Year: 2019

Russia on Wednesday accused Washington of hunting its citizens across the world and said it had made a formal diplomatic protest after Israel extradited a Russian man to the United States where he faces a slew of serious cyber crime charges. The U.S. Department of Justice said in a statement on Tuesday that Alexei Burkov,…

The Russian stock market has delivered the biggest returns to investors anywhere in the world in 2019. Since the start of the year, the MSCI Russia Index, a tracker which follows the 23 largest Russian publicly-listed companies has soared by 44%, Sberbank analyst Cole Akeson told Russian news site RBC. Over the same period, the…

Russia’s Justice Ministry has declared a Czech humanitarian relief group “undesirable” three years after the group was kicked out of a pro-Russian self-proclaimed state in eastern Ukraine. The People in Need NGO, which helps people affected by wartime crises and natural disasters, ended its eastern Ukrainian operations in 2016 after separatists in the Donetsk People’s…

Moscow drivers have the second-highest level of road rage in the world, a new survey has found.  Only Mongolian capital Ulaanbaatar scored higher for road rage on the Mister Auto index, which measures the best and worst places in the world to drive. The survey ranked 100 international cities using 15 criteria covering infrastructure, safety…

A Russian businesswoman appears to be safe after Kuwait handed her a long jail term for embezzlement, the Kommersant business daily has reported. Reports said Monday that a Kuwaiti court had sentenced investment executive Marsha Lazareva to 15 years in prison for money laundering. A U.S. law firm leading the international effort to secure Lazareva’s…

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…

Nine Russian businesspeople have donated to Britain’s Conservative Party, according to a secret parliamentary report on Russian interference in British elections, The Sunday Times newspaper reported Sunday. Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s opponents accuse him of blocking the report ahead of the Dec. 12 parliamentary election, an assertion that his Conservative-led government dismissed. Johnson’s office has…

On November 10, St. Andrew’s Anglican Church held a service commemorating the end of WWI and in remembrance of those who died in wars. Ambassadors and military representatives of countries that fought in the war placed flowers on the altar, starting with the ambassadors of the United Kingdom and Germany. Russian veterans also attended the…

An international summit on solving the Ukrainian crisis is likely to take place this year, Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov told reporters in Moscow on Monday. A breakthrough at talks between Moscow and Kiev on Oct. 1 appeared to open the way for the leaders of Ukraine, Russia, Germany and France to hold the first four-way…

The Russian government could undershoot its annual spending plans by more than one trillion rubles ($15.6 billion), a state watchdog warned Monday. In the first 10 months of 2019, government departments and agencies have spent less than two-thirds of the year’s planned expenditure, and will struggle to make-up the difference before the end of the…

Russia is using private military contractors to escalate the conflict in Libya and boost its influence there, the security chief of Libya’s UN-backed government has said. Libyan interior minister Fathi Bashagha’s accusations follow reports of at least two deployments of Kremlin-linked Wagner mercenaries in recent months as forces based in eastern Libya attempt to take…

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s extended family and associates own $40 million worth of luxury apartments in Moscow’s skyscraper district, according to the anti-corruption campaign group Global Witness. Russia has been a staunch ally of the Assad family over its nearly 50-year rule. The Kremlin threw its military support behind Assad in 2015, helping Damascus retake…

Russia on Monday accused Bolivia’s opposition of unleashing a wave of violence in the South American nation and said it looked like a government push for dialogue had been swept aside by an orchestrated coup. Bolivian President Evo Morales said on Sunday he was resigning to ease violence that has gripped Bolivia since a disputed…

Threats from Russia are escalating, the U.K.’s Chief of the Defense Staff Nick Carter said, as new tools and weapons including disinformation and mercenaries could lead to miscalculations or even war. Techniques including “disinformation, subversion, manipulation, assassinations and of course the use of mercenaries, which are very easily undeclared and non-attributable,” mean that “you can…

A prominent Russian historian has confessed to murdering one of his former students after he was discovered in a St. Petersburg river with a backpack containing the woman’s arms. Police in St. Petersburg on Saturday detained Professor Oleg Sokolov, 63, on suspicion of murdering a former student after he was pulled out of the city’s…

Russian authorities said on Sunday they had completed the release of dozens of captured beluga whales whose plight sparked an appeal by Hollywood celebrities and the intervention of President Vladimir Putin. The mammals, caught last year to be sold to marine parks or aquariums in China, were being kept in cramped conditions in a bay…

