Putin’s Budapest cope, fallout from new U.S. sanctions on Russian oil, and new war crimes allegations Meduza breaks down today’s biggest Russia-related news stories, October 23, 2025

Below, you’ll find a digest of news reports from October 23, 2025, in Russian and English. Today, we focus on Vladimir Putin’s glut of public comments on the collapsed Budapest summit, motherhood, and the impact of new U.S. sanctions on Russian oil. Germany and Belgium are having problems with the latest plans to pressure the Kremlin. Domestically in Russia, pregnant women can expect a new registry, just for them, and the head of what’s basically the local FDIC now finds himself behind bars.

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What was on Putin’s mind today?

• 🕊️ The canceled Budapest summit ✴︎ It was mutual, guys. Also, it was only postponed — maybe indefinitely — but still. “Such meetings need to be well prepared. For me, and for the American president, it would be a mistake to approach this lightly and come out of the meeting without the expected result.”
• 🛢️ New U.S. sanctions on Rosneft and Lukoil ✴︎ This one’s going to hurt, but it also damages U.S.–Russian bilateral relations. And all for what? Moscow will never do anything under pressure! “We feel confident, stable, and although there will inevitably be some losses — owing to a range of factors — our energy sector, nonetheless, remains on solid footing.”
• 💥 Long-range missile strikes on Russia ✴︎ Giving Tomahawks to Kyiv would be an act of escalation. Moscow’s response would be “severe, if not staggering.” Putin’s perspective is that Ukraine is incapable of long-range strikes on its own and depends on Western allies here. “If NATO lifts restrictions on Kyiv’s use of long-range weapons, it would mean that the alliance’s member states are at war with Russia,” reported RBC, describing Putin’s comments.
• 🤱 Motherhood ✴︎ Putin also swung by Russia’s Council on the Implementation of State Demographic and Family Policy and opined on the goodness of mothers. In a nod to multicultural federalism, he highlighted their “sacred significance” in “the consciousness of all peoples of Russia.” He also insisted that Russia must “preserve [its] ethnocultural balance and the strength of [its] sovereignty” by rejecting open borders.

Elsewhere in Russian politics-land

United Russia party officials praised Dmitry Medvedev for becoming a social media psychopath, celebrating his online rage and saucy language as a “courageous defense of the homeland.” ⸺✦⸺ United Russia hopes to add to its 2.5 million members by allowing more people to join online. ⸺✦⸺ The ruling party will also hear an ethics complaint against Samara Governor Vyacheslav Fedorishchev, who rudely fired a local municipal official in a breach of decorum. ⸺✦⸺ In March 2026, Russia plans to launch a national registry of pregnant women, according to Deputy Prime Minister Tatyana Golikova. To “monitor the demographic situation,” the registry will collect information about all pregnant women in Russia, their health status, and the health of newborns.

Catch up on Russia’s (often selective) justice system

• A Russian military court sentenced Ukrainian blogger Yana Suvorova to 14 years for terrorism and espionage for aiding Kyiv, including in a Ukrainian HIMARS attack on the FSB’s field office in occupied Melitopol. Suvorova and her blogging team have all been transferred to Russian prisons notorious for torture.
• A Kaliningrad court convicted two Ukrainian citizens of espionage, illegal border crossing, and attempting to abduct a child. The men allegedly planned to kidnap a four-year-old boy from his mother in coordination with the child’s father, who works for Ukraine’s Defense Ministry.
• St. Petersburg authorities arrested video blogger Diana Chistyakova on terrorism charges for trying to set fire to a local police station. The 29-year-old woman was reportedly scammed out of her life savings and compelled to attack the station as a condition for getting her money back. Chistyakova also worked with the autism center Anton’s Right Here.
• Moscow police arrested Andrey Melnikov, head of Russia’s Deposit Insurance Agency, on embezzlement charges. He’s accused of stealing about 4 billion rubles ($49.1 million) linked to the operation of the Akvamir water park in Novosibirsk. Melnikov’s former deputy, Alexander Popelyukh, who’s been jailed since October 2024, reportedly testified against him. (The closest U.S. equivalent to Russia’s Deposit Insurance Agency is the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.)
• A Moscow court sentenced a convicted murderer recruited out of prison to fight in Ukraine to another 20 years for robbing and extorting millions of rubles from hospitalized soldiers and their families. To get this money, Ivan Kudryashov stole phones and even posed as a military police officer, threatening fake criminal charges to solicit bribes.
• Russia’s Supreme Court reaffirmed that it doesn’t recognize Soviet-era convictions for “anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda,” even if they were “factually justified.” The decision partially exonerates the late Alexander Kuntsevich, whose 1950 treason conviction still stands.

The latest from the warfront

• Ukrainian prosecutors accuse Russian troops of killing five civilians (Reuters)
• Wildfires have consumed large areas of Ukraine, and investigators suspect Russia may be deliberately worsening the fires with attacks and munitions (The Guardian)
• Russia secretly acquired Western technology to safeguard its nuclear submarines despite export controls (The Washington Post)
• Kim Jong Un vowed to deepen North Korea’s military cooperation with Russia (Reuters)

Buckle up, Europeans

• E.U. leaders postpone a decision on how to use frozen Russian assets until December (Bloomberg)
• The E.U. imposed new sanctions on Russian banks, a prison medic, and Chinese refineries (Reuters)
• British authorities arrested three men suspected of spying for Russia (Bloomberg)
• Germany’s Merz government expects the U.S. will exempt Rosneft’s German subsidiary from sanctions (Bloomberg)
• A socialist lawmaker critical of NATO and the E.U., Catherine Connolly, is expected to win Ireland’s presidency (POLITICO)

Are you listening, Americans?

• Oil prices jumped 5 percent following new U.S. sanctions on Rosneft and Lukoil (Reuters)
• U.S. authorities charged an executive with selling sensitive information to Russia for $1.3 million (Reuters)
• New U.S. oil sanctions could pressure India to curtail its purchases of Russian crude (The New York Times)
• Russia is developing strategies to bypass oil sanctions and cushion the hit to its federal budget (Bloomberg)

🤡 lol, whut?

The E.U. sanctioned the rector (basically the president or chancellor) of Moscow’s Higher School of Economics for creating a Master’s program that teaches students how to evade Western sanctions. The sanctions were also imposed in response to Nikita Anisimov’s 2023 decision to offer tuition waivers to students who fought in Ukraine.