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Sergey Mulivanov, a 59-year-old activist with the Latvian Russian Union who moved to Russia two years ago ... left Latvia because he disagreed with its policies. He supported Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and criticized the Latvian authorities for supporting Kyiv, forging closer ties with the West, and restricting the use of Russian. He ran a blog and contributed to Russian propaganda outlets, including an article for the Tsargrad television channel’s website.

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After arriving in Russia, Mulivanov obtained citizenship.

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Mulivanov’s loved ones say he was tricked into signing a contract with the Russian Defense Ministry ... In late October, word came that Mulivanov was about to be sent to the front.

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People close to Mulivanov say he has type 2 diabetes and polyneuropathy.

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cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/12313509

[Original in Russian. This is an automated and paraphrased translation.]

Russian financial intelligence needs to strengthen control over “suspicious” financial transactions in the market, Russian President Vladimir Putin said at a celebration dedicated to the 25th anniversary of Rosfinmonitoring, the Federal Service for Financial Monitoring of the Russian Federation.

According to Putin, the Russian financial system is threatened by foreign criminal groups and foreign special services. They use various tools, including cryptocurrencies and other payment mechanisms, to “cover up shadow settlements” and involve young people in illegal activities.

"Your [Rosfinmonitoring's] task is to see, as they say, at distant posts, before they cause real damage, and to do this, effectively use financial intelligence tools, more actively introduce advanced analytical models and artificial intelligence technologies,” he said.

The Russian authorities are systematically tightening financial regulation, which leads to massive blocking of bank transfers and cards of Russians, increasing the complexity of crypto turnover and restrictions on the use of foreign currency.

In September, Rosfinmonitoring proposed to introduce a new basis for blocking bank accounts of citizens: operations are going to be suspended if the data of the bank’s client coincides with information about the person whose funds were frozen. Access to money is expected to be restored in five days, unless a decision is made to extend the restrictions.

In the summer, Putin signed a law allowing banks to suspend customer remittances for up to six hours if they appear suspicious.

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Many European leaders blame part of the industrial decline on a China Shock 2.0. They point to the trade deficit, alongside Germany’s loss of 10,000 to 15,000 manufacturing jobs every month, as evidence of the growing pressure on European industry.

Meanwhile, European companies cutting jobs at home are expanding their operations in China despite mounting domestic pressure. Volkswagen, for example, has announced plans to cut 100,000 jobs by 2030, citing high costs, weak demand and fierce competition from Chinese carmakers.

Yet the German automotive giant continues to invest heavily in China, including 3.5 billion euros in its research and development hub in Hefei, its largest R&D facility outside Germany, and 2.4 billion euros in a joint venture with Chinese technology company Horizon Robotics.

Joerg Wuttke, a partner at the DGA-Albright Stonebridge Group and ex-president of the EU Chamber of Commerce in China, argues that European companies have little choice but to deepen their presence in China.

cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/12302200

Russia’s disinformation war on the UK has reached new highs as Kremlin-backed media seek to sow chaos amongst Britons and ramp up attacks on their “main adversary”, experts warn.

In the past six months, state-affiliated media have pushed hundreds of thousands of stories on social media portraying Britain as ungovernable, defenceless, and a legitimate Russian target, The Independent can reveal.

Analysis by risk intelligence firm Osavul, which tracks global hybrid threats and supplies technology to Nato, shows such media output rose by around 15 per cent in September, when it produced around 40,365 stories about the UK, while similar levels of disinformation pushed in October.

False claims that the UK bombed the city of Voronezh with storm shadow missiles, that British police were threatening to arrest people for using air conditioners, and that Andy Burnham was “powerless to stop the UK's collapse” are among several posts seen by The Independent.

Osavul said the aim was “to leave British readers with a lower opinion of their own state, and readers abroad with the sense that Britain is not a serious power”.

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cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/12302787

With the French presidential election months away, Russia's disinformation machine works to ensure no pro-Ukraine candidate enters the Elysee Palace.

Viginum, the French agency that counters foreign interference, has already detected hundreds of disinformation operations targeting the vote, whose outcome will have major ramifications for Ukraine and Europe.

