Month: October 2019

Russia has unveiled a new combat icebreaker vessel in St. Petersburg on Friday which it says will help defend its national interests in the Arctic, the state-run TASS news agency reported. The launch of the Ivan Papanin comes amid Russia’s rapid military and economic development in its strategic Arctic region. Earlier this month, over 12,000 troops…

An American citizen whose Russian ex-wife is jailed in the United States could face up to 40 years in an American jail for drug smuggling after his arrest in Russia, the Fontanka news website reported Friday.  A court in St. Petersburg ordered Aleth Terada, 50, to leave Russia by Nov. 1 after finding that he…

Russia’s flagship tech companies, Mail.Ru and Yandex, both reported strong third-quarter results this week amid ongoing concerns over government proposals to limit foreign ownership in Russia’s largest technology companies. With revenues and earnings up at both companies, representatives confirmed they were lobbying the government to water down the potentially damaging legislation to the two publicly…

Convicted Russian agent Maria Butina has been released from a U.S. prison after more than 15 months behind bars, CNN reported Friday, citing the U.S. Federal Bureau of Prisons. Butina, 31, a former graduate student at American University who publicly advocated for gun rights, pleaded guilty in December 2018 to one count of conspiring to…

A steppe eagle from Russia’s republic of Khakasia has been sending hundreds of expensive SMS messages to scientists after she flew into Iran, effectively bankrupting their research. Siberian scientists had equipped Min the eagle with a tracking device that sends SMS messages to document her flight movements. Min, who spent the summer in Kazakhstan with…

A Russian conscript serving in the Far East of the country shot dead eight other soldiers and badly injured two others on Friday after having a nervous breakdown, the Defense Ministry said, Interfax reported. The conscript has been detained, the ministry said, and the two injured troops are being treated in a military hospital. Their lives…

Traffic almost ground to a halt in Russia’s second-largest city of St. Petersburg following a series of police raids on bus and taxi drivers this week. Social media channels said that afternoon inspections created massive bottlenecks Thursday on a road leading to Pulkovo Airport. Passengers got out of their taxis and continued their journey on…

The Bank of Russia has cut interest rates to 6.5% on the back of low inflation, weak domestic growth and fears of a global slowdown. The central bank said further rate cuts could be on the horizon if inflation, which it expects to come in between 3.2-3.7% this year, does not pick-up. Announcing the cut…

Russian network operators could be forced to block internet traffic from countries they believe hoax bomb threats come from, the RBC news website reported Friday. A wave of hoax threats swept Russia in 2017, and during the football World Cup last year, causing disruptions for businesses and public buildings. The Russian Federal Security Service (FSB)…

Around 300 more Russian military police have arrived in Syria, the defense ministry said on Friday, under an accord between Ankara and Moscow which halted Turkey’s military incursion into northeast Syria. The deal, reached on Tuesday by Presidents Tayyip Erdogan and Vladimir Putin, requires that Russian military police and Syrian border guards remove all Kurdish YPG militia…

Moscow on Thursday dismissed media reports that Russian hackers piggy-backed on an Iranian cyber-espionage operation to attack government and industry organizations in dozens of countries as an “unsavory” interpretation of a security report. British security officials have said the Russian group, known as “Turla” and accused by Estonian and Czech authorities of operating on behalf…

Efforts by Russian influence campaigns to stay undetected on social media ahead of next year’s U.S. elections are undermining their ability to gain followers and spread divisive political messages, a senior Facebook executive told Reuters. Social media users need to stand out from the crowd to gain traction online, but that type of behavior also…

The discarded nets of North Korean fishermen are threatening the lives of spotted seals and other marine life in Far East Russia, scientists warn. Moscow has called on Pyongyang to crack down on its poachers in Russian waters after border guards detained hundreds of North Korean fishermen recently. Russian marine biologists estimate that North Korean…

An engineer accused of using one of Russia’s most powerful supercomputers at a secret nuclear laboratory to mine Bitcoins has been sentenced to three years and three months in prison. Andrei Rybkin is one of three scientists to be convicted of using a workplace supercomputer to mine the cryptocurrency in the closed city of Sarov.…

A new project aimed at cutting food waste by helping restaurants sell their leftovers has opened in Moscow, the Village news website reported, citing the project’s press service.  In Russia, 17 million tons of food worth more than 1.6 trillion rubles ($25 billion) are thrown out each year,  according to a study by the Russian…

