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Roskomnadzor, Russia’s executive body responsible for censoring media, telecommunications, and internet content, has sent demands to Apple and Google to remove the IStories mobile app from their stores. Apple itself informed the editorial team about Roskomnadzor’s demands, while the notification for Google was found in the Lumen database.

Roskomnadzor is demanding that the companies immediately inform IStories “about the need for the prompt removal of information distributed in violation of the law” and remove the app from their stores if the demands are not met. It is unclear exactly what information we are supposed to delete. In its letters, Roskomnadzor accuses the IStories mobile app of “destabilizing the socio-political situation in the Russian Federation” and spreading “fakes.”

We launched our mobile app in February 2026 to share important news, research, and investigations despite widespread censorship and restrictions. It works in Russia without VPN.

Today, on March 30, the Tribunal de Paris is holding the first hearing of Dmitry Klyuev's case. Klyuev is the alleged mastermind behind the 2007 tax fraud scheme that had been uncovered by Sergei Magnitsky. According to the French National Financial Prosecutor Office indictment, Klyuev is accused of laundering the money stolen from the Russian budget on French soil.

Sergei Magnitsky was an auditor at Hermitage Capital, who uncovered a 2007 scheme of a 5.4 billion rubles’ ($230 million approx. according to the exchange rates of 2007) embezzlement from the Russian federal budget. The funds obtained through illegal income tax refunds would be transferred to accounts at Universal Savings Bank owned by Klyuev. The money was then transferred abroad through a complex network of shell companies, with some of it ending up in Klyuev’s offshore accounts. After giving his testimony, Magnitsky himself was arrested and sent to a pretrial detention center. There, he died after being beaten and denied medical care. 

After reviewing the evidence gathered in the Magnitsky case, French prosecutors concluded that Klyuev was the mastermind behind the tax fraud scheme.

The money laundering charges are based on Klyuev’s bank accounts spendings. As French investigators discovered, between April 2008 and October 2012 Klyuev used his Cyprus bank accounts to spend over €2 million in France on luxury brand clothing, jewelry, art, and traveling. More than 127,000 euros were spent on paying for a vacation for Dmitry Savelyev, a then-Senator of the Russian State Duma, and his guests at the Courchevel ski resort in France, according to the transactions and invoices available to IStories.

In March 2025, Klyuev was placed on the international wanted list, according to the documents from the French prosecutor’s office (at the disposal of IStories). As the prosecutor’s office notes, Klyuev is likely to be residing in Russia, where he “is clearly enjoying the support of the authorities and is likely to be affiliated with organized crime.” However, Russia has been excluded from the list of countries notified of Klyuev’s arrest warrant being issued, as French law enforcement officials see no prospect of Russia extraditing him.

In Russia, Klyuev owns the Quorum Debt Management Group law firm—a partner of the Russian Deposit Insurance Agency in recovering assets from troubled banks. The Quorum group was founded by Andrei Pavlov, a person featured on the Magnitsky List (originally list of people sanctioned for their connection to Magnitsky's detention, abuse and death in detention in 2009, which has been updated with the names of those responsible for other human rights violations and corruption — Ed.). Klyuev also owns a hunting estate in Kaluga Oblast, which, according to an IStories source, is visited by high-ranking officials at his invitation.

The complaint against Klyuev was initially filed by the Hermitage Capital Foundation. Its CEO, Bill Browder, had launched a global campaign to investigate the Magnitsky case following Magnitsky’s death. As a result, in 2014 the United States imposed sanctions against Klyuev and other individuals involved in the fraudulent scheme.

According to the indictment, the maximum penalty facing Klyuev is 10 years in prison. The prosecution considers Klyuev's regular engagement in money laundering activity to be an aggravating factor. The documents note that he was also involved in laundering the Russian budget stolen funds in Cyprus and Switzerland.

Previously, IStories reported on Klyuev having invested in a luxury resort in Cyprus in 2009 — shortly after Magnitsky had accused him of the financial fraud. In 2012 and 2013, nearly $8 million (247 million rubles approx.) were transferred from an account allegedly linked to Klyuev’s offshore entity (into which money stolen from the Russian budget had previously been funneled) to the Swiss bank account of an offshore company owned by the aforementioned Dmitry Savelyev.

