President Donald Trump’s administration is considering lifting sanctions on the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), sources familiar with talks between Russia and the United States told The New York Times.
Russia is pressing for sanctions relief for RDIF so the fund can take part in supplying Russian diesel fuel to the United States, the sources told the Times.
The U.S. Treasury Department is reviewing the fund’s application for sanctions relief under its standard procedures, one source said. RDIF will have to prove that the reasons it was sanctioned no longer apply.
RDIF is headed by Kirill Dmitriev, a key participant in the talks between Russia and the United States. He is leading the Kremlin’s push for possible joint business ventures between the two countries.
RDIF was established in 2011 to attract foreign investment to Russia. The best-known project it helped develop was Russia’s Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine. Dmitriev and his wife, Natalya Popova, are believed to be close to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s younger daughter, Katerina Tikhonova.
President Joe Biden’s administration imposed sanctions on RDIF on February 28, 2022, four days after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. “While officially a sovereign wealth fund, RDIF is widely considered a slush fund for President Vladimir Putin and is emblematic of Russia’s broader kleptocracy,” the U.S. Treasury Department said at the time.
At Meduza, we are committed to transparency about our use of artificial intelligence in the newsroom. The story you’re reading was written by one of our living, breathing journalists and translated from Russian using an AI model configured to follow our strict editorial standards. This translation process is the result of extensive testing and refinements to ensure our English-language coverage is timely and accurate. A Meduza editor reviews every draft before publication.
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On October 20, a monument to Alexander Solzhenitsyn was dismantled in central Vladivostok, where it had stood since 2015. It was supposed to be moved to a park commemorating victims of political repression, but the very next day it was unexpectedly put back. The official explanation was that it was too large for the new site. Vladivostok’s role in this story is no coincidence. It was there that Solzhenitsyn began his journey across Russia in 1994, after 20 years in exile. The writer traveled across the country to Moscow by train. After returning, he became active in politics, criticizing Gorbachev and Yeltsin but speaking favorably of Putin. The feeling is mutual: Putin honors Solzhenitsyn’s memory despite the writer’s views on the USSR and its suppression of dissent. At Meduza’s request, historian Alexey Uvarov explains how Solzhenitsyn’s contradictory views took shape — and how they foreshadowed the Russian-Ukrainian war.
From Kislovodsk to Vermont: How Solzhenitsyn survived war and the camps and ended up in exile
Alexander Solzhenitsyn was born in Kislovodsk in 1918. His father died before he was born, and his mother raised him alone in Rostov-on-Don. The family was poor, but Solzhenitsyn developed a love of literature as a child. While still in school, he dreamed of writing a novel about the 1917 revolution. Like many of his peers, he sincerely believed in communism and saw the revolution as the first step toward building a just society. In 1936, Solzhenitsyn enrolled in the physics and mathematics department at Rostov University. He continued to dream of a writing career.
Solzhenitsyn was drafted into the army in 1941. After artillery school, he was sent to the front, where he commanded a sound-ranging battery, rose to the rank of captain, and received two military decorations. During the war, however, he began to question Joseph Stalin’s policies. Solzhenitsyn had not yet rejected communism itself. He believed Stalin had distorted Lenin’s ideas and that the Soviet system needed to return to its original principles. He discussed these thoughts in letters to his school friend Nikolai Vitkevich. Military censors read the letters, and in February 1945 Solzhenitsyn was arrested at the front. In July, the Special Council of the NKVD, the Soviet internal affairs agency, sentenced him to eight years in labor camps on charges of anti-Soviet agitation and attempting to establish an anti-Soviet organization.
Solzhenitsyn’s views gradually changed in prison. In conversations with other prisoners, he encountered criticism of Marxism itself as well as of Stalin. In time, the writer concluded that repression was inherent in the Soviet system, rather than simply a consequence of Stalin’s mistakes. He abandoned communism and returned to the Christian faith in which he had been raised. Solzhenitsyn spent part of his sentence in a “sharashka,” a secret research institute staffed by prisoners, and the final three years in a camp for political prisoners in Ekibastuz, Kazakhstan. After his release in 1953, he was sent into indefinite internal exile in Kazakhstan. Only in 1956 was Solzhenitsyn able to return to the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic; a year later, his conviction was overturned and his name cleared. He settled in Ryazan, took a job as a schoolteacher, and continued writing.
The Soviet “Thaw” gave him an opportunity to publish his work. In 1962, Alexander Tvardovsky, editor in chief of the journal Novy Mir, secured Nikita Khrushchev’s personal permission to publish Solzhenitsyn’s novella “Odin den Ivana Denisovicha” (“One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich”). The work attracted enormous interest and immediately made its author famous. But while the Soviet leadership was prepared to condemn Stalin’s crimes, it would not condemn the system of party dictatorship itself. After Khrushchev’s removal in 1964, Solzhenitsyn’s works were gradually barred from publication.
The writer had no intention of renouncing his work. In 1967, he openly challenged censorship, while his novel “V kruge pervom” (“In the First Circle”) and novella “Rakovy korpus” (“Cancer Ward”) circulated in samizdat — clandestinely copied editions — and were published abroad. In 1969, Solzhenitsyn was expelled from the Writers’ Union. A year later, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.
His conflict with the authorities culminated in the publication of “Arkhipelag GULAG” (“The Gulag Archipelago”), which Solzhenitsyn had worked on in secret for many years. Drawing on his own experiences and the testimony of hundreds of former prisoners, he showed that mass repression had begun under Lenin and was rooted in the very nature of the Soviet state. The first volume was published in Paris in December 1973. By then, Solzhenitsyn was offering his own vision of the country’s future as well as criticizing its rulers.
That same year, he sent the Soviet leadership his “Pismo vozhdyam Sovetskogo Soyuza” (“Letter to the Soviet Leaders”), calling on them to abandon communist ideology and concentrate on domestic problems. The writer did not, however, advocate a transition to Western liberal democracy and was open to retaining authoritarian rule. In February 1974, Solzhenitsyn was arrested, stripped of his Soviet citizenship, and expelled to West Germany. He later moved to Switzerland, then to the United States in 1976.
The Vermont recluse: How Solzhenitsyn became a critic of both the USSR and the West
In 1976, Solzhenitsyn settled with his wife and children in the small town of Cavendish, Vermont. He bought a house surrounded by woods, where he could work away from journalists and public attention. His main project was the historical epic “Krasnoye Koleso” (“The Red Wheel”), which he had conceived in his youth. In it, the writer sought to understand the causes of the 1917 revolution and the Bolsheviks’ rise to power. He studied archival documents and eyewitness accounts, then spent months working on the manuscript.
Solzhenitsyn also maintained his ties to the USSR. After the publication of “The Gulag Archipelago,” he had established a fund to help Soviet political prisoners and their families, donating royalties from the book’s sales. Human rights activists secretly distributed the money inside the country. In 1977, Alexander Ginzburg, one of the fund’s leaders, was arrested, but the organization continued its work. Solzhenitsyn also collected Russian émigrés’ recollections to preserve accounts of the revolution, wars, and Soviet repression.
Although the writer rarely appeared in public, he continued to make political statements. His views differed markedly from those of many other critics of the USSR. Solzhenitsyn considered communism a destructive ideology, but he did not see Western society as a model for Russia’s future. This became particularly clear in June 1978, when he addressed Harvard University’s graduating class. Instead of praising American democracy, the writer criticized Western materialism, the excessive emphasis on individual rights, the influence of the press, and politicians’ unwillingness to confront communist regimes. The speech prompted debate in the press: Many critics accused Solzhenitsyn of ingratitude toward the country that had given him refuge and of rejecting liberal democracy.