More than 30,000 people have been found guilty of violating Russian protest law over the past 15 years, according to a study by the independent OVD-Info police-monitoring group. The study looked at cases involving Article 20.2 of Russia’s Administrative Code, known as the “protest article.” Since 2004, the text of Article 20.2 has grown fourfold,…

Russia plans to ask Latvia to extradite Russian journalist Alexander Shvarev to face charges of slandering oligarch Alisher Usmanov, Interfax reported Friday. Authorities in April raided the Moscow offices of Russia’s Rosbalt news outlet, where Shvarev works, in connection with a defamation lawsuit brought by Usmanov. Shvarev is undergoing medical treatment in Riga, according to…

Fans of CSKA Moscow clashed with fans of Hungary’s Ferencváros TC ahead of the two teams’ UEFA Europa League match in Budapest, as seen in videos posted on social media. The first clash happened in the Budapest metro Thursday, when CSKA fans packed metro cars, then broke glass bottles and doused the police with water. Стачки…

More than a quarter of young Russians have never heard of the fall of the Berlin Wall three decades ago, the independent Levada Center pollster said ahead of its 30th anniversary. The Berlin Wall divided the German city’s Soviet-occupied eastern sector from American, British and French-occupied West Berlin when it was built in 1961. Communist…

Professor Alexei Kotov greets his colleagues as he navigates the poorly-lit corridors of the Institute of Ecology and Evolution in the south of Moscow, where he has been a leading researcher and member of the Russian Academy of Sciences since Soviet times. “This whole street was built during the Stalinist period, and I don’t think…

Around 56 million Russians across 143 cities are breathing bad air, the Russian state weather and environment service said in its annual atmospheric pollution report. Roshydromet assessed the concentration of pollutants across a total of 246 Russian cities and towns in 2018. It noted that 89% of all monitored cities exceeded pollution norms that year. …

The Russian financial sector is “more stable and more transparent than ever before,” according to the governor of Russia’s Central Bank Elvira Nabiullina. The country’s banks are finally becoming an attractive option for investors, and the sector is now a “partner for real companies and the real economy,” Nabiullina told an Association of European Businesses…

Russia on Friday began selling tickets for direct train journeys to Crimea, bypassing Ukraine and further cementing its 2014 annexation of the peninsula. Direct trains from Moscow and St. Petersburg will start to run in late December, replacing the route that ran through Ukraine before the annexation. Russia already opened a road section of its…

Bribe allegations leveled in court against a VTB Group executive may complicate the Russian state-owned bank’s attempts to recoup a $535 million loan that’s part of a major debt scandal in Mozambique. A New York court heard testimony last month that the VTB executive in charge of the deal, Makram Abboud, took $2 million in…

One year after the start of the yellow-vest protests in France, many locals are dismissing traditional French media as “fake news” and are tuning in to a new favorite channel — RT (formerly Russia Today). How did a channel that is financed by the Kremlin and accused of being an arm of Russian propaganda become…

Russia has deployed military helicopters to patrol an area near Syria’s border with Turkey in order to help protect Russia military police working on the ground, Interfax said on Friday. Turkish and Russian forces are holding joint patrols in northeastern Syria to monitor an agreement struck by Moscow and Ankara after Turkey launched an offensive…

Russia’s plans to cancel 20,000 Soviet-era laws and regulations may be hampered as officials cannot find the original documents and wording of the relevant decrees. The Justice Ministry wrote to the government yesterday requesting an extension to an original Nov. 15 deadline for the compilation of a list of laws still in force since Soviet…

French President Emmanuel Macron warned fellow European countries that NATO is dying, citing a lack of coordination and U.S. unpredictability under President Donald Trump, comments that were welcomed in Moscow. In an interview with The Economist published Thursday, Macron expressed doubt about U.S.-led NATO’s security maxim that an attack on one ally is an attack…

Key MH17 witness Vladimir Tsemakh is ready to provide testimony to Dutch and Ukrainian investigators about the plane tragedy, but only on pro-Russian separatist territory in eastern Ukraine, his lawyer has said. Tsemakh, who was captured by Ukrainian forces and later returned to Russia for fighting on the side of pro-Russian rebels in the Donbass,…

