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Russia

What Russia's push to ban Telegram means for its economy — and war effort

by Olena Goncharova

“Why do you block the internet?” reads one of the comments under the latest post on Roskomnadzor’s official VKontakte social media page — a bland Women’s Day greeting from the very censorship agency leading Russia’s harshest crackdown on online communication in years. Russian authorities have set April as the target for finally blocking Telegram, one of the last popular international messenger apps still accessible in the country, and force users toward the Kremlin’s glitchy “national messenger

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Budgetary Permacrisis: Ukraine's fiscal challenges in 2026

Ukraine started 2026 with a sigh of relief. Positive news on debt restructuring, IMF aid disbursement, bumper foreign exchange reserves, and most importantly, a last-minute compromise €90 bn loan from the EU, suggested that Kyiv would have a moment to catch its breath. Three months on, and this optimism is firmly in the rearview mirror. Hungarian and Slovakian obstruction has derailed progress on loan disbursement, reforms needed for unlocking critical multilateral institution financing remain

Exclusive: We discovered what's going on inside Russia's shadow fleet

The vessels are old, their hulls streaked with rust, and their ownership obscured behind layers of shell companies. Yet the tankers that make up Russia’s so-called shadow fleet, the armada used to move sanctioned oil across the globe, are kept running with modern Western technology including Starlink, an investigation by the Kyiv Independent can reveal. To gain an insight into how the shadow fleet operates, the Kyiv Independent spoke to two Ukrainian sailors who claim they unwittingly became p

part of Russia's "shadow fleet," anchored off the coast of Ahtopol, Bulgaria, on Dec. 8, 2025.

About Russia

The Kyiv Independent’s coverage of news on Russia. Spanning eleven time zones across Eastern Europe and Asia, Russia has an estimated population of 146 million people. Russia’s capital city is Moscow, which is home to almost one in 10 Russians. Russia’s official currency is the Russian Ruble.

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