Yelena Baturina and Tatyana Bakalchuk are household names in Russia’s billionaire circles. Months after cementing their status as Russia’s only women billionaires, Baturina and Bakalchuk have once again topped Forbes magazine’s ranking of the country’s 25 richest women. But while Baturina’s fortune stayed at $1.2 billion this year, Bakalchuk nearly doubled her net worth to…

A Russian commission on Thursday recommended President Vladimir Putin pardon a Norwegian man jailed for spying, spurring hopes in Norway that he may be released as part of a spy swap brokered behind closed doors. Frode Berg, a retired guard on the Norwegian-Russian border, was detained in December 2017 and jailed for 14 years after…

Around $1 trillion of capital has been pulled out of Russia since the fall of the U.S.S.R., a close aide to President Vladimir Putin has told world leaders at the Russia-Africa forum in Sochi. Sergei Glazyev, who was a long-time economic adviser to Putin and is now minister in charge of integration at the Eurasian…

President Vladimir Putin hosted the first-ever Russia-Africa summit Wednesday and Thursday in the latest display of Moscow’s efforts to restore its geopolitical foothold on the continent after the fall of the Soviet Union. Amid a deluge of memoranda of understanding and cooperation agreements, Russia clinched a series of trade agreements with some of the 54…

Russia’s biggest foreign-owned utilities company Enel Russia has finally sold its biggest coal-burning power station Reftinskaya for an undisclosed amount as part of its efforts to go green as well as become more profitable. The Italian-owned firm is already a leader in investing into renewable energy and has several large wind and solar power projects…

A performing bear has mauled its handler during a show in northern Russia, as animal rights activists step up their campaign to ban traveling circuses that use trained animals in the country. Audience members filmed dramatic scenes Wednesday of the brown bear slamming its trainer to the ground and an assistant kicking it in an…

Russia will send a further 276 military policemen and 33 units of military hardware to Syria in a week, Russia‘s RIA news agency cited a defense ministry source as saying on Thursday. Earlier, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu spoke by video conference to the leader of Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), Russian news agencies reported on Wednesday. Shoigu told the SDF head that Russia will increase the number of its military police near…

Russia has inched upward in the World Bank’s latest Doing Business report, rising three places but still missing President Vladimir Putin’s goal of breaking into the top 20. Putin set the challenge of leaping up the ease-of-business ratings by 2018 after the country placed a dismal 120th in 2011. The 2020 Doing Business report published…

A former U.S. Marine held in Russia on suspicion of spying said on Thursday that a prison guard had forced him to his knees in custody and that he had been threatened with a gun, the Interfax news agency reported. Paul Whelan, who holds U.S., British, Canadian and Irish passports, was detained in December and accused of…

Russia said on Thursday a division of its S-400 missile defense system would take part in a military drill in Serbia, underlining Moscow’s wish to keep a traditional ally on side even as Belgrade pursues links with NATO and the European Union. It will be the first time that the sophisticated S-400s, together with a…

A Russian priest who lives in Italy has whipped up a frenzy over a pro-Kremlin pundit’s citizenship status. Almost 195,000 people have signed Father Sergius’ online petition urging Italy to deny citizenship to political talk show host Vladimir Solovyov, even though Solovyov has not applied for citizenship and has had an Italian residence permit for…

Russians trust President Vladimir Putin less than they do their armed forces, according to a new independent survey seen by the Vedomosti newspaper. The army emerged as Russia’s most trusted institution last year as a result of what sociologists called the Kremlin’s “saber-rattling.” This year’s institutional trust rating published by the independent Levada Center pollster placed…

Russian internet firm Yandex will begin testing its driverless cars in the United States next summer, the company said Wednesday. As part of the North American International Auto Show in Detroit, to take place from June 6-21, Yandex will provide a driverless taxi service in the city’s business center. “The first 10 cars will take…

A Russian migrant in Latvia has launched a hunger strike to protest the country’s refusal to allow his elderly mother-in-law to obtain a residence permit there without taking the required language exam. Around one-third of Latvia’s population of 2 million are ethnic Russians, many of whom do not have Latvian citizenship and are thus unable…

