The Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) claims to have prevented a series of terrorist attacks aimed at high-ranking military personnel of the Russian Ministry of Defense and members of their families. According to the FSB, the preparation of the crimes was carried out by the Ukrainian special services with the involvement of recruited Russian citizens. According to the department’s statement, in November 2024, a Russian citizen recruited by the Ukrainian special services arrived in Moscow.

On the night of December 24-25, the Muslim center “Nur” in Serpukhov was set on fire. A certain “autonomous combat group” of the neo-Nazi movement NS/WP Crew, banned in Russia, took responsibility for the arson. In a circulated video of the moment of the arson, one masked man throws a Molotov cocktail at the building. The incident was brought to the attention of the NVMP monitoring project, which tracks neo-Nazi attacks.

Alexandra's stepfather, Timur Ivanov, served as Russia's Deputy Minister of Defense from 2016 to 2024. Before joining the MoD, he worked under Sergey Shoigu during the latter’s stint as Governor of the Moscow Region. In 2022, the late Alexei Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation (ACF) collaborated with the independent investigative outlet Proekt to publish an exposé about the luxurious lifestyle of the deputy minister and his family.

Two people - a courier and an alleged bomber - were detained by the special services for attempting to undermine the head of the Archangel Z-project, Mikhail Filippov, who specializes in training to control UAVs, Filippov himself told RTVI. “The secret services led and controlled them. I don’t know the details,” Filippov told the publication’s journalist.

TV channels “Russia-1”, First and NTV did not talk about the version about the crash of the Azerbaijan Airlines airliner as a result of air defense operations in the Chechen Republic. This is evidenced by an analysis of evening news broadcasts conducted by The Insider. The broadcast did not mention the previously put forward version of a collision with birds, and also did not talk about the fact that the plane could have been shot down by a Russian Pantsir system.

The head of Yakutia, Aisen Nikolaev, commented for the first time on the bill allowing for the abolition of elections of heads of municipalities in Yakutia. Previously, he advocated popular elections for several years, but now he explained why he changed his mind. “At one time I said that direct elections should be preserved. But life has changed since then.

Bozumbayev also said that the country's authorities have opened a criminal case into the crash, and criminologists and civil aviation experts have already arrived at the scene to conduct an investigation: “As part of the criminal case, examinations will be carried out in cooperation with the services of neighboring states.” The plane of the Azerbaijani airline Azerbaijan Airlines, performing a Baku-Grozny flight on December 25, for unknown reasons, requested an emergency landing at Aktau airport

Social anthropologist Alexandra Arkhipova conducted an investigation and found that behind the pseudonym “Anna Korobkova,” known for mass denunciations, is probably a journalist from Yekaterinburg, Ivan Abaturov. The BBC Russian Service reports this and publishes the results of its research. Arkhipova herself also became a victim of such a denunciation.

“Go through the forest” helped 843 people desert from the Russian army in 2024, project founder Grigory Sverdlin announced on Twitter. According to him, activists helped another 22 thousand people avoid joining the army. “[We] helped to understand the legislation, arrange deferments and AGS , and make a difficult decision. 480 people received consultations with a psychologist,” Sverdlin wrote. It is clarified that “Walk through the Forest” received an average of 71 applications per day.

Anonymous sources within the Azerbaijani government cited by Euronews have confirmed that Flight 8432 that crashed near the city of Aktau in Kazakhstan on Wednesday morning was damaged by a Russian surface-to-air missile during drone activity over Grozny, where the flight was originally headed from Baku. This claim has also been reported by Caliber.Az , a publication reportedly linked to Azerbaijani authorities.

Three submarine cables (two from Elisa Eesti AS and one from CITIC Telecom CPC), which run along the bottom of the Gulf of Finland and connect Finland and Estonia, turned out to be faulty. The ERR publication writes about this. The cause of today's problems is unknown. The companies said that users were not affected by the outage as they had the option to use alternative cables.

Apple explained the removal of Russian media applications and VPN services from the Russian App Store by the need to comply with local laws in order to continue to provide its services in the country.

The Krasnodar Territory needs federal assistance in eliminating a fuel oil spill on the Black Sea coast. The head of Kuban, Veniamin Kondratyev, said that he addressed the Minister of Emergency Situations Alexander Kurenkov with this request. According to Kondratiev, to date more than 30 thousand tons of contaminated soil have been collected, “but, according to preliminary calculations, the volume may increase to 200 thousand tons.” “Today it is important to establish a system for its disposal.

Kremlin-backed television channels Rossiya-1 , Perviy Kanal , and NTV did not cover international media reports that pointed to a Russian surface-to-air missile beng the likely cause of the downing of Azerbaijan Airlines Flight 8243 on Wednesday, as per The Insider’s analysis of the evening news on Dec. 26. The aircraft, an Embraer 190 jet, was en route from Baku to Grozny on Dec. 25 when it made an emergency landing request at Aktau Airport in Kazakhstan for unspecified reasons.

An Azerbaijan Airlines plane, flying from Baku to Grozny on December 25, requested an emergency landing at Aktau Airport in Kazakhstan for unknown reasons but ultimately crashed there. Of the 67 people on board, 38 were killed , while the rest survived. Among the dead were seven Russian citizens. One theory suggests the Embraer 190 aircraft was unable to land in Grozny due to heavy fog.