Day: June 18, 2026

A 70-year-old resident of the U.S. state of Missouri, Brenda Deutsch, who had fostered more than 200 children over the years, has become the centre of a major scandal….

Ilya Traber — an oil port owner in Ust-Luga with sprawling commercial interests, known by the nickname “the Antique Dealer” — was detained in St. Petersburg on June 17. Russia’s Federal Security Service, the FSB, led the operation, and the country’s Investigative Committee opened a criminal case in Moscow linked to his alleged role in the murder of Alexander Petrov, a lawmaker. Traber’s business partner Vladimir Danilenko was also detained. Investigators also searched the home of Gennady Petrov — no relation to the murder victim, despite the shared surname — in connection with the same case. Journalists have long identified Nikolai Shamalov as one of Traber’s business associates; Shamalov’s son Kirill was once married to Putin’s daughter Katerina Tikhonova. The Traber-Putin relationship dates to the 1990s, when Putin oversaw Traber’s activities in his official capacity as deputy mayor of St. Petersburg. Meduza asked Denis Korotkov, a journalist at the Dossier Center who has spent years investigating St. Petersburg’s criminal and business networks, what the public needs to know about Traber — and why his detention is such an extraordinary development.

Oil prices retreated in Asia on Thursday afternoon as traders bet on a swift reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, the critical waterway through which roughly one-fifth of global oil shipments are typically transported.