Ukraine has successfully targeted Wildberries hubs seven times in six weeks as part of a campaign to bring the war to Russia

Russia's most-used mapping service has digitally hidden a military missile site near Finland by copying a fake forest over it on satellite imagery, Finnish public broadcaster Yle reported. Western map services still show the same position, and a Finnish military analyst called the concealment careless and self-defeating. The clumsy edit points to Moscow's growing fear of Ukrainian drones.

What Yandex tried to erase

The concealed site sits beside the Kronstadt naval base, on Kotlin Island off St. Petersburg in the Gulf of Finland. Editing software copied trees from another image and laid them over the missile position. Until now, Russia mostly blurred sensitive locations rather than deleting them, but this edit tries to hide the target's existence outright. The same battery still appears on Google, Apple, and Microsoft satellite maps. In the covered zone, Russia has previously kept Bastion anti-ship missiles and their radar and reconnaissance systems.

A cover-up that gives itself away

Marko Eklund, a military expert and former Finnish intelligence officer, called the secrecy pointless. Western and Ukrainian analysts read their own satellite images, not Yandex, so the edit protects nothing in practice. He believes an administrative order drove it, and that the work was done sloppily. Anyone who knows what to look for can spot the seams and repeating patterns. 

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Kronstadt, Russia’s major naval Base after Black Sea Fleet losses, gets hit by Ukrainian drones (VIDEO)

A pattern set by Ukraine's drones

Russia's map cover-ups have tracked Ukraine's deep strikes. A Moscow court ordered Yandex to mask an oil refinery in Ryazan in 2024 after repeated Ukrainian strikes, and a Nordic-Baltic investigation later counted 119 blurred sites near Russia's northwestern border. Blurring shows up at once, while cloned forest hides the tampering itself.

Kronstadt gives Russia one of its main Baltic Fleet bases, and Ukraine's drones have already reached it. In early June, they set a Russian missile corvette ablaze in dry dock there.

Il sera absent des mondiaux sur route qui auront lieu à Montréal.

Russia will keep escalating until Europe shows both the political will and the military capability to stop it, argues Hans Petter Midttun—and NATO can no longer supply either. In an interview with the Guildhall news agency, the former defense attaché to Ukraine makes the case for the Ukraine-anchored coalition he has argued for since long before this interview: Northern Europe together with Ukraine, credible from the day it is declared.

This interview was conducted in Russian by the Guildhall news agency and is republished here in an edited English translation. The subheadings are Euromaidan Press's.

Hans Petter Midttun is a non-resident research fellow at the Centre for Defence Strategies and a former defense attaché to Ukraine.

Why NATO no longer deters Russia

It seems that despite everything the West has done to deter Russia, the Russian threat to the West—particularly to the Baltic states and NATO members in general—is only increasing. What is your diagnosis? Why has the Western deterrence strategy failed, if you agree that it has?

Yes, I absolutely agree, and I have been saying this for quite some time.

To begin with, it is worth questioning your basic formulation—"the West." I have often used the term myself. Almost every time I write about what is happening, I use it. But recently I have begun to question whether it is still accurate.

If we regard the West as a civilization, as a strategic space, then we understand what we are talking about. Usually that means NATO and the European Union. But if we regard it as a political actor, as an entity responsible for deterrence, the situation becomes much more complicated.

For some time now I have questioned the viability of NATO. I am an officer myself, and I have been oriented toward NATO throughout my career. I have always believed in the Alliance. Almost everything I have done over nearly 40 years has been based on NATO doctrine, strategy, and tactics. But since 2022, I have seriously begun to question it. I have written publicly that I doubt the Alliance can survive in its current form. And I have said very clearly that it no longer deters Russia. I can prove it.

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I defended NATO’s values. I no longer recognize what NATO defends.

Please do.

There are three reasons I have pointed to repeatedly.

The first and most fundamental: if NATO were genuinely deterring Russia, Russia would never have invaded Ukraine. To most people that probably sounds strange, because under NATO's 2010 Strategic Concept, still in force in 2022, NATO was not obliged to defend Ukraine and had not declared any intention to. There was no commitment to Ukraine as such.