Solzhenitsyn speaking at Harvard University. June 8, 1978
Solzhenitsyn also clashed with other émigrés from the USSR. His dispute with the writer Andrei Sinyavsky was particularly bitter. In “Nashi plyuralisty” (“Our Pluralists”), an article published in 1983, Solzhenitsyn accused some émigré intellectuals of having collaborated with the Soviet authorities and now claiming the right to determine Russia’s future. His opponents, in turn, criticized his Russian nationalism and authoritarian views.
Christianity was central to Solzhenitsyn’s worldview. In May 1983, he received the Templeton Prize for his contribution to religious thought. Speaking in London to mark the award, the writer said that society’s abandonment of faith in God was the main cause of Russia’s 20th-century tragedies. He saw this loss of faith as the source of both Soviet totalitarianism and the moral crisis in Western society.
In 1985, Solzhenitsyn remained one of the world’s best-known Russian writers, but his works were still not being published in his homeland. The possibility of returning to Russia seemed remote.
Perestroika and the return to Russia: How Solzhenitsyn planned the country’s future from exile
Mikhail Gorbachev’s rise to power in 1985 changed conditions in the USSR. His policies of perestroika and glasnost allowed previously forbidden subjects, including Stalinist repression, to be discussed openly. The authorities were in no hurry to allow Solzhenitsyn’s works back into print, however. In 1987, Novy Mir editor in chief Sergei Zalygin said the journal planned to publish “Cancer Ward,” and the following year he approached the writer himself. But Solzhenitsyn set a condition: “The Gulag Archipelago” had to be published in the USSR first. He believed readers needed access to this book about the Soviet system’s crimes before any of his other works.
In 1989, Novy Mir finally began publishing chapters of “The Gulag Archipelago.” Other works by the writer soon began appearing in the USSR, and he again became a subject of public debate. In August 1990, Gorbachev restored Solzhenitsyn’s citizenship and that of his wife. The writer was not yet planning to return, however. He wanted to finish “The Red Wheel” and secure the formal dismissal of the treason charge brought against him before his expulsion in 1974.
Solzhenitsyn was already taking an active part in discussions about the country’s future. In September 1990, Komsomolskaya Pravda and Literaturnaya Gazeta published his article “Kak nam obustroit Rossiyu?” (“Rebuilding Russia: Reflections and Tentative Proposals”), with a print run of nearly 27 million copies.
The writer took it as a given that the communist system was doomed and proposed his own plan for transforming the state. He called for abandoning imperial ambitions and not using force to hold on to republics seeking independence.
At the same time, Solzhenitsyn advocated preserving a union of Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan. He also proposed redrawing some republics’ borders because he considered parts of their territory historically Russian. The writer envisioned Russia as a state with strong local self-government, grounded in national and Christian traditions rather than Western political models.
The article provoked fierce debate. Many welcomed the call to abandon communism and focus on domestic problems. But the proposals concerning Ukraine’s and Kazakhstan’s borders drew sharp criticism. Gorbachev also rejected the plan, considering Solzhenitsyn’s views too conservative. Events moved faster than the writer had anticipated. In December 1991, the USSR collapsed, and his proposed union never materialized.
By then, the legal barriers to Solzhenitsyn’s return had also been removed. In September 1991, the Soviet Prosecutor General’s Office dismissed the case against him, finding that his actions did not constitute a crime. But the writer remained in Vermont for almost another three years. He continued working on his books and following Russian politics. Solzhenitsyn welcomed the fall of the communist regime, but Boris Yeltsin’s economic reforms and the population’s impoverishment left him increasingly disillusioned.
On May 27, 1994, 20 years after his expulsion, Solzhenitsyn finally returned to Russia with his wife and son. He deliberately chose a route through the Far East so that he could cross the country by train and see how it had changed. His plane landed first in Magadan, then in Vladivostok. From there, the writer traveled west by rail, arriving in Moscow on July 21.
Solzhenitsyn talking with Siberian Cossacks at a meeting in Irkutsk. June 17, 1994
From support to disillusionment: How Solzhenitsyn became an unyielding opponent of Yeltsin
After returning to Russia, Solzhenitsyn had no intention of confining himself to literature. Over his 20 years in exile, he had developed his own vision of how the country should be organized after communism, and now he wanted to join the debate over its future. But what he saw on his journey across Russia disappointed him. The writer spoke of poverty, corruption, and a privatization process that had put state property into the hands of a small group of people. He called the political system a “sham democracy” and “an ingenious fusion of bureaucrats, Soviet party officials, and hardened wheeler-dealers.”
The Kremlin initially counted on his support. Solzhenitsyn’s biographer Lyudmila Saraskina writes that Yeltsin was certain the writer would be “on our side.” Reformers saw him as an ally against communism, but his criticism of the economic changes increasingly echoed the rhetoric of the communist opposition. The liberal press began calling Solzhenitsyn “the choirmaster of the doomsayers.”
Solzhenitsyn laid out his views most fully in a speech to the State Duma on October 28, 1994. Lawmakers had spent several months debating whether to invite the writer, with the pro-presidential Russia’s Choice faction voting against it. Solzhenitsyn spoke for about an hour. He said Russia had “no democracy, only oligarchy” — rule by “a small, closed circle of people.” He proposed developing local self-government along the lines of the prerevolutionary zemstvos, elected bodies responsible for schools, hospitals, and roads. The writer did not oppose a strong presidency and believed it should be preserved, but he thought its powers should be increasingly limited at lower levels of government, with residents making their own decisions at the local level. Solzhenitsyn also expressed mixed views on the idea of having the president appoint regional leaders. He warned lawmakers that parliament risked sharing the fate of the prerevolutionary Dumas if it could not stand up to the executive branch.
Lawmakers gave the speech a cool reception: No one asked questions, and the applause was tepid. The writer’s supporters saw this as evidence of politicians’ indifference to the country’s troubles. Reformers, meanwhile, considered Solzhenitsyn’s proposals outdated. Yegor Gaidar said with regret that the speech had pleased the communists.
His relationship with Yeltsin was also difficult. In August 1991, Solzhenitsyn welcomed Yeltsin’s resistance to the State Committee for the State of Emergency, which had attempted a coup, but soon began criticizing his economic policies. In June 1992, they spoke by phone for 40 minutes, and the writer said he had “failed to convince him of anything.” The president also publicly challenged his prominent critic. In “Zapiski prezidenta” (“The Struggle for Russia”), he responded to Solzhenitsyn’s question about whether he would treat his own mother with shock therapy: “I would use shock therapy on myself, and not just one time.”
On November 16, 1994, they met in person, with their wives and without journalists. Yeltsin’s press secretary, Vyacheslav Kostikov, recalled that the president was nervous and that his advisers had tried to talk him out of the meeting. The conversation lasted about four hours and, in Kostikov’s words, proceeded “without glossing over political differences.” Solzhenitsyn recounted his journey across the country and outlined his proposals. But no noticeable changes in government policy followed.
Another source of disagreement soon emerged. In December 1994, Russian troops entered Chechnya, which had effectively been outside Moscow’s control since 1991. Solzhenitsyn considered the decision to go to war a “grave political mistake.” In 1992, he had advised Yeltsin to let Chechnya go if it wanted to secede. Later, the writer proposed recognizing the republic’s independence, but separating it from Russia with a line of military posts along the border and retaining the territory on the left bank of the Terek River as part of Russia. In 2000, after Chechen militants invaded Dagestan, he acknowledged that his earlier advice to Yeltsin had been a mistake.
