Current Digest of the Russian Press, Vol. 77, No. 26 – Table of Contents

PETROV: TRUMP TEAM SHRUGS OFF ALLEGATIONS OF DIVISION OVER IRAN STRIKES, BUT DISAGREEMENTS WITHIN REPUBLICAN CAMP CLEAR; EXPERTS WEIGH IN ON UNPREDICTABLE TRUMP’S POSSIBLE NEXT ACTIONS

(By Gennady Petrov. Nezavisimaya gazeta, June 23, 2025, p. 1. Condensed text:) Despite warnings and even threats, including those made in the US itself, [US President] Donald Trump nevertheless gave the order to bomb Iran. . . …

(By Andrei Kortunov, political analyst. Kommersant, June 23, 2025, p. 6. Complete text:) So, the US has inflicted a bombing attack on Iran’s three key nuclear facilities after all. Since the campaign to eliminate Iranian General Qassem Soleimani in January 2020 [see Vol. 72, No. 1 – 2, pp. 3 – 8], Tehran and Washington have never been so close to a large-scale direct armed confrontation with each other…

(By Gennady Petrov. Nezavisimaya gazeta, June 24, 2025, p. 1. Condensed text:) Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi’s visit to Moscow was going to be Monday’s main event. Reuters, citing its sources, reported that Araghchi had brought a letter [for Russian President Vladimir Putin] from Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. The latter purportedly says that he is unhappy with Russia’s lack of support, which is so necessary amid the confrontation with the US and Israel, which are militarily far stronger [than Iran], and invokes the Russian-Iranian Treaty on [Comprehensive] Strategic Partnership that was signed this past January [see Vol. 77, No. 4, pp. 17 – 18]. If [Iran] really has such grievances, Araghchi did not make them public…

(By Kazem Jalali, Iranian ambassador to the Russian Federation. Izvestia, June 25, 2025, p. 3. Complete text:) The coalition of the unilateral represented by Israel and directly supported by the US is violating the global nonproliferation regime. Such dangerous actions have undermined the credibility of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) mission. They are a serious threat to global peace and security. The entire international community, especially the “multilateral world,” must pay attention and should be alarmed by this…

(By Nikita Smagin. Novaya gazeta Europe, June 25, 2025, https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2025/06/25/esli-iran-poidet-po-puti-nestabilnosti-eto-mozhet-privesti-k-grazhdanskoi-voine. Complete text:) Editors’ Note. – On June 13, Israel launched an operation against Iran, attacking nuclear facilities in several parts of the country. In response, Iran began to strike Israeli cities. Dozens of people have been killed and hundreds injured as a result of reciprocal attacks during the week and a half of the war. In the early morning hours of June 22, the US joined the war. The country’s Armed Forces struck [Iran’s] nuclear sites at Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan. Overnight on June 24, Donald Trump announced a ceasefire between Israel and Iran…

(By Nikolai Pershin. Novaya gazeta Europe, June 25, 2025, https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2025/06/25/ekspress-sammit. Condensed text:) Editors’ Note. – NATO allies agreed to increase their defense spending to 5% of their gross domestic product. This was the key outcome of the alliance’s summit that took place in The Hague on June 24 – 25 and turned out to be the shortest summit in NATO history – and an extremely quiet one. . . …

(By Gennady Petrov. Nezavisimaya gazeta. June 26, 2025, p. 1. Condensed text:) The final statement (declaration) of the NATO summit, which took place in The Hague, names only Russia and terrorism as long-term threats to Euro-Atlantic security. The document does not mention either China or Iran in this capacity. . . …

(By Yelizaveta Borisenko and Semyon Boikov. Izvestia, June 27, 2025, p. 1. Condensed text:) Editors’ Note. – Izvestia has learned that, for the first time since the 1990s, a NATO final declaration has not mentioned a commitment to an open-door policy. This provision had been present in all of the alliance’s final documents for over 30 years. Experts believe that this was done for tactical reasons, so as not to annoy US President Donald Trump, who opposes Ukraine’s membership in the bloc. . . …

