We were taught that truth is the best weapon.

That if people have access to facts, they'll figure it out.

This turned out to be completely, dangerously wrong

(🧵Read on) Information is no longer scarce: everyone has access to it. The Kremlin understood this sooner than most. Unlike Pravda in Soviet times, they don't see hiding facts as the biggest priority — instead, they flood you with versions of events until you start drowning in them.

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The Abu Dhabi talks won't end the war—but they're far from pointless. Here's what they could actually achieve, and why Putin may be forced to soften his demands within months: 🧵[1/8] Previous rounds of talks have led to some important, albeit limited results. First and foremost, I'm talking about prisoner exchanges - the UAE has mediated 17 of them in the past four years, allowing thousands of captured soldiers to return to their families

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A Bangladeshi janitor arrived in Russia expecting a cleaning job. Within weeks, he was sent to the front lines in Ukraine with a rifle in his hands.

🧵Read on to learn how Putin is avoiding another round of mobilization: [1/12] An investigation by @ap has found that Russian companies have been approaching Bangladeshi workers, claiming to be recruiting for civilian jobs - but when they arrive in Russia, the migrants are coerced into signing military contracts and deployed into combat zones against their will

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An IT specialist was deported back to Russia at the weekend after being detained for jaywalking in Kazakhstan. The moment his plane landed in Russia, he was arrested for treason.

🧵 The walls are closing in for those fleeing the Putin regime [1/10] Russian-Ukrainian dual citizen Alexander Kachkurkin is one of two people to be handed over to the Kremlin by Kazakhstan in the past four days, which clearly shows that the country is no longer safe for Russians pursued by the regime.

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For years, the West didn't know what to do with Russians who reject Putin. Engage them? Ignore them? Sanction them anyway?

That confusion just ended. @PACE_News has launched a formal platform for Russian democratic forces.

🧵Here's why this matters [1/14] First, what is PACE? The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe—the continent's oldest international parliamentary body. 46 countries, founded in 1949 to defend human rights and democratic governance.

Russia was expelled in 2022 after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

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He traveled to visit his elderly parents. Instead, he was arrested for his wife's social media posts.

🧵A Russian-Irish man now faces terrorism charges because he married a Ukrainian citizen [1/6] Dmitry Simbayev, 49, has lived in Ireland for more than 20 years but travels to visit his elderly parents in Chelyabinsk every year. His wife, Darya Petrenko, fled to Ireland in 2022 after Putin launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine

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I spent 10 years in Putin's prisons. In 2025, I was labeled a 'terrorist' for opposing the war.

🧵Now leaked Interpol files prove what I've long understood: the Kremlin has weaponized international policing into a worldwide dragnet for those who oppose Putin. [1/14] Over the past decade, Russia has generated three times more complaints to Interpol's oversight body than any other country. More Russian cases have been overturned than those of any other nation.

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What does it look like when a government can silence 90 million people while keeping itself online?

Iran just showed us. Russia is next.

(🧵Read on 1/17) Iran’s internet blackout is a preview of what Russia’s 'sovereign RuNet' is actually for: not resilience, not 'security,' but the ability to plunge the country into darkness while the state keeps operating.

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After more than two years of work, the Russian Democratic Forces Platform at PACE has been successfully established.

A huge thanks to all who contributed their time and political authority to these efforts >>🧵[1/4] The Platform's composition is highly representative on PACE's side (the President, the heads of all political factions...) as well as from the Russian side - all of the most significant Russian anti-war political movements are involved. All of them also signed the Berlin Declaration.

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Imagine attacking a university you never applied to because you think you deserved a personal invitation instead of taking exams like everyone else.

🧵That's Putin with NATO — here's the reality of his paranoid excuses for invading Ukraine: Fact: Russia under Putin never applied to join NATO. Meanwhile, every nation that supposedly "snuck up" on Russia actually waited 5-20 years to meet strict membership criteria on democracy, independent judiciary, and fair elections.

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Putin claims NATO forced his invasion.

Before 2022, the alliance was 1,000 tanks and 700 artillery short of defending just the Baltics.

