The first half of June 2026 paints a picture of a Russia that is increasingly closed off, militarised and fragile.
Not through a single major news story, but through a series of signs which, taken together, paint a picture that is hard to ignore: refineries burning, petrol shortages, spiralling military spending, ever-more-expensive universities, a shortage of cancer drugs, political trials, digital censorship, the suppression of memory and new forms of civil solidarity.

Classrooms and trenches

The month begins with a development that appears to be social in nature, but is in fact deeply political: studying at Russian universities has become more than 10% more expensive following the reduction in fee-paying places.
The authorities justify the cutbacks by citing a surplus of graduates in economics, management and law, but the practical result is that thousands of families must bear higher costs to provide their children with an education.
Even in a society scarred by war, the university ceases to be a place of social mobility and becomes yet another source of economic pressure.

Alongside this, the FBK [Anti-Corruption Foundation] has published an investigation into Valery Fedorov, head of VCIOM [All-Russian Centre for the Study of Public Opinion], the institute that helps shape the official picture of public support for Putin.
According to the investigators, an opaque network of contractors is said to have existed around VCIOM, whilst Fëdorov’s family is said to possess luxury flats, luxury cars, Hermès bags and jewellery worth sums incompatible with their official incomes.

The news is almost symbolic: those who measure public support live within the very system that that support is meant to lend credibility to.

But the most significant trend concerns the war.
In early June, signs of a slowdown in the recruitment of Russian army contract soldiers emerged, whilst oil refining volumes fell to their lowest levels since 2009 following a series of attacks on refineries.
The fuel crisis is beginning to affect not only the annexed Crimea and the occupied territories, but also an increasing number of Russian regions. Some petrol stations are introducing sales limits; elsewhere, petrol is running out, queues are forming, and ration cards, QR codes and restrictions are appearing.

War, then, is no longer just a line item in the budget or a story on the telly.
It has become part of everyday life: in petrol prices, in transport, in flights, in cancelled holidays, in the products missing from the shelves in Crimea.
After petrol, buckwheat, sugar, rice, flour, salt, pasta and vegetable oil are also beginning to disappear from the annexed peninsula. The problem stems from attacks on the ‘Novorossiya’ road, one of the main land supply routes.
The logistics of war are becoming the logistics of scarcity.

No target is safe

Russian territory, too, appears increasingly vulnerable.

On 3 June, the opening day of the SPIEF [St Petersburg International Economic Forum], St Petersburg and the Leningrad region suffered one of the largest drone attacks since the start of the war.
A few days later, on 6 June, the attack was even more intense: according to the authorities, 144 drones were shot down over the region.
There were fires, evacuations, damage to military and oil facilities, and delays at Pulkovo Airport. The image is powerful: whilst the economic forum promises stability, robots, technology and ‘pragmatic dialogue’, the war descends upon the city.

The attacks continued over the following days. In Cheboksary, the “VNIIR-Progress” factory, which manufactures components for drones and aircraft munitions, caught fire; in Samara, Rosneft’s Kuybyshevsky refinery was set ablaze; and in the Vladimir region, oil infrastructure was targeted.

On 14 June, a Rosrezerv [Federal Agency for State Reserves] depot in Rybinsk, which had already been hit at the end of 2025, goes up in flames. After the attack, residents speak of a ‘rain of oil’: a black, oily, sticky film on buildings, vegetable gardens and the Volgotnya River.
War also falls from the sky as a substance that dirties the earth.

On 15 June, the Russian government authorised certain refineries to produce fuel with a sulphur content significantly higher than the Euro 5 standard.
The measure, first introduced in autumn 2025 and extended indefinitely, is intended to reduce the risk of shortages. But the price is high: engines more prone to wear and tear, damaged exhaust systems, and a more fragile environment.
This, too, is an internal consequence of the war: to prop up the system, standards are being lowered.

This vulnerability also affects civilian infrastructure.
In Kuban, following another breach of the dam on the Kuban River, a state of emergency has been declared in four settlements.
More than 4,300 hectares of fields are flooded, whilst the village of Troitskaya, with over 6,000 inhabitants, remains under threat. Residents say they have ‘plugged the gaps with their own bodies’.
It is a painful and almost literal image of the relationship between citizen and state: where public protection falters, the naked bodies of the people remain.

Armenia’s long farewell

On the international stage, Russia is also losing ground in the so-called post-Soviet space.
In early June, Russian state-run channels stepped up their threats against Armenia and Nikol Pashinyan. On a programme hosted by Vladimir Solovyov, political scientist Sergei Micheev went so far as to declare that post-Soviet states exist only as long as Russia consents to their existence. It is a revealing statement: it says, without diplomacy, that for a section of the Russian imperial elite, the independence of other peoples remains a revocable concession.

But Armenia is responding with concrete action. Pashinyan’s party has won the parliamentary elections and can form a government on its own; the European Union is preparing economic aid and trade opportunities; on 15 June, Yerevan announced military exercises with the United States, France and Greece.
This is yet another sign of the cooling of relations between Moscow and Yerevan, following the trauma of Nagorno-Karabakh and theCSTO [ Collective Security Treaty Organisation] crisis. Russian influence is not disappearing, but it appears less inevitable.

Navalny is still alive

Meanwhile, within Russia, the crackdown continues to spread.
On 4 June, Alexei Navalny would have turned 50. At the Borisovskoye Cemetery in Moscow, people are bringing flowers, leaving notes and reading poems.
His mother, Lyudmila Navalnaya, thanks those who keep her son’s memory alive and recalls his words: “Don’t give up”.