(By Aleksandr Tikhonov. Vedomosti, June 25, 2025, https://www.vedomosti.ru/politics/articles/2025/06/26/1120151-iz-ldpr-isklyuchili-odnogo-iz-samih-izvestnih-sokolov-zhirinovskogo. Complete text:) As expected, the presidium of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia’s [LDPR] Supreme Council expelled one of the most famous members of the late leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky’s team: Yaroslav Nilov, head of the State Duma committee on labor, social policy and veterans’ affairs and a public critic of the situation within the party.

After the meeting, Leonid Slutsky, who has headed the LDPR since 2022, said he had received a proposal to expel Nilov from [the ranks of] “deputies, party members and regional branches.” “Everyone agrees: Someone who breaks with party discipline, who slanders the party, its leadership and fellow party members, who acts in ways that damage the LDPR’s reputation, cannot remain in our ranks. These are the principles the great Zhirinovsky bequeathed to the party,” he said, adding that he agrees with the decision, which passed by “an absolute majority.”…

(Source: Kholod Media. Meduza, June 24, 2025, https://meduza.io/en/feature/2025/06/24/we-want-our-own-people-in-charge. Complete text:) Editors’ Note. – Over the weekend, thousands took to the streets in Russia’s Altai Republic to oppose changes to the region’s constitution and a set of amendments eliminating local self-governance. Passed by regional lawmakers just days after the protests, the reforms do away with small, locally elected administrations. Officials say the move is simply meant to streamline bureaucracy. But in a region home to the Indigenous Altai people, the changes shift control over land use away from rural communities and into the hands of higher-level authorities. Kholod Media reported on the protests and growing calls for the Kremlin to remove Governor Andrei Turchak – the son of a longtime friend of [Russian President] Vladimir Putin. Meduza shares an English-language version of their reporting.

On June 21, locals gathered in the capital of Russia’s Altai Republic, Gorno-Altai, for a rare authorized protest against an overhaul of the region’s local governance system. According to local activist Pavel Pastukhov, around 4,000 people took part; the Internal Affairs Ministry put the figure at a quarter of that…

(Nezavisimaya gazeta, June 26, 2025, p. 2. Complete text:) A list of books to be removed from bookstores has been posted on the Internet. It is purportedly being circulated by a respectable publishing house. Naturally, we will not present the complete list. We will mention only some books (without giving the authors’ names, just in case). First, the most obvious ones: “Sex Education” [Polovoye vostpitaniye], “Polyamory” [Poliamoria] [and] “All the Kremlin’s Men” [Vsya kremlyovskaya rat]. Here, everything is more or less clear. Promotion of nontraditional values, libel against Russian reality, and so on. The list also includes books by authors who have been designated as foreign agents or something else [undesirable].

But then, for example, we have “Recipe for Happiness” [Retsept shchastya] (the author is not a foreign agent – we checked). Is something wrong with that book? Evidently. Or this title: “Transit Systems in Resident-Friendly Cities” [Transport v gorodakh udobnykh dlya zhizni] (we checked: this author is not a foreign agent, either). What’s bad here? Well, something must be. The list also includes books by Eduard Limonov, who died in 2020. [One of them is] the controversial novel “It’s Me, Eddie” [Eto ya, Edichka]. If you try hard (and you really must, since it does not promote anything), perhaps you might find promotion of something nontraditional there. However, apart from Eddie, the list features a wonderful, lyrical work by the same author: “Diary of a Loser” [Dnevnik neudachnika]…

(By Igor Seleznyov. Nezavisimiaya gazeta, June 26, 2025, p. 5. Complete text:) The Armenian authorities are claiming to have uncovered a coup attempt. According to them, the conspirators included oligarchs, deputies, journalists and members of the Armenian Apostolic Church (AAC). They allegedly had plans to bring some 4,000 militants out onto the streets of Yerevan in August and overthrow the government in September.

