Russia’s war against Ukraine Daily updates as Moscow’s full-scale invasion enters its fourth month

Major recent events in Russia and Ukraine

• 📉 Meta’s dwindling userbase in Russia: New data from Mediascope show that the ban on Meta has reduced Instagram’s daily user base in Russia from 39 million to 11.7 million. Meanwhile, Facebook’s audience has dropped from 6.7 million users to 1.9 million. Daily use of Telegram, however, has doubled to 40 million people since February 24 (when Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine).
• 🎯 Gunning for Russia’s bridge to Crimea: Ukrainian General Dmytro Marchenko says destroying the Kerch bridge is one of Kyiv’s top priorities, as it would complicate Moscow’s ability to send reserve troops through Crimea. The bridge will be “Target Number One” for the military once Ukraine gets the necessary weapons, he told journalists on Wednesday.
• 🎖️ Honor à la Putin: The Russian president awarded valor medals to soldiers in the same tank regiment that a Meduza investigation implicated in war crimes committed against civilians outside Kyiv in Bohdanivka.
• 💰 Take one for the team, guys: Russia’s central bank has urged credit organizations to withhold dividend payments and bonuses from senior executives in order to ensure financial stability during the Russian economy’s “structural transformation.”
• 🚧 Mighty-mighty, just lettin’ it all hang out: A new study found that the production of half of Russia’s construction materials (including bricks, tiles, porcelain, and more) is almost entirely dependent on equipment imported largely from the West.

Chechnya residents being forcibly sent to fight in Ukraine

Chechen anti-war bloggers and representatives of human rights organizations told investigative outlet The Insider that because ethnic Chechens have largely been reluctant to enlist in the army and join the war in Ukraine, the authorities are coercing them with threats of torture, criminal charges, and familial shame.

Alexey Navalny reportedly transferred to a "prison with a prison" in Melekhovo

Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny has been transferred to a maximum security prison in the village of Melekhovo in the Vladimir region. Regional Public Monitoring Commission Chairman Sergey Yazhan reported the news to RIA Novosti on Tuesday.

“He [Navalny] has arrived at IK-6 [the prison in Melekhovo]. He’s arrived and is there now,” said Yazhan.

Earlier on June 14, associates of Navalny reported that he had been transferred out of Correctional Colony No. 2 in Pokrov but that his new location was unknown.

Major recent events in Russia and Ukraine

• 🛡️ It’s not enough help: Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar told journalists on Tuesday that Kyiv has received only 10 percent of the foreign military assistance it’s requested. “Without the help of Western partners, we will not be able to win this war,” she warned, urging faster deliveries of advanced weapons. On June 13, presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak stated that Ukraine needed a thousand 155mm howitzers, 300 multiple-launch rocket systems, 500 tanks, 2,000 armored vehicles, and 1,000 drones to end the war.
• 🧑‍🚀 The liberal vs. the starchild: While meeting with Putin on Tuesday, Audit Chamber head Alexey Kudrin described the development of Russia’s space program as “flawed,” provoking criticism from the outspoken director of Roscosmos, Dmitry Rogozin. “First and foremost, the head of the Audit Chamber should be a highly qualified and objective specialist, not a professional liberal in a senior government position,” Rogozin wrote on his Telegram channel. (Kudrin had nice things to say about Russia’s agriculture, transport system, and nuclear engineering.)
• ⛓️ Navalny’s new home: Alexey Navalny has been transferred to a maximum-security prison in the town of Melekhovo outside Vladimir. In late March, a judge added nine years to his imprisonment after convicting him of fraud and contempt of court. In early May, Navalny said inmates in Melekhovo witnessed preparations for a “prison within the prison” built specially for him.
• 🚫 Russia bars entry for more journalists and specialists: Russia’s Foreign Ministry added another 49 British nationals to its ever-growing list of foreigners banned from entering Russia. The latest sanctions target journalists supposedly “involved in the deliberate dissemination of false and one-sided information” about Russia and the invasion of Ukraine, and “representatives of the British defense sector” who are allegedly involved in facilitating the supply of weapons to Ukraine.