Solzhenitsyn also tried to reach television audiences. Beginning in April 1995, his 15-minute addresses aired on ORT every two weeks. He spoke about schools, the army, elections, the situation of Russians outside Russia, and the war in Chechnya. But the program was canceled after 12 episodes. The 13th episode, devoted to people’s disillusionment with politics and criticism of the authorities, never aired. “They’ve shut me up, just as I expected,” Solzhenitsyn said. ORT’s management said it had made the decision because of the approaching parliamentary elections and the need to maintain political balance. But because other critical programs were taken off the air at the same time, the decision prompted suspicions of political censorship. Solzhenitsyn no longer had a regular television audience, though he continued to travel around the country and express his views in the press.
Solzhenitsyn at his country home in Troitse-Lykovo during the filming of Alexander Sokurov’s film about him
By the late 1990s, his criticism of Yeltsin had grown even harsher. In May 1998, he published “Rossiya v obvale” (“Russia in Collapse”). In it, Solzhenitsyn accused the authorities of carrying out unfair privatization, destroying industry and science, impoverishing the population, and giving in to the West. He did not call for a return to the Soviet system, but he considered the existing political order unacceptable. The book appeared three months before the August debt default, which gave his criticism added weight.
His differences with Yeltsin came to a head in December 1998. To mark the writer’s 80th birthday, the president awarded him the Order of St. Andrew the Apostle, Russia’s highest state honor. Solzhenitsyn had sent the presidential administration a written refusal in advance, but Yeltsin signed the decree anyway. On December 11, his birthday, at the premiere of Yury Lyubimov’s play “Sharashka” (“The Prison Research Institute”) at the Taganka Theater, he said from the stage: “I cannot accept an award from the country’s highest authority, which has brought Russia to its present disastrous state.” The writer did, however, accept Yeltsin’s personal birthday greetings.
Putin and Solzhenitsyn: How a dissident and a KGB officer grew close
Solzhenitsyn entered 2000 as an unyielding critic of Yeltsin. He reacted sharply to Yeltsin’s resignation and acting President Putin’s decree granting the former head of state immunity. Speaking at the Russian State Library in May 2000, he said: “I consider it disgraceful to absolve Yeltsin of responsibility. And probably not just Yeltsin — another hundred or two should stand trial along with him!”
Solzhenitsyn was initially wary of the country’s new leadership as well. In interviews with NTV and Novaya Gazeta, he criticized Putin’s intention to continue Yeltsin’s reforms: “So far, we have seen no encouraging steps from the new authorities to put things right.”
Within a few months, however, his attitude toward the new president had become noticeably more favorable. On September 20, 2000, Putin and his wife visited Solzhenitsyn at his country home in Troitse-Lykovo. The following day, the writer said the president had made a good impression on him. He praised Putin’s quick mind and described his decisions as “prudent and sound,” saying Putin had “no thirst for personal power.” Solzhenitsyn said the two did not always agree, but listened carefully to each other’s arguments.
The meeting provoked debate. To many former Soviet dissidents, the growing closeness between the author of “The Gulag Archipelago” and a former KGB officer seemed paradoxical. Andrei Sakharov’s widow, Yelena Bonner, wondered how “the regime’s most fearless opponent became friends with a KGB colonel.”
Still, Solzhenitsyn’s approval of the president did not mean he stopped criticizing the authorities. In December 2000, while accepting an award from the French Academy of Moral and Political Sciences, he sharply criticized the political elite, which he believed was dominated by “unrepentant members of the old nomenclatura” and “rapacious former heads of the Komsomol.” Answering journalists’ questions after the ceremony, the writer recounted what he had told Putin at their private meeting: “Strengthening the state is necessary for Russia’s unity, but strengthening the state will not make Russia flourish. Russia can flourish only when millions are free to speak, when they are free in word and deed to shape their own destiny.”
Solzhenitsyn and Putin agreed above all on the need to strengthen the state. The writer believed that the collapse of the USSR and the economic upheavals of the 1990s had left Russia in a deep crisis, and that the new president was trying to rebuild the state.
In a July 2007 interview with the German magazine Der Spiegel, Solzhenitsyn said Putin had inherited a country that had been “ransacked and knocked off its feet” and had begun gradually rebuilding it. The writer also said he was “dismayed” by the slow development of local self-government and regretted the absence of a sizable, constructive political opposition in Russia. In the same interview, he called Putin’s decision to abolish elections to the State Duma in single-member districts a mistake.
In private conversations, Solzhenitsyn could be even more explicit in criticizing Putin’s decisions. In April 2008, a few months before his death, he met with U.S. Ambassador William Burns. According to a diplomatic cable published later, the writer called the abolition of gubernatorial elections a “mistake.” He said citizens should be able to choose their own representatives in government and hold them accountable. As an example, Solzhenitsyn recalled town meetings in Vermont, which he called the very essence of democracy.
Putin and Solzhenitsyn also had similar views on relations with the West. Solzhenitsyn had long criticized Western policy, but his judgments became even harsher after NATO’s bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999. In a 2006 interview with Moskovskiye Novosti, he said NATO’s expansion was intended to encircle Russia and strip it of its sovereignty. A year later, the writer called Putin’s foreign policy “quite reasonable and more foresighted,” while criticizing NATO’s efforts to bring former Soviet republics, particularly Ukraine, into its orbit.
The Russian State Prize, awarded to Solzhenitsyn in 2007 “for outstanding achievements in humanitarian work,” symbolized the closeness between the writer and the president. Solzhenitsyn had refused the Order of St. Andrew from Yeltsin in 1998, but accepted Putin’s award. He explained his decision by noting that the prize had been awarded by a panel of experts rather than by the president personally. In his Der Spiegel interview, Solzhenitsyn also answered a question about Putin’s past: “Vladimir Putin — yes, he was an officer of the intelligence services, but he was not a KGB investigator, nor was he the head of a camp in the gulag.”
Putin and Solzhenitsyn meeting. June 2007
On June 12, 2007, the writer’s wife, Natalia, accepted the award at the Kremlin. Solzhenitsyn himself was unable to attend because of his health. After the ceremony, Putin visited him at home for another conversation. The president told journalists that many of the authorities’ actions were in keeping with Solzhenitsyn’s ideas.
Life after death: How the authorities put Solzhenitsyn’s legacy to work for them
Solzhenitsyn died on August 3, 2008, at 89. By then, Putin had become prime minister, and Dmitry Medvedev was president. Both paid their respects to the writer: Putin attended the public memorial service, and Medvedev the funeral at the Donskoy Monastery. On the day of the funeral, Medvedev signed a decree commemorating Solzhenitsyn. Scholarships were established in his honor, and Moscow’s Bolshaya Kommunisticheskaya Street was soon renamed Alexander Solzhenitsyn Street, despite protests from the Communist Party of the Russian Federation. Later, an abridged version of “The Gulag Archipelago,” prepared with the involvement of the writer’s widow, Natalia, was produced for schoolchildren.
The Russian authorities continued to honor Solzhenitsyn’s memory in the years that followed. In December 2018, to mark the centenary of the writer’s birth, Putin personally unveiled a monument to him in Moscow. In his speech, the president called Solzhenitsyn a “true patriot” who, even in exile, “opposed any manifestations of Russophobia.” In this way, Solzhenitsyn’s devotion to Russia and defense of its national interests — not just his fight against Soviet repression — took on special prominence in the official portrayal of the writer.