Two Russian nuclear-powered submarines simulated a “duel” during recent tactical drills in the Arctic, the RBC news website reported Thursday. Two Northern Fleet Sierra-class submarines, the titanium-hulled Pskov and Nizhny Novgorod, sailed out from their homeports toward the Norwegian Sea for deep-sea diving and weapon testing two weeks ago.  The Pskov and the Nizhny Novgorod impersonated…

Mikhail Svetov, one of the main figures of Russia’s Libertarian Party and an organizer of this summer’s mass protests in Moscow, was interrogated overnight by the Investigative Committee and his apartment searched over allegations of sexual misconduct against a minor.  Initial reports said that Svetov, 34, had been charged with “indecent assault” against a minor…

Moscow’s city court has ruled to disband an indigenous people’s rights group almost 20 years after its founding, the latest in a series of NGO shutdowns that critics see as retaliation for their activities. Russian authorities blacklisted the Center for Support of Indigenous Peoples of the North/Russian Indigenous Training Center (CSIPN/RITC) as a “foreign agent”…

Thousands of troops, historical re-enactors and more marched across Red Square today to mark the 78th anniversary of one of the most famous Soviet military parades. On Nov. 7, 1941, the Soviet Union held the October Revolution Parade, its first military parade during World War II. It’s best known for taking place during the Battle…

Europe shouldn’t make the “huge mistake” of avoiding dialogue with Russia, French President Emmanuel Macron told The Economist, continuing his recent overtures to the country that the West has shunned over its annexation of Crimea. Macron previously attempted to bridge the European Union’s differences with Moscow this summer, warning against the “strategic error” of isolating…

Ice covers Russia’s Arctic waters once more, and in a few weeks the vast region will become inaccessible to everyone without a powerful icebreaker. The three oil rigs that have been operating in the area for most of the summer and fall are now either out of the region or closed down for the winter…

A senior Foreign Ministry official has denied Russia’s military presence in Libya following a New York Times report that about 200 Russian mercenaries have arrived in the oil-rich North African country in the past month and a half. The Kremlin-linked Wagner mercenaries’ reported arrival in Libya appears to be the second wave in as many…

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is unhappy with the West. Countries that consider themselves to be shining beacons of democracy are barring Russian foreign correspondents from working on their territories, he told a crowd of media professionals, lawmakers and diplomats at an upscale hotel in central Moscow Wednesday. “The West is scared of any competition…

Russia has drawn up retaliatory measures in case the United States leaves the Open Skies treaty, a pact which allows both countries to conduct surveillance flights over each other’s territory, the state-run RIA news agency reported late on Wednesday. The treaty, which entered into force in 2002, covers 34 countries and is designed to build…

Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov has proposed killing internet users who “insult someone’s honor” online, according to BBC Russia’s translation of the outspoken Russian regional chief’s remarks Wednesday. Kadyrov appeared to be referencing a Russian law enacted this year that punishes those who “disrespect” government institutions online. A majority of those fined or jailed under the…

Russia‘s FSB security service has identified 2,000 Russian nationals who are relatives of militants in the Middle East and could try to return to Russia, posing a terrorist threat, the FSB’s head said on Thursday, the state-run RIA news agency reported. FSB director Alexander Bortnikov’s comments come weeks after an estimated 50 Russian women disappeared after fleeing…

The number of Russians who support the death penalty’s return has climbed to almost 50%, according to the independent Levada Center pollster’s survey released Thursday. While the death penalty remains enshrined in Russian law, the Kremlin placed a moratorium on its use in 1996 as a condition of Council of Europe membership. Debates on restoring…

Cyprus said on Wednesday that it had started a process to strip 26 individuals of citizenship they received under a secretive passports-for-investment scheme, admitting it had flaws. The Mediterranean island has been rattled by disclosures of its investments scheme since Reuters exclusively reported last month a list of Cambodian beneficiaries, including its police chief and…

Russia’s natural population decline has continued for a fourth consecutive year in 2019, the Audit Chamber said Thursday as the country continues to struggle with a demographic crisis. Russia’s total population dropped for the first time in a decade in 2018, totaling 146.8 million at the end of last year as migration numbers hit record…

Turkish and Russian troops on Tuesday began their second joint patrol in northern Syria near Kobani, under a deal that has forced a Kurdish militia away from Turkey’s border, while local media released footage of angry crowds pelting a convoy with stones. Nearly a month ago, Turkey and Syrian rebel allies launched a cross-border incursion…