Month: August 2019

Russia and China plan to discuss foreign interference as anti-government protests continue to rock Moscow and Hong Kong and spur accusations of U.S. meddling. Russian lawmakers said they plan to cut short their summer recess to debate foreign powers’ “meddling in domestic issues” as they blamed Google for allegedly promoting last Saturday’s 50,000-strong protest on YouTube.…

Radiation levels in the Russian city of Severodvinsk rose by up to 16 times on Aug. 8 after an accident that authorities said involved a rocket test on a sea platform, Russia‘s state weather agency said Tuesday, the TASS news agency reported. The defense ministry initially said background radiation had remained normal after the incident…

The United States has “more advanced” technology than Russia’s nuclear-powered cruise missile that was presumed to have been involved in a mysterious accident last week, President Donald Trump has said. At least five nuclear experts were killed in the secretive rocket engine test at sea in northern Russia five days ago. U.S.-based experts and intelligence…

An estimated 50,000 protesters took to the streets of Moscow on Saturday, Aug. 10, in one of the largest protests in Russia since 2012. They rallied against the barring of opposition candidates from local elections next month and police crackdowns at recent rallies. 256 were detained in a march after the demonstration.

Less than 15 percent of Russians are considered to be part of the middle class, according to an analysis of official data by the state-run RIA Novosti news agency. Russians’ real incomes and ability to save money have suffered from low oil prices and Western sanctions in the past five years. Independent polling has said…

Video footage of a Russian police officer punching a young woman in the stomach has stirred anger among many Russians who believe the authorities have used excessive force to disperse weeks of political demonstrations in Moscow. The clip, filmed Saturday and later circulated online by Russian celebrities with millions of followers, shows the moment two…

At least five nuclear experts have been killed in a mysterious explosion during a rocket engine test at sea in northern Russia four days ago. Officials have been slow to release information about Thursday’s blast, which led to a radiation spike in a nearby city and sparked heightened demand for iodine. U.S.-based nuclear experts said…

Russia‘s top nuclear official promised on Monday to succeed in developing new weapons as he paid tribute to five scientists killed in what U.S. experts suspect was the botched test of a new missile vaunted by President Vladimir Putin. The five scientists were buried in the closed city of Sarov on Monday. They died last…

Russia held a memorial service on Monday for five scientists killed in a mysterious explosion last week after an official at their research institute suggested they had been working on developing a small nuclear reactor. Authorities have been drip-feeding information about a blast during a rocket test on a platform in the White Sea off…

The estimated 50,000 people who braved Moscow’s rainy weather on Saturday to support opposition politicians barred from a local election and protesters arrested on charges of “mass unrest” last month were largely young adults who see themselves as ordinary people, a survey has said. Russian state television has branded participants of the latest authorized gathering…

A series of explosions that rocked a Russian ammo depot in Siberia has injured a total of 32 people over the past week in addition to one death, authorities have said. Explosions ripped through the site last Monday, killing one, injuring 13 and prompting the authorities to evacuate 16,000 residents from nearby areas in the…

Russia’s military has thwarted the third attack on its airbase in Syria in the past week, Russian news agencies have reported. The attacks took place as Russia’s ally Syria said last week it was resuming military operations in a Russian-led campaign in Idlib, blaming Turkey for not abiding by its commitments under a truce deal.…

Russia’s state communications watchdog has asked Google to stop advertising “illegal mass events” on its YouTube video platform, it said Sunday. Tens of thousands of Russians staged what observers called the country’s biggest political protest for eight years on Saturday, defying a crackdown to demand free elections to Moscow’s city legislature. Multiple YouTube channels broadcast…

A Tesla electric car caught fire after crashing into a tow truck on a Moscow motorway late on Saturday. Footage of the incident on state TV channel Rossia 24 showed the car by the side of the road engulfed in flames and thick black smoke. Two small explosions occurred within a few seconds of each…

Russian riot police ringed off the presidential administration building in Moscow on Saturday after a crowd gathered nearby following an opposition rally and hundreds more were seen walking toward the area chanting, Reuters witnesses said. Police detained at least 120 people, according to the OVD-Info police-monitoring website, after more than 500 people were seen moving…