Vladimir Putin and Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s widow, Natalia, at the unveiling of a monument to the writer in Moscow. December 11, 2018
The writer’s widow, Natalia Solzhenitsyna, plays an important role in preserving and interpreting his legacy. In a 2018 interview with the French newspaper Le Figaro, she supported the annexation of Crimea, calling it a restoration of historical justice. Solzhenitsyna also acknowledged that the peninsula’s annexation was contentious under international law and opposed Russian intervention in the Donbas. She said the intervention was an enormous mistake that the country would come to regret.
In 2022, after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the publisher AST released “S Ukrainoy budet chrezvychayno bolno” (“Ukraine Will Be an Extremely Painful Problem”), a collection compiled by Solzhenitsyna. The book continued a project begun in 2018 with the collection “Rossiya. Zapad. Ukraina” (“Russia. The West. Ukraine”). It brought together Solzhenitsyn’s statements on Russian-Ukrainian relations, disputed territories, and Western policy. In the foreword, the writer’s widow repeated her husband’s arguments about the injustice of Ukraine’s Soviet-era borders and Western countries’ responsibility for the deterioration in relations between Russia and Ukraine.
Yet in May 2022, Natalia Solzhenitsyna also signed a written pledge vouching for opposition politician Vladimir Kara-Murza, who had been arrested on charges of spreading “fake news” about the Russian army.
Solzhenitsyn, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan: How the writer’s views grew more radical
Solzhenitsyn’s views provoked particularly fierce debate in Ukraine and Kazakhstan. The writer recognized peoples’ right to self-determination and opposed forcibly keeping republics within a common state. Yet he considered large parts of Ukrainian and Kazakhstani territory historically Russian. This contradiction persisted in his statements for decades.
Solzhenitsyn’s early reflections on Ukraine seemed fairly conciliatory. In “The Gulag Archipelago,” the bulk of which he finished writing in 1968, the writer recalled his conversations with Ukrainian nationalists in Soviet camps. He criticized the authorities’ habit of labeling them bandits and considered Ukrainians’ desire for independence understandable.
Despite their shared history, Russians and Ukrainians had failed over several centuries to learn to live in harmony, Solzhenitsyn acknowledged. “Ukraine will be an extremely painful problem,” he warned. But he considered it unacceptable to hold on to Ukraine by force. Ukrainians themselves, he believed, should decide their country’s future. The writer nevertheless hoped that a peaceful separation would eventually allow the two peoples to reunite.
In May 1975, Solzhenitsyn recorded an Easter radio address to Ukrainians in Canada. In it, he recalled his own Ukrainian roots: His mother was almost entirely of Ukrainian descent, and his maternal grandfather spoke Ukrainian. The writer said he did not speak Ukrainian fluently but understood it well. He recalled Ukrainians’ suffering, including the famine of the 1930s, and his friendships with Ukrainian prisoners in Soviet camps. Polish historian Grzegorz Przebinda of Jagiellonian University said the address was included in neither the 2018 collection “Russia. The West. Ukraine” nor the 2022 volume “Ukraine Will Be an Extremely Painful Problem,” both prepared by the writer’s widow.
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Even during this period, however, Solzhenitsyn’s attitude toward Ukraine was becoming more contradictory. Przebinda found that, when preparing a new edition of “The Gulag Archipelago” in 1980, the writer added a remark to his earlier reflections saying that Khrushchev had arbitrarily transferred Crimea to Ukraine. At the same time, some sympathetic statements about the Ukrainian national movement disappeared from the book.
Solzhenitsyn nevertheless continued to oppose violence between the two peoples. In 1981, he sent a letter to the organizers of a conference on Russian-Ukrainian relations in Toronto. In it, the writer urged that no one be held by force and promised that “never, under any circumstances, shall I take part in a Russian-Ukrainian clash or allow my sons to do so.”
By the early 1990s, territorial claims were becoming increasingly prominent in his thinking. In “Rebuilding Russia,” Solzhenitsyn proposed letting most Soviet republics go while preserving a union of Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan. He denied that a distinct Ukrainian people had existed since the early Middle Ages, calling such ideas “a recently invented falsehood.” The writer also maintained that the Kherson region, the area around the Sea of Azov, Crimea, and the Donbas had never been part of historical Ukraine. He considered Kazakhstan’s territory an artificial creation of the Soviet authorities and proposed keeping its northern regions within Russia. Solzhenitsyn still recognized Ukrainians’ and Kazakhs’ right to independence in principle, but he believed that each region should decide separately which state it would belong to.
Solzhenitsyn in the United States in 1989
These proposals provoked a sharp reaction. In September 1990, participants in a rally in Alma-Ata against Solzhenitsyn’s territorial claims publicly burned a newspaper containing his article. The Lviv Regional Council also condemned the writer’s statements. His critics included former Ukrainian political prisoners who, like Solzhenitsyn himself, had endured the Soviet camps.
In August 1991, before the Soviet Union collapsed, Solzhenitsyn called on Yeltsin to reconsider the Soviet republics’ borders. He asked the president to ensure that votes in Ukraine’s forthcoming independence referendum would be counted separately in each region. In the writer’s view, residents should decide for themselves which state their territories belonged to. In a 1994 interview with Forbes, he again said he wished Ukraine success, but only within borders that he himself considered ethnically justified.
In his final years, Solzhenitsyn’s views on Ukrainian politics hardened further. In 2006, he called the alleged suppression of the Russian language in Ukraine “an act of atrocity” and again questioned Ukraine’s right to Crimea and its eastern regions. In April 2008, four months before his death, he published an article in Izvestia titled “Possorit rodnye narody?” (“Swallowing Shameless Lies”). The writer opposed recognizing the famine of 1932–1933 as a genocide of Ukrainians and compared the Ukrainian authorities’ arguments to Bolshevik propaganda.
The article outraged former Ukrainian political prisoners. Levko Lukyanenko and other human rights advocates called on Russian intellectuals not to support this interpretation of the Holodomor. They also expressed hope that Solzhenitsyn himself would find the courage to “live not by lies” — a reference to his own 1974 essay, “Zhit ne po lzhi” (“Live Not by Lies”).
How to view Solzhenitsyn in 2026
It would be wrong to reduce Solzhenitsyn either to his “great-power” views or to his condemnation of Soviet camps and repression. He was a complex person whose political convictions changed throughout his life. Though he did not support Western liberal democracy, the writer defended freedom of speech, human dignity, and local self-government.
But in today’s Russia, the “great-power” side of his legacy has come to the fore. Putin found ideas that matched his own views in the writer’s reflections on a strong state and national interests. As a result, Solzhenitsyn, who remains unacceptable to many admirers of the Soviet past, has gained a prominent place in the state’s efforts to shape historical memory.
Other parts of his legacy, meanwhile, increasingly conflict with the Russian authorities’ actions. Even as the state honors the author of “The Gulag Archipelago,” a Moscow museum devoted to Soviet repression has been closed and replaced by a museum of victims of Nazi crimes.
Still more striking is the contradiction with the principle of “protecting the people,” which Solzhenitsyn considered one of the state’s main responsibilities and which Putin himself quoted in 2006. The war against Ukraine, with its enormous loss of life, is difficult to reconcile with that principle. In closing, all that remains is to quote Solzhenitsyn once more, from his essay “‘Russky vopros’ k kontsu XX veka” (“The ‘Russian Question’ at the End of the Twentieth Century”):
We do not need to be a world arbiter, to compete for international leadership (stronger volunteers will surface); all our efforts must be directed inwards, towards assiduous inner development.
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Dmitry Alekseyev, president and co-owner of the retail chain DNS, wrote a Facebook post defending political scientist Alexander Kynev, who was arrested on charges of attempting to sell drugs.
