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Agencies

Most of Ukraine’s northern Chernihiv region was ‌left without power on Saturday after a Russian drone attack, local governor Viacheslav Chaus said.
He ⁠said repair works were under way ‌to fix the damage. The region, which ‌borders Russia and Belarus, ⁠had ⁠a pre-war population of nearly ‌a million.
The regional capital, also called ‌Chernihiv, ‌was fully without power, ‌the city administration there ⁠said.
Russia has conducted a vast ⁠bombardment campaign against Ukrainian energy facilities throughout the ‌war, ‌causing regular, hours-long blackouts across the country.


Meanwhile, Moscow has thwarted protests over the blocking of the popular messaging app, Telegram, but frustration persists.
In one Russian city, officials blocked a rally due to a “tree inspection”.
Elsewhere, they blamed snow removal problems or still-existing Covid-19 restrictions. And in one location, administrators argued that the reason for the protest did not exist.
Authorities in nearly a dozen Russian regions in recent weeks cited various excuses to prevent demonstrations against internet censorship and the blocking of the app.
In most cases, they succeeded. Mindful of a crackdown on dissent since the four-year-old invasion of Ukraine, activists decided not to risk holding unauthorised rallies, even if they were not about the war.

Some went to court to challenge government refusals to authorise pickets, while others scaled them back to smaller indoor gatherings.
But the disapproval persists across the political spectrum over moves against Russia’s second-most popular messaging app, adding to frustrations over a growing list of various issues that plague the country.
“Clearly the situation has changed, the laws have become stricter, but the protest hasn’t gone anywhere,” said Alexander Sustov, a legislator in Russia’s far eastern Primorye region where a pro-Telegram rally was blocked last month.
“Discontent remains. And any ban only fuels that discontent,” he said.
Restricting Telegram is Russia’s latest move to put the internet under government control.

Thousands of websites and platforms are blocked, as are multiple virtual private networks that allow users to circumvent censorship. Widespread cellphone internet shutdowns leave only a handful of government-approved websites available.
Telegram trails only WhatsApp – also severely restricted – in popularity among Russians, and is widely used by government agencies for their official social media presence, as well as by pro-Kremlin commentators and military bloggers with hundreds of thousands of followers.
Authorities encourage users to switch to MAX, a government-backed messaging app that critics say is a state surveillance tool.
Military bloggers criticise the moves against Telegram, arguing it is an indispensable communications tool for Russian troops in Ukraine and for activists running crowdfunding campaigns to help Moscow’s forces.

The government initially promised not to restrict Telegram on the battlefield, but a different signal later came from the Kremlin.
At a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin for International Women’s Day, a servicewoman called Telegram “an adversarial communications tool” and agreed with him when he said that “the use of communications systems that are not ours, not under our control, poses a danger to personnel” in battle.
Unconfirmed media reports predict that the coming weeks will see a complete blocking of the app, which in December 2025 had 93.6 million monthly users in Russia, or 76 per cent of the population, according to monitoring group Mediascope.
Protests stifled from Moscow to Siberia
Blocking Telegram prompted various political forces, including those who support the war or the Kremlin in general, to act.
Widespread dismay and the lack of a black-and-white narrative to justify the restrictions made “people feel like they can afford to protest here”, said political analyst Abbas Gallyamov.
Last month, members of Other Russia, an ultranationalist, pro-war group, blocked the entrance to the Moscow office of state media and internet regulator Roskomnadzor with a bicycle cable and displayed a banner saying: “Give us an internet without supervision, (and) Russia without Roskom-disgrace.”
In December, the group hung a banner at the agency’s St. Petersburg office, saying, “Roskomnadzor, ban this banner.”
All were arrested, with the Moscow activists facing criminal charges.
Regional branches of the Communist Party, which generally supports the Kremlin, tried to organise rallies in several places.
In Siberia’s Altai region, they were turned down after local officials said claims of an internet clampdown were “at odds with reality”.
It is not up to officials to decide what we read. The internet is not a prison
Communist Party activists in Russia
In southern Krasnodar, a rally for later in March has been authorised on the outskirts of the city.
In the northern cities of Naryan-Mar and Syktyvkar, Communist Party activists managed to hold pickets, with placards saying, “it is not up to officials to decide what we read” and “the internet is not a prison”.
But those were exceptions, with authorities elsewhere refusing to allow rallies or blocking them at the last minute.
Organisers in the Ural Mountains city of Perm secured a permit for a March 15 demonstration, but two hours before its start, activists were told of a “potential emergency situation” at the rally site that made it unsuitable for a gathering.
Some still showed up.
Viktor Gilin, 80, unfurled a banner that read, “Vladimir Putin! I demand that you bring back freedom of thought and speech – the internet!”
He was swiftly detained and fined.