Major recent events in Russia and Ukraine

• 🎨 Chilling street art: Yekaterinburg’s eerie new artwork: Street artist Timofey Radya has published a video and photos of his newest installation: the words “Live in the past!” in large block letters on top of the roofs of two apartment buildings on Kosmonavtov Prospekt in Yekaterinburg.
• 🕯️ Another mass grave outside Bucha: Officials outside Kyiv near Bucha reported the discovery of a new mass grave containing the bodies of seven civilians. Many had their hands bound and had suffered gunshots through their knees. Officers said there were signs that the victims had been tortured before they were shot in the head. Ihor Klymenko, the chief of Ukraine’s National Police, says his agency in investigating the deaths of more than 12,000 civilians killed during Russia’s invasion. In the area surrounding Kyiv, which Russian troops occupied in March, at least 1,500 civilians were killed.
• 👾 A newspaper ‘hack’ raises political questions: On Monday, the pro-government newspaper Izvestia briefly published a story about an article allegedly written by Sergey Kiriyenko, President Putin’s domestic policy czar, declaring that the Donbas would be rebuilt even at the expense of Russians’ living standards. Izvestia later said the report was the work of hackers (the newspaper also denied that Kiriyenko ever made the remarks in question). Analysts like Dmitry Kolezev and Tatiana Stanovaya speculated that Kiriyenko’s rivals within Russia could be trying to turn the president’s paranoia against his first deputy chief of staff.
• 🪖 Calling in reinforcements: Amid a rising number of reports in the Russian state media about the Ukrainian military shelling the city of Donetsk (including claims on Monday that artillery fire hit a maternity ward), the head of the self-declared Donetsk People’s Republic, Denis Pushilin, declared the need for “additional allied forces” from Russia to defend the territory.
• 🤝 The mayor who changed sides: After accusing the Ukrainian military of setting fire to one of the buildings at the Sviatohirsk Cave Monastery, the Ukrainian mayor of Sviatohirsk, Vladimir Bandura, officially crossed over to the side of the “Donetsk People’s Republic” on Monday. After meeting personally with DNR head Denis Pushilin, he was formally reinstated as Sviatohirsk’s DNR “city administrator.” Kyiv promptly charged Bandura with treason.
• 👮 A law-and-order shuffle: Officers in Russia’s Rostov region are reportedly being sent “on assignment” to police the streets of cities in the self-declared Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republicans (where the local militia are all gone to fight on the frontlines against Ukrainian troops), according to 161.ru.
• 🚢 America’s push for more Russian goods: The U.S. government is “quietly encouraging agricultural and shipping companies to buy and carry more Russian fertilizer,” people familiar with the efforts told Bloomberg, citing fears about spiraling global food costs. According to Bloomberg, overcautious shippers, banks, and insurers have avoided Russian fertilizers, fearing sanctions violations, even though Washington has built food-related exemptions into its sanction. “U.S. officials, surprised by the extent of the caution, are in the seemingly paradoxical position of looking for ways to boost them.”
• 🛢️ Russia’s new friends in the oil biz: Russia became India’s second biggest supplier of oil in May, outpacing Saudi Arabia (but not Iraq), reported Reuters. Supplies from Russia accounted for about 16.5 percent of India’s overall oil imports in May, helping to reduce India’s imports from the Middle East to about 59.5 percent.
• 🚰 Meet Borjomi’s new boss: The Georgian government has obtained a 7.73-percent stake in Borjomi, one of the nation’s largest mineral water producers, “free of charge.” Operations at the company’s plants have been suspended since late April due to Western sanctions against Mikhail Fridman, the cofounder of Alfa Bank, which owned a majority stake in Borjomi International. Last week, hundreds of workers went on strike to protest recent layoffs.