“It’s very encouraging to see that after years of going after those who profited from the $230 million fraud uncovered by Sergei Magnitsky, the key perpetrator himself is now facing trial in Paris,” Bill Browder commented to IStories. “We hope that one day he will also be held accountable in Russia for what he has done to the Russian people.”

The Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation plans to recruit 78,800 personnel into its newly established Unmanned Systems Forces (VBS) by the end of 2026. This is according to military documents discovered in the public domain by IStories.

One of the files was published on the website of the Vyazemsky Forestry College in Khabarovsk Krai — despite being marked “For Official Use Only.” IStories also located the document on the websites of two rural settlements in Rostov Oblast, though data regarding the size and composition of the VBS units had been entirely redacted from those versions. One was edited using the free online tool iLovePDF, indicating that the full text of the Ministry of Defense’s plans has resided on the servers of a foreign company since December 2025.

According to leaked data, the Unmanned Systems Forces of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation will consist of:

• 7 separate brigades;
• 15 regiments;
• 70 battalions;
• One division;
• 12 Rubicon detachments;
• 12 companies of “heavy” UAVs;
• 12 companies of ground robotic complexes.

The military seeks to recruit 58,000 personnel from among students, graduates of drone piloting courses, former aviation personnel, and “citizens of the female sex” with relevant training.

An additional 10,800 new recruits for the Unmanned Systems Forces will be secured by transitioning conscripts to professional contracts. The remaining 10,000 positions will be filled by reassigning active-duty personnel from other units.

By the end of 2025, the Ministry of Defense planned to attract 3,500 people to these new units, according to a presentation discovered on the website of a district administration in the Komi Republic.

The military department set a goal to “expeditiously staff from all sources” one separate brigade in each of the five military districts, as well as two separate brigades attached to the Rubicon Center for Advanced Unmanned Technologies.

Only 300 of these recruits were to be drawn from the existing ranks of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, with 600 coming from conscripts. Approximately 2,600 recruits were expected to be sourced from cadets at military training centers — the modern designation for military departments at civilian universities — as well as volunteers from BARS units and other categories.

The Ministry of Defense also compiled data on the number of students in technical majors at universities that train UAV pilots, alongside enrollment targets for military training centers and supplementary education programs for drone pilot instruction.

According to the table, UAV pilot courses at military training centers — the departments housed within civilian universities — were available at 32 institutions, with nearly 2,000 students enrolled. In 2026, more than 400 soldiers, sergeants, and reserve officers with drone piloting experience are expected to graduate from these military departments, followed by over 800 in 2027.

The table appears to set an annual recruitment target for the military training centers at 1,562 people — nearly four times the number of this year’s graduates. Each university on the list is assigned a “responsible central military command body.”

After signing a contract, recruits must undergo three stages, according to an internal Ministry of Defense document. First is preparation at educational institutions in Russian regions, followed by training within the Ministry of Defense’s instructional network and at its proving grounds. Finally, recruits undergo an evaluation for “compliance with qualification requirements.”

The military department’s presentation likely included an early version of the list of “educational institutions” where contract soldiers are sent during the first stage. This list comprises 61 organizations, though it remains unclear whether additional training centers were added later.

According to Ministry of Defense estimates from early December 2025, the organizations on the list could accommodate approximately 1,600 trainees simultaneously. The sites include Moscow universities, UAV manufacturing facilities, and training centers in occupied territories of Ukraine. At least five centers in Donetsk Oblast, four in Luhansk Oblast, two in Sevastopol, and one in Zaporizhzhia Oblast are engaged in training drone operators.

• In mid-November 2025, the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation officially announced the formation of a new service branch — the Unmanned Systems Forces. By December, authorities had launched a massive campaign to recruit contract soldiers, and by February 2026, the effort had reached nearly every educational institution in the country.

• Russian authorities had not previously disclosed the size or composition of the new branch. Figures similar to those found in the Ministry of Defense documents were previously cited by Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi, the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, who described them as a projected increase in units for 2026. According to Ukrainian data, the Russian Unmanned Systems Forces are expected to number 165,000 personnel by the end of the year.

• In late 2025, the government began an extensive drive to recruit civilian university students for contract service in the Unmanned Systems Forces. To date, the campaign has spread across all of Russia. Students are promised only a year of service far from the front lines, but contract addendums indicate they may be reassigned to the infantry at any time. Furthermore, the contracts are indefinite and cannot be rescinded. In some instances, students have been pressured to sign; IStories has previously detailed these students’ experiences and the legal methods available to counter such coercion.

