Russian Digest
Week of 6/8: Top stories I'm keeping an eye on
Russia’s fuel crisis jumps from 15 to 25 regions in five days—plus six occupied Ukrainian areas
Russia’s gasoline crisis has spread to 25 of its own regions and six occupied Ukrainian ones, the Russian-language Moscow Times reported on 10 June. Six days earlier, the count stood at 15. Ukrainian strikes on Russian refineries hit a wartime monthly record in May 2026, dropping Russian refining loading well below the start of the year.
This comes amid the Ukrainian long-range drone strike campaign, targeting Russian oil processing, transportation, and storage facilities almost every day. Additionally, Ukraine has escalated its mid-range “Logistic Lockdown” campaign, targeting Russian logistics in the occupied territories at depths of up to 200 km.
Read More: EuroMaidan Press
EU countries agree to unblock accession talks with Ukraine and Moldova
Friday’s agreement allows Ukraine and Moldova to formally open the first cluster of accession negotiations, known as “Fundamentals”.
The 27 countries of the European Union have reached an agreement to open the first cluster of accession talks with Ukraine and Moldova, building on the momentum created after Hungary lifted its two-year veto last week.
The breakthrough was achieved on Friday evening by ambassadors in Brussels, who endorsed a common position to go ahead with the next phase of negotiations.
The position comes with a rule-of-law roadmap and an action plan on minority rights, the main bone of contention between Budapest and Kyiv. The action plan was amended to reflect the outcome of the consultations between the two sides.
The formal step will take place on Monday 15 June in Luxembourg, where the EU will hold separate intergovernmental conferences with the two candidates.
Read More: Euronews
German commander warns Russia may take nuclear threat into space
Germany’s top military space commander said he cannot rule out that Russia is working on technology to place a nuclear warhead in space, warning that such a move could cripple satellite services and make parts of orbit unusable for decades.
“At the very top end of escalation, there is the suspicion that Russia may be working on technology to place a nuclear explosive device in orbit,” Major General Michael Traut, commander of the Bundeswehr Space Command, said in an interview with POLITICO at the ILA Berlin air show.
Asked whether he considered that realistic, Traut said: “I cannot rule it out.”
Read More: Politico EU
UN records highest civilian casualty toll in Ukraine since 2022
More than 2,000 civilians were killed or injured in Ukraine in May, making it the deadliest month for civilians since April 2022, the U.N. Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine (HRMMU) reported on June 12.
The mission verified at least 274 civilian deaths and 1,763 injuries during the month, the highest monthly casualty toll recorded in the past four years.
“The intensification of hostilities and the increasingly frequent use of powerful weapons in urban areas led to high numbers of civilians killed and injured across the country,” Danielle Bell, head of the HRMMU, said in a statement.
Read More: Kyiv Independent
Trump intelligence adviser previously helped father pursue millions from Kremlin-linked bank, leaked documents show
Amaryllis Fox Kennedy, a Trump administration adviser on intelligence issues who recently stepped down from two senior national security positions, previously helped her father secure at least $12 million from a Russian investment bank that cooperated with the Kremlin, leaked documents show.
Kennedy, a former CIA officer, was involved in the deal in 2009 and 2010 as head of an offshore corporation owned by her father. She was employed as a spy during those years, according to media reporting.
The documents show that as president of the British Virgin Islands-registered Helios Enterprises Limited, Kennedy was involved in an effort on behalf of her father, Hodson Thornber, to pressure a Moscow-based investment bank to fulfill a 2008 agreement to pay roughly $30 million for Helios’ shares in a large Ukrainian agricultural company. The Russian bank, Renaissance Capital, included former senior Russian intelligence officers in its top ranks.
Read More: ICIJ
Jared Kushner’s $5 Billion Albanian Reality Check
For over three years, Jared Kushner has striven to build a set of luxury hotels and resorts in a corner of Eastern Europe that U.S. investors typically overlook.
It isn’t going well.
In the past two weeks, a proposed Kushner development on an environmentally protected beach in Albania has exploded as a political issue in the country. Thousands of protesters have been marching daily, a special prosecutor has opened an investigation into land sales, and even the European Union’s executive arm has voiced concerns to Albania about the project, sparking worries it could imperil the country’s bid to join the bloc.