”[…] I get it — the elephant in the room, the times we’re living in. But you know what? They’ve just released a series based on ‘Hard to Be a God.’ There’s not much left of the Strugatsky brothers’ work in it, but even there, persecuting scholars is portrayed as an outrageous example of medieval barbarism. Kynev is one of those scholars. A scholar who’s now sitting in an overcrowded cell with a hole in the floor for a toilet. Surely this isn’t what our traditional values are about? Or is humanism a forbidden word now, too?” Alekseyev asked.
The news outlet Agentstvo, which drew attention to Alekseyev’s post, said it was a rare instance of a prominent Russian businessman speaking out in defense of a victim of political repression.
Alexander Kynev is a well-known expert on Russian regional politics. He was arrested in a drug case on September 25. He was beaten when he was detained, and his shinbone was broken in two places. On October 26, it emerged that he had gone on a hunger strike in pretrial detention. His lawyer said Kynev shares a cell with 34 other people and that the toilet is a hole in the floor, which Kynev cannot use because his leg is in a cast.
Dmitry Alekseyev’s DNS is one of Russia’s largest retailers of electronics and home appliances. Forbes estimates Alekseyev’s net worth at $1.6 billion. Alekseyev has criticized the authorities before, including after Alexey Navalny’s death in pretrial detention.
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A ceasefire took effect early on October 27 in Oleshky (called Alyoshki in Russian) in Ukraine’s Kherson region. Russia and Ukraine had agreed to halt fighting to evacuate civilians and deliver humanitarian aid to the Russian-occupied city, where a humanitarian catastrophe has unfolded. U.S. first lady Melania Trump helped the two sides reach the agreement.
The ceasefire will last until 10:59 p.m. on November 1, said David Arakhamia, who heads the Servant of the People faction in Ukraine’s parliament and is a member of Ukraine’s negotiating team. Russia’s human rights commissioner, Yana Lantratova, confirmed the timing. Arakhamia called the ceasefire in Oleshky “the biggest de-escalation since 2022.”
Melania Trump said the ceasefire had begun two days ahead of schedule and had been extended beyond Oleshky to allow humanitarian convoys to pass safely. She said Valery Gerasimov, chief of Russia’s General Staff, had confirmed this.
Ukraine and Russia said on the evening of October 27 that both sides were fully observing the ceasefire. The Kremlin also said the humanitarian operation in Oleshky was “going according to plan.”
Many details of the humanitarian operation remain unclear: which roads will be cleared of mines, where residents will be taken and how they will be evacuated, whether they will be allowed to go directly to Ukraine or stay in Oleshky, and where families with children will be allowed to go. The Financial Times reported that even those wishing to go to Ukraine will first be taken to Russia. The operation will be carried out in several stages.
Petro Andriushchenko, head of Ukraine’s Center for the Study of Occupation, said the evacuation from Oleshky is scheduled for October 30. Information about residents who want to leave is being gathered in a rush, he said, adding that details of how the evacuation will proceed remain confidential for now. Andriushchenko suggested that departures would depend on how the roads are cleared of mines. He said Ukraine expects a route across the Dnipro River to be arranged so Oleshky residents who want to go to Ukraine can travel directly to Ukrainian-controlled territory.
Oleshky residents may be evacuated to Russian-annexed Crimea or Rostov-on-Don, said Vladimir Saldo, the Russia-installed “governor” of the Kherson region. He said transportation and temporary accommodation had already been arranged for them. Saldo also said those wishing to go to Ukraine would receive help.
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Finnish President Alexander Stubb and Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre. October 20, 2026
Finnish President Alexander Stubb and Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre spoke by phone with Vladimir Putin. Western leaders initiated the call to discuss Russia’s war against Ukraine and diplomatic efforts to end it.
The Finnish president’s office said the call was meant “to convey messages directly regarding future negotiations to help to end the war to President Putin” ahead of meetings to be held in Abu Dhabi. It was Putin’s first contact with European leaders supporting Ukraine since July 2025, when he spoke with French President Emmanuel Macron.
The Kremlin confirmed the call, saying Putin “assessed the current situation” in Ukraine and reminded participants of the “root causes of the conflict.” Putin also pointed to the “confrontational policy of EU and NATO countries, which is prolonging the fighting,” the Kremlin’s press service said.
Volodymyr Zelensky said Stubb and Støre briefed him on their call with Putin. “Alex and Jonas made it clear to the Russian leader that real de-escalatory steps are needed regarding our energy and infrastructure,” Zelensky said. He added that the Finnish and Norwegian leaders had discussed preparations for a trilateral meeting between negotiating teams from Ukraine, the United States, and Russia.
Stubb’s office said the call “was a follow-up of the meeting in Oslo on October 20 and held in consultation with Ukraine.” The Norwegian capital hosted talks that day between Donald Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff and Zelensky, with Støre and Stubb also taking part. Witkoff then traveled to St. Petersburg to meet with Putin before returning to Oslo and flying home to the United States.
Those trips produced an agreement on a trilateral meeting between the United States, Ukraine, and Russia, to be held in Abu Dhabi. The meeting will take place after November 4, Putin aide Yuri Ushakov said. The day before, on November 3, the United States will hold midterm elections in which Republicans could lose their congressional majority.
Announcing the timing, Ushakov said the peace talks would also have to involve “all of Europe.” Europe has long sought a negotiator to represent the European Union’s interests in talks on ending the war between Russia and Ukraine.
Stubb has repeatedly been named as a candidate for the role, having built a good relationship with Trump, including on the golf course, and emerged as one of Trump’s main points of contact with European leaders. The Telegraph has also named Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, and Czech President Petr Pavel among the candidates.
After Stubb and Støre’s call with Putin, Frederiksen criticized the initiative, saying she was “skeptical” and that the talks had not been coordinated with other European leaders. She added that she sees no sign that Russia wants peace with Europe, either in the hybrid war that continues every day or in Ukraine.
The independent Russian political newsletter Faridaily says contacts between European leaders and the Kremlin amount to “a significant shift in position.” European leaders had “mostly preferred not to talk to Putin at all” since the war began.
However, a source close to the Kremlin said that “events are moving toward escalation, including an intensification of hybrid warfare with Europe.” According to the source, Putin is convinced NATO is waging a hybrid war against Russia and blames Ukraine’s European allies for “comprehensive assistance” in attacks on Russia, including helping identify targets and guide strikes.
A source close to the Kremlin told Reuters that Putin told Stubb and Støre that Russia would not abandon its goal of capturing all of the Donbas. The European leaders responded that a “just” peace was necessary, the source added.
The war in photographs. The Lithuania–Russia border
A Russian flag in Sovetsk, Kaliningrad region, on the border with Lithuania. October 25, 2026Sovetsk residents in front of the letter Z (photographed from the Lithuanian side, on the opposite bank of the Neman River). October 25, 2026Lithuanian border guards monitor camera feeds. October 26, 2026Lithuanian border service surveillance cameras near the Šešupė River on the border with Russia. October 26, 2026A Lithuanian soldier on the border with the Kaliningrad region. October 26, 2026Anti-tank “dragon’s teeth” on the Lithuanian side near a closed crossing on the border with Belarus. October 27, 2026
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France is working with 10 other European countries to establish a new nuclear deterrence framework aimed at Russia, The Wall Street Journal reported.
The initiative, which President Emmanuel Macron called “forward deterrence,” was unveiled in March 2026. It calls for deploying nuclear-capable French Rafale fighter jets to other European countries. Participants also intend to create a joint system for early warning and intelligence sharing.