But the Strategic Concept stated clearly, under its second core task—crisis management—that in the event of a conflict threatening the security of the Alliance, NATO would use a combination of political and military instruments to manage and resolve it. What is happening in Ukraine is precisely such a conflict. It threatens the security of the Alliance, and the Alliance recognized this many years ago. So before the invasion, Russia must have looked at NATO and concluded it would not act.

The second point: if Russia were deterred, it would not be waging a constantly escalating hybrid war on NATO territory. It is already waging one. And, shamefully, NATO has not even acknowledged the fact. It talks in general terms, but it never calls what is happening what it is: a hybrid war, a campaign to undermine the Alliance. We are not acting on the basis of that reality.

The third point: if Russia were deterred, it would not now be preparing for a potential attack on NATO members.

So there are three very clear indicators that, whatever NATO believes about its own deterrence, Russia does not believe it. And that is what determines whether deterrence works. Deterrence is not determined in Washington or Brussels. It is determined in the Kremlin.

Why the answer cannot come from NATO

We still need to deter Russia from expanding its aggression further, including directly against NATO, which the Kremlin clearly regards as one possible scenario. How should the deterrence strategy be adjusted? What mechanisms need to be created?

Let me take one step back first, because I think it matters. I would argue this cannot be achieved through NATO. NATO will never be able to deter Russia. I would go further: NATO is no longer the solution. It has become part of the problem.

There are several reasons. During the Cold War, NATO took the risk of strategic miscalculation extremely seriously. If the Soviet Union provoked us—by sending a combat aircraft, a warship, or moving ground forces in our direction—NATO always responded. This was done to leave no room for miscalculation and no impression of local weaknesses the Soviet Union could exploit.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, we stopped acting this way—despite the fact that, for roughly 15 years before the full-scale war, Russia was challenging us, testing us, and doing many of the things the Soviet Union once did. We lost our credibility.

On top of that, a transatlantic divide has opened—a rupture between Europe and the United States. We see an America that is no longer a reliable ally but is becoming more of a strategic opponent. America treats the European Union as an opponent, and that creates an entirely different strategic environment. We are talking about a former ally that threatens to seize NATO territory—Greenland—and talks about annexing Canada. All of it opens a window of opportunity for Russia that it could previously only have dreamed of.

Part of the responsibility lies with Europe too, because we did not take security and defense seriously enough. We did not invest. We are now extremely vulnerable, with critical weaknesses that can be exploited. So we are in a moment of weakness, and Russia understands it. Russia also understands that this window is limited in time, and that is precisely what raises the risk of more serious developments.

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Europe now faces two strategic adversaries: Russia and the United States

The coalition, and which countries would form it

I appreciate the deeper assessment, but that is still diagnosis. What is the treatment? What concrete steps need to be taken, and by whom, to deter Russia again?

I spent so long on the previous question because I wanted to completely destroy the notion that NATO will be the solution. It will not. That means we have to look for something else.

We need some of the qualities NATO had in the 1980s. At the height of the Cold War, the member states—there were 16 then—knew who the adversary was. They all saw it the same way. They understood its strategic goals, its doctrine, its capabilities, its theater of operations. So every state was committed to countering the threat. We invested in defense—Europe spent roughly 3.8 percent of GDP on it—and we had a common strategy. In a sense we were a coalition of the like-minded. That is what I advocate rebuilding.

But it also means that, initially, a significant share of NATO members, and possibly some EU members, would have to remain outside such a structure. If you want a structure built on a common understanding of the threat and unity of purpose, you have to accept that not all states share the same aspirations. That is why I have named a number of countries that should become its founding members, with the ultimate goal of including all of Europe. But we start with a group of the like-minded.

Which countries do you have in mind?

My argument begins here, and it is one of the reasons the coalition is necessary: Ukraine will never become a member of NATO. To be honest, that was already clear five, four, and three years ago. It is a shameful situation. But that is exactly the point. Europe needs strategic autonomy. We have to stand on our own feet and defend Europe ourselves. We can no longer rely on the United States, so we need to build something else.

I believe this coalition should be built around Ukraine and the NB8 countries—the Nordic-Baltic Eight—together with the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Poland, and the Netherlands. Essentially, Northern Europe together with Ukraine. That configuration alone already creates enormous credibility. It would bring together not only Ukraine's battle-hardened armed forces—the Ground Forces, National Guard, Special Operations Forces, air defense, and Unmanned Systems Forces—but also high-tech European air forces, navies, and special operations forces. Almost immediately you have a structure with real credibility, because we share common values and a common understanding of how to fight Russia and how to defeat it. Simply announcing such a coalition would have a deterrent effect.

