MEDUZA/EN/VHF

On Thursday, the second court hearing of 21-year-old Russian Sergeant Vadim Shishimarin took place in Kyiv. Shishimarin is the first Russian soldier to face formal charges for war crimes in Ukraine. He is accused of murdering a 62-year-old man in the Sumy region named Oleksandr Shelipov. According to prosecutors, on February 28, Shishimarin and four other Russian servicemen ended up in the village of Chupakhivka after their convoy was attacked and dispersed. The soldiers then fired on and commandeered a private vehicle. While driving away, they saw a civilian with a bicycle who was speaking on a cell phone. On orders from his commanding officer, Shishimarin shot the man using his assault rifle. Not long thereafter, Ukrainian troops captured the sergeant and later charged him with violating the laws and customs of warfare, as well as committing a premeditated murder. Under these statutes, Shishimarin faces between 10 years in prison and life imprisonment.

McDonalds has announced that it is leaving the Russian market after 32 years of doing business there. Since mid-March, operations have been suspended at McDonalds' 850 restaurants across Russia. On May 16, the company confirmed that it will sell its Russian business. Existing locations will be rebranded, and the iconic Golden Arches will vanish. According to the state news agency TASS, the new restaurants could open as soon as mid-June. Before the invasion, McDonalds employed 62,000 people at its franchises. The company continued to pay these staff even after suspending business in Russia. Meduza spoke to a handful of McDonalds workers to learn their thoughts about the chain's departure from Russia, and to find out what they plan to do next.

The investigative news website Proekt has published a database of information about Russian military units currently fighting in Ukraine. In total, the database names 166 commanding officers, offering varying degrees of detail about each individual's activities and biography, as well as information about their income, property, debts, and any recorded fines. Nearly two dozen of the officials identified were born or raised in Ukraine.

Russian ballet master Igor Zelensky may share a last name with Ukraine's current president -- but he's actually the father of Vladimir Putin's granddaughter. A joint investigation by Meduza, Current Time TV, and the Dossier Center has revealed that Zelensky has been in a years-long relationship with Putin's purported second daughter, Katerina Tikhonova. Until recently, Zelensky was based in Munich, where he worked as the director of the Bavarian State Ballet. And Tikhonova, who heads the Moscow-based nonprofit "Innopraktika," divided her time between Russia and Germany. Zelensky resigned from his position in Munich in early April, reportedly in connection with his refusal to publicly condemn Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Now, there's speculation that Zelensky will take on a leadership role at a new state theater the Russian authorities are constructing in Crimea -- a project announced by Putin himself in 2018.

On February 23, four members of an Orthodox youth movement in Kharkiv set out on a four-day pilgrimage. Their plan was to return home on February 28. At 5:00 a.m on February 24, they got off their train in Kyiv and learned that Russia's invasion had begun. Ever since then, they've been living in a Ukrainian Orthodox monastery in the Kyiv region. Some of them have nowhere else to go because their homes have been destroyed; others have made the decision not to leave for religious reasons. Meduza asked Iryna, a journalist from Kyiv who found herself living in the same monastery, to write about the new lives these young people are building in the monastery.

On May 11, the online newspaper Ukrayinska Pravda released a short documentary called "The Occupant" ("Okupant," in Ukrainian), which tells the story of a Russian lieutenant named Yury Shalaev. According to the newspaper, 24-year-old Shalaev served as the commander of a motorized rifle platoon in a military unit based in Shali, Chechnya. He was deployed to Ukraine on March 3, as part of Russia's full-scale invasion -- and he recorded his wartime experiences on his phone. Shalaev was taken prisoner in early April and the videos he recorded ended up in the hands of Ukrayinska Pravda. The newspaper's journalists turned the recordings into a 24-minute documentary that offers a window into Shalaev's life before and after his arrival in Ukraine. To find out more about the making of the film, Meduza sat down with journalist Mykhailo Tkach, the head of Ukrayinska Pravda's investigations department.

On May 20, Azov regiment member and Mariupol defender Dmytro Kozatsky posted two farewell photos on social media as he left the Azovstal steel plant, where he had been living under siege for over two months.

As of today, Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine has been underway for exactly three months. Throughout Moscow's "special military operation," representatives of the Russian elite have repeatedly changed their positions on the war in Ukraine and the crisis at home. Moderate optimism replaced what was initially extreme pessimism, only to be ousted by a wave of moderate pessimism. Sources close to the Kremlin told Meduza that these moods have shifted again, as more elites express dissatisfaction with Vladimir Putin directly. Frustration with the president, moreover, is rising among both supporters and opponents of the invasion.

Mariupol's Azovstal steel plant was under continuous siege by Russian troops from early March until May 17. The last place unoccupied by Russian troops in the city, the plant was completely cut off from the outside world. Ukrainians managed to defend it up until May 16, when the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces ordered the commanders of the units in Azovstal to "save the lives of the personnel." The soldiers (the majority of whom belong to the Azov regiment, which was using the plant as a base) laid down their weapons and surrendered. Meduza spoke to the wives of two of the Azov soldiers who were taken prisoner, and to the mother of one who died, about what it was like to follow the siege from afar as their loved ones were under siege inside the plant.

Since the start of the war, the Russian government has repeatedly violated even the most basic rights of Russian soldiers. Those who don't want to join the war have been forced to sign contracts and sent into battle against their will. Meanwhile, families have been given little to no information about the fates of their missing husbands and sons -- nor, often, have they been given their dead loved ones' bodies. With the official system either overwhelmed by the sheer number of victims or invested in remaining opaque, the task of helping relatives get answers has fallen to human rights lawyers. Meduza spoke to Soldiers' Mothers Committee Executive Secretary Valentina Melnikova about the new role the organization has taken on since February 24.