Russia’s state nuclear agency acknowledged for the first time on Saturday that nuclear workers were involved in an explosion during a rocket engine test that caused a spike in radiation in a nearby city. The agency, Rosatom, said five people killed in the blast were its staff members, and the accident involved “isotope power sources,”…

Nearly 50,000 people took to Moscow’s streets to rally for fair elections on a rainy Saturday despite weeks of heavy crackdowns, making it one of Russia’s largest protests in several years. This summer’s protest movement, which began as a standoff between opposition figures and Moscow authorities over the barring of independent candidates from an upcoming…

Nearly 50,000 Russian opposition activists and their supporters have taken to Moscow’s streets for a fifth consecutive weekend in spite of a government crackdown as support from citizens and celebrities grows across the county. The protests, which demand that Moscow authorities allow independent candidates to appear on the ballot in the city’s upcoming elections, have…

Russian opposition politician Lyubov Sobol, an ally of Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny, said on social media on Saturday she had been detained by police ahead of a protest in Moscow. A video posted on Sobol’s Twitter account showed police entering her office.

U.S.-based nuclear experts said on Friday they suspected an accidental blast and radiation release in northern Russia this week occurred during the testing of a nuclear-powered cruise missile vaunted by President Vladimir Putin last year. The Russian Defense Ministry, quoted by state-run news outlets, said that two people died and six were injured on Thursday in an explosion…

Vladimir Putin was appointed Russia’s acting prime minister on Aug. 9, 1999 by then-President Boris Yeltsin. He’s remained in power ever since, either in the role of president or prime minister. We went to the streets of Moscow to ask locals how they view Putin’s two-decade-long rule.

Bruised Russian teenager Alexander Kostyuk spent three days in hospital being treated for concussion he said he sustained on Aug. 3 when four policemen beat him with truncheons at an opposition protest in Moscow. It was the second peaceful demonstration in as many weeks by an increasingly defiant opposition to President Vladimir Putin. Both were…

A series of explosions rocked a Russian ammo depot in Siberia for the second time in a week on Friday, injuring five people, the state-run TASS news agency cited doctors as saying. A fire broke out following the explosions at the site in the Krasnoyarsk region, TASS reported. The explosions were caused by a lightning strike,…

Russia’s Foreign Ministry has accused Japan of “illegally” including Pacific islands claimed by both Moscow and Tokyo in a map of the Olympics the Japanese capital will host next year. Japan has been seeking the return of the Kuril Islands — which it calls the Northern Territories — since Soviet troops seized them at the…

At least six victims of a military site explosion in northern Russia have allegedly been taken to Moscow with radiation exposure, according to unconfirmed media reports published a day after the mysterious blast. Authorities in a nearby city reported a brief spike in radiation Thursday when a rocket engine blew up at the testing site…

Russian President Vladimir Putin was appointed acting prime minister on Aug. 9, 1999, by then-president Boris Yeltsin. He has been in office as president or prime minister ever since, a period spanning two decades. Here are some highlights of Putin’s 20 years in power: Aug. 9, 1999 — During an economic crisis, Boris Yeltsin names little-known…

Residents of two northern Russian cities are stocking up on iodine that is used to reduce the effects of radiation exposure after a mysterious accident at a nearby military testing site, regional media have reported. The Defense Ministry has given few details of the accident, saying only that two people were killed and six injured…

Russia on Friday accused the U.S. Embassy of having meddled in Russia’s internal affairs when it published a map online showing the route of an unauthorized anti-government protest earlier this month. Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said it had summoned a senior U.S. diplomat over what it said was a post on Twitter and the…

Russian lawmakers are moving to further restrict the locations where citizens will be allowed to protest following weeks of demonstrations over Moscow authorities’ refusal to allow the opposition from running for local office. Thousands of Muscovites have taken to the streets in the past month to protest the decision to bar opposition members from running…

On this day 20 years ago, Russian President Boris Yeltsin named Vladimir Putin the country’s acting prime minister and successor for the presidency. At the time, most Russians knew little about the 46-year-old head of the Federal Security Service (FSB), who had largely kept out of the public eye. The Kremlin’s political opponents, meanwhile, criticized Yeltsin’s…