The Russian recruiters luring foreigners into the war against Ukraine have been given a “blacklist” of countries from where it is now prohibited to “import” mercenaries, IStories has discovered.

We have found the list in the recruiters' groups and chats on social media. The information has also been confirmed by one of the major regional recruitment centers.

In early January 2026, recruiters began distributing a list of countries whose citizens are banned from signing contracts with the Russian Armed Forces from 2026 on.

We found the earliest mention of the list on the TikTok account of Kelvin Egyir, a mercenary from Ghana. He had served in the Russian army and is now promoting the service to the African audience.

The 36 countries stoplist is being circulated among the recruiters working in Arabic-speaking regions. The list mainly includes African and Arab countries as well as other states officially listed as “friendly” to Russia: China, India, Brazil, South Africa, Turkey, Cuba, Afghanistan, Iran, and Venezuela.

It is unknown who exactly made the decision to reduce the list of countries for recruitment and at what level it was done. The list is likely to have been a result of diplomatic contacts.

For example, Nepal, India, and Sri Lanka had appealed to the Russian authorities with requests and demands to stop recruiting their citizens to the war since mid-2024. Moscow pledged not to lure Indians and Sri Lankans into signing the military contracts.

In November 2025, Jordan made the same demand. Soon after, the country was added to the banning list.

Kenya, an important source of mercenaries for the Russian army, was also added to the list. According to the local authorities, more than 1,000 Kenyans ended up fighting on the frontlines in the ranks of the Russian army. In February 2026, the Kenyan government publicly called on Russia to stop its recruitment campaign in the country. However, Ben Stimson, a British instructor training African mercenaries in the Russian army, mentioned a ban on recruiting Kenyans and Nigerians back in January. 

According to media reports, most recruits from Africa ended up on the front lines in the summer and fall of 2025 as a result of deception. For example, 35-year-old Kenyan Francis Ndarua was offered a job as an electrical engineer in Russia, his mother said in a CNN interview. In October 2025, she lost contact with him, and later she recognized her son in a video circulating on social media, where a Black soldier in Russian military uniform is racially insulted and forced to storm the front lines with an anti-tank mine attached to his chest. The author of the video, presumably a Russian soldier, calls Francis a “can opener” and says that he would be "hopping around the woods.” His fate remains unknown.

In February, several more countries could have been added to the stop list, in addition to the 36 previously mentioned. The expanded list was published by Mustafa al-Yasari, an Iraqi blogger who exposes Russian recruitment networks in the country. According to him, Argentina, Iraq, Yemen, Cameroon, Colombia, Libya, and Somalia have also been banned. The information had been allegedly provided to the blogger by a Russian officer.

“Thanks to our government for contacting the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Iraqi embassy in Russia,” al-Yasari said. “Thank God, we have put an end to this issue: no more young men will be fighting in the Russian ranks. And those who left a week or two ago will return.”

The Iraqi blogger did not respond to our follow-up questions on social media.

The alleged agreement between Iraq and Russia has probably not affected the Iraqis who were already on the front lines. On February 19, it was reported that a popular Iraqi pop singer Hussein al-Turki had been killed. In his November video, he told his followers he had come to Moscow at an invitation to perform at a concert. Then he was taken to a city located 16 hours' drive from the Russian capital and asked to sign a Russian-language document which turned out to be a contract with the Russian Armed Forces.

The contract recruitment center which had previously distributed the 36 countries list, has not confirmed the expansion of the list. They have kept recruiting mercenaries from Colombia, for example, as confirmed by IStories.

According to “I Want to Live", a Ukrainian project allowing Russian servicemen to voluntarily surrender to Ukrainian forces, Russia had recruited more than 10,000 foreign mercenaries by the fall of 2025. The citizens of countries now included in the stop list accounted for 37% of the total number of foreigners. Among them, the leaders are Cuba (with over 1,000 people), Nepal (about 800 people), and Sri Lanka (over 700 people). The largest number of mercenaries come from the EAEU states: Tajikistan (with over 1,500 people), Belarus (over 1,300), and Kazakhstan (over 1,100).

In 2025, outside the EAEU, the Russian army was most active in recruiting citizens of Ghana, Cameroon, and Kenya — with at least 100 people from each country, according to the recent data provided to IStories by the “I Want to Live” project.