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The alliance Russia fears isn’t NATO. It’s a coalition that will actually fight.

What you are saying resonates with me. But the Russian threat exists here and now. Building full European strategic autonomy without the United States would take at least five years. What do we do in the meantime? How do we deter Russia now?

I would challenge that. I have heard the argument many times. We are not talking about forces that exist only on paper. The armed forces of the countries I named already exist today, and they are built on the same standards—NATO standards. We do not need to invent new ones. They share a doctrinal foundation and, in many respects, similar strategic approaches. We can use NATO technologies, standards, documents, doctrines, and research—everything the Alliance has already created is available to us. And Ukraine is already largely NATO-compatible. Will such a coalition be as effective today as it could be in five years? No. But Ukraine itself was not as effective five years ago as it is today.

The nuclear question

What about nuclear weapons? Full deterrence of Russia is hard to imagine without a nuclear component.

I would challenge that too. We have all grown accustomed to relying on the idea of nuclear deterrence. I am not saying it does not matter, and some of the states I named do possess a nuclear capability.

But not comparable to Russia's arsenal.

Yes, but it does not quite work that way, and that is the point. Both Russia and the United States have lost wars without using nuclear weapons. The consequences of using them are so catastrophic that the great powers—including China—regard the threshold as extremely high. You could argue Russia might not have attacked Ukraine if Ukraine had kept nuclear weapons. Possibly. But that is in the past. The war is already under way, and after years of it—after Ukraine has crossed practically every one of Russia's so-called red lines—Russia still has not used nuclear weapons against Ukraine.

So we cannot abandon the idea of a coalition simply because it lacks an arsenal comparable to Russia's. On the contrary: we have to recognize that the threshold for use is so high that the probability of actual use is extremely low. Not zero, but extremely low. And we are no longer talking only about deterring Russia. Russia is already at war with Europe and waging war on Ukraine. We are talking about how to end that war, with the tools we have. We cannot do it through NATO. We cannot rely on the United States to do it for us. So either we build something genuinely credible, or we accept that Russia will keep acting against us.

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Russia won’t start a nuclear war. It might cause a nuclear disaster.

Why it starts with a declaration

You said the cost of using nuclear weapons must be unacceptable to Russia. The same logic can apply to the conventional threat. What concrete steps can we take now to make the cost of further conventional aggression unacceptable to the Kremlin?

The solution is right in front of us. The starting point is what Ukraine itself has said many times: Russia will escalate for as long as we let it, and it responds to nothing but strength. So until we—the West, or the coalition, whichever term you prefer—stand up and demonstrate both the political will and the military capability to act, Russia will keep escalating.

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NATO is dead. Meet CALM.

That is why, when you asked about the timeline, I said: if these countries had united yesterday, today, or tomorrow and announced the creation of such a coalition and their intention to fight together, that alone would completely change Russia's strategic assessment.

Today Russia is fighting one country, Ukraine, supported by around 50 partner states. But it is still fighting only one country. If that declaration were made tomorrow, the situation would change radically. Russia already finds it difficult to fight Ukraine; it would face a fundamentally different reality if Ukraine formally joined a coalition with European military powers.

So this is not only about physical capabilities. It is about changing Russia's perception of its strategic environment. And it starts with a declaration.

The next step would be the actual conduct of military operations, if necessary. But it begins with the declaration. That would completely change Russia's strategic calculus.

Hans Petter Midttun

Hans Petter Midttun, independent analyst on hybrid warfare, Non-Resident Fellow at the Centre for Defense Strategies, board member of the Ukrainian Institute for Security and Law of the Sea, former Defense Attaché of Norway to Ukraine, and officer (R) of the Norwegian Armed Forces. 

President said he was ‘not happy’ with plans for large-scale joint exercises he described as ‘inappropriate and hostile’. Plus, how five obscure horses have ended up at the center of a transatlantic betting mystery

Good morning. Donald Trump has said he is scaling back joint US military drills with South Korea aimed at deterring North Korea, despite military officials from both countries warning that Kim Jong-un’s regime is learning new battlefield tactics from the Ukraine war.