Moscow-linked campaigns have spread false claims that center-left Raphael Glucksmann helped set up torture prisons in Ukraine, that President Emmanuel Macron's protege Gabriel Attal inherited a drug empire, or that the centrist candidate Edouard Philippe suffers from dementia.

A victory by one of these three candidates would signal that Paris will stay on its pro-Ukraine, pro-European course — making them a primary target for Russia.

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Undermining them ahead of the April 2027 election could pave the way for a runoff between far-right Marine Le Pen and far-left Jean-Luc Melenchon.

Smearing France's pro-Ukraine candidates

Glucksmann, the co-leader of the center-left Place Publique (PP) party, ranks among the most decisively pro-Ukraine voices on the French political scene.

The social democratic MEP lambasted European leaders for not doing enough to help Kyiv and urged the seizure of immobilized Russian assets.

It comes as little surprise that he found himself one of the primary targets of Russian-backed disinformation.

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Two notorious Russian-linked campaigns have targeted French elections.

Matryoshka, which pushes out a dozen false reports a day while posing as established media outlets or experts, is the most prolific, says Chine Labbe, the senior vice-president for partnerships and managing editor for Europe at NewsGuard.

"As of mid-October 2026, we had counted 89 fake Matryoshka reports targeting French presidential candidates."

The other is Storm-1516, a more sophisticated campaign linked to the GRU that uses generative AI to set up whole new websites.

"Since this summer, we have counted seven claims from this operation targeting French candidates, three of which imitated real news outlets," Labbe told the Kyiv Independent.

According to Viginum, the fake news stories targeting Philippe and Glucksmann in the summer were carried out by Storm-1516.

The same operation was behind more recent false reports — posing as the French environmental news site Reporterre — that Glucksmann spent over 2 million euros ($2.2 million) on private jet flights, the independent Gnida Project reported.

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The fact that the three centrist, pro-Kyiv candidates are the main target of these operations is also a clear clue of Russian involvement.

"The false claims typically portray them as mentally unstable, corrupt, and generally unfit for office, echoing the Russian-backed false claims that have targeted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in recent years," Labbe said.

Paris has emerged as one of Kyiv's key military allies since Russia launched its full-scale war, providing long-range missiles, fighter jets, artillery, and more.

Macron has also played a leading role in the Coalition of the Willing, a group of nations committed to providing aid and post-war security guarantees to Ukraine. A victory by far-right or far-left candidates would likely call this role into question.

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But support for Ukraine is far from the only issue that Russian disinformation seeks to exploit.

Amelie Jaques-Apke, a disinformation and foreign influence expert at Sciences Po's CEVIPOF research center, identifies the erosion of trust in French democratic institutions as the chief goal.

"Damaging individual candidates is the visible tactic. The more durable objective is to make whatever result emerges look illegitimate," Jaques-Apke told the Kyiv Independent.

However, the actual impact of these campaigns on French voters is more difficult to gauge. Viginum described the operations as "mediocre" and "lacking visibility."

"The real risk lies in amplification," Jaques-Apke says.

"These fakes gain reach when they are picked up by Russian officials or state media, by pro-Russian figures in the West, or when politicians denounce them loudly and unintentionally spread them further."

Furthermore, Russian disinformation continues to evolve, deploying generative AI to produce more convincing fakes, professionalizing its operations, and monetizing divisive content, the expert warns.

"(The campaigns') limited impact so far is therefore no guarantee for April."

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The repairs are estimated to cost around €500 million, with G7 countries already pledging €260 million in October, according to Politico.

The bank hopes to secure further commitments at a fundraising conference in Paris on November 9, co-chaired by France, Ukraine and the EBRD.

"It's not a Ukrainian problem," EBRD [European Bank for Reconstruction and Development] President Odile Renaud-Basso said. "Everybody should feel concerned about nuclear safety globally."

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The protective structure of Ukraine's Chernobyl nuclear reactor were destroyed after a Russian drone strike damaged it in February 2025.

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Probably the goofiest looking yet most strategic vehicle in terms of ability to move heavy industrial equipment in war or peacetime in response to attacks or disasters that obliterate infrastructure.

