Latest reports
Everything we have published, newest first.
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Situation, report
Russia has banned night movement in a five-kilometre strip beside Estonia until 26 September. The zone it sits in was drawn in 2006, not this June.
An FSB border directorate notice bans night movement outside settlements within five kilometres of the Estonian border, hunting and firearms, and small craft on a stretch of the Narva, from 16 to 26 September. The border zone it applies to dates from a 2006 order, not one issued this June as reported. Estonia's border representative calls the measure neither routine nor extraordinary, and nothing read here ties it to mobilisation.
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Situation, report
US prosecutors say a Russian network offered $40,000 to kill a dissident in America. One defendant was already wanted in Lithuania.
The US Justice Department has unsealed charges against five people it says work for Russian intelligence, alleging murder-for-hire offers in the United States and Lithuania. One of the five had already been named by Lithuanian prosecutors, and by a Deutsche Welle investigation, over arson attacks in four EU countries. All five remain at large and nothing has been tested in court.
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Situation, opinion
United Russia went from 49.8 per cent to 57.83. The war was on the ballot and the war won.
With over 95 per cent counted, Russia's Central Election Commission gives United Russia 57.83 per cent and 355 of 450 Duma seats, up from 49.8 per cent in 2021. Putin cast the vote as a test of support for the war.
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Energy and shipping, opinion
Ukraine says it has disabled 45 per cent of Russian refining. The bill is arriving at everyone's pump.
Ukraine's General Staff puts the damage to Russia's design refining capacity above 45 per cent and names the plants. The same day, Reuters reports record diesel prices in Europe and the United States and the IEA says there are few options left to stop further rises.
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Situation, opinion
Russia has been firing fewer ballistic missiles since August. That is the worrying part.
Bloomberg, relayed by Ukrainska Pravda, reports that Russia's reduced use of ballistic missiles since August may mean it is stockpiling them for winter strikes on Ukraine's energy grid. This column examines how much that inference can carry.
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Situation, opinion
Brussels has drafted its largest sanctions list. On Monday morning it could not agree to extend the ones it has.
A document obtained by the Kyiv Independent sets out nearly 1,600 proposed EU listings aimed at Russia's defence industry, for adoption on 7 October. It lands on the same day the bloc's ambassadors ended a morning meeting without agreeing to extend the sanctions already in force, a day before that extension runs out.
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Energy and shipping, opinion
Trump says he is working on a massive potash deal. Belarus says its volumes are all contracted.
The US president said he is working on a deal to buy Belarusian potash at a better price than Canada's. The same day, Belarus's own leader said this year's volumes are contracted and none are free. This column reads the two statements together.
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Situation, news analysis
Moscow’s war above the traffic: the Pantsir highway video
A Pantsir appears above a busy road in footage identified as Moscow. Below it, traffic keeps moving. After the refinery strike, the harder question is what the official interception counts actually tell residents.
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Situation, opinion
A UN rapporteur says 223 people were killed unlawfully at sea. The same week, sanctions on the court were reported ready.
A UN special rapporteur counts 68 US strikes and 223 dead in the Caribbean and Pacific and calls them crimes against humanity of murder. Separately, Reuters reports that sanctions against the whole International Criminal Court have been prepared, with the timing still unclear. This column is about what happens to accountability when both are true at once.
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Situation, opinion
Moscow did not sound its air-raid sirens. The polls were open.
The Institute for the Study of War assesses that authorities in the Moscow region withheld sirens and SMS alerts during a major Ukrainian strike, while State Duma voting finished. This column asks what the silence proves and what it only suggests.
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Situation, opinion
The White House says it is not attacking the free press, only the fake news. It decides which is which.
Three newsrooms were banned on Friday. On Monday they sued, and the four networks that had not been banned switched off the camera they share. This column argues that the refusal is right, that it is late, and that a paper covering the edge of a world war has a selfish stake in whether it holds.
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Situation, report
EU ambassadors failed to renew the sanctions on Monday morning. The extension runs to Tuesday.
EU ambassadors ended their September 21 morning meeting without agreement on renewing individual Russia sanctions. The legal extension runs to September 22; a reported compromise remains a proposal.
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Inside Iran, report
Iran's statisticians say the economy shrank 10.1 per cent. The quarter they measured ended in June.
The Statistical Center of Iran reported on Sunday that GDP fell 10.1 per cent year on year in the first quarter of the Persian year, and 4.6 per cent with oil taken out. The count stops on June 20, before the months for which Kpler and Vortexa estimate the lowest Iranian crude loadings.
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Situation, opinion
Canada is buying insurance in Europe. Say plainly what it insures against.
France's president backed Canada as the European Union's first associate member, and the two governments agreed to share space and defense infrastructure. This column reads the day as insurance and asks who is being insured against.
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Energy and shipping, opinion
Ninety per cent of Ukraine's steel has stopped. Seventeen of its workers are dead.
Kyiv Post reports that Russian ballistic missiles have halted the three plants behind 90 per cent of Ukraine's steel, killing 17 workers. The language of idled capacity is the wrong language for what the owners describe.
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Situation, opinion
Zelensky says Ukraine fired its own ballistic missile. The supply line is the story.
Volodymyr Zelensky says Ukraine used a domestically developed ballistic missile, the Pelican, in strikes on Russia on Sept. 20. NV reports Ukraine has been building its own systems to reduce reliance on foreign weapons. This column argues that reliance, not the warhead, is the subject.
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Situation, opinion
Macron says there will be no warning. Take him at his word.
A translation of the French president's 18 September press conference is headlined with his sentence that a physical attack will arrive unannounced. His own account of the weeks before it shows where that belief leads.
