This was Russia today Tuesday, November 25, 2025

Howdy, folks. Today, I review published testimony from an accused “Ukrainian terrorist” who says his Russian captors subjected him to horrific torture. Also inside: leaked phone calls between Trump envoy Steve Witkoff and senior Kremlin officials, plus new developments in Lukoil’s efforts to navigate U.S. sanctions. If you’re enjoying the newsletter’s new approach (or want to complain), please let me know. Yours, Kevin.

Ukrainian Red Cross volunteer says Russian forces tortured him for months and coerced a terrorism confession

This week, the independent news outlet Mediazona published excerpts from the testimony of Yurii Kaiev, a Red Cross volunteer abducted in August 2022 by Russian forces in Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region. Kaiev was tortured in a basement for two months before he was formally booked and forced to confess to plotting terrorist attacks, including the assassination of collaborationist officials, on orders from the Security Service of Ukraine. He and eight of his supposed accomplices have been on trial in Rostov for more than a year. What follows is a brief summary of Kaiev’s testimony, which was read aloud in court on June 19, 2025.

Yurii Kaiev, now 42, has endured Russian captivity since the evening of August 5, 2022, when armed men first took him hostage in the town of Skelky in Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region. The men, who never formally identified themselves, seized Kaiev’s money, medical equipment, and belongings, including his Mercedes-Benz. He was transported to Kherson, where interrogators beat him, forced him to inhale gasoline fumes, shocked his head with a cattle prod, and demanded confessions without presenting any charges. 

After the first 30 minutes of this torture, Kaiev agreed to lead the Russians to four pistols that he had received from fleeing Ukrainian security officers and later buried in a field. En route to the hiding spot, a soldier started punching Kaiev in the face and head, shouting that he would teach Kaiev to love his true homeland (Russia), after Kaiev said his support for Ukraine was rooted in patriotism. One of the other soldiers then informed Kaiev that his attacker was “Tyson,” so nicknamed because he had served in Syria with Wagner Group and bitten off prisoners’ ears.

Kaiev says that, before officers staged his official arrest in October, he was held for two months in an underground jail. In that dimly lit, foul-smelling basement, he and other Ukrainians were tortured to extract confessions. Kaiev saw soldiers rob fellow detainees and regularly heard screams from other prisoners being tortured. Food was intermittent, and some guards were more creatively abusive than others, though the younger soldiers were some of the most vindictive. In those two months, Kaiev lost 25 kilograms (55 pounds). Kaiev’s cellmates included women and even an 11-year-old boy who was accused of passing Russian troops’ coordinates to Ukrainian intelligence. The boy cried for his mother and spoke only Ukrainian, unlike Kaiev and the others. Prisoners were forced to sing the Russian national anthem and were insulted on camera. Some were subjected to mock executions where drunken teenage soldiers fired their guns into the ceiling or pretended to play Russian roulette with a revolver.

In September 2022, amid the panic of Ukraine’s counteroffensive that would liberate parts of Kherson in November, Kaiev says his captors forced him and other detainees to handle various weapons, deliberately leaving their fingerprints. They also made him sign a confession without letting him read its contents.

The Archive Collection: Nothing can stop Meduza from releasing anniversary merch — even if we have to make it ourselves. Check out our latest drop now!

We have a new tradition here at Meduza: every year on our birthday, we update the merch in our online store, Magaz. In 2025, we turned 11 — and despite the considerable challenges we’ve faced this year, we’ve found a pretty original way to bring you a new collection. Here’s a look at the latest clothing and accessories you can buy to rep Meduza and support our work.

News you don’t want to miss today

📞 Trump envoy coached Kremlin on how Putin should pitch Ukraine peace plan to Trump 🇺🇸🇷🇺

Leaked telephone records show that U.S. presidential envoy Steve Witkoff advised senior Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov on how President Putin could frame a Ukraine peace initiative to Donald Trump, suggesting they use the recent Gaza agreement as a template.

• The strategy: Witkoff urged Putin to congratulate Trump on the Gaza deal and float a “20-point” peace concept to set up a call and pave the way for a summit.
• The genesis: The call offers rare insight into the origins of the 28-point blueprint that Washington has since pressed Ukraine to accept.
• The concessions: Witkoff acknowledged that a deal would involve Ukrainian territorial concessions — mentioning Donetsk and even a possible land swap — and said he had wide discretion to move the talks forward. | Bloomberg

🛢️ Lukoil co-founder Fedun sells $7-billion stake back to company 📉

Leonid Fedun, a co-founder of Lukoil, sold his roughly 10-percent stake — valued at about $7 billion based on market prices — back to the company in early 2025.

• The context: The deal followed Lukoil being hit by Western sanctions in October and beginning to shed its foreign assets. The company later said it would cancel 76 million shares it had repurchased, about 11 percent of its capital.
• The retreat: Fedun, a Monaco-based billionaire who stepped down from Lukoil’s management in 2022, has gradually withdrawn from Russia’s business scene since the invasion of Ukraine, including selling the soccer team Spartak Moscow.
• The significance: His exit is a rare example of a major Russian shareholder quietly unwinding core holdings under sanctions pressure, as speculation persists that state-controlled Rosneft could ultimately move on Lukoil. | Reuters

🔍 Why hasn’t the biggest corruption scandal of Zelensky’s presidency forced him into political or diplomatic concessions? | Despite the Energoatom embezzlement scandal and its fallout, shifting power dynamics — from his chief of staff’s entrenchment to U.S. pressure over a proposed peace deal — have left Volodymyr Zelensky politically weakened but still unwilling and unable to accept concessions that lack domestic legitimacy.

⛑️ New investigation reveals the Russian Red Cross is expanding operations in occupied Ukraine as its international funding grows | Russian Red Cross leaders are tightening their links to the Kremlin’s military and propaganda networks in occupied Ukrainian territories while continuing to receive millions of euros from international Red Cross institutions.

🕊️ Russian foreign minister suggests Moscow could reject Trump’s updated peace plan | Sergey Lavrov warned that Russia may withdraw support for Washington’s latest Ukraine proposal, citing shifts he says now favor Kyiv and diverge from the understandings he claims were reached earlier in Alaska.

🕊️ ‘There is no such thing as a just peace’: Meduza’s Russian-language readers react to Trump’s Ukraine–Russia peace plan | Our audience members voice sharply divergent views on the proposed Ukraine–Russia deal, ranging from exhaustion-driven support for any ceasefire to warnings that its terms risk emboldening Moscow and endangering Ukraine’s future.

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