These also reduce the confidence attackers can have in predicting where heavy machinery will be, which increases the chances that the humans operating them will never even need the armor protecting them. In a sense, these bridgelaying vehicles represent the most effective defense against overwhelming enemy artillery/drone/missile attacks for mechanized armies... and the bonus is they can make temporary bridges quickly for all kinds of other peacetime reasons too!

Another wrinkle here, having a thorough, established capability with these vehicles also make sabotage attacks against civilian bridges less attractive since it will not effectively restrict mechanized forces/heavy military equipment, and further the military can develop a doctrine that uses bridgelayers in serious situations simply because the civilian bridges are static, known, full of civilians and easily sabotagable.

The attractiveness of coming up with an elaborate clandestine plan to sabotage a bridge somehow or other becomes very quickly a pretty ineffective resources when temporary bridges can confidently be laid down quickly in response, this in effect increases the resiliency of civilian bridge infrastructure to attack by making it a far less meaningful target.

In October, fully electric cars took 37 percent of the new-car market: 94,086 of them, more than petrol and diesel cars combined for the second month in a row. Less than three years after the old subsidy was scrapped overnight and sales collapsed, the birthplace of the automobile is buying electric faster than its own car industry predicted!

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Germany’s best-selling electric car in October was Tesla's Model Y as it outsold the Volkswagen Golf, Germany’s best-selling car every year since 1981.

The catch is Tesla’s rhythm. Its German registrations swing with the delivery quarter, so the Model Y went from 299 in July to 8,038 in September, and the Tesla brand as a whole registered just 2,932 cars in October.

Over the full year sits second, outsold by Czech automobile manufacturer Skoda's Elroq that registered more than 3,000 cars in every month of 2026 through September and leads the year to date with 30,845, ahead of the Model Y.

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The top-10 brands in Germany according to the latest registration come exclusively from domestic brands: Volkswagen, Mercedes, and BMW.

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two pro-Russian hacker groups (Noname057(16) and Z-Pentest) claimed they carried out cyberattacks on store fridges and freezers across Europe. They messed with the remote systems to raise the temperatures, forcing Swedish supermarkets like Coop and ICA to throw away a bunch of spoiled food. However, cybersecurity experts note that these groups might just be exaggerating or taking credit for security flaws that were already there.

Residents of Russian-occupied Oleshky in Kherson Oblast still lack access to humanitarian aid delivered during a recent mission, while tragic events continue to unfold in the community.

“We have also received reports that people are not receiving the humanitarian aid delivered to Oleshky during the humanitarian mission,” Tetiana Hasanenko, head of the Oleshky City Military Administration, said in an interview with Ukrinform.

She said residents who received aid reported being given only small amounts of food, not enough to last one person even a week. Hasanenko added that officials currently have no way to verify what is happening in the community. Some residents were also unable to evacuate for various reasons.

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“Some people say they did not even know about the evacuation. They had been staying in basements, for example, without any means of communication. Even though there was a ceasefire, people in the community are in such a state that they find it hard to believe anything. It is difficult for them to assess what is happening around them. Just because the shooting had stopped for a while did not mean they could tell an evacuation was underway,” she said.

Hasanenko added that some Oleshky residents did not receive evacuation information in time because they were hiding in basements. Others did not wait for the bus convoy on the highway or did not believe they would be allowed to leave without undergoing filtration screening.

“They set out thinking it might be a one-way trip, so to speak. But they simply could not stay there because death awaited them either way. So they took the risk,” she added.

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A ceasefire took effect at 3 a.m. on Oct. 27 in occupied Oleshky and other settlements in Kherson Oblast. During the ceasefire, routes were cleared of mines and humanitarian aid was delivered to Oleshky, where approximately 1,700 people had been without food and medicine.

The main phase of the humanitarian mission — the evacuation — began on Oct. 30, following demining operations and the delivery of humanitarian aid. A total of 25 buses with 750 seats were prepared. Oleshky residents who wanted to return to Ukrainian-controlled territory traveled to the Russian city of Anapa in Krasnodar Krai. From there, they flew to Belarus aboard four aircraft before continuing by bus to Ukraine.

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On Nov. 1, U.S. first lady Melania Trump wrote on X that the humanitarian mission in Oleshky, Kherson Oblast, had been successful.

