Day: November 12, 2019

A Russian court has jailed six Crimean Tatar activists to jail terms between seven and 19 years on charges of terrorism Tuesday, a move that has sparked condemnation from abroad. Some Crimean Tatars have accused Russia of locking up its ideological opponents as religious extremists in the wake of the 2014 annexation of Crimea from…

Russia has ruled that authorities can seize suspicious assets owned by relatives and acquaintances of criminals convicted of corruption unless they can prove they were lawfully obtained, the Vedomosti business daily reported Tuesday. The ruling came in response to an appeal by a convicted police anti-corruption official’s family, who argued that the authorities had illegally…

ST. PETERSBURG – For years Oleg Sokolov was a well-known eccentric among the academic elite of Russia’s cultural capital St. Petersburg.  As one of the founders of the city’s historical reenactment society, at weekends he liked to dress up as Napoleon Bonaparte, ride a white stallion and bark orders at pretend soldiers. His obsession with…

Russian investigative journalist Ivan Golunov was arrested in June on fabricated drug charges and released days later following an unprecedented public outcry. The court dropped all charges against him. Five months after he was released, the criminal case into drug trafficking is still ongoing. Authorities have said they would investigate those who fabricated the charges…

One evening in August 2018, 21-year-old Mikhail Aksel stepped into the imposing marble of Moscow Metro’s Sportivnaya station. Aksel, a senior activist in The Other Russia, a small but flamboyant opposition party associated with the former punk and far-right nationalist writer Eduard Limonov, was no stranger to run-ins with the police. Even so, Aksel was surprised…

Israel has extradited suspected Russian hacker Alexei Burkov to the United States despite Moscow’s proposal to swap him for an Israeli woman jailed in Russia over marijuana possession, The Times of Israel reported Monday. Burkov, who was detained during a visit to Israel in 2015, is wanted in the U.S. on charges of credit card…

Kremlin-linked business owner Yevgeny Prigozhin — dubbed “Putin’s Chef” — has carved up his catering company, handing half to a 27-year-old lawyer who previously founded a dog shelter in Siberia, the Current Time news site  reported. The Concord Food Plant, Prigozhin’s main business asset, was divided on October 30, according to data from the Contour Focus…

Vladimir Putin never misses a chance to pounce on perceived geopolitical weakness, even when doing so might contribute to the downfall — and potential incarceration — of an old acquaintance like Benjamin Netanyahu. The Russian leader has snubbed repeated requests from his embattled Israeli counterpart to free Naama Issachar, a 26-year-old army veteran sentenced to 7…

Russia’s republic of Chechnya has the highest trust ratings toward its leaders and President Vladimir Putin among all regions, Russian media reported Monday. The Kremlin closely monitors Putin’s trust ratings, which dipped to historic lows then quickly bounced back after the Kremlin challenged state pollsters’ methodologies. Its domestic policy curator Sergei Kiriyenko earlier this year…

Kazakhstan’s former president Nursultan Nazarbayev is trying to arrange a meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskiy, whose countries are at odds over the war between Kiev and pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine. “Zelenskiy has already agreed to a tete-a-tete, and (I have) informed the president of Russia about that. We shall see now (if…