The United Kingdom, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Poland, Greece, Finland, Norway, Sweden, and Denmark have joined France in the initiative. The three Baltic states, which are most vulnerable to Russian aggression, are not part of the project, while Italy declined to participate. Finland said it would like to take part but does not plan to host nuclear weapons on its territory in peacetime.
French officials believe the new deterrent could be more credible because the security of France’s European neighbors matters far more to Paris than to Washington.
European officials also emphasize that the new system should supplement, rather than replace, the American “nuclear umbrella” over the continent and create further strategic uncertainty for Russia.
Experts say the French ASMP-A cruise missiles carried by Rafale fighters are more effective in modern warfare than American B-61 nuclear bombs. The American bombs were developed in the 1960s, and advances in Russian air defenses limit their use.
Macron also said France plans to resume producing nuclear weapons for the first time in decades. The country currently has about 290 nuclear warheads but will no longer disclose information about its arsenal.
In practice, however, France will retain full control over its nuclear forces. “The French will let us participate in their nuclear deterrence as much as the Americans,” said a minister from one of the countries involved in the project.
France is holding bilateral talks with its partners and has set up 10 separate groups for those discussions. Defense officials across Europe have had to hold frequent calls to keep one another informed about the negotiations, military officials said.
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Radio Television of Vojvodina (RTV) apologized to viewers live on air for having “turned a blind eye to many things,” Serbian outlets reported.
❗️Dnevnik RT Vojvodine u 17h. V.d glavnog i odg. urednik RTV je podneo ostavku. Ali ovo izvinjenje i jedan otkaz nisu dovoljni! Potrebna je odgovornost, otkaz, i njegova i SVIH onih koji su dosad ćutali na javnom servisu svih građana. 🧹 pic.twitter.com/8dBKmjfsEl
A news broadcast showed footage of people in Serbia celebrating after the election. Anchor Goran Eror then said the footage showed only some of what RTV had failed to show viewers the previous night.
“For many years, the public broadcaster failed to fulfill its role. Things went unsaid, a blind eye was turned, information was one-sided, reporting was uncritical, and the right questions were not asked — or no questions were asked at all. And for that, we owe our viewers an apology,” the anchor said, reading a statement on air.
He said some employees had fought to allow journalists and editors to work freely but that “we did not win the battle in time.” “But we believe it is important to carry on that fight,” he said.
Following the apology, Nenad Čačić, acting editor-in-chief of RTV’s main channel, RTV 1, resigned.
Serbia held an early parliamentary election on October 25. Former President Aleksandar Vučić, who had resigned a month earlier, ran in the election, hoping to become prime minister if he won. His party lost to the “Student List” movement, which grew out of protests that began in 2024.
A similar episode unfolded in Hungary, where Viktor Orbán stepped down after 16 years in power when the government changed in spring 2026. The new government later announced a reorganization of the public broadcaster MTVA, while the television channel M1 apologized to viewers for lying and for “doing it all these years.”
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Starlink service for Ukraine’s armed forces was restricted over fears that Russia would shoot down the company’s satellites, a post on X by SpaceX chief Elon Musk suggests. Musk was responding to a post about Russia’s ability to blow up satellites in space.
“This is indeed one of the main reasons that Starlink must remain a civilian operation,” Musk tweeted. “It can be used for infrastructure that is military, but it cannot be used for unequivocally offensive strikes that make it fair game to be struck back. An adversary blowing up Starlink satellites would create a domino effect of destruction that would generate a vast field of debris making space unusable.”
In mid-October, Ukraine’s armed forces encountered restrictions on their Starlink satellite terminals, specifically the military version, Starshield. Connections cut out when drones flew faster than 160 kilometers per hour (about 100 mph).
Westernmedia reported that Musk himself had initiated the restrictions on Starlink service for the Ukrainian military. He later accused Ukraine of using Starlink for “offensive” drone strikes. Ukraine’s armed forces responded that this was “technically impossible,” since Starlink does not work over Russian territory.
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Russian bailiffs have opened 14 enforcement proceedings against former Rusnano head Anatoly Chubais, TASS reported.
They intend to recover 17.74 billion rubles from him to compensate Rusnano for its losses. An additional 2.13 billion rubles will be collected as an enforcement fee.
Chubais’s assets have been frozen under three of the proceedings. The first, involving 5.6 billion rubles, was opened in April 2025. The second was opened in December 2025, when assets worth 11.9 billion rubles were frozen in connection with a Rusnano lawsuit over the Crocus project. Bailiffs imposed the third asset freeze, worth 5.5 billion rubles, in April 2026.
Chubais headed Rusnano from 2008 until his resignation in December 2020. He left Russia in March 2022. Before leaving, Chubais wrote a letter to Vladimir Putin calling for an immediate end to the war with Ukraine. The letter came to light in a report prepared by Mariana Katzarova, the U.N. special rapporteur on human rights in Russia.
According to the report, Chubais was “publicly attacked by the president” after sending the letter. After Chubais left Russia, Putin said that a “huge financial hole” had been discovered “in the nanotechnology organization he headed for many years.”
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Political scientist Alexander Kynev, who was arrested for allegedly attempting to sell drugs, has been cited for violating “foreign agent” regulations.
It is unclear what prompted the citation, which was filed with Moscow’s Perovsky District Court on October 27. No hearing has been scheduled.
Kynev has been in pretrial detention since September 25. He denies the drug allegations.
The Slovo Zashchite project reported that Kynev was beaten so severely during his arrest that his leg was broken. Political scientist Ekaterina Schulmann said the beating was an attempt to force Kynev to confess to treason.
On October 26, reports emerged that Kynev had stopped eating in pretrial detention because his broken leg prevented him from using the toilet in his cell. Kynev himself said the injury left him unable to move around properly.
Alexander Kynev is one of the most respected experts on Russian regional politics and elections. Russian authorities designated him a “foreign agent” in February 2026.
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The news outlet Holod has warned that it may have to shut down unless it finds more funding.
“We really do have only enough money left for two months of work. If we don’t find support, we’ll have to stop,” the editorial team wrote in an appeal.
The journalists asked readers for donations, saying recurring subscriptions would help them plan further ahead. They said supporting publications designated as “foreign agents” carries no administrative or criminal penalties.
“Holod currently has around 1.5 million followers across various platforms, and that audience is growing rapidly. Still, given the political situation and the many restrictions on monetization, audience size is no guarantee of financial stability,” Holod founder Taisiya Bekbulatova told Meduza.
She said the outlet would not be able to continue all of its current work. Its main focus will be keeping its Instagram account and YouTube channel running.
Holod has operated since 2019, and its reporting has received multiple nominations for the Redkollegia journalism award. In 2024, Russia’s Justice Ministry added the outlet to its register of “foreign agents.”
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Reviews posted on the 2GIS page for the “Sirius-55” military recruitment center in Omsk say city residents are being forced to sign contracts with Russia’s Defense Ministry and go to war. The Omsk Civic Association drew attention to the complaints.
The reviews appear to come from relatives and acquaintances of men forcibly sent to war. Some were posted by new accounts, others by accounts whose users have reviewed institutions and businesses in Omsk on 2GIS for years.
Reviews saying Omsk residents were being picked up off the street and taken to the recruitment center began appearing as early as March. “They bring in people who are sick, cross-eyed, people who’ve had strokes, even people who aren’t fully dressed and just stepped out to the store,” one post reads. In August, media outlets (1,2) and human rights advocates also reported several similar cases in Omsk.
A new wave of complaints appeared in September and October. Several women said their relatives and friends had been picked up off the street even though they did not live in Omsk and had come to the city on personal business or for work.
