Melkonyants was arrested in August 2023 in connection with the activities of the European Network of Election Monitoring Organizations (ENEMO), which was co-founded by Golos's legal predecessor, the Golos association.
Ukraine's underground storage facilities are currently using 19.4% of their capacity. Almost 32%, or 2.79 bcm, less gas is available in the storages than in the previous year, according to the estimates.
The majority of Ukrainians, 71%, do not support holding elections before a full peace deal, even in the case of a ceasefire and security guarantees, according to a poll published by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) on May 14.
"He'd like me to be there, and that's a possibility. ... I don't know that he would be there if I'm not there. We're going to find out," U.S. President Donald Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One while traveling to Qatar, Reuters reported.
Trump has long demanded that NATO allies increase their military spending, previously calling for the alliance to raise its benchmark from 2% to 5% of GDP.
More than 1,000 Russian government entities and 1,200 private companies are involved in the economy of occupied Mariupol, a major southeastern city occupied by Russia after it invaded Ukraine in 2022, according to a research paper published on May 14.
The measures target almost 200 ships of Russia's "shadow fleet," 30 companies involved in sanctions evasion, 75 sanctions on entities and individuals linked to the Russian military-industrial complex, and more.
The government has approved "reform roadmaps in the rule of law, public administration, and democratic institutions, as well as Ukraine’s negotiation position," Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said.
The statement did not name the ex-official by name, but details of the case indicate it relates to Oleh Hladkovsky, a former deputy secretary of Ukraine's top security body who has been wanted since mid-April.
Brazilian President Lula da Silva claimed that Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha had appealed to his Brazilian counterpart, Mauro Vieira, to ask Putin if he was willing to conclude a peace agreement.
U.S. Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris gestures as former U.S. President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks during a presidential debate at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, US on Sep. 10, 2024. Photo for illustrative purposes. (Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images)
A Russian troll farm known as Storm-1516 was behind the creation and dissemination of a fake news story that alleged that U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris was responsible for a hit-and-run in 2011 that paralyzed a girl, Microsoft said in a report published on Sept. 17.
CBS News previously debunked the story, but Microsoft's report was the first indication that Russia was the source of the false news. The story was initially spread by a website disguised as a local San Francisco media outlet and included an embedded video that Microsoft said used a paid actor.
Storm-1516 is "adept at grabbing headlines with its outlandish fake videos and scandalous claims," Microsoft said. It and other Russian troll farms "will likely only escalate its targeting of the Harris-(Tim) Walz campaign in the lead-up to election day."
Beyond the influence campaigns, Microsoft said that "Russian cyber proxies and hacktivist groups" have also been involved in direct attacks on U.S. and EU election infrastructure, such as a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack on websites associated with elections for the EU parliament earlier in 2024.
The usage of such cyber proxies "offer(s) a method for potentially laundering compromising information garnered from a hack-and-leak operation while maintaining a veil of plausible deniability for the Kremlin," Microsoft said.
"Cyber proxies may also be employed for stoking fear of electoral disruption just before or on election day in November," the report added.
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