The world was a very different place in 1999. We were introduced to Britney Spears. Bill Clinton was impeached. Napster was launched. And everyone worried about Y2K and the havoc it would soon wreak on dial-up internet and our giant PCs. It was also the year Vladimir Putin was appointed as prime minister of Russia…

A former top prosecutor in Russia has encountered resistance as he tries to sue Stalin over orders to execute over 80,000 people and send nearly 200,000 to the gulags, Russia’s Kommersant business daily has reported. Ex-prosecutor Igor Stepanov filed a report seeking to launch criminal proceedings against Stalin, citing the Soviet leader’s 1937 order to…

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An aide to Italy’s deputy prime minister Matteo Salvini, at the center of accusations the ruling League party sought millions of euros via a secret Russian oil deal, flew back-and-forth to Moscow last year, news website BuzzFeed said on Thursday. Flight records show Salvini’s former spokesman Gianluca Savoini went to Moscow on three separate occasions…

A senior Russian lawmaker on Thursday accused the United States of meddling in a Moscow city election next month by organizing what he called provocations in the Russian capital, the state-run RIA news agency reported. Andrei Klimov, the lawmaker who oversees the upper house of parliament’s commission to defend state sovereignty, said that a series…

Moscow’s opposition plans to press ahead with more protests this Saturday even after election officials closed all avenues for several Kremlin critics to run for office in the Russian capital next month. The ongoing standoff between Russia’s opposition and its leadership that has taken place in recent weeks has drawn international attention to what would have otherwise…

Russian authorities on Thursday froze a slew of bank accounts linked to jailed opposition politician Alexei Navalny as part of a money laundering investigation, Kira Yarmysh, his spokeswoman, and Russian investigators said. Russia’s Investigative Committee announced during protests in Moscow last weekend that it had opened a criminal case into the laundering of 1 billion…

Two people were killed and a nearby city reported a rise in radiation levels when a rocket engine blew up at a testing site in northern Russia on Thursday, forcing authorities to shut down part of a bay in the White Sea to shipping. The brief spike in radiation was reported by authorities in the nearby city…

Russia closed off an area of the White Sea to shipping for a month after the fatal explosion of a rocket engine on a military testing ground in Russia‘s north earlier on Thursday, Interfax cited the port of Arkhangelsk as saying. The explosion of a liquid-propellant rocket engine killed two people on Thursday in Russia‘s northern Arkhangelsk region,…

The first thing Leonid Treskunov did after he was detained during a protest in Moscow on June 12 was call the OVD-Info police-monitoring group.  “I googled their hotline number and called them pretty much as soon as I was in the police wagon,” said the 33-year-old Muscovite. “I didn’t know what to do in a…

Russia’s Bal coastal missile system (NATO reporting name SSC-3 or Styx) was moved from its permanent deployment location to the Sredny Peninsula on the Barents Sea coast on Wednesday evening, the Northern Fleet’s press service reported. Sredny Peninsula is the smallest peninsula between the Pechenga Bay and Rybachny (Fisher) Peninsula, a northwestern appendix to the Kola Peninsula.…

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said Ankara will not recognize the Crimean peninsula as Russian territory during talks with his Ukrainian counterpart on Wednesday. Russia annexed the Black Sea territory from Ukraine in 2014, incurring several rounds of Western economic sanctions. Moscow maintains that an overwhelming majority of Crimean residents voted to join Russia…

Apple is under investigation in Russia following a complaint from cybersecurity company Kaspersky Lab and may be abusing its dominant market position, Russia’s anti-monopoly watchdog said on Thursday. Watchdog FAS said it was investigating why a new version of Kaspersky Lab’s Safe Kids application had been declined by Apple’s operating system, resulting in a significant…

Kyrgyz elite security forces attempted to arrest former president Almazbek Atambayev at his house on Wednesday, but his supporters kept them at bay and killed at least one operative, local media and authorities reported. Parliament accused Atambayev of corruption and stripped him of immunity from prosecution in June after he fell out with current president…

A new Russian military drone equipped with stealth technologies has taken flight for the first time, according to footage published by Russia’s Defense Ministry. The military said over the weekend the Okhotnik (“Hunter”) combat drone made “several circles” for more than 20 minutes at an altitude of up to 600 meters before landing. [embedded content]…

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…