In Yerevan, [police] arrested Archbishop Bagrat, who has for over a year now been urging the overthrow of [Armenian] Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, whom he has called the Antichrist. Armenian law-enforcement agencies have published several audio recordings where they claim the priest is talking about a plan to seize power. According to the investigation, he was planning to create up to 200 combat groups of 25 people each that were supposed to take control of parliament…

(By Vladimir Novikov, head of the Caucasus department at the Institute of CIS Countries. Ekspert, June 27, 2025, https://expert.ru/mnenie/tserkov-kuznitsa-protesta/. Complete text:) Editors’ Note. – On June 27, [the Armenian] National Security Council sent special forces to the residence of the head of the Armenian Apostolic Church (AAC) Catholicos Karekin II to [collect] Archbishop Mikael Adzhapakhyan and deliver him to the [Armenian] Investigative Committee (IC). He is being charged with public calls that he made back in February 2024 to seize power and overthrow the constitutional order. The archbishop’s supporters prevented special forces from arresting him, but he did later appear at the Armenian IC on his own. Ekspert has determined what lies at the heart of the conflict between the siloviki [law-enforcement and security officers] and senior church officials, as well as what this means for Russia.

Armenia is a country where state-building was interrupted by the battle for influence over it between the Ottoman and Persian empires. Under these conditions, the Armenian Church – which is the oldest of all Christian churches – has played the role of a “substitute” for state institutions for centuries. Even after Armenian statehood was restored and the church was formally separated from the state, it has continued to be a very influential institution…

(By Irina Khalip. Novaya gazeta Europe, June 25, 2025, https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2025/06/25/free-at-last-en. Complete text:) When Keith Kellogg, the US presidential envoy for Ukraine [and Russia], arrived in Minsk last week, Belarussian opposition circles were immediately rife with speculation that a fresh round of political prisoners could be released by the country dubbed “Europe’s last dictatorship.”

Grounded in recent events rather than purely wishful thinking, the speculation turned out to be correct on Saturday [June 21] when 14 of some of the most prominent political prisoners held in Belarussian jails finally walked free, including a man many believed would never again live to see the light of day – if he was even still alive at all – Sergei Tikhanovsky…

(By Dmitry Taratorin. Nezavisimaya gazeta, June 25, 2025, p. 1. Condensed text:) One of the participants in the 2020 presidential election campaign, Valery Tsepkalo, made a statement in which he expressed hope that the released Sergei Tikhanovsky would deal with his wife’s corrupt entourage. . . .

Like Sergei Tikhanovsky, who was released after Lukashenko’s meeting with [US President Donald] Trump’s special envoy [for Ukraine and Russia] Keith Kellogg, Valery Tsepkalo tried to take part in the fight for the presidency in 2020. And he, too, was not registered…

(By Philemon Yang, president of the 79th session of the United Nations General Assembly. Nezavisimaya gazeta, June 26, 2025, p. 1. Complete text:) Eighty years ago this month, the UN Charter was signed in San Francisco, turning the page on decades of war and offering hope for a better future. For 80 years, the UN has stood as the highest expression of our hopes for international cooperation, and as the fullest embodiment of our aspiration to end the “scourge of war.” Even in a world steeped in cynicism, this is a milestone worth acknowledging.

The UN remains the only organization of its kind, and the only one to have endured for so long. That longevity is remarkable when we consider the context of its founding: assembled from the rubble of not one, but two global cataclysms. Its predecessor, the League of Nations, had collapsed in disgrace…

(By Anastasia Kostina. Izvestia, June 23, 2025, p. 3. Condensed text:) Editors’ Note. – China is not considering sending peacekeeping contingents to Ukraine, Chinese Ambassador to Russia Zhang Hanhui told Izvestia in an interview. . . .

Question. The Chinese side has repeatedly stressed the need to peacefully settle the Ukraine crisis. Saudi Arabia and Turkey have previously provided platforms for talks. Is the Chinese side willing to play a constructive role in the settlement?…