Day: October 16, 2019

Russia removed three U.S. diplomats from a train near the site of a mysterious military testing accident on Monday because they did not have special permits to be in the area, Interfax reported Wednesday. Russia’s state nuclear agency, Rosatom, has acknowledged that five of its nuclear workers were killed in an Aug. 8 explosion during…

The Swedish navy spent almost $2 million hunting for a Russian submarine off the coast of Stockholm that turned out to be a broken buoy, Sweden’s Svenska Dagbladet newspaper has reported. Sweden said in 2014 it had proof that a foreign submarine had been operating illegally in the Stockholm archipelago after suspicions sparked the country’s…

The Trump administration dispatched its top officials to Turkey on Wednesday for emergency talks to try to persuade Ankara to halt an assault on northern Syria, while Russian troops swept into territory abandoned by Washington in a sudden retreat. Robert O’Brien, White House national security adviser since last month, arrived in Turkey aiming to meet Foreign…

Russian police have arrested five more people on suspicion of assaulting police officers at opposition protests this summer, marking a new wave of trials in the so-called “Moscow case.” Russians took to the streets nearly every weekend this summer after a slew of opposition politicians were barred from taking part in Moscow’s local election. The…

Russian opposition activist Lyubov Sobol has been named one of the world’s 100 most influential women by the BBC, becoming the only woman from Russia to be included in the list. The list published Wednesday names 100 women from around the world who “give us their vision of what life could look like in 2030.” Sobol,…

Russian forces have crossed the Euphrates river in northern Syria and reached areas outside the city of Kobani, pushing eastward with Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the Syrian Observatory said on Wednesday. The troop movement comes days after the SDF cut a deal with the Syrian government for army troops to deploy at the border…

Russia’s security agencies have identified more than 5,500 Russian citizens who have traveled abroad to fight alongside terrorists, the head of the Federal Security Service (FSB) said Wednesday. “Criminal cases against almost 4,000 of them have been opened,” the state-run RIA news agency quoted FSB director Alexander Bortnikov as saying at a meeting of security…

This summer, images from Russia of police beating protesters with batons and dragging them off to armored vans flashed across the world’s screens so often they became routine.  Sparked by the arrest of an investigative journalist on fabricated drug charges, the mass rallies then became weekly affairs after opposition politicians were blocked from running in…

Russia is considering banning foreign companies from taking a lead role in designing and building the country’s green energy infrastructure, Russian daily Vedomosti said on Wednesday. New proposals currently being discussed would block contracts for new wind and solar farms, along with other renewable energy production projects, from being awarded to non-Russian entities. Analysts say…

Russia said on Wednesday that Syrian and Turkish military forces should work out how to cooperate in northern Syria based on the Adana accord, a 1998 security pact, the state-run RIA news agency reported. Moscow would be prepared to help with that cooperation, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in the southern Russian city of Sochi.…

A growing chorus of voices expressing environmental concerns has prompted the Russian government to consider setting up a “Green Party” controlled by the Kremlin, the RBC news website reported Wednesday. President Vladimir Putin’s administration has been jolted into action by Russia’s nascent climate protest movement and frustration with nationwide waste-collection reforms, which critics warned would…

Footage of an abandoned U.S. military base in the town of Manbij in northeast Syria shared by pro-Russian government media shows the haste with which U.S. troops pulled out of the city they had patrolled for a year. The Russian-backed Syrian army entered Manbij on Tuesday, taking advantage of an abrupt U.S. retreat from Syria…

Police violence and radiation prompted the highest levels of anxiety among Russians on social media, according to a quarterly analysis cited in Russian Forbes on Wednesday.  The findings by Russian PR firm CROS follow a summer of mass anti-government protests in Moscow, where police detained thousands of demonstrators, and two high-profile nuclear accidents that sparked…