On March 15-17, presidential “elections” are held in Russia. “Balloting” has been going on for three weeks in the occupied territories of Ukraine. The current “election campaign” in the TOT (temporarily occupied territories) is accompanied by the mobilization of the local population and the creation of a propaganda image of the people’s love for Putin. The key task of the Kremlin is a high turnout, which should prove high confidence not only in Putin, but also in Russia in general. So, the regime stretched the “balloting” over time and is conducting a large-scale campaign to “encourage” Ukrainians using coercion and intimidation. For example, special “mobile groups” visit every house, which makes it almost impossible to avoid participating in the “balloting” for locals who previously could simply not go to the polling station and thus express their protest against the occupation.

The Kremlin is ready to play the “hunger games” in order to weaken Ukraine and its wartime allies. Russia’s participation in the Black Sea Grain Initiative was accompanied by blackmail and threats to withdraw from the “grain agreement”, permanent sabotage of work of the Joint Coordination Center and implementation of systematic escalation policy. All of the aforesaid by no means contributed to global food security and stability.

Russia plans to hold so-called “elections” to the “legislative bodies” (in other words, occupation governments) in the occupied areas of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia oblasts as well as in 79 municipal districts this coming fall.

In April 2023, the Russian Federation held the presidency in the UN Security Council, a body designed to support international peace and security. However, the situation is totally absurd because this state is committing aggression against another sovereign state, killing children, and committing genocide of the Ukrainian people.

Parts of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions of Ukraine have been under occupation for more than a year now. Russia is trying to integrate these territories into their own economic space in order to weaken their connections with Ukraine. In particular, the hryvnia came under the strike, as Russia seeks to replace it with the ruble. The occupiers introduced new rules for receiving social benefits and pensions: they can only be available to people who had become citizens of Russia. Recently, Ukrai...

The full-scale invasion of Russia provoked a food crisis in the world. Because of defeats at the front and the failure to seize Ukraine, the aggressor resorted to grain blackmail in order to weaken Western sanctions. The tool of this strategy was the Black Sea Initiative on the export of Ukrainian grain, which extension Russia uses every time to lobby their interests.