It was not preparing to attack — was barely capable of self-defense. FACTS 👇 After the Cold War, Europe dismantled its military capacity at a pace no aggressor would consider. Tank numbers dropped from 19,000 to 4,000. Combat aircraft fell from 3,500 to 1,500. Nations planning attacks do not destroy their own weapons for decades leading up to war.

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A Russian schoolteacher secretly filmed his own workplace as it was turned into a war propaganda machine. That footage is now part of a documentary shortlisted for an Oscar.

Here’s the story behind ‘Mr Nobody in Russia’:👇

[1/12] Pavel Talankin spent most of his life at School No. 1 in Karabash, a small industrial town in Russia’s Urals. First as a student, later as an events coordinator, he ran clubs, filmed concerts, and built a refuge where students felt safe

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Ukraine struck a Russian tanker in the Mediterranean last month. Cutting off oil profits is the obvious motive.

🧵 But what @dossier_center found in the crew records hints at why these ships might matter beyond sanctions

[1/13] According to an investigation by Dossier Center, conducted in cooperation with Norway's NRK, crew lists show two Russians with ties to GRU special forces and the Wagner paramilitary group were aboard the tanker Qendil on its second-to-last voyage.

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Putin now admits what he has denied for months: Russia's war-driven growth is over.

Labor reserves are exhausted, unemployment — at record lows, with no solutions in sight.

1/13 🧵Takeaways from his annual Q&A Televised "Direct Line" is not a conversation, but a content hub. Its messages are designed to be clipped, repeated, and amplified across state media, turning a staged Q&A into weeks of narrative reinforcement

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Russia's "import substitution" policy is a cruel joke and has created a catastrophic dependence on China.

How the promise of independence led to a humiliating reality of isolation and decline. 🧵[1/18] After annexing Crimea in 2014, Russia faced a barrage of Western sanctions. In response, the Kremlin came up with the "import substitution" policy and promised to replace foreign goods with domestic production. 10 years on, the results are a case study in failure.

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What happens when one builds a military on convicted criminals?

Eventually they start hunting each other—and torturing civilians caught in between.

🧵A window into Putin’s collapsing internal order: [1/14] Konstantin Ektov spent eight years in Russian prisons for robbery and theft before volunteering for the war in 2023. After an injury took him off the front, he was reassigned to an "operative search group" in a small town near the Chinese border

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Germany just jailed Russian saboteurs. But the real threat isn't spies, it's Kadyrov's men working in plain sight.

🧵 How did a Chechen warlord's loyalists infiltrated Europe's most critical ports? [1/12] On October 30, a Munich court jailed three Russian-German dual citizens for spying on military movements, a Bavarian refinery, and US troop deployments. Investigators say they worked for Russia between late 2023 and early 2024.

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If you think Russia’s nuclear weapons are constrained by procedure, you are dangerously wrong.

There is no "Red Button." There is just one man, and a room full of people too afraid to stop him

🧵[Read on — 1/18] Russia’s nuclear weapons are not guarded by institutions or checks and balances. They are carried, quite literally, by a handful of officers whose sole job is to obey one man. So, what is Service K?

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The most dangerous moment in dealing with the Kremlin is when Putin opens his mouth.

He guaranteed Prigozhin’s safety weeks before blowing him out of the sky; promised Ukraine peace days before attacking.

🧵 We may have to deal with him, but we must never trust him [1/13] Here are some of the instances when Putin egregiously went against his own word (for those who didn't pay attention)

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With the release of Epstein files pending, let me remind what @dossier_center uncovered:

Convicted sex-trafficker worked directly with an FSB officer who ran Putin's elite St. Petersburg Economic Forum. We have their emails

🧵(Read on — 1/9) The timing is crucial here: in 2014-2015, right after Crimea, right after the first sanctions.

Putin's regime desperately needed Western business participation at Russian events to maintain any semblance of legitimacy. Epstein had access to exactly those people.

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"My friends died at the hands of Russian soldiers. Why can't I talk about it?"

This question will cost Varvara Volkova 7 years in a Russian penal colony

🧵Here's her story [1/7] Varvara was a flight attendant, not an impassioned political activist.

In a neighborhood chat, she stated the obvious: Russian forces are killing civilians in Ukraine. The prosecution framed it as "fake news" motivated by hatred toward the armed forces, and the court accepted it.

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