Major recent events in Russia and Ukraine

• 📉 Not dying so much anymore: Mortality rates in Russia have fallen below their pre-pandemic levels, Health Minister Mikhail Murashko reported on Friday, noting that COVID-19 cases nevertheless remain high. The minister offered no concrete figures, however. The Federal State Statistics Service said Russia’s natural population decline in 2021 was more than 1 million people — an all-time record in Russia’s post-Soviet history. In early 2022, officials reported that the Russian population shrank by 692,900 people (the biggest annual decline in 19 years).
• 👑 Peter the Not-So-Great: Estonia’s Foreign Ministry summoned Russia’s ambassador, Vladimir Lipaev, on Friday to condemn Vladimir Putin’s recent remarks about the Great Northern War in the early 18th century, when Peter I of Russia led a coalition against the Swedish Empire, “returning” Moscow’s control over lands in the Baltic region and expanding Imperial Russia into Europe. “The same is true to the west, relating to [the Estonian city of] Narva. He returned it [to Russian control] and reinforced it,” Putin told a group of young people on June 9.
• 🙊 Precious bodily fluids: State Duma lawmakers have drafted legislation that would expand existing mass media limits on foreign ownership to online classifieds portals, limiting foreign stakes to 20 percent. The bill’s sponsors warn that these websites accumulate vast amounts of Russian nationals’ personal data. Lawmakers singled out the Dutch-owned website Avito, Russians’ favorite place to find jobs. (For another look at fears about foreigners’ access to Russians’ personal secrets, read Farida Rustamova on how Vladimir Putin poops.)
• 🪖 The death toll among Ukraine’s soldiers: Ukrainian presidential advisor Mykhailo Podolyak told the BBC that between 100 and 200 Ukrainian soldiers are being killed every day — the highest death toll any Ukrainian official has yet acknowledged publicly during the war with Russia. The main reason for the significant losses, he explained, is Russian superiority in artillery. To reach parity with Moscow, Podolyak said, Kyiv needs “hundreds of advanced artillery systems” and as many as 300 missile systems.
• 🚫 Banned books: The Russian bookstore Litre.ru has stopped selling a book about the “Primorsky Partisans” (six young men who went to war in 2010 against the local police, accusing them of corruption and brutality), apparently because the author, journalist Oleg Kashin, is a designated “foreign agent.” (Meanwhile, books by the satirist Viktor Shenderovich, another “foreign agent,” are still available on Litre.ru.)