The president said he was “not happy” with US participation “based on my very good relationship with Kim Jong-un”. He added that the drills were costly and “send a signal that is totally inappropriate and hostile, to a country that, as long as Donald J Trump has been president, has been unthreatening and respectful”. Trump added that it was too late to cancel the drills so he had ordered the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, to “substantially reduce” them.

Why are there continuing concerns about USS Abraham Lincoln? Democrats have intensified their demands for answers from the Trump administration over conditions onboard the USS Abraham Lincoln amid concern over crew morale, mental health and living conditions. Ruben Gallego, a Democratic senator from Arizona, said he blamed the carrier’s prolonged deployment on the unresolved war that Donald Trump started in February with Iran as well as lackluster leadership in general from the Republican president’s administration.

Russian forces shelled and struck front-line and border regions across northern, eastern, and southern Ukraine over the past 24 hours, killing at least eight civilians and wounding more than 40, regional authorities reported on 17 August. Sumy, Donetsk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia oblasts reported deaths, while people were wounded in Kharkiv, Kherson, Dnipropetrovsk, Chernihiv, and Odesa Oblasts.

Russia's daily strikes have hit populated areas and civilian infrastructure both near the front line and far behind it. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that 13 regions had come under attack over the past week, with more than 1,550 attack drones, nearly 1,560 guided aerial bombs, and 62 missiles, most of them ballistic, launched at Ukraine.

North: FPV drone attacks firefighters’ vehicle

In Sumy Oblast, Russian forces carried out more than 50 strikes on 24 settlements across 11 communities. A drone strike in the Sumy community killed a 75-year-old man and a 72-year-old woman and wounded another civilian, the Sumy military administration said. It also said two more people were wounded in the Seredyna-Buda community. A mass drone attack on Sumy caused large fires and wounded at least one person, Sumy city military administration head Serhii Kryvosheienko said.

In Chernihiv Oblast, a 41-year-old man was wounded in a Geran drone strike on the Kozelets community, Head of the Regional Military Administration Viacheslav Chaus said. He added that Gerbera drones destroyed a hangar and farm equipment in the Kholmy community. In a border village in the Horodnia community, an FPV drone struck a yard, and a second FPV drone hit a firefighters' vehicle that had arrived at the scene. A house later caught fire. A critical infrastructure facility was also hit.

In Kharkiv Oblast, six people were wounded in strikes on Kharkiv and nine other settlements. The heaviest damage was reported in Izium, where 19 houses and four apartment blocks were damaged, head of the Regional Military Administration Oleh Syniehubov said.

East: Russian strikes destroy 30 stalls

In Donetsk Oblast, Russian forces killed two residents of Kramatorsk and wounded 18 people across the region, Head of the Regional Military Administration Vadym Filashkin said. In Sloviansk, round-the-clock strikes damaged critical infrastructure and destroyed 30 stalls at the Lisnyi market, Sloviansk City Military Administration Head Vadym Liakh said.

In Poltava Oblast, two industrial facilities were hit, causing fires, and drones also attacked another industrial facility in Myrhorod district, Head of the Regional Military Administration Vitalii Diakivnych said. No casualties were reported.

In Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, Russian forces attacked four districts nearly 20 times from the evening of 16 August, wounding five people, Head of the Regional Military Administration Oleksandr Hanzha said. He added that houses and outbuildings caught fire in Pavlohrad and Nikopol district.

In Zaporizhzhia district, two people were killed and three wounded, Head of the Regional Military Administration Ivan Fedorov said. He also reported 1,217 strikes on 60 settlements across the oblast, including 20 air strikes, about 846 drone attacks, and 350 artillery strikes.

South: strike damages civilian vessel flying the flag of Togo

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Exclusive: Raúl Torrez is drafting two bills with state lawmakers to bolster consumer protections and child safety online, building on state’s landmark case against Meta

New Mexico’s attorney general is mounting a full-court press against technology companies to improve their child safety measures, capitalizing on a landmark win in court against Meta earlier this year.

Raúl Torrez is working with state lawmakers to draft two new bills he says will strengthen consumer protections and child safety online. The legislation, expected to be announced in the coming weeks, will build on the state’s case against the parent company of Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram. A jury found in March that the company misled its users about the safety of its platforms and enabled harm, including child sexual exploitation. The social media giant was fined nearly $1bn as a result of the case.