Over the past years, Russian authorities have been systematically blocking independent media and platforms. IStories Media itself has been blocked in Russia since the start of the full-scale invasion — that's how much the Kremlin dislikes the investigations we do.

We don't want to wait until everything is blocked completely. So we built our own app to make sure people in Russia can read IStories despite censorship. And because we have an English version of the website for the international audience interested in important stories from Russia, we made the app bilingual. So you, our dear friend, can use it too.

We had planned to launch the app in March, but the Telegram crackdown in Russia changed our timeline. That's why we're releasing it now. Even though the app is missing some planned features, it's already doing a great job.

Here's what the IStories app can already do:

• Bypasses censorship. The app has a built-in proxy. If you're in Russia without a VPN, it will give you full access to all our reporting.

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Alesya Marokhovskaya, Editor-in-Chief, IStories Media

The French prosecutor’s office has seized the head of Gazprombank Andrey Akimov’s assets. This was reported by Le Monde.

The seizure was carried out in May 2025. Le Monde claims that four villas and plots of land on the French “millionaire’s island” Saint Barthélemy (St. Barts) in the Caribbean Sea were confiscated from Akimov. The value of the seized property was estimated at €81.9 million.

At that time, the case was handled by the staff of the Office national anti-fraude (ONAF). It has now moved under the jurisdiction of the Parquet national anti-criminalité organisé (PNACO).

French investigators also seized the property of Gazprombank Deputy Chairman of the Management Board Alexey Matveev, Le Monde writes. His case is being handled by the Parquet national financier (PNF), since he is suspected of tax fraud in connection with the purchase of a villa.

Andrey Akimov is a person close to Vladimir Putin’s inner circle, an acquaintance and business partner of his longtime friends. He has headed Gazprombank for 20 years. IStories previously published a joint investigation with Le Monde about Akimov’s European assets.

We wrote that Akimov owns a total of four houses in France, and only one of them is located on Saint Barthélemy. This mansion, with terraces and swimming pools, once belonged to legendary ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev.

IStories also found that Akimov owns the “Aloha” villa in Villefranche-sur-Mer on the French Riviera, a villa in Chens-sur-Léman on the French shore of Lake Geneva, and a villa in Ramatuelle in the Provence region.

Akimov’s deputy, Matveev, owned a villa in Beaulieu-sur-Mer on the Riviera. Apparently, it is this mansion that is linked to the tax fraud investigation. Tax authorities value the villa at €29 million. Matveev’s son owns two more villas in Beaulieu-sur-Mer.

Akimov has property not only in France. He also owns luxury apartments and houses in Austria, Spain, and the United Kingdom, and invests in real estate in Cyprus. Read more about this here.

Roman Anin, the publisher and former editor-in-chief of IStories, has been stripped of his Russian citizenship after a Russian court found him guilty of “spreading fake news” about the actions of the Russian Armed Forces in Ukraine. This was reported by Kommersant and TASS with reference to the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs for Yaroslavl Oblast (Anin was registered in this region).

“After reviewing the materials collected by the migration department staff of the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia for Yaroslavl Oblast [...] the previously acquired citizenship of the Russian Federation has been terminated for the citizen born in 1986,” the Ministry of Internal Affairs stated.

It is unknown when exactly the citizenship was annulled.

Anin was a naturalized Russian citizen; he was born and raised in Moldova and received a Russian passport only in 2006.

• Since October 2023, a law has been in force in Russia that allows a person to be deprived of acquired citizenship for “military fakes,” “discrediting the army,” calls for extremist activity, and so on. At the end of July this year, Putin signed a law under which acquired citizenship can be revoked for virtually any political crime.

• In March, a court sentenced Anin and former IStories reporter (now a TV Rain reporter) Ekaterina Fomina in absentia to 8.5 years in a penal colony in a case concerning “fakes” about the Russian Armed Forces. The case was based on three IStories videos — two news overviews by Anin and an investigation by Fomina about the killing of civilians in Bucha. You can read more about this case here.

• For the first time, a person was stripped of citizenship in March 2024 for “fakes” about the Russian Armed Forces. Aleksandr Somryakov from Kuban was sentenced to six years in a penal colony for reports about crimes committed by the Russian army in Mariupol and Bucha.

