“Non-hostile” vessels can pass through the Strait of Hormuz in coordination with Tehran. The Iranian authorities sent this message to the UN Security Council and the International Maritime Organization, the Financial Times and Reuters wrote on March 24.

Mikhail Zygar wrote a column about this in The New York Times. We retell the main thing from it Valery Sharifulin / TASS / Profimedia At the beginning of 2026, the Russian economy was fully overtaken by the consequences of the war with Ukraine and Western sanctions, writes Mikhail Zygar. Budget revenues began to decline, production is declining, foreign trade is shrinking (Russia is forced to sell oil to India at $22 per barrel - this is about a third of the market price).

HBO, the television channel responsible for producing the series about the wizard Harry Potter, posted a teaser for the first season on social networks. It will be called "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" and will consist of eight episodes. Harry Potter HBO has announced work on a Harry Potter series in 2023. The first season is scheduled to premiere on Christmas Day 2026 on the HBO Max streaming platform.

From April 1, 2026, individuals will not be able to export cash rubles from Russia to the EAEU countries (Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan) in an amount exceeding the equivalent of 100 thousand dollars. This decree was signed by Russian President Vladimir Putin. For individual entrepreneurs and legal entities, the ban will apply regardless of the amount. An exception will be the export of cash rubles through international airports of the Russian Federation.

At least 40% of Russia’s capacity to supply oil abroad (2 million barrels per day) is temporarily disabled as a result of Ukrainian attacks and the detention of tankers from the Russian “shadow fleet,” Reuters estimates . “This is the most serious disruption to oil supplies in modern Russian history, and it comes just as oil prices exceeded $100 a barrel due to the [US and Israeli] war with Iran,” Reuters noted.

Trump's special envoy John Cole talks about negotiations with Lukashenko Press service of the President of Belarus / AFP / Scanpix / LETA Joe Cole and Alexander Lukashenko during a meeting in Minsk. March 19, 2026 After Donald Trump returned to the White House, the United States began to restore relations with Alexander Lukashenko.

Former governor of the Kursk region Alexey Smirnov said that his predecessor in this post, Roman Starovoit, received kickbacks on the construction of fortifications. Smirnov, who himself is accused of taking bribes in the construction of border fortifications, made these statements at his trial. According to Smirnov, Starovoit received at least 21 million rubles from kickbacks. Smirnov, who headed the Kursk region from May to December 2024, was detained in April 2025.

A court in the Moscow region of Pushkino sentenced film critic Ekaterina Barabash in absentia to five years in a general regime colony on charges of spreading “fakes” about the Russian army. Barabash herself reported this on Facebook. “Now I’m officially a criminal. But it’s awkward in front of like-minded friends and colleagues on the article - everyone gets 8, but for some reason I only get 5. It’s even awkward,” she wrote.

Russian banks opposed the new legislative norm, which obliges them to confirm financial transactions through the national instant messenger Max. Kommersant writes about this with reference to a letter that the National Financial Market Council sent to the Central Bank and the government. A new anti-fraud bill would require both SMS and Max verification for all “meaningful activity” on bank accounts.

More than a thousand schools throughout Russia have included the manufacture of equipment for the needs of the army in the compulsory curriculum, writes “Verstka”. The publication’s journalists, together with the “Not the Norm” project, analyzed more than 50 million posts from school public pages on VK and found that many educational institutions have actually become “shweibats” who use child labor to equip Russian soldiers fighting in Ukraine.

1491st day. The Ukrainian Armed Forces are attacking Russia in the Baltic: a ship was damaged at the shipyard in Vyborg, there was a strong fire in the port of Ust-Luga. Ukrainian drones fell in Latvia and Estonia Since February 24, 2022, Meduza has been broadcasting live about the Russian-Ukrainian war. We publish your letters every day because we are sure that we need to continue talking about the war. Share with us your thoughts about the war. What feelings are you experiencing?

“Things like this” told how and why this happened Kirill Kukhmar / TASS / Profimedia Livestock in the Novosibirsk region, where authorities declared a quarantine due to a “dangerous disease,” were killed using methods that are prohibited in international practice. Residents of villages in the Novosibirsk region, who were interviewed by journalists from the publication Takie Dela, reported that they were not told what kind of drug was administered to their animals.

Hmm-hmm-hmm... Why would that be? As Meduza discovered, a series of articles with similar headlines appeared in Russian regional media stating that Russians should delete Telegram from their phones by March 31, 2026. At the same time, the pro-Kremlin tabloid Baza published an article saying that Russians’ iPhones allegedly overheat and fail due to VPN. All this is happening against the backdrop of a slow - but apparently irreversible - blocking of the messenger.

The press service of the mobile operator Beeline denied reports that the company blocks Telegram and limits the Internet to those users who do not close the messenger on their devices. On March 25, a screenshot with a message from supposedly Beeline support service circulated on social networks.

Let's summarize the results of the shutdown: communications were turned off at the request of the FSB, operators were simply “lowered down from above” with a map of the districts Evgeny Messman / TASS / ZUMA Press / Scanpix / LETA Mobile Internet in Moscow began to be turned off on the evening of March 5.