Clancy’s live-streamed trial has become fodder for amateur sleuths to push viral conspiracy theories that threaten to undermine efforts to de-stigmatize illness, experts say

Meghan Cliffel was riding the subway in New York City in December 2015 when she became convinced the entire city belonged to a cult that was plotting to kill her and her two daughters. When she got back to her Manhattan apartment she believed the talking heads on the television were speaking to her directly, threatening her, and that the refrigerator was emitting poisonous gas. Her husband, she feared, was part of the cult too.

“I punch him in the face trying to get to the kids,” Cliffel recalled, “Then I’m ultimately trying to get to the roof of our building because I believe if I get up there and show I’m willing to jump, that that’ll show my loyalty to the cult and hopefully stop this whole thing.”

Good morning. We’re mentally preparing for a big week in trade negotiations, but our reporters have entertaining distractions to offer in the meantime. More on tariffs below, along with a new life for IMAX and the secret sauce behind a successful food festival.

Russia struck facilities of Ukraine's state-owned Naftogaz Group 13 times over the past week, hitting several regions with drones and missiles, the company reported on 17 August. Gas extraction infrastructure was among the targets, and one asset was hit several times. Naftogaz said the strikes seriously damaged equipment and production capacity and cut part of its output. No employees were injured this time.

The strikes are part of a systematic Russian drone and missile campaign against Ukraine's oil and gas production, intensifying as winter approaches. Naftogaz has now counted 293 strikes on its facilities since the start of 2026.

Acting Naftogaz CEO Serhii Fedorenko has said the strikes are meant to inflict maximum damage on Ukraine's infrastructure ahead of the heating season. The company said Russian attacks destroyed 37 sites in its network during the first seven months of 2026, 32 Ukrnafta filling stations and five Ukrhazvydobuvannia complexes.

The strikes carry a human cost too: EP has reported 312 workers killed across the group since 2022. In what Naftogaz called its largest strike on gas production infrastructure, Russia fired 35 missiles and 60 drones at facilities in the Kharkiv and Poltava regions in October 2025.

Russia's long war on Ukraine's energy grid

Russia has bombed Ukraine's power and heating systems through every winter of its full-scale invasion. Each year the strikes have grown heavier. Then-Energy Minister Denys Shmyhal said last winter's attacks damaged or destroyed roughly 80% of Ukraine's energy system. Across 2025, Russia hit energy sites more than 600 times, damaging all 15 of the country's thermal plants. The strikes have forced repeated nationwide blackouts and cut heat to homes in sub-zero cold.

That previous campaign failed to collapse the grid, so Moscow now eyes Ukraine's water systems as its next winter target. Heading into the coming winter, Ukraine received about three times fewer air-defense missiles in the first half of 2026 than a year earlier. Kyiv is answering with its own deep strikes on Russian refineries and military plants. For civilians, the pattern means another winter of cold homes, rationed power, and threatened water supplies.

Observers call Peltola, who won the red state’s House seat twice and is running to unseat Dan Sullivan, ‘a unicorn’

Dan J Sullivan is a retired schoolteacher and US Forest Service employee living in the town of Petersburg in south-eastern Alaska, who is running as a Republican for the US Senate. Dan S Sullivan is a Republican US senator, who has represented Alaska since 2015.

Both candidates will appear on the ballot, one name after the other, when Alaskans vote in primary elections this week – a complicated quirk of the contest that has drawn howls from Republicans.

Kemp’s ridley sea turtle, near death on Welsh beach in 2023, is thriving in Houston despite lingering pneumonia

A Kemp’s ridley sea turtle native to the Gulf of Mexico is largely thriving after he was found nearly dead on a beach in Wales in late 2023, nursed back to health and then flown to Houston recently to continue recovering – though scans revealed signs that the creature has been grappling with lingering pneumonia, according to his caretakers.

Rhossi’s condition was detailed in a blogpost on Friday from the Houston zoo, whose veterinary team was tasked with caring for the creature – believed to be no older than age four – and giving him the best chance possible at an eventual, successful return to the wild.

The president was forced to hide in a catering truck amid the Iran war, in an encapsulation of the conflict’s failures

For decades, Donald Trump cultivated a public image based on strength and dominance. He was a brash New York real estate mogul; a reality TV star who deployed his signature phrase: “You’re fired!” to eliminate contestants from The Apprentice; and eventually US president and undisputed leader of the Republican party.