A court bailiff has evicted DMS, the company of Alternative for Germany (AfD) party member Murad Dadaev, from a 19th-century historic mansion in Hanover, Hannoverische Allgemeine Zeitung reports.

The reason for the eviction was nonpayment of rent. Previously, IStories and the German media outlet CORRECTIV reported that Dadaev, a functionary of the far-right AfD with ties among Kadyrov’s people and ultra-nationalists, had effectively seized the villa — ignoring the eviction lawsuit and failing to pay rent. He turned the mansion into a meeting place for the local AfD cell, which is headed by deputy chairman of the party’s Bundestag faction Jörn König.

On the night before the eviction, a fire broke out in the protected historic mansion. Police have not yet commented on the causes of the arson. Previously, local antifascists had thrown paint at the villa several times. Dadaev himself was not in the city — on the night of the arson and just before the eviction, he announced on his Instagram that he had left for Dortmund.

• Who is Dadaev. IStories and CORRECTIV discovered that under the name of the AfD member from Hanover, Noah Krieger, is actually 36-year-old Murad Dadaev, a native of Chechnya. In the party, he is promoting an image of a Chechen integrated into German society, while at the same time using ultra-nationalist rhetoric and promoting Kremlin narratives about the need for economic cooperation between Germany and Vladimir Putin.

• Kadyrov’s people and far-rightists. Murad’s brother is Suleiman Dadaev. In 2009, he participated in the murder of former Ramzan Kadyrov bodyguard Umar Israilov in Vienna. Israilov had fled to the EU to testify about torture and extrajudicial executions in Chechnya. The investigation concluded that his murder was ordered by Kadyrov. Suleiman Dadaev was sentenced to 19 years in prison in Austria, but for unclear reasons he was released early — in 2022, he flew direct from Vienna to Moscow and later received a passport under a new name, IStories found.

• Murad Dadaev claims that he does not communicate with his brother. As Chechen opposition figure Tumso Abdurakhmanov noted, in reality, after his release Suleiman Dadaev has visited his brother’s villa in Hanover. How he was able to enter the EU after his release and deportation remains unknown.

• Among the frequent guests at Dadaev’s villa is Said-Magomed Ibragimov. He was a bodyguard for two of Kadyrov’s closest associates, Magomed Daudov and Abuzayed Vismuradov (the current prime minister and deputy prime minister of Chechnya, respectively), and is also included in the network of “official representatives” of Kadyrov in Europe. He has been linked to pro-Kadyrov criminal groups in Germany.

• At the same time, Dadaev’s circle includes not only moderate AfD deputies like Jörn König, but also members of the party’s ultra-nationalist wing such as Stephan Brandner and Mischa Fere. Dadaev also claims that he is in contact with Markus Frohnmaier, one of the most fervent Vladimir Putin apologists within the party.

An anonymous hacker group has breached the infrastructure of Mikord — one of the key developers of the Unified Military Registry (UMR), the human rights organization Go by the Forest, to which the hackers handed over a trove of documents, reports.

The hackers had been inside the system for several months. They gained access to the source code, technical documents, and internal correspondence of Mikord. The group claims it destroyed the company’s infrastructure.

IStories contacted Mikord director Ramil Gabdrakhmanov, who confirmed the hack: “Listen, well, who hasn’t been hacked? These days, a lot of people are under attack.” When asked whether the company is involved in the development of the UMR, Gabdrakhmanov declined to answer. “I can’t comment on anything. We work on several projects,” he said.

Go by the Forest provided the documents received from the hackers to IStories journalists; the newsroom verified their authenticity and confirmed Mikord’s involvement in the development of the UMR. Soon, we will tell you how the registry and its main components work.

Plans by the Russian authorities to create a digital military registry became known in April 2023, when the corresponding bill was adopted by the State Duma in a single day, passing both the second and third readings at once. At that time, Meduza first named one of the registry’s developers — according to the publication, it was RT Labs, a subsidiary of Rostelecom.

In February 2024, the government designated Rostelecom as the sole contractor for the Ministry of Digital Development’s contracts to create the Unified Military Registry. The deadline for completion of the state contracts was set for December 31, 2024. From Putin’s orders it also followed that the UMR and the summons registry were planned to be used already in the fall 2024 draft, but the full launch of the new system took place a year later. Since October 2025, draft notices in the electronic registry began to be posted by military commissariats in dozens of regions across the country, and in four of them, they even abandoned paper draft notices altogether.

