Lost signal
Russia restricts mobile internet access in parts of the Ulyanovsk region
This week in the news:
The Russian government restricted mobile internet access in parts of the Ulyanovsk region.
The State Duma passed a new law that requires medical graduates to spend up to three years working in a state-run hospital.
Several of President Zelenskyy’s close associates were implicated in a corruption scandal related to the Ukrainian energy sector.
— Sara Ashbaugh, Editor in Chief
Mobile internet shutdown
Russian authorities have restricted mobile internet access in parts of the Ulyanovsk region until the end of the war in Ukraine. Authorities justify the restrictions, similar to a wave of mobile internet shutdowns in other regions since May, with the necessity to protect important government, military, and industrial facilities from drone attacks that rely on a mobile internet signal. However, this is the first time that the shutdown is semi-permanent.
Theoretically, there is an allow-list of services that users can still access, including banking and state-adjacent email operators. In reality, according to the iStories investigative outlet, even these services are inaccessible. In other regions, such as St. Petersburg, which also experienced a temporary shutdown this week, these services were working.
It is expected that the authorities will expand the areas experiencing an open-ended shutdown if the experiment in this region is successful. Alexey Chepa, the deputy head of the State Duma’s Committee on International Affairs, suggested a country-wide shutdown of external access points (which the communications watchdog Roskomnadzor has the right to initiate), in the case of “foreign meddling” in Russia’s upcoming legislative elections in 2026. Recently, Russian mobile operators also started to force mandatory one-day outages on users returning from abroad.
The Russian government has steadily restricted access to Western online services over the past few years. It has also been testing equipment to isolate the Russian internet from the rest of the world since 2019, when the “Sovereign Internet” law that mandated the authorities to create a domestic DNS fork was adopted. Meanwhile, according to survey results reviewed by the business newspaper Vedomosti, Russians are increasingly worried about mobile internet outages. These outages, among other things, make working and accessing services (such as taxis) more difficult, creating the impression that the war is affecting people’s usual pattern of life. This week, the Volgograd Region saw the first lawsuit against a mobile operator for such disruptions. Authorities and operators have, as of now, no plans to compensate users.
— Andras Toth-Czifra
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban visited the White House last week to discuss oil sanctions with President Trump. After their meeting on Friday, Trump agreed to exempt Hungary from the U.S.’s recently imposed sanctions on Russian oil companies Rosneft and Lukoil. “We’re looking at it, because it’s very difficult for him to get the oil and gas from other areas,” Trump said. According to White House officials, the exemption is temporary, with a one-year expiration date. Additionally, Hungary agreed to purchase some $600 million in American liquefied natural gas as part of the arrangement. (photo: EPA / Shutterstock)
New doctors to be grounded
The State Duma passed legislation on Tuesday that would require medical school graduates to spend up to three years working in state-run hospitals, subject to specific decisions by the Health Ministry. Those refusing would face various penalties, ranging from returning their tuition to a steep fine and getting their accreditation suspended. The newly-introduced rules are reminiscent of Soviet-era practices.
The bill suggests an acknowledgement that Russia is facing an acute shortage of medical personnel in public clinics, as it prepares for the return of hundreds of thousands of injured and traumatized soldiers from Ukraine in the event of a ceasefire.
According to the government’s own estimates, there is a shortage of 23,300 doctors and 63,500 mid-level medical personnel. An October survey by the SuperJob website found that medical organizations faced the largest labor shortages in the country, with 90% of those surveyed reporting difficulties with hiring, mostly general practitioners and nurses. The situation is especially bad in poorer regions without large population centers, as recent years have seen wealthier regions drawing medical personnel, often with targeted campaigns. A report by the data analysis project “To Be Exact” found large discrepancies in health care accessibility between poorer and wealthier regions, with an increasing number of doctors choosing to work at private clinics.
In recent years, spending at the level of regional budgets—responsible for around 60% of health care expenditures, including running regional and local hospitals—has fallen behind inflation, with overall expenditures growing by a mere 11% between 2020 and 2024 in nominal terms, according to the Audit Chamber. War-related expenditures, including higher spending on social aid, have crowded out other areas in regional budgets. The worsening situation of regional budgets, paired with the decentralization of political responsibility and incentives to focus on short-term policy priorities, have also prevented long-term investments into social infrastructure.
