peninsula from Russia.

What remains unconfirmed is whether the rail bridge is out of service. Monitors reported fire and explosions; neither Ukraine's military nor the occupation authorities had detailed the damage to the Kerch–Dzhankoi crossing.

Ukrainian drones struck the Moscow oil refinery in Kapotnya early on 18 June, sparking a large fire, Moscow mayor Sergei Sobyanin said.

The strike is the second to hit the same refinery within 48 hours: Ukrainian drones had already damaged the plant's ELOU-AVT-6 primary oil processing unit on 16 June, forcing a temporary shutdown.

What happened on 18 June

Residents of Moscow and the surrounding region reported a mass drone overflight on the morning of 18 June, according to monitoring Telegram channels. Russian authorities claimed 52 drones were shot down, but several reached their target.

Videos circulated online showed multiple fires across the refinery grounds in Kapotnya, with thick black smoke columns visible from several districts of Moscow.

"Air defense forces continue repelling the massive attack. Several drones managed to reach the Moscow oil refinery. Measures are being taken to deal with the consequences," Sobyanin wrote at 6 am, according to his Telegram channel.

Why the refinery matters

The Kapotnya refinery sits about 15 kilometers from the Kremlin and is a critical part of Moscow's fuel infrastructure. The plant covers about 40% of the Moscow region's gasoline needs and 50% of its diesel, and also produces aviation kerosene for the capital's airports.

The 16 June strike on the same facility had already disabled the ELOU-AVT-6 unit, one of the refinery's primary processing units, according to earlier reports. The 18 June strike marks the second time in three days that drones have penetrated air defenses to reach the plant.

Russia plans to add eight countries to its network of Russian Houses in Africa, Ukraine's military intelligence agency, HUR, said this week. The goal, the agency says, is to win over the young. New centers would open in Nigeria, Senegal, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Togo, Mali, Mozambique, and São Tomé and Príncipe.

The plan adds a cultural layer to a push built on arms deals, mercenaries, and a fast-growing diplomatic footprint. Euromaidan Press has reported that Moscow keeps about 40 embassies and 350 Orthodox parishes across 34 African states. Meanwhile, the independent Moscow Times found Russian Houses in Africa already operating or opening in at least 22 countries.

The HUR calls these centers a pipeline that funnels young Africans into fighting in Russia's war on Ukraine.

Russian Houses in Africa target the young

HUR calls the network part of "a war for the minds of Africans," aimed above all at the young. Inside, the centers would screen Soviet and Russian films and hand out ideologically vetted literature. They would also teach the Russian language and coach young people to move to Russia as students or workers.

Organizers sell them an image of a "happy Russia"—but in practice, the agency says, that promise often curdles. Some recruits sign contracts with Russian occupation forces and die in assault units at the front.

The rollout has a clear chain of command. A body called the Center for People's Diplomacy runs it, HUR said. Moscow set up that body in 2024. It then put Dmitry Savelyev, a State Duma deputy from the ruling United Russia party, in charge.

The Center for People's Diplomacy works hand in hand with Rossotrudnichestvo, the Kremlin's agency for cultural outreach abroad. Such centers stage cultural programming, including a Pushkin Day in Bangui and a poetry evening in Bamako, according to the Africa Report.

From the Coup Belt to the Gold Coast

The expansion tracks Russia's wider advance across the continent. After a wave of coups swept the Sahel, the juntas of Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger turned from Paris to Moscow. They expelled French troops and welcomed Russian forces.

Russian Houses opened in Bamako, Niamey, and Ouagadougou soon after those takeovers, EUvsDisinfo has documented. Togo, one of the eight countries on HUR's list, then signed a military-cooperation deal with Russia in 2025.

For Kyiv, the soft power masks a harder aim. HUR says Moscow really wants Africa's natural resources. As proof, it points to Sudan, where it claims Kremlin-linked groups poisoned the water with mercury through unregulated gold mining. The agency cast the contamination as a slow-acting weapon, the kind of damage Sudan will spend years undoing.

HUR cast the contamination as a slow-acting weapon, the kind of damage Sudan will spend years undoing.

Ultimately, the stakes reach the battlefield. Euromaidan Press has reported that Ukraine now trails Russia and China in terms of influence across the continent. Kyiv counts more than 1,780 Africans from 36 countries fighting for Moscow. HUR says the new Russian Houses in Africa will widen exactly that pipeline.