At least 1,174 residents of the Kursk region disappeared after the Ukrainian army began invading the region. This was announced by Acting Governor Alexander Khinshtein. The official clarified that this number was obtained based on requests to the police from relatives and loved ones of the missing. Of the 1,174 people, according to Khinshtein, 240 Kursk residents have already been found.

Art: D.D. / Mediazona What was once a detention centre for juveniles and women with children, Detention Centre No. 2, or SIZO-2, in Taganrog—a short drive from the occupied Ukrainian city of Mariupol—has for over two and a half years been used to detain captured Ukrainians. The facility has become notorious for inhumane conditions, with former detainees alleging that guards subjected them to beatings and torture, including suspension upside down, from their first day.

In the Baltic Sea, off the coast of the German island of Rügen, the ship Eventin is drifting, carrying almost one hundred thousand tons of oil. The German Maritime Emergency Command told Welt , Spiegel , Bild and Norddeutscher Rundfunk about this. The German side clarifies that the ship cannot maneuver, but it is sealed and safe for the environment. The multipurpose vessel Arkona and the emergency tug Bremen Fighter went to the tanker.

Art: Boris Khmelny / Mediazona Russia considers nearly two hundred organizations “undesirable,” including human rights and religious groups, various Western foundations, and even conservation organizations like the Wild Salmon Center and the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF). However, targeting independent media appears to be the most pressing issue for the authorities.

The Tagansky District Court of Moscow received materials from the administrative case against the TV Center television channel. Mediazona drew attention to this. TV Center drew up a protocol on the “demonstration” of LGBT relationships without the “18+” label (Part 2 of Article 6.21.2 of the Administrative Code). What caused this is still unknown. In May last year, Channel One was fined one million rubles under a similar protocol.

The United States has imposed sanctions against Surgutneftegaz, Gazprom Neft and tankers owned by the US Treasury website. The restrictions included the head of Gazprom Neft, Alexander Dyukov, the company's Moscow and Omsk oil refineries and dozens of production enterprises, including Gazpromneft-Zapolyarye, Gazpromneft-Yamal, Gazpromneft-Noyabrskneftegaz and Gazpromneft-Orenburg.

The Supreme Court of Buryatia sentenced a resident of the republic with the last name Kashin to 13 years in a maximum security colony in a case of treason (Article 275 of the Criminal Code). Mediazona found information about this on the website of the Fifth Court of Appeal of General Jurisdiction. The verdict was handed down on October 23, 2024. Today, January 10, the court of appeal reviewed the case, upholding the previous decision. According to the prosecution, V.A.

Oil products leaked from the stern of the Volgoneft-239 tanker, which ran aground near the port of Taman in the Temryuk region. The operational headquarters of the Krasnodar region reported this. Monitoring teams this morning discovered that fuel oil was leaking from the vessel, the Ministry of Transport writes . “It is currently unknown what the extent of the damage is. There are specialists from the Marine Rescue Service on the ship who must establish this,” the operational headquarters said.

Mathematician Mikhail Verbitsky was included in the register of “terrorists and extremists” maintained by Rosfinmonitoring. His name has an asterisk on the list; this indicates that a case was opened against Verbitsky in absentia under terrorism charges. RIA Novosti claimed in November 2024 that the mathematician who condemned the war in Ukraine was being prosecuted under the article on calls for terrorism on the Internet (Part 2 of Article 205.2 of the Criminal Code).

In 2024, Russian courts issued 81 fines under Article 20.33 of the Code of Administrative Offenses to journalists and readers of publications that were declared “undesirable.” This is evidenced by Mediazona’s calculations based on data from the websites of district courts. Among editorial offices, Meduza had the most protocols in 2024 (45). In second place is Radio Liberty (12), then Dozhd (9) and others.

The Commissioner for Human Rights in Russia, Tatyana Moskalkova , and the acting governor of the Kursk region, Alexander Khinshtein, published for the first time since August a list of missing persons after the invasion of the Ukrainian Armed Forces into the region.

After talking with telephone scammers, 18-year-old student of the Physics and Technology School of Electronics, Photonics and Molecular Physics (FEPM) of the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, Petr Vetchinkin, died. His death was reported in the FEFM group for students and graduate students on VKontakte. University representatives published a text compiled by the young man’s family and loved ones. It says that Vetchinkin died on December 21, 2024.

Yandex co-founder Arkady Volozh, in an interview with Bloomberg, compared his departure from Russia and the sale of the company’s Russian business to the exodus of Jews from Egypt. “I didn’t lose everything <…> In general, they let us leave with some savings. It was an outcome, just like in Egypt,” Volozh commented on the deal. According to the company's press release , the Russian division was sold for 475 billion rubles (about 5.2 billion US dollars).

The St. Petersburg police are conducting an investigation into the death of a detainee in the department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in Vyborg, Leningrad Region, according to the department’s telegram channel. The police said that on January 8, the car of a 29-year-old resident of Vyborg was stopped by traffic police officers due to a violation of traffic rules. They noticed “visible signs of drug intoxication” in the driver.

Rosfinmonitoring refused to exclude Alexei Navalny, who was killed in a colony in Kharp, from the list of “terrorists and extremists.” The politician's widow, Yulia Navalnaya, reported this with reference to the department's response.