Anti-war activists explain the challenges of protesting in Azerbaijan Story by Bashir Kitachayev for The Beet . Edited by Eilish Hart . Two and a half years ago, the decades-long conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia over Nagorno-Karabakh escalated into a full-blown war . Today, American and European officials are urging the two sides to seize upon recent diplomatic momentum and broker a lasting peace.

In the Rostov region, air defense systems shot down a Ukrainian missile near the city of Morozovsk, said the governor of the region, Vasily Golubev. “An air defense system went off in the Morozovsk area, shooting down a Ukrainian missile. The military is doing their job. Keep calm,” Golubev’s Telegram channel says. He did not provide other details of what happened. Russian and Ukrainian telegram channels published a video, presumably, of air defense operations in the Morozovsk region.

Members of the House of Commons of the British Parliament unanimously supported the decision to recognize the Holodomor of the 1930s as genocide of the Ukrainian people, the BBC Russian Service reports. The vote was initiated by Conservative MP Pauline Letham. According to her, the decision should be a message to Russian President Vladimir Putin in connection with the war he unleashed in Ukraine.

Citing a Ukrainian military source, the news website Ukrainska Pravda reports that the intelligence ship Ivan Khurs, part of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, has been damaged in a Ukrainian naval drone attack. According to the speaker, the ship didn’t sink but urgently needed repairs. “The Russians are now hastily fixing it,” he told the publication. On Thursday, a 14-second video of a drone attack on a Russian ship was published on an unofficial Ukrainian military Telegram channel.

The Dutch prosecutor's office has seized a plot of land in the suburbs of Amsterdam that belongs to Jorrit Faassen, the ex-husband of Russian President Vladimir Putin's eldest daughter , Maria Vorontsova . As journalists from Proekt, the Dutch publication Follow the money and The Guardian found out, the prosecutor's office arrested Faassen's plot in the village of Duivendrecht on May 12. Previously, this plot was owned by structures of Putin's friends - businessmen Arkady and Boris Rotenberg.

The war has been going on for more than a year. The amount of claims - tens and hundreds of millions of dollars. The main thing from the investigation of "Ukrainian Truth" Sergey Bobok / AFP / Scanpix / Leta After the beginning of the full -scale Russian invasion, the Armed Forces of Ukraine collided with an acute shortage of ammunition and military equipment.

References to the prosecutor and judge of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, Karim Ahmad Khan and Rosario Salvatore Aital, who issued a warrant for the arrest of Russian President Vladimir Putin, appeared on the wanted board of the Russian Interior Ministry in the Moscow region of Severnoye Tushino, Sota writes. "Attention wanted!

Moscow’s prestigious School of Higher Economics will fully fund the education of students who have participated in the “special military operation” (“SVO”) and their family members, says a university press release. “In accordance with the presidential decree, we have a special quota for the children of participants in the ‘special military operation’ — 10 percent of our admissions slots have been allocated.

FSB officers used intimate photos of Moscow State University postgraduate student Azat Miftakhov, who is serving a sentence in a penal colony for the attack on the United Russia office, to achieve his transfer to a lower caste of prisoners. Miftakhov's wife Elena Gorban told Doxa about this. According to her, in early 2019, Miftakhov found himself in the status of "offended" because of his bisexuality, after the FSB distributed his photos among other prisoners.

The reported capture of Bakhmut has magnified the Wagner Group leader’s influence in the Kremlin, but competitors may cut him down to size Evgeny Prigozhin’s press service / AFP / Scanpix / LETA A still from Evgeny Prigozhin’s video, shot in “liberated Bakhmut,” May 20, 2023 Over the past several days, Moscow has been celebrating its purported capture of Bakhmut, even though some Ukrainian units are still fighting for the city.

The reconnaissance ship Ivan Khurs, which is part of the Black Sea Fleet of the Russian Federation, was damaged as a result of an attack by Ukrainian naval drones in the Black Sea, Ukrayinska Pravda reports, citing a source in military circles. “It didn’t sink, but there was a hit, there is significant damage to the hull and equipment. Now the Russians are hastily repairing, ”said the source of the Ukrainian edition.

Konstantin Sonin, an economist and professor at the University of Chicago, was placed on Russia’s federal wanted list, according to Mediazona, which found this information in the Internal Affairs Ministry’s database. In March, Russia’s Investigative Committee opened a criminal case under the statute on “fakes” about the Russian Army against Sonin.

Animated films from Studio Ghibli by Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki will be unavailable to users of Russian online cinemas from June 1, TASS reports. According to an agency source in the industry, the distributor of Ghibli films in Russia was unable to renew the screening rights. On May 25, notifications appeared on the pages of Ghibli cartoons in the Kinopoisk online cinema that the pictures would be available to users until May 31.

A new criminal case is being mounted against the imprisoned opposition politician Alexey Navalny, now serving a nine-year sentence in a Russian penal colony. The Russian news outlet Mediazona has spotted a new docket filed at the Moscow City Court. At first, the court records only listed one new felony charge against Navalny: creating an extremist organization.

The Higher School of Economics intends to educate students who are participants of the " SVO " and their close relatives in the main educational programs at the expense of the university, the press service of the university reports. "According to the presidential decree, a special quota was created for children of SVO participants - 10% of the places from the admissions control figures were allocated under it.