On Aug. 17, 2026, prominent opposition politician Lev Shlosberg was sentenced to 11 years and one month in prison for speaking out against Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine. Photo: Press service of Yabloko’s regional offices in Pskov Earlier today, judge Viktoria Malyamova of the Pskov City Court sentenced Lev Shlosberg, the 63-year-old deputy chairman of the liberal Yabloko party and a well-known anti-war politician, to 11 years and one month in a general-regime penal colony.

North Korea has built a new tactical road about 20 meters wide inside the demilitarized zone (DMZ) and built a bridge about 110 meters long, according to a Daily NK analysis of commercial satellite images from the American operator Planet Labs with a resolution of three meters. The road runs along the northern bank of the Pukhan River and joins a section that runs parallel to the riverbed about 120 meters from the Military Demarcation Line (MDL).

TASS, in a message entitled “TASS: a scenario of color revolutions is unfolding in Ukraine,” writes (original spelling preserved): “The situation that is happening in Ukraine follows the scenario of color revolutions,” Russian security forces told TASS. "Currently, everything is happening according to the classic scenario of color revolutions. Throughout the former Ukrainian SSR, they are reporting problems with cashless payments in supermarkets, which provokes domestic conflicts in stores.

Russian stock indexes have plunged 30% over the past three months, approaching their lowest level since the start of the war. Under conditions of higher taxes, arbitrary property confiscations, falling investment, increasing war damage, and high interest rates, the value of Russian companies will continue to decline. Доступно на русском Contents 1. War and Punishment 2. Profit collapse, defaults, and bankruptcies 3.

Governor of the Nenets Autonomous Okrug Irina Gekht, at a meeting with Vladimir Putin, reported that every tenth man in the region signed a contract with the Ministry of Defense: “This, you know, is also such a northern character and northern spirit, when entire families go to the front to defend their homeland.” According to the latest published estimate from Arkhangelskstat, which The Insider studied , as of January 1, 2025, about 41.9 thousand people lived in the Nenets Autonomous Okrug.

US Congress lawyers are drowning in a flood of bills written with the help of artificial intelligence - the texts are replete with errors and sloppy wording. Politico writes about this with reference to eight current and former employees who worked with the legal service of the House of Representatives (Office of Legislative Counsel, OLC). The service's workload is growing as more congressional offices and outside lobbying groups rely on large language models.

The head of the Azerbaijani diaspora in Moscow, Bakhtiyar Hasanov, was deported from Russia. As reported by the Azerbaijani news agency ARA, he was brought to the airport from a temporary detention center for migrants, where he had been staying since June. Hasanov was deprived of Russian citizenship last year. In July 2025, it became known that the head of the Regional National-Cultural Autonomy of Azerbaijanis of the Moscow Region, Elshan Ibragimov, was deprived of Russian citizenship.

Security forces in Moscow are preparing to bring to court the case of IT specialist Yuri Belenky, who has lived in Bulgaria since 2015, but regularly came to Russia. In 2025, he was detained, and then he was charged with several transfers for the needs of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the Azov regiment. The case was based on a detailed report that the Binance crypto exchange sent at the request of the Investigative Committee. The human rights project “First Department” writes about this.

Moderate solar storms, each several times more powerful than the famous Carrington event of 1859, occur approximately once every two hundred years - and this is much more often than previously thought. Scientists came to this conclusion after analyzing the growth rings of European oak trees, in a study published in the journal Communications Earth & Environment. They found traces of four such events in the first millennium AD - around 14, 553, 675 and 954.

A series of intense heat waves and worsening drought have gripped agriculture across much of Europe, causing vegetable and grain producers to warn of “catastrophic” harvest failures, The Guardian writes . In France, the vegetable harvest dropped, according to the farmers themselves, “very significantly”: they harvested 25% less zucchini, 35% less lettuce, 40% less peas, 60% less broccoli, and 50–100% less artichokes.

The average price of third-class wheat in Russia on August 10–16 decreased by 2.8%, to 11.5 thousand rubles per ton. Fourth-grade wheat fell in price by 3.1%, to 11 thousand rubles, fifth-grade wheat by 2%, to 10 thousand rubles. The price of barley fell by 5.6%, to 9.7 thousand rubles per ton. The cost of fourth-grade wheat fell by 24% over the year, and current grain prices are at their lowest since May 2024.

On August 11, 2025, Deputy Babushkinsky Interdistrict Prosecutor of Moscow Sergei Kachushkin was detained in his office. According to investigators, the prosecutor not only instructed the operatives to use interrogations with bias, but also tortured those arrested. In July 2026, drug trafficking on a large scale and illegal arms trafficking were added to the charges of torture. The trials were held behind closed doors, and the criminal case was classified.

The Skiros tanker (IMO: 9390628) was attacked at the Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC) terminal in Novorossiysk. Bloomberg writes about this, noting that this is the first attack at this terminal in three weeks. As sources told the publication, Skiros was attacked after loading. Although mostly Kazakh oil is loaded at the CPC terminal, this cargo was of Russian origin. The attack took place on August 16.

France's Directorate General of Public Finance (DGFiP), which is also responsible for tax collection, acknowledged a large-scale data breach that occurred as a result of two hacks - in June and July. As AFP reports , the data of 678 thousand individuals and legal entities, as well as about 200 thousand accounts stored in the land registry, were stolen. The French “hacker duo” ZeroBytes took responsibility for the hack.

The Russian LGBT Network announced the cessation of public activities and official closure. The organization will soon delete its pages on social networks. The team explained the decision due to increased risks. Once an organization is included in the “extremist” register, any connection with it is fraught with criminal prosecution for employees, supporters and people who sought help. On April 27, the St.