In the Siberian city of Novosibirsk, 16 people were detained this month at the site of a planned pro-Telegram rally.
Although authorisation for the protest at that square was not needed, participants arrived to find the site marked off with tape for a purported “tree inspection”, said activist Roman Malozyomov.
Malozyomov and other activists, journalists and some passers-by were detained but let go after a few hours.
He went straight to the Lenin Square for a one-man picket with a sign proclaiming he wanted to “stay connected,” with the Roskomnadzor logo crossed out.
This week, activists in several regions filed for authorisation of more rallies on March 29. Some were swiftly rejected.
Protesting other issues, cautiously
Rallies have been rare since anti-war protests were brutally suppressed in 2022, with political prosecutions skyrocketing and laws restricting dissent multiplying.
Smaller demonstrations persisted in spots, including unauthorised ones.
Wives of soldiers picketed at the Kremlin and the Defence Ministry in 2024, and over 1,000 people gathered that same year in the Bashkortostan region to protest the jailing of a local activist, resulting in mass arrests.
Farmers in Siberia protested this month over cattle culling they deem unwarranted. In northern Komi, workers at a woodworking plant rallied to demand back pay.
Hundreds joined an authorised rally in October in Vladivostok to protest increased car registration fees, one of the largest gatherings in the Pacific coast city in years.
In Siberia’s Tomsk, activist Anton Isakov recently managed to organise an authorised demonstration against the blocking of popular online game platform Roblox and another against animal cruelty.
If authorities allow protests, there are ready participants because of the many issues “that people want to speak out about”, he said. His attempts to get a permit for a pro-Telegram rally have been refused so far.
Malozyomov, the Novosibirsk activist, said small, authorised rallies on issues such as high utility costs are often allowed there because “the authorities are trying to give people an opportunity to vent, so that the tension doesn’t build up”.
Some are trying measures other than rallies.
Konstantin Larionov in Kaluga, southwest of Moscow, and 41 others filed a lawsuit against Roskomnadzor and other government officials last year, arguing that restrictions on Telegram and WhatsApp violate their free speech and privacy rights.
Larionov urged others to join by petitioning the court via email, and the number of plaintiffs swelled to 105.
He said it was encouraging to see people “from different parts of the country” willing to take part.
The court sided with the authorities. Larionov appealed and lost but plans to go all the way up to the Supreme Court.
He admits the ability to protest in Russia has shrunk but believes it is important to keep trying.
“We are, maybe, retreating a little bit, but we’re not giving up,” he said.
Analyst Gallyamov says the Telegram protests are more about signalling popular discontent than “fighting the regime”.
But “it is another crack in the foundation” of Putin’s rule, he said.
Reporting by Reuters and Associated Press


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Ukraine war

Most of Ukraine’s Chernihiv region has no power after Russian attack

Yevheniia Yeremina, 89, stands in her kitchen using a gas stove to warm her apartment, which has no electricity and heating, in Kyiv on January 26. Russia has often attacked Ukrainian energy infrastructure amid its invasion. Photo: AFP

Varvara (whose name has been changed to protect her identity) poses for a picture during an interview with journalists on February 5 in Moscow. She joined an anti-war protest in 2022 but now does not dare to criticise the Kremlin. Photo: AFP

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin and the late Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei greet each other in 2022 in Tehran. Photo: via AP

The Telegram app had 93.6 million monthly users in Russia in December. File photo: dpa

Police officers stand at the site of a planned protest of restrictions on Telegram after authorisation for the rally was revoked due to a “potential emergency situation” in Perm, Russia, on March 15. Photo: AP

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A US bomber takes off from the Diego Garcia military base in 2001. Photo: Handout via AFP

This image from the US Navy in 2024 shows an aerial view of Diego Garcia. Photo: AP

A man holds a placard during an anti-war demonstration on Saturday outside the UK’s RAF Fairford airbase, used by the US amid the US–Israel conflict with Iran. Photo: Reuters

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Men in Tehran inspect the ruins of a police station struck in early Marcy during the US-Israeli military campaign. Photo: AP

Relatives mourn while General Ali Shamkhani, secretary of Iran’s Defence Council and a senior adviser to the Supreme Leader, was buried in Tehran on March 14. Photo: AP

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Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban in Brussels, Belgium on Thursday. Photo: Reuters

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban (left) looks at satellite images showing part of the Druzhba oil pipeline earlier this month. Photo: Hungarian PM’s General Department of Communication via EPA

Ukraine’s President  Volodymyr Zelensky speaks to EU leaders in Brussels via video. Photo: AFP

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A Ukrainian soldier walks down a road covered with anti-drone netting in Izyum, Kharkiv region. Photo: AFP

Russian soldiers fire towards Ukrainian positions in Ukraine. Photo: Russian Defence Ministry via AP

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Then US president Barack Obama hugs Shigeaki Mori, a survivor of the 1945 atomic bombing of Hiroshima, during a visit to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park in 2016. Photo: AFP

Smoke rising above Hiroshima after the US dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city on August 6, 1945. Photo: AFP/US National Archives

The Atomic Bomb Dome memorial in Hiroshima, which was designated a Unesco World Heritage Site in 1996. Photo: EPA

Hiroshima was in ruins after the US dropped the first atomic bomb on the Japanese city on August 6, 1945. Photo: AFP

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Russia & Central Asia

Meanwhile, although Putin’s regime has thwarted protests over the blocking of the popular messaging app, Telegram, there is still discontent


Meanwhile, although Putin’s regime has thwarted protests over the blocking of the popular messaging app, Telegram, there is still discontent.


Most of Ukraine’s Chernihiv region has no power after Russian attack

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Meanwhile, although Putin’s regime has thwarted protests over the blocking of the popular messaging app, Telegram, there is still discontent

Meanwhile, although Putin’s regime has thwarted protests over the blocking of the popular messaging app, Telegram, there is still discontent