Russia changes military recruitment tactics, a mayor threatens a constituent for ‘dislikes,’ and Ukraine will start exporting weapons Meduza breaks down today’s biggest Russia-related news stories, October 28, 2025

Below, you’ll find a digest of news reports from October 28, 2025, in Russian and English.

Do you enjoy daily news briefs? Are you starved for direct, hand-crafted, microbrewed stories and commentary about Russia? If you shouted “Yes!” to any of these questions, check this out:

Listen up, Europe and America

• 🕊️ State Duma deputies have cautiously welcomed the idea of meeting with members of the U.S. Congress but stopped short of making any firm commitments. Presidential envoy Kirill Dmitriev floated the prospect after meeting this past weekend in Florida with Republican Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna. Such contacts largely disappeared after 2014 and again after 2022, and any new meeting would likely serve more as a political gesture of openness than as a substantive negotiation. — Kommersant
• 🇭🇺🇨🇿🇸🇰 “Hungary is looking to join forces with Czechia and Slovakia to form a Ukraine-skeptic alliance in the E.U. […] The Visegrad 4 alliance split after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, as Poland advocated hawkish positions toward Moscow and Hungary took the opposite stance.” — Politico
• 🛡️ Russia’s Foreign Ministry says NATO has intensified reconnaissance activity near Russia’s borders in the Baltic and Black Sea regions, calling the alliance’s actions “aggressive” and “anti-Russian.” — RBC
• 🇧🇾 “A luxury resort complex near Krasnaya Polyana [the Black Sea ski resort favored by Russia’s elite] is being built by investors linked to Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko’s inner circle.” — RFE/RL
• 🇧🇾 “Belarus to deploy Russia’s Oreshnik missile system in December […] Earlier, Lukashenko said the deployment was a response to what he called Western escalation.” — Reuters
• 📈 “Rheinmetall Reshapes East Europe’s Soviet-Era Defense Industry […] Once seen as a money-losing industry, ammunition production received a jolt with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine” — Bloomberg
• 💰 “The E.U. is ratcheting up pressure on governments reluctant to agree on funding for war-ravaged Ukraine — telling them if they don’t force Russia to foot the bill, they’ll have to do it themselves. The European Commission is acutely aware that its plan B — joint E.U. borrowing known as eurobonds — is even more unpalatable for funding a €140 billion reparations loan” — Politico

Meanwhile, in Russia and Ukraine

Public policy

• 🏦 Central Bank chief Elvira Nabiullina said Russia’s economy is undergoing a “managed exit from overheating,” noting that demand growth has slowed while production capacity is expanding. She emphasized the need to curb high inflation without stalling growth and confirmed plans to keep cutting the key interest rate throughout 2026. — Meduza
• 🪖 The State Duma passed all three readings of legislation allowing the calling up of reservists for peacetime duties. The new law permits “special” call-ups to protect critical infrastructure, including energy, transport, and industrial facilities. Military officials have urged the public not to view the law as a new mobilization. — Meduza
• 🪖 “Russian lawmakers Tuesday endorsed a bill mandating year-round military conscription, rather than just in the spring and fall […] it stipulates that conscripts will enter military service only during a few spring and summer months as before” — The Associated Press
• 👨‍⚖️ Judge Oleg Zatelepin has been appointed secretary of the Plenum of Russia’s Supreme Court, replacing the long-serving Viktor Momotov. On October 14, a court granted the Prosecutor General’s Office’s request to confiscate 95 properties worth 9 billion rubles ($113.6 million) from Momotov and his associates, including assets tied to the Marton business-hotel chain. In their lawsuit, prosecutors allege that Momotov abused his office and participated in tax evasion and other schemes, but he doesn’t yet face criminal charges. — Kommersant
• 🪖 A mayor in Russia’s Tomsk region threatened constituents who criticized his social media post recruiting drivers for military service. After Valery Denichenko’s message received hundreds of dislikes, he warned one woman directly that “guys will come back from the war and ask those who put dislikes on their work,” implying possible retaliation. — Govorit Nemoskva
• 🪖 Saratov — which previously led Russia in spending on recruiters, according to available data — has ended its program that paid recruiters for signing people to military contracts. This is the first known cancellation of such a scheme in Russia. Several regions of the country, including Saratov, have started reducing signing bonuses for new contract soldiers — a development “Get Lost” activist Ivan Chuvilyaev attributes to recruitment shifting to conscripts and people held in pretrial detention centers. — 7×7
• 📖 “What’s on Vladimir Putin’s reading list?: The Russian leader is obsessed with history, but there’s a reason he doesn’t like to cite his sources” — Peter Frankopan in The Financial Times

The war in Ukraine

• 💊 A Russian missile strike on October 25 destroyed the central warehouse of Ukraine’s largest pharmaceutical distributor, Optima-Pharm, wiping out about 20 percent of the country’s monthly medicine supply and causing an estimated $100 million in losses. The attack also reportedly erased key logistics databases, temporarily halting deliveries to Kyiv and the surrounding region. — Meduza
• 🤏 Commenting on the passage of legislation allowing reservists to be called up to protect critical infrastructure, Russian Security Council Secretary Sergey Shoigu said that fewer than 1 percent of Ukrainian drones reach their targets inside Russia. — Kommersant
• 🔍 Russia’s Investigative Committee released data alleging that more than 5,000 civilians were killed and over 13,000 were injured in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions between 2014 and 2022. In May 2025, when announcing an investigation into supposed Ukrainian war crimes in the Donbas, the agency claimed higher numbers, citing nearly 7,000 deaths and 25,000 injuries. — Kommersant
• 🌊 Following reported Ukrainian strikes on October 24–25 that damaged the Belgorod Reservoir Dam, the water level dropped by about one meter (more than three feet). Authorities have warned that several nearby towns — home to roughly 1,000 people — remain at risk of flooding. — Kommersant
• 🏰 “Russia has pounded Ukraine’s fortress city for over a year, but it hangs on: It was supposed to fall more than a year ago, but Pokrovsk is still holding out, even as street fighting has erupted inside the city after Russian troops infiltrated.” — The Washington Post

Police work

• 👩‍🎤 Stoptime vocalist Diana “Naoko” Loginova will spend the night at a St. Petersburg police station after officials filed another administrative charge against her for a street performance that authorities say constituted an illegal public assembly and disturbed the peace. Earlier on Tuesday, medics were called to the station and reportedly administered an injection to Loginova. — Mediazona
• 🔍 Russia’s Internet regulator, Roskomnadzor, plans to expand its network of traffic-filtering devices by adding a new “protective layer” between telecom operators and private companies. The change will let authorities impose more targeted, less detectable blocks and monitor users’ search activity — especially for “extremist” content. — Agentstvo
• ⚖️ Russia’s financial watchdog, Rosfinmonitoring, has added pro-Kremlin blogger and former Ukrainian lawyer Tatyana Montyan to its list of “terrorists and extremists.” Montyan is perhaps the first openly pro-war “Z-blogger” to face such sanctions. She fell out of favor in September 2023 after Vladimir Solovyov’s TV network aired an old video in which she called Vladimir Putin a “dumb khuilo” (“dumb dickhead”) over the annexation of Crimea. — Agentstvo
• 📦 “Ukraine plans to begin limited exports of weapons next month […] [Zelensky seeks] to ensure that domestically produced weapons and ammunition cover about 50% of the army’s needs.” — Reuters

🤡 lol, whut?

Russia’s Supreme Court has approved a proposal to create a new district court named after Vladimir Putin in Chechnya’s capital. Officials say the new court will ease caseloads and “improve access to justice.”