A bust of the son of CIA Deputy Director Michael Gloss, who was killed in the war in Ukraine, has been installed at Donetsk School No. 115. This was reported by Alexei Kulemzin, the Russia-appointed mayor of Donetsk, who attended the unveiling of the monument.

“A soldier is not a profession, but a calling. There is no foreign land for those who fight for justice <...> May the heroes be glorified!” — reads the plaque attached to the bust.

Next to Gloss’s monument, a bust of Corporal Ivan Kokovin was also installed; they died together while carrying out a combat mission.

In September, School No. 115 also was named after Gloss and Kokovin.

Michael Gloss was the son of CIA Deputy Director for Digital Innovation Juliana Gloss and Larry Gloss, a developer of software for the U.S. Department of Defense and NATO. In 2023, Michael dropped out of school in the United States, joined the hippies, and set off to travel the world. That summer, he ended up in Russia, and by fall he had signed a contract with the Russian Ministry of Defense. On April 4, 2024, he was killed near Chasiv Yar. He was 21 years old.

Putin posthumously awarded Gloss the Order of Courage, which was presented to the parents of the deceased through U.S. presidential envoy Steven Whitkoff.

During his speech at the “Valdai” forum in October 2025, Putin commented on Gloss’s death in the war.

“How does the anthem go? The United States — the home of the brave. Well, he was a brave man. He truly proved it with his actions, with his life. <...> Even though he was an American, he was a Russian soldier,” he said.

The fate of Gloss was first reported by IStories in April 2025; the full investigation can be read here.

According to the figures Russia provided to the UN, 963 women in total were killed in acts of domestic violence in Russia last year. 530 of them were murdered by their partners (former or current husbands or boyfriends), and the rest (433 women) were killed by other family members.

The total ratio of women killed in acts of domestic violence reached 47% of the total number of those murdered in the country during the year. This is the highest ratio in 15 years: from 2010 to 2019, it rose from 23% to 45% and then began to decline gradually. Last year was the first one when this ratio began to rise since the start of the full-scale war in Ukraine.

This trend can be explained by changes in the approach to the statistics: over time, police officials have gotten better at filling out crime reports, explains Ivan Markov (name changed for security reasons), an expert on Russian judicial and law enforcement system:

“Previously, the ‘relationship with the victim’ field would be left blank. In other words, if one person killed another, the statistics would not not reveal the nature of their relationship. Now this field is filled in increasingly carefully. Global criminology tells us that for a country like Russia this parameter (the ratio of women killed in acts of domestic violence — Ed.) should have reached about 70%. This is what’s going on: we are seeing a slow increase, which probably means the police started to fill out their forms much more carefully.”

The last time Russia published data on domestic violence victims was in 2022. According to the data from the Prosecutor General’s Office, 1,311 women were killed by their family members or partners in 2022. This is higher than the number of 1,008 victims Russia provided to the UN. The figures probably differ due to the way they are recorded: the Prosecutor General’s Office statistics includes both murders and attempted murders, while the data provided to the UN only includes intentional homicides. Since 2023, the Prosecutor General’s Office has not published crime statistics reports. 

The UN data also shows that in 2024 the number of males killed in Russia surged by 40% — from 6,600 to 9,300. Prior to that, it had been steadily declining since 2002, with the exception of a slight increase in 2014–2015.

The increase seems to be due to civilians' casualties in the occupied territories of Ukraine now being included in the number of victims of “intentional homicide.”

“Previously, deaths during combat operations would not be recorded as murders. But at some point, Russia started to count missile strikes as ‘terrorist attacks’ and to open official investigations. In such cases, the killed civilians are considered victims of ‘terrorist attacks.’ As far as I know, the practice has not yet been fully established, but the fact that we are seeing a sudden reversal of a steady downward trend suggests that this might be the case,” Ivan Markov says.

The UN methodology indeed counts deaths by terrorist attacks as cases of intentional homicides. The UN definition includes cases of deaths of people who were not combatants and died as a result of actions intended to “intimidate a population, or to compel a state or an international organization to do or abstain from doing any act.” The breakdown by cause of death, however, hasn't been included in the data for Russia since 2022.

The Russian Interior Ministry’s investigative unit has opened a criminal case for possession of explosives against 37-year-old Moscow punk musician Vladimir Bolobolov, his relatives told IStories.

