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2/ Komsomolskaya Pravda journalist Dmitry Steshin calls it "a day of celebration for foreign agents, as the audience for pro-Russian channels on Telegram has plummeted."
2/ The Russian news outlet Mash reports that AvtoVAZ will shut down its assembly lines for almost the entire period from 27 April to 17 May, with the workforce sent on mandatory leave.
2/ Madina Nikolaevna Mironenko, a 42-year-old soldier's widow and mother of four children, was dragged out of her house by her hair and stabbed to death by a masked neighbour, in front of her nine-year-old daughter. Another neighbour witnessed the attack and recognised the man.
2/ Starovoit, who shot himself on 7 July 2025 shortly before he was due to be charged for fraud, has been the subject of testimony given by Alexey Smirnov, his also-indicted deputy and successor. Smirnov says that he and his own deputy also took bribes.
2/ A statement issued by the Austrian Federal Ministry of Defence says that it will not let the US use its airspace for military operations against Iran. Individual requests for overflights are being reviewed in consultation with the Austrian Foreign Ministry.
2/ Wells manage the release of oil and gas that is under great pressure from underground reservoirs. While they are designed to throttle flow up and down as required and can be shut in for short periods for maintenance, they are not designed for indefinite shut-ins.
2/ Russia's Ministry of Digital Development, Communications, and Mass Media has put forward a bill on state regulation of artificial intelligence, which essentially outlaws the use of foreign AI systems such as ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini.
2/ 'Marmot of the Burning Prairie' writes:
2/ 'Military Informant' publishes the text of the decree:
2/ Writing on his personal Telegram channel, Deripaska argues that "in difficult times, we know how to pull ourselves together and work more. And the sooner we switch to this new schedule—from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., including Saturdays—the faster we will undergo this transformation."
2/ March 7th: "We don't need people that join Wars after we've already won!"
2/ The bank has issued a briefing note to investors drafted by its chief economist, @KallumPickering. He writes:
2/ Corriere della Sella and La Republicca report that on Fridary 27 March, the Italian Chief of the Defence Staff, General Luciano Portolano, was informed that several US bombers were inbound to the Naval Air Station Sigonella in Sicily, controlled by the Italian Air Force. 
2/ The BBC Russian Service reports that the FSB has told the Ministry of Digital Development to impose a tax on every gigabyte of VPN traffic after an initial 15 Gb. The FSB wants to discourage Russians from connecting to foreign VPN servers to access resources blocked in Russia.
2/ Alexey Chadayev, the head of the Ushkuynik Research and Production Centre – a leading Russian drone development organisation – recounts a conversation that he had recently with a Russian lieutenant general about the army's failing UAV pilot recruitment programme:
2/ "Just to give you a little context, it's worth mentioning that:
2/ In Star Trek, the Kobayashi Maru is a scenario which Star Fleet cadets have to undertake. They must respond to a distress call from a crippled ship in the Klingon Neutral Zone — but any rescue attempt triggers a war, and doing nothing lets the crew die. 
2/ The blocking of the Strait of Hormuz has reduced traffic through the strait by 97%, cutting off most of the Persian Gulf oil and gas supply from tanker shipment. The reduction in the supply of oil is twice as large as seen in any previous oil crisis, according to the IEA.
2/ It's very noteworthy that all three military departments (Army, Navy and Air Force) started in almost exactly the same place – 74-75% – but have fallen to strikingly different levels: 41.9% for the Army, but only 26.2% for the Air Force.