My Last Day in St. Petersburg

Last night I collected my dog tags. Tonight I'm boarding a train bound for the Russian Arctic.

For the foreseeable future, this is my final update from St. Petersburg. The next chapter begins with training alongside the Russian Marines, and it marks the biggest change I've made since moving to Russia.

Many people have asked over the past year whether I would simply continue reporting on events from the sidelines. The answer is now clear. I made my decision, signed the paperwork, and the process is complete.

The timing is anything but quiet.

Over the past few days we've seen another wave of strikes targeting civilian and commercial infrastructure on both sides. Ukrainian officials were quick to celebrate attacks against Russia's largest online retailers before condemning retaliatory strikes as war crimes. Predictably, the standard seems to depend entirely on who is firing the missiles.

The wider debate over civilian infrastructure has become increasingly blurred. During the Black Sea grain deal there were repeated Russian claims that commercial shipping was being used to move military supplies. Whether every allegation proved accurate or not, the broader question hasn't disappeared. Modern conflicts increasingly rely on civilian logistics networks, warehouses and transport systems, making distinctions far less straightforward than many politicians and media outlets would like to admit.

The same applies to postal and delivery networks. Open-source photographs published by Ukrainian supporters have shown military equipment, including FPV drones, stored inside logistics facilities. Once images like that enter the public domain, arguments about whether those facilities remain purely civilian become far more complicated.

Meanwhile, ordinary people continue paying the price. When online retailers are attacked, it isn't generals who lose out. It's pensioners waiting for medicine, families expecting parcels and small businesses relying on deliveries. Those realities rarely make headlines.

Beyond the battlefield, politics remains depressingly predictable. Leaders change, speeches change, but policy rarely does. New faces continue promising the same support, the same strategies and the same rhetoric. Personnel rotate. Direction stays remarkably consistent.

As for this channel, things will inevitably change.

There will still be geopolitical analysis whenever circumstances allow, but you'll also see something different: firsthand observations from military life, training and daily reality inside Russia that few Western audiences ever get to witness directly.

I don't know how regularly I'll be able to publish from this point forward. That will depend entirely on where I am and what communications are available.

What I do know is that this isn't the end of Foreign Agent Intel.

It's simply the beginning of a very different chapter.