Major recent events in Russia and Ukraine

• 💱 Here today, yuan tomorrow: On June 7, Russia’s dominant lender Sberbank suspended transactions by entrepreneurs under foreign trade agreements in Chinese yuan. Spokespeople told the state news agency RIA Novosti that the bank is working to restore payments in yuan, but they advised customers to work through “partners and other authorized banks” in the meantime. Following the invasion of Ukraine, the United States, the European Union, and numerous countries targeted Sberbank in economic sanctions against Russia. In late May, the EU even removed the bank from the SWIFT international banking system, effectively cutting it off from global financial networks.
• 🕵️ Lobbying for a stronger SORM: Russia’s Digital Development, Communications, and Mass Media Ministry has proposed reforms that would fine telecoms operators a percentage of their gross income for failing to install the hardware required to operate the System for Operative Investigative Activities (SORM) — wiretapping equipment that allows law enforcement officials to monitor telephone conversations, text messages, and Internet traffic. The ministry also wants to require the Federal Protective Service’s approval before issuing new telecoms operating licenses (making SORM installation necessary to receive a licenses). Additionally, the fee for obtaining one of these licenses would jump 133 times to 1 million rubles (almost $17,000), ostensibly to lock out “dubious services.”
• 📉 Huawei’s disappearance: Russian retailers that specialize in selling products from Huawei are shutting down across the country, sources told the news agencies RBC and RIA Novosti. Four of 19 vendors have already closed. The closures are reportedly the result of supply shortages and declining demand for smartphones in Russia. The manufacturer of 40 percent of all smartphones imported into Russia in 2020, Huawei has since lost its market share in the country, slipping to just 3 percent of imported smartphones by 2021.
• ⚖️ He’s got hurt feelings: Dmitry Kachan, the head of a law firm based in Russia’s Primorsky Krai, is suing the Swedish clothing company H&M for allegedly discriminating against Russian customers on nationality grounds. He seeks 700,000 rubles (almost $12,000) in emotional damages because H&M’s website currently will not ship products listed as “in stock” to locations inside Russia. In early March, in response to the invasion of Ukraine, H&M suspended operations in Russia and closed its 155 stores nationwide, joining roughly 1,000 other foreign companies in a boycott of Russia.
• 👮 Moscow’s patriot police: Sergey Mironov, the head of the nominal opposition party Just Russia — For Truth, complained in a Telegram post on Wednesday that Moscow city inspectors ordered him to remove a pro-invasion banner displayed in his office, citing “numerous appeals from citizens.” Mironov questioned the existence of these appeals, accusing city officials of preventing “patriotic” displays in the capital that mention “the war in which the country’s fate is being decided.”
• 🤝 The Russians are coming (to the “DNR”): Denis Pushilin, the head of the self-declared Donetsk People’s Republic, fired his government on Wednesday and replaced the cabinet with multiple ex-Russian state officials, including Prime Minister Vitaly Khotsenko (formerly a senior official in Russia’s Industry and Trade Ministry), Alexander Kostomarov (formerly the first lieutenant governor of Russia’s Ulyanovsk region), and Evgeny Solntsev (a former aide to the head of Russia’s Construction and Housing and Public Utilities Ministry). Pushilin said the personnel changes are needed “to strengthen integration processes.” For months, rumors have circulated that the Kremlin plans to stage “referendums” in occupied regions of Ukraine as a prelude to annexation.
• 🛑 Gerhard-come-lately: Gerhard Schröder has withdrawn his consent to be nominated to Gazprom’s board of directors. The former German Chancellor was nominated in February before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. At the time, he was serving as chairman of Rosneft’s board of directors — a position he didn’t abandon until late May.

Major recent events in Russia and Ukraine

• ☭ Return of the Young Pioneers: On Tuesday, Russia’s State Duma will consider a bill creating a new children and youth program called “Recess.” The bill was introduced on the 100th anniversary of the creation of the Soviet Young Pioneers. President Vladimir Putin himself will be in charge of the new program.
• 🪖 Russian gains: Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu announced that Russian troops have taken complete control of Sievierodonetsk’s residential areas, as well as a significant portion of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions on the left bank of the Siverskyi Donets River. “As of today, 97 percent of the territory of the Luhansk People’s Republic has been liberated,” he said.
• 🙅 Conscripts in the war: About 600 military conscripts were involved in the “special military operation,” and that they were all brought home as quickly as possible, according to Artur Yegiev, the military prosecutor of Russia’s Western Military District. He said that “disciplinary measures” were taken against the officers responsible. Back in March, Russian President Vladimir Putin denied that any conscripts were fighting in Ukraine, but the Russian Defense Ministry acknowledged soon after that this wasn’t true.
• 🪖 Sloviansk may soon fall: According to Ukrainian presidential advisor Oleksiy Arestovych, the Russian army may lay siege to the city of Sloviansk as soon as a week from now. According to Arestovych, Russia currently has the advantage due to a delay in Western arms supplies to Ukraine. Donetsk regional administration head Pavlo Kyrylenko reported that 75 percent of Sloviansk’s population has fled, leaving only 24,000 people there. The city has been experiencing power outages and water shortages.
• 💥 Someone doesn’t feel liberated: An explosion in a Kherson cafe this morning was the result of a terrorist attack, according to the head of the region’s “new administration” installed by Russian occupying forces. Russian officials in Kherson are investigating the incident.