Bolobolov disappeared without a trace on the morning of August 27 after leaving a café in Reutov. As he later recounted to his relatives and attorney, several men attacked him from behind on the street and quickly forced him into a car. During the ride, they put a bag over his head, beat him with stun guns, attached wires to him, ran electric current through his body, and strangled him, demanding that he confess to “what they already know about him.” The kidnappers did not specify what exactly they wanted to hear from Vladimir. IStories has obtained photographs showing characteristic traces of electric torture on Bolobolov’s body.

At the same time, his relatives filed a missing person report with the police, but law enforcement responded only by saying that he had “probably gone on a bender.”

Later, Vladimir, still with a bag over his head, was taken to an unknown location, handcuffed to a radiator, and the beatings and torture continued. On August 28, Bolobolov was brought to his own apartment in Reutov, where, without any warrants, a search was conducted. Officers from the Moscow and Moscow Oblast branch of the FSB showed him a homemade explosive device disguised as a power bank, which they claimed to have found in his home. According to Bolobolov’s own testimony, he had never seen this item before the search.

The search lasted about six hours. He was allowed to call a friend and ask her to take his cat. The night of August 28 to 29, Bolobolov again spent under “interrogation” with torture at an unknown location, handcuffed to a radiator and with a bag over his head. In this blinded and immobilized state, the security forces put an object in his hand that, by feel, resembled a homemade explosive device, which they claimed to have discovered in his home, according to a relative recounting the man’s memories.

On August 29, Vladimir regained consciousness in the police station for the Dorogomilovo district (he learned this only from his cellmates), where he was forced to sign an administrative protocol for petty hooliganism and was released onto the street that evening without any means of communication.

On August 31, despite his lawyer’s protest, the man was detained again after he filed a kidnapping complaint at the Reutov police station and went to the trauma center to document evidence of torture. Bolobolov was placed under administrative arrest for 15 days, and after serving his sentence, was detained again. Vladimir is currently being held in a temporary detention facility in Balashikha; tomorrow, a court will decide on pretrial restrictions.

Laboratories in two countries independently concluded that Alexei Navalny was poisoned in prison in February 2022. Yulia Navalnaya reported on her Telegram channel.

According to her, in February 2024, Navalny’s close associates managed to smuggle his biological samples abroad and deliver them to a laboratory in one of the Western countries.

“The laboratories concluded that Alexei was killed. Specifically — poisoned,” Navalnaya said.

Navalny’s widow also stated, that according to testimony from five colony employees, before his death the politician suffered severe pain, convulsions, and vomiting, but was not given timely medical assistance.

The forensic medical examination records do not mention convulsions. However, the report does note bruising on Navalny’s elbows and knees, sustained 30–40 minutes before death, as well as hemorrhaging in the parietal region.

“Alexei, in convulsions, was thrashing on the floor. That’s apparently where these marks came from,” Navalnaya said.

No video recordings of Alexei Navalny’s final day in the colony have been preserved.

Border guards prevented a 28-year-old man, who had received a draft notice several days earlier, from leaving Russia. He reported the incident himself on the Telegram channel Pogranichnyy Kontrol [Border Control].

The man said he was issued a draft notice on September 8, requiring him to appear for a medical examination on October 22. After that, the travel ban immediately appeared on the register website. However, he had planned his vacation back in May, so he decided to risk flying. Previously, he had avoided conscription but had not received any draft notices.

“At passport control in Sheremetyevo, officers were called over immediately, without a word. They conducted an explanatory conversation and told me that yes, the ban is indeed showing up in their database, there’s nothing they can do, and that this is the first case they’ve encountered with this new service,” he wrote.

Under current law, a travel restriction is imposed on a citizen as soon as a draft notice is issued in their name. This measure applies only to conscripts: men aged 18–30 who are subject to conscription and do not have the right to deferment or exemption. The restriction should not be applied to other categories of citizens.

“In the case described, the man will only be able to leave Russia after appearing at the military enlistment office or if he appeals the draft notice and the restriction itself,” according to the Movement of Conscientious Objectors (MCO).

The “unified register of military registration” was launched back in August, but this is the first known case where the travel restriction has actually been enforced, writes the MCO. At the same time, there is an indication that the story may be fake — the attached notification photo does not specify which military enlistment office imposed the restriction.