In one review, a woman said her father-in-law had been “grabbed off the street and driven away” to the recruitment center on October 25. She said he was beaten there and needed medical attention afterward.
Reports of mass roundups of men in regions across Russia began appearing in the summer of 2026. Local residents said men were being picked up off the street, forced to sign contracts with Russia’s Defense Ministry, and sent to war. One widely publicized case took place in the Penza region. By October 22, human rights advocates had received reports of similar roundups from 33 regions across the country and annexed Crimea.
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An IT specialist from Chelyabinsk signed a contract with Russia’s Defense Ministry that promised him service in the drone forces. Instead, he ended up in what’s known as a “meat grinder regiment.” He was sent on an assault and went missing, his wife told the independent Russian investigative outlet iStories.
Nikolai and Irina (names changed) had been together for 20 years and raised two children. The family didn’t need money: Nikolai developed software for government agencies at a large IT company.
In the summer of 2026, Nikolai decided to go to war to “benefit society.” “When the special military operation started in the country, a lot of our friends left for abroad. We kind of looked down on that. I can’t explain it now. But still, we had a question: who’s going to defend the country then? Defend its interests?” Irina told journalists.
An appendix to the contract specified that Nikolai would serve as a drone operator and undergo training for that role. Instead, he was sent to military unit No. 95378 in the Samara region, home to the 1437th Motorized Rifle Regiment, where he spent several months. He received no training or weapons instruction at all, doing “housekeeping work” and serving as a “company clerk” instead.
Russia’s Defense Ministry has been actively recruiting Russians, including students, into the drone forces since late 2025. Recruiters promise high salaries, one-year contracts, and service far from the front line, but in reality, the contracts are open-ended, and recruiters cannot guarantee any special conditions of service.
In conversations with his wife, Nikolai said that his unit practiced extortion and harshly punished discipline violations: putting offenders in a pit or sending them on assaults.
In September, Nikolai called his wife and said he was being sent on a combat mission:
One day he called from someone else’s phone number and said he was being sent on a combat mission and wanted to say goodbye. At first I didn’t understand anything. I said, how is that possible? Were you even trained for anything? What mission are you being sent on? He said he didn’t know, and to be honest, he started crying. Then the call cut off.
Soon after, his wife received a notice from command that Nikolai had gone missing on September 28 “while performing tasks during the special military operation.” What exactly happened to him on the combat mission remains unknown.
Irina found a notification from the online marketplace Ozon in her husband’s email showing that Nikolai, while at the front, had bought five laptops for 120,000 rubles. She believes someone among his commanders stole about one and a half million rubles from his bank card. On social media, she found complaints about commanders from relatives of other servicemen who served in the same unit.
The 1437th Regiment, where Nikolai served, is part of the 15th Separate Guards Motorized Rifle Brigade. Its unofficial name is the “Black Hussars.” Before Russia’s full-scale war with Ukraine, it was the only “peacekeeping” brigade in the Russian army. Its soldiers carried out missions in Georgia and Nagorno-Karabakh and likely took part in the annexation of Crimea.
In the war against Ukraine, the brigade took part in the occupation of the Kyiv region. Brigade servicemen are suspected of torturing and killing civilians. The unit itself also practices torture and extrajudicial killings, the independent Russian news outlet Verstka reported.
The 1437th Regiment is commanded by Colonel Vladimir Teslo, 31, iStories found. In 2024, Vladimir Putin awarded him the title Hero of Russia “for the totality of heroic acts and personal courage.”
“On the one hand, the regiment commander is a Hero of Russia. On the other, that same commander sees his soldiers as walking wallets. First he empties their bank accounts, then he gets rid of the soldiers themselves. I want people to know about this Teslo. He may be a hero for one thing, but he’s a murderer for another. I don’t know what will come of speaking out. It’s too early to tell. These are deranged men with guns,” Irina told journalists.
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Roskomnadzor, Russia’s federal media regulator, has sent a bill to the information policy committee of the State Duma, the lower house of Russia’s parliament, proposing mandatory identification of children on social networks, the Russian business daily Vedomosti reported, citing a statement by a regulator representative at the committee meeting.
The agency also proposed limiting the amount of time children under 14 are allowed online. A Roskomnadzor representative said the measure is meant to restrict children’s access to banned content.
The Internal Affairs Ministry announced it is concerned about children and teenagers being drawn into offenses and crimes through social networks, messaging apps, forums, and gaming chats.
According to the ministry, the most common crimes children are drawn into are acting as “droppers” and giving third parties access to their own accounts.
The Digital Development Ministry announced as far back as June that it is considering introducing age verification mechanisms for users of online platforms. Its head, Maksut Shadayev, said the ministry is studying how other countries have approached the issue.
Various restrictions on children and teenagers’ access to social media are being discussed worldwide. Since late 2025, a law banning social media for children under 16 has been in effect in Australia. Similar restrictions are being discussed in the UK and EU countries, including France and Spain.
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The ceasefire in Russian-occupied Oleshky will last until 10:59 p.m. on November 1, said David Arakhamia, head of the Servant of the People faction and a member of the Ukrainian negotiating group.
“This is the biggest de-escalation since 2022. The ceasefire will last from October 27 until 10:59 p.m. on November 1. Every effort like this brings the long-awaited peace in Ukraine closer,” he wrote on his Telegram channel.
The Russian side has not commented on this information.
Russia and Ukraine agreed to the ceasefire in Oleshky to evacuate civilians and deliver humanitarian aid. The ceasefire began at 4:00 a.m. Moscow time (3:00 a.m. Kyiv time). According to the White House, U.S. first lady Melania Trump initiated the agreement.
Residents of the city of Oleshky in the Kherson region have lived under Russian occupation since 2022. The situation there has verged on humanitarian catastrophe since the fall of 2026, as constant drone attacks have left residents without food, electricity, or adequate medical care.
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Donald Trump Jr., 48, the son of U.S. President Donald Trump, traveled to Mongolia in August 2026 to hunt, spending two days there with Umar Kremlev, head of the International Boxing Association and a businessman close to the Kremlin, the Financial Times found.
Umar Kremlev, whose real surname is Lutfulloyev, has led the International Boxing Association (IBA) as its president since 2020. Under him, the organization has received tens of millions of dollars from Gazprom. In 2023, the International Olympic Committee stripped the IBA of the right to hold Olympic boxing tournaments, citing, among other reasons, a lack of transparency in its finances.
In 2024, Kremlev became the new owner of the car dealership Rolf, which had previously belonged to businessman Sergei Petrov and had been placed under temporary management by a decree from Putin. The Russian investigative outlet Proekt reported that Kremlev acquired Rolf because of his friendship with Alexey Rubezhny, head of the Russian president’s security service. Kremlev also obtained a number of assets in the lottery and bookmaking businesses through that same friendship, Proekt wrote.
Kremlev is also tied to the Trump family. In September 2026, it emerged that he had paid part of the costs of Donald Trump Jr.’s wedding in the Bahamas, and Democrats in the U.S. Congress launched an investigation. Trump Sr. later said that his son had repaid the money to Umar Kremlev.
A charity auction raffled off the trip to Mongolia in the company of the U.S. president’s son. One of the winners did join Trump Jr. to hunt mountain sheep. Kremlev, who did not take part in the auction, also joined the trip, along with longtime Republican Party donor Kevin Small.
Trump Jr. flew into the Mongolian capital, Ulaanbaatar, in late August, after his wedding on a private island in the Caribbean Sea — a wedding Kremlev partly funded. He then traveled several hundred kilometers to a camp in western Mongolia, where he stayed with a small group of hunting guides, drivers, and cooks. Kremlev joined him there, accompanied by Arthur Martirosov, a businessman and partner at the venture fund Voskhod, which is under U.S. sanctions.