Major recent events in Russia and Ukraine

• 🚨 Wanted in Russia: Journalist Andrey Soldatov, an expert on Russia’s secret services, said on June 6 that he found his name on the Russian Interior Ministry’s wanted list. Soldatov also learned that all of his bank accounts in Russia had been frozen. The charges against Soldatov remain unclear, as the Interior Ministry’s wanted persons registry says only that he “is wanted for violating an article of the Criminal Code.”
• 🪞More sanctions from Moscow: Russia’s Foreign Ministry has imposed retaliatory sanctions on 61 American government officials and business leaders. Among those included on the latest sanctions list are Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, and White House Communications Director Kate Bedingfield, as well as Netflix co-CEO Reed Hastings, New York Stock Exchange Chairman Jeffrey Sprecher, and Delta Airlines CEO Edward Bastian. 
• 🕯️Bodies recovered from Azovstal: Russia has turned over the bodies of 160 Ukrainian fighters killed during the siege of Mariupol’s Azovstal steel works, AP reported on June 6. According to President Zelensky, Kyiv is still working to secure the release of more than 2,500 fighters from the plant who are being held prisoner by Russia. 
• ✈️ Going after Abramovich’s jets: A U.S. court has authorized the seizure of two jets owned by Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich valued at more than $400 million. The U.S. has accused Abramovich of violating export controls and recent sanctions by re-exporting the two airplanes — a $60 million Gulfstream and a $350 million Boeing — to Russia.

Major recent events in Russia and Ukraine

• ✈️ No-Lavrov zone: Bulgaria, North Macedonia, and Montenegro have all closed their airspace to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, forcing him to cancel a visit to Serbia that had been planned for June 6-7. Lavrov himself called the move “outrageous” and “unthinkable.”
• 🕯️ A solemn Journalist's Day: Ukraine’s Culture and Information Policy Ministry announced that 32 journalists have been killed in Ukraine since the war began. According to Current Time, the list of victims includes journalists from Ukraine, Russia, France, the U.S, and Lithuania.
• 📃 Officially done with the ECHR: Russian State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin announced that a law officially ending Russia’s observance of decisions made by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) will be adopted this week. “The ECHR has become a tool in the political fight against our country in the hands of Western politicians. Several of its decisions have directly violated the Russian Constitution, our values, and our traditions,” said Volodin.
• 📺 No more Russian TV in Latvia: Latvia’s National Electronic Mass Media Council banned the broadcasting of about 80 Russian channels that were still accessible on Latvian territory. The ban was imposed in accordance with a new law Latvia’s parliament passed in late May that allows the restriction of foreign programs that "threaten the country’s sovereignty." On the other hand, one Russian channel was given a license to begin broadcasting: Dozhd (TV Rain), an independent network that was blocked in Russia on March 1 and suspended operations days later.
• 🪖 Zelensky makes the rounds: The active fighting nearby notwithstanding, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky paid visits to troops in Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk regions, both of which are partially occupied by Russian troops. “I visited [the cities of] Lysychansk and Soledar. I’m proud of everyone I met, shook hands with, and spoke to,” Zelensky said in a video posted later. He also visited displaced civilians from Mariupol in the Zaporizhzhia region.
• 💣 Keeping Ukraine armed: The UK announced it will send American-produced M270 multiple launch rocket systems to Ukraine. The first shipment will include three weapons, according to the BBC; it’s unclear whether more will be sent later on. Britain was apparently not deterred by threats made by Putin last week to bomb new targets in Ukraine if the U.S. follows through on a promise made last week to supply other advanced missile systems to the Ukranian military.
• 🚢 Training with future allies: NATO, Finland, and Sweden have begun the BALTOPS joint military exercises in the Baltic sea. The yearly event, which will last two weeks, has involved the two non-NATO member countries since the 1990s, though this year’s training comes in the wake of Finland and Sweden’s announcements that they intend to join the alliance.
• 🚗 Return of the Moskvich: Moscow’s former Renault car factory, which was “acquired” by Kamas after Renault left the Russian market, has officially been renamed for its new product: the Moskvich, ​​an iconic Soviet-era (and later Russian) car that was last produced in 2001, though the new models will be Chinese vehicles designed by JAC Motors. Journalists from RBK spotted the change on Russia’s Unified State Register of Legal Entities.