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A Finnish court on Thursday convicted the Russian captain and a senior crew member of the cargo ship Fitburg for damaging two undersea telecommunications cables in the Gulf of Finland last year.

The Helsinki District Court found the two defendants guilty of "aggravated criminal damage."

It said in a statement that they had intentionally dragged the ship's anchor along the seabed for around 130 kilometers (81 miles).

The captain was sentenced to three and a half years in jail, while the crew member, an Azerbaijani citizen, was sentenced to two years and 10 months.

They were also ordered to jointly pay around €1.9 million ($2.1 million) in damages, the Reuters news agency reported, with the captain to pay about €85,000 more.

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The Russian “Matryoshka” bot network has launched a campaign on social media promoting claims that Ukraine operates “secret prisons” where military personnel and foreigners are tortured. Researchers with the Antibot4Navalny project, which tracks pro-Russian bot activity on social media, provided The Insider with information on more than 10 fake videos and posts.

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The main fabricated narratives include:

• Azov fighters allegedly kidnapped Europeans for ransom and then killed them. A video bearing the logo of Polish broadcaster TVP World claims that two Polish citizens may have been among those held in the “secret prison.” The kidnappers allegedly demanded 30,000 euros for their release, but contact with the hostages was lost after the money was handed over. The video also claims that two French volunteers who fought on Ukraine’s side may have been kidnapped.
• A video styled as a Human Rights Watch report claims that hundreds of secret prisons operate in Ukraine. Citing the rights organization, it alleges that hidden basements are used for torture, killings, and blackmail.
• French publication Franc-Tireur is falsely presented as reporting that a mass grave containing the bodies of 64 people was discovered on the grounds of a purported secret prison in the Kyiv Region.
• A video designed to look like a Euronews report claims that Kyrylo Budanov, head of the Ukrainian president’s office, knew of the existence of secret prisons in the country. Its creators allege that European partners repeatedly warned Kyiv that disclosure of information about torture could undermine support for Ukraine among EU countries.
• Another video, styled as material from the UN initiative “Stop Rape Now — UN Action Against Sexual Violence in Conflict,” claims that the supposedly “freed” 14-year-old boy was also subjected to sexual violence. The creators allege that such crimes were routinely committed in “secret prisons” and that people in France now intend to demand that President Emmanuel Macron’s government stop funding Ukraine.

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Ukrainian anti-corruption investigators accused senior security officials on Wednesday of ​shielding a network of illegal businesses ranging from scam centres to drugs, part of an expanding probe that could stoke tensions ‌between key law enforcement agencies.

Top employees of Ukraine's SBU security service, the National Police and the Prosecutor General's Office have taken bribes to protect the criminal ring, even helping to plan attacks and kidnappings, the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) said.

[Original in Russian. Automated and paraphrased translation with minimal edits.]

The ex-Minister of Health of the Perm Territory and the chief pediatrician of the Ural Federal Distric,t Olga Kovtun, on the air of a local TV channel proposed to oblige women to ask permission for abortion from ex-husbands.

"This idea has a humanistic meaning. If a person, previously close, appears in the status of a husband, and he will dissuade a woman, then he will guarantee something to her. To guarantee something that will contribute to her stable life, maybe even a family reunion," she said.

According to Kovtun, a woman can “go along with someone else’s advice” or be emotionally unprepared for the birth of a child, so an additional limiter can be useful. How this practice will be implemented, she did not specify.

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At the same time, Kovtun was criticized for failures in administrative work: after joining the Ural State Medical University (USMU), she halved the number of departments. For example, with her, ophthalmology was combined with traumatology and orthopedics. Employees of the university complained that USMU “will graduate students whose knowledge will be slightly higher than that of a paramedic, since the destruction of highly specialized departments will entail the reduction of highly professional specialists.”

Before that, Kovtun headed the Ministry of Health of the Perm Territory and was remembered, first of all, by a series of scandals. She fired about thirty chief doctors of leading medical institutions in an effort to bring in more loyal people. Young parents also suffered: under the leadership of Kovtun, mothers were canceled the issuance of baby food, replacing it with dry mixtures and monetary compensation.