Read More: Wall Street Journal
Car bomb kills senior Russian military official near Moscow
A senior Russian military official has been killed in a car bombing near Moscow, according to media reports.
An explosive device planted underneath a BMW detonated at about 5.30am on Tuesday as Col Damir Davydov was driving near his home in the city of Balashikha, the independent outlet Astra reported. It was the latest in a string of assassinations targeting Russian military officials and prominent pro-war figures since the Kremlin launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Davydov, 57, headed the Russian military’s artillery and missile ammunition supply directorate, a key logistics role responsible for overseeing the distribution of weapons to the armed forces.
Read More: The Guardian
A second round of interference: After Pashinyan’s election victory, Moscow is set to increase its economic pressure on Armenia
Armenia’s June 7 parliamentary elections ended with a victory for the Civil Contract party led by the country’s prime minister, Nikol Pashinyan. The party received 49.8% of the vote, which, after the proportional redistribution of seats from parties that failed to enter parliament, will give it an absolute majority of seats in the National Assembly. The election campaign unfolded amid worsening relations with Russia over Yerevan’s potential rapprochement with the European Union, and according to local political analysts and economists interviewed by The Insider, the most interesting developments are likely just beginning. The Kremlin still has many means of applying pressure, from imposing cross-border trade restrictions to making life for Armenian labor migrants in Russia more difficult.
Read More: The Insider
Ukraine police chief says Russia recruits young women to kill Ukrainian servicemen
Ukraine’s police chief has accused Russia of recruiting teenage Ukrainian girls to kill Ukrainian military personnel, following the arrest of a 17-year-old suspected of murdering a serviceman on the instructions of a Russian operative.
In an interview published on Wednesday by Ukrainian media outlet Cenzor.NET, national police chief Ivan Vyhivskyi said there had this year been six cases of contract killings arranged via the Telegram messaging app, one of which was prevented.
Read More: Reuters
Drone Incursions in Romania Were Followed by a Coordinated Online Storm
Drone activity near the EU’s eastern border has been recurring in the last months. But now, Russian drones have gone a step further—into Romania. On the night between May 28 and 29 and again almost exactly a week later on June 5, two drone incidents were observed in Romania. The incidents were also immediately present in different narratives across the online information space and stayed there as a result of artificially created networks of posts which operated for a week without intervention of the platforms.
Read More: VSquare
Russian Woman Convicted of Lying About Spy Ties, Stalking Agent Gets Prison Time
A United States District Judge in Manhattan sent a Russian woman behind bars for 14 months after she pleaded guilty to lying to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) about her ties to Russia’s premier intelligence agency, the FSB, and to naturalization fraud linked to the interstate transport of women for prostitution.
Case documents made public last week illustrated that prosecutors wanted the judge to impose a harsher penalty—between 18 to 24 months—on 35-year-old Nomma Zarubina, who previously insisted when entering her guilty plea that she had actually assisted the FBI and shared information with the CIA.
“The defendant lied to the FBI in connection with a sensitive investigation into malign foreign influence,” prosecutors wrote in their sentencing memorandum. “She helped run a prostitution business over the course of several years. She intentionally omitted her participation in that criminal enterprise on her naturalization application in an effort to obtain United States citizenship. And then, after being arrested and released on bail, she repeatedly taunted, harassed, and threatened Case Agent-1.”
Read More: OCCRP
Russian national charged in connection with Void Blizzard espionage campaign
Federal prosecutors have charged a Russian national with conspiracy to commit unauthorized computer access in connection with a sprawling cyber-espionage campaign linked to the Russia-aligned threat group Void Blizzard, according to a criminal complaint filed in federal court this week.
Denis Nikolayevich Obrezko, a Russian citizen, is accused of breaking into systems owned by companies in the United States and elsewhere, according to an FBI affidavit unsealed Tuesday. Investigators allege Obrezko facilitated the campaign by purchasing a virtual private server and domain names used in attacks targeting businesses, educational institutions, and other organizations.
Read More: Cyberscoop
Excellent!
Russia has tentacles everywhere in the world….