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Situation, opinion
Zelensky made an offer to stop. The locomotive got the picture.
On September 14 Ukraine's president said he would halt strikes on Russian territory if allies secured a genuine Russian commitment to spare Ukraine's critical infrastructure. One wire report shows what an offer to stop has to compete with.
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Situation, report
A Czech spy chief says Russia could move on NATO territory in 'months, not years'. Latvia's says: 'We don't see indications of an imminent attack.'
The head of the Czech Republic's BIS security service told the Guardian that a limited Russian incursion into NATO territory could come in 'months, not years'. In the same report Latvia's security chief said he sees no indications of an imminent attack, and neither man would discuss the intelligence. Poland's prime minister says strikes are planned. The Kremlin denied any such plans in August.
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Situation, report
Russia is putting a war network in orbit. Thirty-one are up, two hundred and fifty-two are planned, and the ones that fell have names.
Bureau 1440's Rassvet constellation is meant to give Russian forces in Ukraine steady communications of their own. RFE/RL counts 31 satellites in orbit against 252 planned, and reports that Rassvet terminals have not been found on Russian drones or missiles as of yet.
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Situation, report
The Pentagon says it has all the weapons it needs. Allies are reportedly told to wait up to five years for theirs.
Bloomberg, citing unnamed officials, reports that Washington has warned allies of delays of up to five years in key weapons deliveries while it refills stockpiles run down against Iran. The Pentagon's public position is that it has every weapon it needs. Its own inspector general wrote of 'strategic inventory shortfalls'.
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Situation, report
Tehran says it has been told what is coming. Trump, the same day: 'if and when do I blow the entire nation up?'
Iran's central military command said on Sunday it had received information that Washington will resume action against it, with backing from other countries in the region, and promised sustained strikes on US bases if it happens. The same day, a Fox News correspondent said the president was in "deciding mode" and weighing three courses, one of them wiping Iran out. Neither report carries a date.
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Energy and shipping, news analysis
Kapotnya’s refinery fire: smoke is not a unit of measurement
A refinery reported to supply some 40% of Moscow’s fuel market was hit overnight. That figure says what the plant was worth before the drones came, not what it lost after.
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Situation, opinion
Coming soon: a decision. Available now: the suspense.
The New York Post reports Trump's latest Iran remarks. A media commentary on the gap between an announcement and a trailer for one.
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Situation, report
Brussels and Helsinki say 72 hours. Berlin's guide is reported to say ten days.
The European Commission asks the public for a minimum of 72 hours of supplies. Finland asks the same and, alone among the sources read here, says what the three days are for. Germany's new civil-protection guide is reported to ask for ten days.
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Situation, opinion
The Kremlin wants a mandate. It has arranged the answer.
An election can count the votes it permits. That does not entitle a government to claim the consent it has made difficult to withhold.
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Situation, report
Moscow says it shot down 450 drones on election day. Some reached the refinery anyway.
Russian officials report three dead in the Moscow region and damage at the capital's oil refinery after what the mayor called the largest drone attack ever on the city. Zelenskyy claims the strike, and every drone count comes from Moscow.
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Situation, news analysis
The Russia sanctions law does not ask the President. It tells him, by 18 October.
The White House called it a law that "authorizes" sanctions. The text Trump signed says the President "shall" impose them within 30 days, names four Russian financial institutions and reaches well past them, and makes declining to act a written statement to Congress that a waiver serves the national interest.
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Situation, report
The Houthis say they hit Riyadh. Saudi Arabia says it shot the missile down.
The Saudi-led coalition confirmed a ballistic missile was fired at the capital on Saturday and says it was intercepted. A fuel tank burned near the airport the same day, and no source read here establishes why.
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Situation, editorial roundtable
The false report was caught. That is not yet evidence of a safeguard.
A roundtable on the difference between a designed safeguard and a fortunate intervention, drawing on two accounts of mistaken intelligence.
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Situation, report
South Korea rules out joining the Iran war, keeps shipping protection under review
Lee Jae Myung ruled out deployments involving participation in the Iran war. A stronger role protecting South Korean shipping remains under consideration.
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Situation, news analysis
The report was false. The military preparations were real.
CNN reports a Chinese-vessel interception was planned on faulty AI-assisted intelligence. The disclosure raises concrete questions about verification.
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Situation, news analysis
Greenland has a deal. The signatures are still to come.
Trump announces expanded military access. Denmark says sovereignty is protected. The agreement still faces signature and parliamentary procedures.
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Situation, situation report
The strikes have stopped. Nothing has been signed.
Iran and the United States have gone more than a week without hitting each other. Both governments arrive in New York this week with the next phase of the war undecided.
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Nuclear file, report
Nobody has seen Iran's enriched uranium for more than a year
More than 9,000 kilograms of enriched uranium sit somewhere under three bombed sites. The agency whose job is to count it has been locked out since June 2025, and the body meant to enforce the rules stops functioning on 27 September.
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Inside Iran, report
Rifles for volunteers, executions for protesters, and a currency in free fall
The Iranian government filled the streets of Tehran on Friday. In the same month, two rights organisations documented an execution campaign, and the rial passed 2.3 million to the dollar.
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Energy and shipping, report
The Strait of Hormuz is open, at about a quarter of normal
Oil-product flows through the world's most important oil chokepoint are running at roughly one million barrels a day against four million before the war. Brent is near $104, and Saudi Arabia is moving crude the long way round.
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Investigations, investigation
The UN body policing Iran's nuclear sanctions has no chair, no experts and, from 27 September, no mandate
A year-long procedural dispute has quietly disabled the machinery that is supposed to enforce UN sanctions on Iran. The record of how it happened is public, and it reads as a sequence of individually minor blocking moves.