On August 30, Kremlev posted two videos to his Telegram channel. In one, he says he is flying to Mongolia with Martirosov, while in another he shows footage from the trip. In the caption, Kremlev asks, “How do you feel about hunting?”
One participant in the trip said Trump Jr. and Kremlev tried not to be photographed together while at the camp. Trump Jr. does not appear in Kremlev’s video either, though two organizers of his hunting trips do.
According to one guide, Trump Jr. killed an Altai argali — an endangered mountain sheep prized by hunters for its large horns — during the trip. After the hunt, he returned to the Mongolian capital. However, his trip did not end there — he held a series of other unofficial meetings, including a dinner with Mongolian President Ukhnaagiin Khürelsükh.
As a member of the president’s family, Trump Jr. traveled with a U.S. Secret Service detail. The U.S. Embassy in Ulaanbaatar paid $18,715 for hotel rooms linked to an unspecified “visit” by Secret Service agents from August 23–September 6.
A representative for Trump Jr. said a mutual friend from hunting circles introduced him to Umar Kremlev. “Don has made clear that he has a personal friendship, not a business relationship, with Umar. Their friendship is largely based on their shared love for hunting, fishing and the outdoors. It shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone that they went hunting together earlier this year,” the representative added.
A still from a video about hunting in Mongolia, shot during Donald Trump Jr.’s 2022 trip
However, intelligence experts polled by the FT believe these relationships create favorable conditions for manipulation.
“It really doesn’t matter if people have the most above board intentions,” said Holden Triplett, former director of counterintelligence at the U.S. National Security Council. “The moment the Russian security and intelligence services figure out someone has a relationship with anyone of high value, they will try to weaponize that.”
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Finnish President Alexander Stubb and Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre spoke by phone with Vladimir Putin, the Finnish president’s office said.
The statement said the call was ”a follow-up of the meeting in Oslo on 20 October.” That day, the Norwegian capital hosted talks between Donald Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff and representatives of Ukraine.
Stubb and Støre initiated the call to discuss Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine and the diplomatic efforts to end the war and promote peace and stability in Europe.
The statement from the Finnish president’s office said the purpose of the call was to directly convey to President Putin Ukraine’s position on the upcoming peace talks in Abu Dhabi.
On October 20, a meeting was held in Oslo between Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Finnish President Alexander Stubb also took part. After this meeting, Witkoff traveled to St. Petersburg, where he met with Putin — then he returned to Oslo and flew to the U.S. from there. Following these talks, the parties agreed to hold a new trilateral meeting between Russia, the U.S., and Ukraine. It will take place after November 4 (that is, after the U.S. midterm elections) in Abu Dhabi.
After this latest stage in the return to peace talks between Ukraine and Russia, European countries began looking for a representative who could take part on the EU’s behalf. Among the candidates for this role, The Telegraph named Stubb and Støre, as well as Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, Czech President Petr Pavel, and Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen.
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Primorsky Krai’s regional Labor Ministry said social payments in the krai could be temporarily delayed.
The ministry said the regional budget is currently “operating under increased strain, including due to the need to address nationwide tasks connected to the special military operation.”
“Under these conditions, funding for certain social support measures is being disbursed in stages, so the transfer of some payments may be temporarily delayed,” the ministry said, adding that it “understands” how important timely social support is for residents of the krai, and the “concern of those who are now waiting for the funds to be transferred.”
Authorities in the Nizhneilimsky district, in the Irkutsk region, plan to cut about 37% of the staff at the district administration and public-sector institutions, said Pavel Berezovsky, head of the district. The first to be let go, he said, will be night watchmen at schools, kindergartens, and community centers, along with employees of the municipal enterprises “Service Center” and “Clean City.”
As the news outlet “7×7” notes, the staff cuts come amid problems with the region’s budget. The Irkutsk region legislature increased the budget deficit to 38.7 billion rubles in October, about 15% of the region’s own revenues. Irkutsk Governor Igor Kobzev attributed the increase to the need to fund socially significant spending.
In late July, Rostov region authorities declined to raise public-sector workers’ pay by 4% and gave no explanation. In Sakhalin, authorities froze pay indexation for medical workers, explaining that their salaries had outpaced inflation in previous years. In the Sakha Republic, authorities postponed pay indexation for public-sector employees by two months.
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Defense ministers from the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, Poland, and France met in Paris on October 26 as members of the E5 group — the countries with the largest defense budgets — to discuss support for Ukraine ahead of winter.
After the meeting, the ministers named Russia the main long-term threat to European security and pledged to keep supporting Ukraine despite Washington’s warming relations with Moscow.
“Our countries share the assessment that Russia represents the most acute and long-term threat to Euro-Atlantic security and stability,” the final statement reads. Russia’s war against Ukraine and intensifying hybrid attacks in Europe “do not undermine our unity, solidarity and cohesion. On the contrary, they strengthen our determination to pursue the efforts already undertaken to safeguard the integrity and security of Allied territory,” the ministers said.
The ministers pledged to continue backing Ukraine but announced no new military or financial aid packages, Bloomberg said. During the meeting, they limited themselves to reaffirming earlier commitments.
German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius stressed that the allies would work to preserve U.S. support for Ukraine: “We will do everything we can to ensure that the U.S. also supports Ukraine with supplies, as well as with intelligence and satellite data.”
The latest deterioration in relations between Ukraine and the United States is forcing Europe to consider how to help Ukraine without American support, Bloomberg said. Pistorius said the E5 countries are also working with Ukraine on their own air defense system meant to supplement the U.S. Patriot systems.
Relations between Kyiv and Washington have deteriorated sharply amid a fuel crisis. Donald Trump first demanded that Ukraine stop striking Russian fuel infrastructure, and when a cease-fire could not be reached, he eased sanctions against Russia, allowing diesel fuel to be sold on the world market.
In response, Volodymyr Zelensky accused Trump of trying to force Ukraine into capitulation, saying the United States is delaying shipments of missiles for Patriot air defense systems and restricting the operation of Starlink and Starshield in Ukraine.
At Meduza, we are committed to transparency about our use of artificial intelligence in the newsroom. The story you’re reading was written by one of our living, breathing journalists and translated from Russian using an AI model configured to follow our strict editorial standards. This translation process is the result of extensive testing and refinements to ensure our English-language coverage is timely and accurate. A Meduza editor reviews every draft before publication.
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Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered the government to draft proposals for changing search engine results on abortion-related queries, according to a list of presidential instructions.
Under the instructions, search engines would have to display sites offering “social support to women facing a reproductive choice” before other results when users search for information about abortion.
Valentina Matviyenko, speaker of the Federation Council, the upper house of Russia’s parliament, made a similar proposal in May 2026, calling for search engines to change their algorithms so that links to family support centers would appear before abortion-related results.
“So that when people type in the search bar for information about clinics where an abortion can be performed, information about family support centers would appear first, and only then the websites of those clinics, including information about the risks of abortion and its health consequences,” she said.
Russia has waged a broad campaign to restrict abortion access in recent years. Among other measures, private clinics in 19 regions of the country have stopped performing the procedure altogether.
At Meduza, we are committed to transparency about our use of artificial intelligence in the newsroom. The story you’re reading was written by one of our living, breathing journalists and translated from Russian using an AI model configured to follow our strict editorial standards. This translation process is the result of extensive testing and refinements to ensure our English-language coverage is timely and accurate. A Meduza editor reviews every draft before publication.
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