0625GMT//Russians complain of pressure to join new Kremlin instant messaging app; Armenia wants to quit Kremlin-led economic bloc

RUSSIA KILLS UKRAINIAN CIVILIANS: Russian drones and missiles hit sites across Ukraine on Thursday, killing at least 23 civilians. The targets included British and EU offices in Kyiv. (COMMENT: This was the largest Russian attack on Ukraine since July. Talks to end the war in Ukraine feel a long way off. It's, perhaps, important that Russian missiles hit European targets. The Kremlin accuses the EU and Britain of being warmongers for taking a far harder position on negotiations compared to the US.)

RUSSIAN NAVAL DRONE STRIKE: Russia's navy said that it had sunk a Ukrainian warship for the first time with a naval drone. This was later confirmed by Ukrainian military intelligence. Reports said that the drone hit a small missile-carrying ship at the mouth of the Danube River. (COMMENT: Finally sinking a Ukrainian warship with a drone may feel like a significant technological win for Russia, but, in reality, Ukraine has been doing this for three years.)

KREMLIN'S SURVEILLANCE MESSENGER: Russians are openly complaining that the Kremlin is forcing them to switch to a new state-built instant messaging system called Max. A Telegram user from Penza, in central Russia, said in a video that instructions are being broadcast on loudspeakers along the shopping street every 30 minutes for people to use Max. (COMMENT: The Kremlin has spent the year developing Max and is now trying to get Russians to use it instead of WhatsApp, Telegram and other instant messaging systems. From Sept. 1, all civil servants will have to use Max, and it will be pre-installed on mobile phones in Russia. Russians are, rightly, worried that this is just another tool for the Kremlin to monitor their lives and to harvest data and personal information.)

MILITARY SPENDING: In the first three months of 2025, the Kremlin spent more than half its income on its military for the first time, said Janis Kluge, a research fellow at the German Institute for International Security Studies. Kluge estimated that the Kremlin's spending on its military has doubled since its invasion of Ukraine in 2022. (COMMENT: There was a large jump in military spending by Russia at the start of 2023. This data also reflects how the Kremlin's income from tax and sales of oil, gas and other products has fallen.)

TRADE WITH CHINA FALLS: Russia's trade with China fell by 8.1% in the first half of the year, Chinese customs data showed. This was mainly due to a drop in vehicle imports to Russia from China and Russian oil and gas exports. (COMMENT: Putin will fly to Tianjin, north China, for a summit of the Russia and China-led Shanghai Cooperation Organisation on Sunday and Monday. There will be roughly 20 heads of state at the summit, handing Putin a diplomatic coup, but he will also want to chat over the declining trade data with Chinese leader Xi Jinping.)

ARMENIA TO QUIT KREMLIN TRADE GROUP: Nikol Pashinyan, Armenia's PM, said for the first time that he wants to pull Armenia out of the Kremlin-led Eurasian Economic Union. Instead, he confirmed that he wants Armenia to join the EU. (COMMENT: This is a major shift for the Kremlin to deal with. It has publicly said that it will mount an influence campaign to keep Armenia within its sphere of influence. The EAEU is one of its key tools for projecting influence on its so-called "near abroad" and the Kremlin has used it to skirt around Western sanctions. Armenia would be the first country to quit the EAEU, a customs union that began operations in 2015. The EAEU members are Russia, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.)