In recent months, Trump has taken his boastfulness to an extreme, reportedly telling confidants that he’s “the most powerful person to ever live” and comparing himself with some of history’s most feared leaders, including Genghis Khan, Napoleon, Hitler, Stalin and Mao.

The American has proved again that she’s in a class of her own. But is that a good thing for her sport?

Over the weekend, more than 16,000 fans, including former and current world champions such as Floyd Mayweather, Terence Crawford, and Shakur Stevenson, filled State Farm Arena in Atlanta to witness Claressa Shields dominate Kaye Scott.

Shields made quick work of Scott winning by TKO in six rounds after unleashing a flurry of punches against the Australian, whose corner threw in the towel to stop the fight before more damage could be done.

Trucking industry experts are calling for a significant overhaul of Ontario’s oversight of commercial truck driver training in the wake of a scathing report from the province’s Auditor-General that raised concerns about shoddy enforcement.

President orders Pentagon to scale back ‘inappropriate and hostile’ exercises with South Korea

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President ⁠Donald Trump reiterated ⁠on Monday that ⁠Iran ​cannot have a ⁠nuclear weapon amid a lack ⁠of progress in ​diplomatic ‌efforts ‌to resolve the ‌Middle East conflict.

“The number one Goal is, and always ‌will be, that Iran cannot ​have, in any way, shape, or ⁠form, a ​Nuclear Weapon,” Trump ​said in ​a ​post ‌on Truth ​Social.

Sberbank has reported another jump in profit, on course to pay a dividend even bigger than the record one it handed shareholders earlier this summer. Shareholders in the European Union, the United States, and every other country Moscow calls “unfriendly” will not see a ruble of it.

The bank earned more than 1 trillion rubles ($12 billion) in the first half of 2026 alone, up nearly a fifth on the year, a gain in an economy the Central Bank of Russia itself describes as only moderate after a downturn at the start of the year.

Full-year profit hit a third straight record in 2025. Sberbank pays out half its profit, and the dividend it set for 2025 was already the biggest it had ever paid.

For a shareholder in New York or Frankfurt, none of it is money he can spend. About a quarter of the 2024 payout was set aside in restricted “type-C” accounts for holders from “unfriendly” countries, and nothing has changed since: the dividend is credited to him and then locked.

The Russian state, which owns just over half of Sberbank, faces no such block. It collects roughly half of every payout, while its budget deficit runs past 6 trillion rubles ($71 billion) in five months.

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Russia’s oil money is drying up—so its own people are paying for the war

The market moves the other way

The records are landing on a market that has barely moved in four years. The MOEX index, the main gauge of the Moscow Exchange, had fallen 17 straight weeks by mid-July, its longest losing streak since 1997, back near where it stood the week Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022; anyone who bought Russian shares at the start of the war has made almost nothing since.

Sberbank yields more than 10% on paper, but the stock has fallen about 14% over the past year, so the record dividend does not even cover the price drop, and the foreign holder takes that loss without the payout that might soften it.

Moscow keeps tightening the lock

Russia built the type-C system in 2022 as a countermeasure to Western sanctions that froze its reserves abroad, and officials say the money stays until those reserves are freed.

Within that system, dividends owed to “unfriendly” foreigners are deposited into blocked ruble accounts that they can spend only on Russian taxes, government bonds, and fees.

In June 2026, the block reached ordinary bank deposits after a few words were added to the founding decree: “bank deposits (deposits).” Repayments and interest above 10 million rubles (about $120,000) a month now go the same way.

One court opens a crack

In a ruling dated 14 April 2025, the Supreme Court held that a bank cannot refuse to swap an investor’s frozen depositary receipts—certificates that stand in for shares held abroad—for the actual Russian shares, merely because those securities sit in a blocked type-C account.

A Moscow court then sided with the investor, Vladimir Pelevin, and fined Raiffeisenbank for the delay. The ruling allows a holder to swap receipts for shares, but it does not affect the dividends those shares pay, which still land in type-C.

A compensation scheme, based on a March 2024 decree, pays out only when no “unfriendly” foreigner is anywhere in the ownership chain.

A draft law before Russian lawmakers would allow the state to seize the balances in type-C accounts outright. The decree that created them, in 2022, is titled “On the temporary procedure.”