Under her, the Ministry of Health also revised the mechanisms of the ambulance, betting on the involvement of commercial contractors to service calls. “This provoked talk about the redistribution of the multi-million dollar market in favor of specific outsourcing companies,” wrote then the publication “Ura.ru”. In March 2016, a rally was held in Perm against the “collapse of Perm medicine”. The main demand of the protesters was the resignation of Kovtun.

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The Bank of England is expected to raise interest rates Thursday for the first time in over three years in order to tackle the inflation shock caused by the Iran war.

[This piece is written by Dr. Emir Kremić, the former head of the Federal Institute of Statistics of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Co-Founder of Auroris AI.]

When Bosnia and Herzegovina held general elections last month, it used biometric voter identification and ballot scanners — a reform widely praised for producing fast and accurate results. That’s a real achievement. But the region’s digital foundations remain fragile, and the region’s adversaries know it.

The Balkan chessboard remains checkered, torn between attraction to the European Union and to Russia, with China maneuvering for leverage. Bosnian nationalists, including separatist, pro-Russian Serbs, won the recent vote. But Serbs gave a pro-European student-led movement a clear majority in another October election, while Montenegro and Albania closed chapters in their EU accession talks.

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The cheapest way to shift the balance of power is to undermine trust in the ballot. For the region, cybersecurity is not a technical issue. It is a strategic one. Washington is waking up to the risk — but needs to increase its focus on digital dangers. The EU is already pressing for action but must also increase its scrutiny.

Across the region, national cyber-response teams remain small and underfunded, public systems are outdated, and responsibility is fragmented. Large volumes of sensitive data, from tax and health records to the new biometric voter data in Bosnia, are held in databases that are rarely audited.

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Telecommunications and surveillance networks rely on Chinese equipment. Belgrade’s Chinese-supplied “safe city” facial-recognition system represents the best-known example. Kremlin-funded media and anonymous networks are ready to amplify disinformation, which artificial intelligence now makes cheap to produce in local languages.

China’s Huawei remains the dominant supplier to Bosnia’s two largest mobile operators, BH Telecom and Republika Srpska’s M:Tel. The security risks of that choice have never been seriously considered. Western money paid for much of that infrastructure. Bosnia’s biometric voting carries its citizens’ calls, data, and biometric records — and it is only as trustworthy as the equipment and the vendors deployed.

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For a hostile power, this represents an attractive environment. It does not need to defeat Balkan institutions, only to find the least-protected one. Access gained can be used to collect data on officials, NATO personnel, and diaspora communities; to map energy grids and transport hubs; and to prepare disruption that can be switched on in a crisis.

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[In Albania], HomeLand Justice, a hacker group that the Albanian government links to Iran, broke into the national parliament, deleted data, and published lawmakers’ emails on Telegram. Investigators believe the attackers had administrative access well before they revealed themselves; passwords had reportedly not been changed for years, and intrusion alarms did not sound. It was the group’s third major attack on Albanian institutions since 2022.

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Ransomware paralyzed Montenegro*s government networks in 2022. Bosnia lacks a fully functioning state-level cyber emergency response team. A 2022 ransomware attack crippled the country’s Parliamentary Assembly, taking its servers, website, and email offline. Thousands of employees in state institutions were locked out of their networks for more than two weeks. No public report on the incident or its lessons was ever released. The pattern persists. In early 2024, hackers breached the Bosnian Republika Srpska’s health information system and its tax administration.

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The EU already demands cybersecurity and data protection standards as part of the accession process, and Montenegro and Albania are moving quickly through the chapters. Brussels and NATO should make cyber-resilience a visible, funded priority across the region: shared incident response, regular audits of critical databases, support for election security, and clear rules on high-risk vendors in critical networks.

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Serbia’s incoming government has promised transparency and the rule of law while keeping military neutrality. Cyber cooperation is one area where it can work closely with EU and NATO partners without changing that stance. Bosnia’s successful use of election technology shows what is possible, and also creates a new duty to protect biometric data.

Western Balkan citizens want accountable institutions. Protecting that legitimacy means protecting their networks.

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BMW signalled a potential for losses after slashing its profit margin to between -0.5% and 0.5% this year and blamed fourth-quarter costs tied to the restructuring that includes 8,000 job cuts in its home market.

cross-posted from : https://lemmy.zip/post/74460923