An attack on Novorossiysk, the "capture" of an abandoned village, and 500 rubles for the cancellation of "Motherland": overnight news
Novorossiysk was subjected to a massive attack by Ukrainian drones, and the Russian Ministry of Defense reported the "seizure" of a village in the Kharkiv region, which had been deregistered back in 1997. Meanwhile, activist Anton Mikhalchuk attempted to deregister the Rodina party with a 500-ruble wire transfer.
Drone attack on Novorossiysk and the "capture" of a non-existent village
Ukrainian drones launched a massive attack on Novorossiysk, according to an official statement from the city's mayor, Andriy Kravchenko. Falling debris damaged six residential buildings, a commercial building, and a construction site. Following the attack, two temporary shelters for residents were established in the city.
Furthermore, the Russian Ministry of Defense reported establishing control over the village of Shcherbakovka in Ukraine's Kharkiv Oblast. However, as Astra has discovered, this village was completely depopulated and deserted back in the 1990s, and was officially deregistered in 1997.
Consequently, analysts from the Ukrainian project DeepState did not record any advancement of Russian troops in the area of the former village. However, similar reports of the "capture" of long-defunct settlements have been published by the agency before—for example, the village of Belaya Bereza in January 2026.
500 rubles from a "foreign agent" to cancel the Rodina party
At the same time, Anton Mikhalchuk, a politician and activist based abroad, transferred 500 rubles to Alexey Zhuravlev, the leader of the Rodina party. After this, Mikhalchuk, who had previously been listed as a "foreign agent," publicly called on the Central Election Commission and Rosfinmonitoring to revoke Rodina's registration.
The point of the action is that failure to return funds from a "foreign agent" is considered prohibited political financing under Russian law. Ultimately, this performance-action was a response to Zhuravlev's lawsuit, which had previously led the Supreme Court to disqualify the Yabloko party from the State Duma elections.
University admissions plan and Yandex Pay deletion
Deputy Secretary of the Russian Civic Chamber, Vladislav Grib, proposed a new system for priority admission to universities. He believes that both Unified State Exam (USE) results and Olympiad victories should be required, rather than considering only one of these achievements. Grib believes that achieving a perfect score on the exam is no less difficult than winning an Olympiad, and the number of competitions considered could be reduced.
It was also announced that the Yandex Pay app had been removed from the App Store. Representatives emphasized that users' funds are completely safe, and the app is still available for download on Google Play and for use on iPhones if previously installed. However, other services in the ecosystem, including Yandex Market and Yandex Go, remain accessible.
