Day: August 7, 2019

Outspoken designer Artemy Lebedev has announced his emigration from Russia in an emotional video address that has left many viewers dubious about its sincerity. A well-known designer and popular blogger famous for his provocative views, Lebedev owns the design studio Art.Lebedev. The studio has developed the official logos of the Russian cities of Moscow, Yekaterinburg…

More than a quarter of children in Russia live below the poverty line, double the national average across all age groups, according to official data. As the number of Russians living in poverty grows amid declining real incomes, researchers say children are significantly more likely to experience economic hardship than other population segments. The United…

Russian election officials have issued a final decision to block opposition candidate Lyubov Sobol from running for Moscow’s city council next month. Russia’s Central Election Commission (CEC) said it had received 19 appeals from various candidates including Sobol against the Moscow commission’s decision to disqualify them from the ballot on Sept. 8. That decision, based…

U.S. authorities have arrested a Russian immigrant on suspicion of illegally smuggling restricted firearms parts inside packages of jeans and sneakers into Russia. Vladimir Kuznetsov, 58, is alleged to have exported parts to assemble sniper rifles and other firearms without licenses “by methodically mislabeling the packages” for two and a half years. U.S. law enforcement…

Russian authorities ordered mobile operators to cut access to mobile data services during last weekend’s opposition protests in Moscow, marking the first documented case in Moscow’s history, Russia’s Internet Protection Society NGO has said. Russia’s first documented instance of authorities ordering to stifle mobile internet access took place in the country’s republic of Ingushetia in October,…

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Wednesday pressed Russian leader Vladimir Putin for a resumption of peace talks after four Ukrainian soldiers were killed by shelling in the eastern Donbass border region. Conflict between Ukrainian troops and Russian-backed forces has killed an estimated 13,000 people since 2014. A ceasefire deal brokered by France and Germany ended…

Russia’s law enforcement and security officials have committed more crimes in 2018 than they did the previous year, according to a media report citing official data. Authorities investigated 6,613 crimes committed by members of 10 key security and law enforcement agencies in 2018, according to data from the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office cited by the…

Russia called outgoing U.S. Ambassador to Russia Jon Huntsman a professional diplomat late on Tuesday, but said he had been unable to improve battered Russia-U.S. ties because he had been hamstrung by domestic U.S. politics, the state-run TASS news agency reported. Huntsman, who was appointed by U.S. President Donald Trump in 2017, said in a…

Russian prosecutors said on Tuesday that some of the vast Siberian wildfires that environmentalists have dubbed a climate emergency were started on purpose by arsonists trying to conceal illegal logging activity. President Vladimir Putin called in the army last week to help firefighters battle fires raging in remote Siberian forestland that had spread to an…

Moscow residents are more likely to support the recent wave of opposition protests in Russia’s capital than oppose them, according to the independent Levada Center polling agency. Thousands have taken to the streets of Russia’s capital for the past four weekends in support of the opposition candidates barred from running for the Moscow City Duma…