On the same day, the audio version of “Patriot” is released, read by family members and many figures from the cultural and opposition spheres, whilst an archive of memories featuring texts, investigations, videos, photographs, interviews and documents is published on the website navalny.com.

In a system that seeks to erase, archiving becomes a political act.
The memory of Navalny is no longer merely a private remembrance or a matter of family mourning: it becomes the moral backbone of the Russian opposition.

This is why those in power continue to target everything around them. On 15 June, the European Union introduced new sanctions against individuals involved in the persecution of the FBK, and in the poisoning and killing of Navalny. Those sanctioned include prosecutors, judges, officials from the MVD [ Ministry of Internal Affairs], FSB employees and individuals linked to the facial recognition technology used against pro-Navalny and anti-war protesters.

The crackdown is not limited to high-profile figures.
Russian universities are beginning to expel students from VUCs [military training centres] who refuse to sign a contract with the Ministry of Defence.
Only 4% of new inoagents [foreign agents] in 2025 received this status dueto foreign funding: in the vast majority of cases, the vague phrase‘foreign influence’ is now sufficient.
‘Memorial’ and more than 30 affiliated organisations are added to the list of ‘extremists and terrorists’.
Maria Ponomarenko, a journalist detained since April 2022, receives a new sentence.

A resident of St Petersburg is fined for comments made during a private WhatsApp video call, following a complaint by the person he was speaking to. The boundary between public and private is dissolving.

The regime’s app is also closing down

The digital world is also gradually being shut down.
The state-run messaging app Max has been removed fromthe App Store and has lost more than half of its user base.
The App Store itself is experiencing interruptions in Russia. Roskomnadzor is discussing with IT companies the creation of a GosVPN [state-run VPN], an idea that some Russian experts describe as technically unfeasible.

Russian services are beginning to restrict access via Gmail: Avito (a national classifieds website and app) is warning users that they are no longer permitted to use foreign services for authentication.
Digital sovereignty, presented as independence, is increasingly taking the form of a fence.

On the social front, the signs are equally worrying.
At least 16 regions are facing a shortage of platinum-based cancer drugs.
The cost of children’s summer camps has risen by up to 21% in some regions.
An investigation by ‘Vërstka’ [an independent Russian publication] and the University of Helsinki shows that at least half of all cases of violence against children in Russia occur at home, whilst the most common punishment remains a fine of 5,000 roubles.
A participant in the war against Ukraine, who had previously been pardoned for a murder, has been sentenced to life imprisonment for the killing of his ex-wife and her seven-year-old daughter. This is one of the darkest consequences of the practice of sending prisoners to the front and then returning them to society as men ‘redeemed’ by war.

The war is also eating into the budget.
According to Janis Kluge’s calculations, in the first three months of 2026, almost 46% of Russian federal expenditure was allocated to the war.
If this trend continues, military spending could reach around 10% of GDP by the end of the year. At the same time, big business is bracing for possible redundancies, whilst some KPRF [ Communist Party of the Russian Federation] MPs are speaking openly of the risk of a ‘social explosion’ and calling for a public plan to end the ‘SVO’ [special military operation, the official Russian term for the war against Ukraine].

An attack on the heart of Ukraine

Finally, on 15 June, news emerged of the cultural damage caused by the Russian attack on Kyiv on the night of 12 June: the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra [Kyiv Caves Lavra], the “Mystec’kyj arsenal” complex [Artistic Arsenal], the Dovzhenko Film Studio, and the House of Organ and Chamber Music in Dnipro.

At the Lavra, the roof of the Cathedral of the Dormition caught fire; at the Dovzhenko Studio, the costume workshop—housing the country’s largest collection of stage costumes—was destroyed.

The war also affects archives, museums, churches and artistic heritage: in other words, everything that allows a people to recognise themselves through time.

Yet, within this picture, there is not only destruction.
The week of solidarity with political prisoners raises millions of roubles. Leonid Volkov organises a live chess broadcast; Marija Pevčich and Aleksandr Štefanov raise over two million through streaming; charity runs take place in 45 cities around the world; the “Ty ne odin” [You Are Not Alone] fund continues to support prisoners and their families.
On 14 June, the marathon in support of political prisoners raised 14,224,042 roubles, more than the previous year.

These figures cannot compete with the billions spent on the war.
But their significance does not lie in the absolute figures. It lies in the fact that, whilst the state invests enormous resources in isolating, punishing and intimidating, a section of Russian society continues to forge connections: parcels, medicines, lawyers, letters, visits, donations, archives, words saved from prison.

Hope in Russia today bears little resemblance to optimism. It is more sober and more challenging: it is the resolve not to abandon prisoners, not to surrender memory to those in power, and not to accept that Russia is defined solely by drones, denunciations, propaganda and fear.

Two Russias

In the first fortnight of June 2026, we therefore see two Russias.
The first burns fuel, lowers environmental standards, militarises schools and universities, threatens its neighbours, abolishes historic organisations, puts artists on trial, and uses war as a test of loyalty.
The second lays flowers at Navalny’s grave, reads ‘Patriot’, raises money for political prisoners, defends persecuted lawyers, preserves documents, runs for those who are imprisoned, and continues to say ‘don’t give up’.

The second Russia today is more fragile, more scattered, often in exile or in prison. But precisely for this reason, it remains crucial.
Because a country is not merely its power. It is also the memory of those who have been killed, the voice of those who are imprisoned, the loyalty of those who do not forget. And as long as this memory endures, Russia will not belong entirely to those who govern it.