— Andras Toth-Czifra
Russia’s first anthropomorphic AI robot fell down during its unveiling at a Moscow technology event this week. The robot, named AIdol, was developed by the robotics firm Idol to showcase Russian domestic components and AI capabilities. Instead, AIdol fell flat on its face seconds after walking onstage at the event on Monday. In a video that has circulated online, AIdol is dragged offstage by two assistants, shedding pieces as it goes. Idol attributed the malfunction to calibration issues, but many have criticized the company for debuting an unfinished product. “I hope that this mistake will turn into an experience,” Idol CEO Vladimir Vitukhin said. (photo: Novosiltsev Artur / Moskva Agency)
Ukrainian corruption scandal
Several of President Zelenskyy’s close associates have been implicated in a major corruption scandal. On Monday, the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU), Ukraine’s anti-corruption law enforcement agency, revealed its ongoing investigation into an embezzlement scheme related to the state nuclear power company Energoatom. According to NABU, the co-conspirators extracted around $100 million from Ukraine’s energy sector by pressuring Energoatom contractors to pay an additional 10%-15% of their contract values in kickbacks. The money was then laundered through a secret office in Kyiv. The NABU investigation, nicknamed “Operation Midas,” took 15 months and involved over 1,000 hours of wiretapping and 70 raids. NABU has since released excerpts of tapes in which alleged participants can be heard discussing the details of the scheme. On the tapes, they refer to one another using code names such as “Che Guevara,” “Professor,” and “Rocket.”
So far, NABU has charged seven people in connection with the case. According to the Bureau, five of them have been detained and two others have fled. The alleged leader was businessman Timur Mindich, a close associate of Zelenskyy and a co-owner of Zelenskyy’s production company, Kvartal 95. Mindich was reportedly tipped off about the investigation and fled to Israel before he could be arrested. Additionally, two government ministers have resigned in the wake of the scandal. Current Energy Minister Svitlana Grynchuk and former Energy Minister (current Justice Minister) German Galushchenko submitted their resignations after Zelenskyy called for their dismissals. Although he has not been charged, Galushchenko is suspected of assisting Mindich, and his home was raided by NABU earlier this week. Other high-profile detainees include former Deputy Prime Minister Oleksiy Chernyshov and Ihor Myroniuk, Galushchenko’s former advisor.
The investigation comes at a time when Ukraine is struggling with a barrage of Russian attacks on its energy infrastructure, making a corruption scandal in the sector even more significant. “It is completely unacceptable that, amid all this, there are also some schemes in the energy sector,” Zelenskyy said in a video address to the country. He also announced that he would sign a decree imposing sanctions on two of the individuals involved, including his former business partner Mindich.
— Sara Ashbaugh
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Quickfire: Regions
The government of the Far Eastern Transbaikal Territory appealed to the federal government for help with the region’s gasoline shortages. The Achinsk and Angarsk refineries, which mainly service this region, have not been targeted by Ukrainian drones. However, the overall problems on Russia’s domestic fuel market may still have influenced the situation in the Far East because of domestic redistribution efforts, according to experts talking to The Insider. Earlier, shortages were also reported from the Kemerovo Region in Siberia. The federal Ministry of Finance is reportedly preparing amendments that eliminate the excise tax on denatured ethyl alcohol used in the production of gasoline in order to make such production profitable, as drone attacks against refineries continue.
At a visit to Krasnoyarsk, Sergey Shoigu, the Secretary of Russia’s Security Council, spoke approvingly about earlier suggestions by Sergey Karaganov, a pro-Kremlin political scientist, to “Siberianize” Russia after the war in Ukraine. Among other things, Karaganov suggested that returning war participants could be resettled to Siberia to work on grand infrastructure projects. Shoigu spoke about Karaganov’s suggestions in the context of creating new industrial clusters in Siberia, e.g. for the processing of rare earth metals. The construction of new population centers in Siberia around industrial clusters has long been an idea championed by Shoigu, and one that he has regularly talked about over the past years, prompting speculation that he was aiming to be a domestic overseer of these plans instead of his current leading role in the security elite. He has proposed tax breaks and subsidized loans for workers voluntarily moving to Siberian regions, which have experienced a steep population decline over the past three decades. However, even with Russia’s pivot to Eastern markets, development projects in Siberia and the Far East (such as the expansion of Eastern railway lines) have been plagued by delays and lack of funding over the past years.
The recruitment of volunteer reservists to protect industrial facilities against increasingly numerous and precise drone attacks began in at least 19 regions over the past week. The deployment of reservists for this purpose was made possible by recently adopted legislation in the State Duma. Regions are reportedly incentivizing recruitment with monthly or lump-sum payments. These are only a fraction of the size of recruitment bonuses paid to contract soldiers, but, for the duration of their status as military personnel, reservists also have the right to the same social payments as active military personnel. In Tatarstan, an oil-producing region, the first contingent of reservists already began military training. Border regions, which formed volunteer territorial defense units in 2024, are also creating new groups.
— Andras Toth-Czifra