A European uranium enrichment firm has resumed shipments of a highly toxic and radioactive waste product from Germany to Russia, Greenpeace Russia warned Wednesday. The enrichment firm Urenco and Russia’s state nuclear company Rosatom halted the radioactive waste imports from Germany in 2009 over revelations that the waste was stored in the open. German media…

Russia will land two nuclear-capable strategic Tu-160 bombers in South Africa on Wednesday, Interfax news agency cited South Africa’s military as saying. Observers say it would be the first such deployment on the African continent. The Tupolev Tu-160 strategic bomber, nicknamed the White Swan in Russia, is a supersonic Soviet-era aircraft capable of carrying up…

Russian political consultants ran online campaigns supporting Bolivian President Evo Morales and criticising his election opponents in a bid to secure a fourth-term for the Kremlin-friendly leader, Russian news site Proekt has reported. The support, which focused on pumping out hostile social media campaigns against Morales’ critics, was orchestrated by political consultants close to Rosatom,…

Russia’s mega high-speed rail project to link Moscow, St. Petersburg and Nizhny Novgorod is set to cost 2.3 trillion rubles ($36 billion), according to Russian media reports. Around 600 billion rubles ($9.4 billion) will come in the form of direct state grants or cheap government-backed loans, while the rest will be financed directly by Russian…

The Czech Republic’s chief of counterintelligence has said that his country’s security forces had dismantled a Russian espionage ring last year that had been planning cyberattacks against the European Union member state. The BIS counterintelligence service said last year that Russian intelligence services were behind cyber attacks targeting the Czech foreign ministry. The BIS warned…

The Kremlin said on Wednesday that the United States had betrayed and abandoned the Syrian Kurds and advised the Kurds to withdraw from the Syrian border as per a deal between Moscow and Ankara or be mauled by the Turkish army. The comments by Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov to Russian news agencies followed a deal…

The last picture police officer Nikolay Korokhov posted on the Russian social media site VKontakte shows him carrying his young daughter on his shoulders while his wife Yekaterina takes a photo of the three of them. They’re all wearing silly sunglasses and smiling. A week later Korokhov shot himself in his office. He left a…

Turkey and Russia agreed on Tuesday to remove the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia to beyond 30 km (19 miles) from the Turkish border, after which their troops will jointly patrol a narrower strip of land in a “safe zone” Ankara has long sought in northern Syria. Beginning at noon on Wednesday, Russian military police and Syrian border guards…

Three people were killed on Tuesday in an accident at Norilsk Nickel’s Taimyr underground mine in Siberia, the Russian mining giant said. The world’s largest palladium producer and second-largest nickel producer said the facility was still working after the incident. It is one of the company’s main mines in Siberia and contains mixed ores. At 16:30…

Police in St. Petersburg rounded up more than 800 migrant workers in a market raid last week following a mass brawl, the local 47news.ru news website reported Monday. The raid is one of two launched by police this month in an attempt to find the instigators of a Sept. 14 violent altercation involving 50 migrants…

President Vladimir Putin announced Monday that Moscow will soon forgive Ethiopia its debts — the fourth African country to be forgiven in recent years as Russia moves to increase its influence on the continent. Putin made the announcement on the eve of the first-ever Russia Africa Summit, which will bring more than 50 African leaders…

Russia says it has obtained the data needed to support its claims in the Arctic region. The new information will be assessed by the UN Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf (CLCS) during a meeting in February, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Yuri Borisov said. Last week, the high-ranking government official spoke in the Marine…

The Kremlin said Tuesday that preparations to organize a four-way summit aimed at finding a resolution to the conflict in eastern Ukraine had effectively ground to a halt. A breakthrough in talks last month appeared to open the way to a possible summit between Russia, Ukraine, France and Germany, known as the Normandy Four. But…

Special agents in northern Russia have raided a resort where dozens of Jehovah’s Witnesses had gathered, marking the latest instance in an ongoing campaign against the religious group that Russia considers extremist. Russia labeled the Jehovah’s Witnesses an extremist organization in 2017, leading to mass arrests and spurring hundreds of its estimated 175,000 Russian members…

Russia has the world’s highest levels of wealth inequality, surpassing the United States and China, the Credit Suisse Research Institute’s annual review has said. An estimated 83% of Russia’s wealth is now owned by its richest decile despite the country’s modest average wealth, the financial services company said in its report published Monday. “This is…