Leonid Bershidsky remembers pioneering journalist Derk Sauer Photo shared by a Meduza reader Derk Sauer Derk Sauer, who died in Amsterdam on Thursday at the age of 72, was a figure of rare consequence in the history of post-Soviet journalism. A former reporter and editor in the Netherlands, he departed for the Soviet Union in the late 1980s and went on to establish Independent Media, a publishing house built around local editions of Western glossy magazines.

U.S. officials conducted secret negotiations with senior Russian officials this week to end the war in Ukraine but made no headway, Secretary of State Marco Rubio revealed on Fox News Radio . The previously unreported talks took place on July 28 or 29 with “some of Putin’s top people” in hopes of finding a path to peace. The White House’s patience with Moscow appears to be running thin after more than six months of diplomatic efforts.

Leonid Bershidsky - in memory of Derk Sauer Meduza Reader Archive Derk Sauer died in Amsterdam. He was a reporter and editor in the Netherlands before leaving for the USSR in the late 1980s. Independent Media, which Sauer built in Russia, published local versions of Western glossy magazines and made him a rich man. The main project of his life was Vedomosti, the first newspaper in Russia to work according to high Western standards.

Russian state media outlet RIA Novosti published an inflammatory column Wednesday titled There’s No Other Option: No One Should Remain Alive in Ukraine by columnist Kirill Strelnikov. The piece argues that Western assessments portraying Ukraine’s military favorably are mere propaganda designed to keep Ukrainians fighting as “laboratory rats” for Western military research. The column contrasts Western praise for Ukrainian military capabilities with Kyiv’s growing setbacks on the battlefield.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed amendments introducing misdemeanor penalties for the “intentional” search for banned materials online, including when using a VPN. The corresponding document was published on Russia’s official legal information portal. Under the new legislation, individuals found to have “deliberately” searched for “extremist” content face fines ranging from 3,000 to 5,000 rubles (approximately $37 to $62).

A year after reaching Pokrovsk, Russian forces appear ready to launch a full assault Like our earlier reports on the combat situation in Ukraine, this article takes stock of the recent developments on the battlefield based on open-source information. Meduza has condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine from the very start, and our detailed military analyses are part of our commitment to objective reporting on a war we firmly oppose.

The Indian government has instructed state-owned oil refiners to “come up with plans for buying non-Russian crude,” sources familiar with the matter told Bloomberg . The guidance reportedly amounts to “scenario planning, should Russian crude become unavailable.” According to Reuters , Indian state refiners have stopped buying Russian oil over the past week amid narrowing discounts and threats from U.S. President Donald Trump.

Very important services break down regularly. We have compiled a list Pavel Bednyakov / AP / Scanpix / LETA In Russia, turning off the Internet is routine. Crashes of websites and services too. The biggest failure occurred on July 28, when Ukrainian and Belarusian hackers hacked Aeroflot’s systems: in a day and a half, 150 flights were delayed, at least 20 thousand passengers were affected, and the carrier’s loss exceeded 250 million rubles.

Russia’s ex-President Dmitry Medvedev gets to nuclear threats in record time in latest social media dust-up with Trump Alexander Shcherbak / TASS / Profimedia Dmitry Medvedev — Russia’s onetime reformist president and current Security Council deputy chairman — made headlines this week with a string of frantic social media posts that drew sharp reactions from U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham and President Donald Trump.

Dutch journalist and entrepreneur Derk Sauer, who built a publishing empire in post-Soviet Russia that included The Moscow Times and Vedomosti, died at 72, Het Parool reported on Thursday. He sustained severe injuries in a sailing accident in Greece a month ago and underwent treatment in Athens and Amsterdam hospitals. Sauer’s death marks the end of an era for Western media ventures in Russia.

In it you need to meet the embodiment of evil and survive. You can also set everything on fire Morteshka The game “Dashing One-Eyed” was released on PC - a mystical horror from the Perm studio Morteshka, inspired by ancient Russian fairy tales. It tells the story of a nameless Blacksmith who goes on a quest to find a mysterious, dangerous and evil creature named Likho.

Ex-army chief and U.K. Ambassador Valerii Zaluzhnyi strikes a pose for Vogue Ukraine — and gets Russian propagandists talking Ukraine’s former army commander-in-chief and current U.K. ambassador, Valerii Zaluzhnyi, made a splash this week by penning a column and appearing in a photo shoot for Vogue Ukraine. The photos, which showed Zaluzhnyi dressed not in battle fatigues but in a smart navy-blue suit, prompted a range of commentary in Ukraine, from messages of support to memes.

The authors remembered that the series has been on the air for 12 years, and finally adjusted to the mature viewers Adult Swim Adult Swim has released the eighth season of Rick and Morty, a fantastic animated series about interdimensional travelers: a brilliant inventor and his teenage grandson. More precisely, this is how the series was presented before. Now the plot centers on the middle generation of this unusual family: Rick's daughter Beth and her husband Jerry.

One thousand two hundred and fifty-fourth day. Massive attack on Kyiv. 31 people killed Oleksii Filippov / AFP / Scanpix / LETA Since February 24, 2022, Meduza has been broadcasting live about the Russian-Ukrainian war. We publish your letters in our daily materials because we are sure that we need to continue talking about the war. How do you feel about the ongoing war? How is it affecting you personally right now?

The main thing from the investigation of the Sistema project XXII Carat Club Villas The head of Rostec, Sergei Chemezov, has a “dacha cooperative” in Dubai. This is a cottage community in which his villa is adjacent to two of the same kind, owned by Chemezov’s colleagues in the defense industry - the head of the Russian Helicopters holding company Nikolai Kolesov and the head of Rosoboronexport Alexander Mikheev, the Sistema investigative project found out.