Year: 2019

Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny was released on Friday after 30 days in prison, his spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh said on Twitter. Navalny, a prominent Kremlin critic, was jailed on charges of violating Russia’s protest laws after he called for people to demonstrate in central Moscow over the exclusion of opposition candidates from a local election…

Russia doesn’t “shop” for foreign territories, the Kremlin has said in response to U.S. President Donald Trump’s idea to buy the resource-rich Danish territory of Greenland. Trump, who built his career as a real estate mogul, has mused openly in recent days about a U.S. purchase of Greenland, raising eyebrows in Europe and the U.S.…

Russia’s forest authority estimates that forest fires across Siberia and other regions have cost approximately 7 billion rubles ($106 million) so far this year, the state-run RIA Novosti news agency has reported. More than 200 fires are burning across an area of 1.1 million hectares of the country, almost 1 million of which cover remote…

Members of two infamous pro-Kremlin groups have stormed a human rights NGO’s seminar on how to deal with law enforcement at protests, saying they don’t want a repeat of the 2014 Ukrainian revolution in Russia.  Two fringe nationalist groups called the National Liberation Movement (NOD) and SERB are known for attacks on opposition activists and…

Doctors who treated victims of radiation after a deadly explosion in northern Russia were told to “get to work” after raising concerns of exposure, Russian media have reported, citing medical personnel involved in treating the victims. A rocket engine blast killed at least five people and injured six on a platform off the coast of the…

Russia’s Foreign Ministry said on Thursday that a possible U.S. deployment of missiles in the Asia-Pacific region would pose a threat to international security. U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper said earlier this month that he was in favor of placing ground-launched, intermediate-range missiles in Asia relatively soon. “U.S. actions are creating a threat for international…

The European Union is against making any unconditional invitation to Russia to let it rejoin talks among the G7 world leaders, a senior official with the bloc said of an idea floated by U.S. President Donald Trump. The seven leaders of the world’s advanced industrialized countries are due to meet in the French resort of…

Russian opposition members were banned from running for Moscow’s legislature because they had submitted “falsified” signatures, President Vladimir Putin has said, playing down the election protests that rocked the capital this summer. Tens of thousands of people have demonstrated in central Moscow since mid-July in support of the opposition candidates. Authorities barred the candidates from…

One in five Russians believe that they can affect their government’s decision-making processes, according to a new poll that sociologists link to growing public discontent with the authorities in Russia. Over the past year, Russia has seen protests against unpopular moves by the authorities, including President Vladimir Putin’s pension reforms that will delay many workers’…

Russian chess grandmaster Anatoly Karpov has been unable for several months to obtain a visa to travel to the United States, his friend, the owner of a chess academy in New York who invited him to teach a summer camp there, said on Wednesday. Karpov, 68, considered one of the greatest chess players of the…

Russia and Turkey held urgent talks in July on connecting Turkish companies and lenders to the Russian central bank’s alternative to the SWIFT financial messaging system. The two sides met soon after Turkey risked the threat of U.S. sanctions by taking delivery of a Russian S-400 air-defense missile system, snubbing demands by the Trump administration to cancel…

A senior Russian official and an industrial magnate with close Kremlin ties have spoken out this week against police violence in Moscow’s largest protests in years. Critics have said the authorities used excessive force while detaining hundreds of people who rallied this summer in support of fair local elections. The Kremlin said individual cases of…

Ten of thousands of people have fled to Syria’s border with Turkey in the last few days as a Syrian army advance pushed further into the opposition’s last major stronghold, residents, rights groups and opposition sources said on Wednesday. They left Maarat al-Numan, a city in Idlib province that has been a sanctuary for families…

U.S. President Donald Trump said on Tuesday it would be appropriate to let Russia join the G7 group of advanced industrialized countries. Speaking to reporters at the White House, Trump noted his Democratic predecessor, Barack Obama, had wanted Russia out of what used to be the G8 “because Putin outsmarted him.” “But I think it’s much more appropriate to have Russia in.…

Thirteen police officers in Russia’s republic of Ingushetia will stand trial for refusing to disperse protesters during clashes over a contentious land-swap deal, the MBKh Media news website has reported. Protests held this spring to demand a public vote on the border agreement with neighboring Chechnya turned violent when armed security forces tried to disperse them.…

Russia has detected new cases of African swine fever (AFS) in the Amur region near its border with China, local authorities said on Wednesday. ASF-infected pigs were found at two private farms in the village of Volkovo near Blagoveshchensk, the local administration said on its website. The ASF virus is a highly contagious fever among…

A Russian regional official has caused controversy for allegedly comparing victims of this summer’s historic Siberian floods to animals in a leaked audio file she claims was faked. The comments allegedly made by Irina Alashkevich, the Irkutsk regional administration’s spokeswoman, come a month after another regional official ignited backlash for insulting the victims of flood-hit areas. Over…

Another year, and another Russian billionaire relinquishes ownership of a professional sports club. The latest to do so is Mikhail Prokhorov, who’s selling his stake in the Brooklyn Nets and its arena for a record $3.5 billion to Joe Tsai, the Taiwan-born executive vice chairman of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. Last August, Alisher Usmanov sold his 30%…

Russia’s oil and petroleum sales to the United States have reached six-year highs, according to U.S. Energy Information Administration data analyzed by the RBC news website. The U.S. imported 61.75 million barrels of crude oil and petroleum products from Russia in January-May 2019, up from 56 million barrels in January-May 2018. Russia’s Federal Customs Service,…

Russia is a European country, French President Emmanuel Macron has said following talks with President Vladimir Putin. Macron hosted Putin in France on Monday, where the French leader played up efforts “to tie Russia and Europe back together” and underscored his belief that “Europe stretches from Lisbon to Vladivostok.”  “Russia is a very deeply European…

On a dreary Sunday afternoon in northeast Moscow, over 800 people came out to support three young sisters who have been charged with the murder of their father.   Among an audience of varied genders and ages, some came to support the sisters, others for the bands scheduled to perform. The audience brought in 176,600 rubles…

The Russian military has unveiled footage of a reconnaissance drone, which it claims can fly for over 24 hours, performing its first flight. Previous reporting has suggested that Russia’s long-endurance armed drone project had been beset by cost overruns and delays. Russia’s Altius-U boasts an “entire spectrum of reconnaissance tasks using optical, radio and radar…

A majority of Russians believe that conditions in their country make it hard to plan for the long-term future, according to a state-funded survey published on Tuesday. Russians have been affected by five years of Western sanctions and dropping oil prices, with real incomes shrinking and almost 21 million people in the country living below the poverty line.…

Russia’s federal anti-monopoly service FAS said on Tuesday it fined a media group that broadcasts CNN International in Russia 200,000 rubles ($3,000) for breaking volume regulations in its programming. The fine was imposed on Monday, FAS said on its website.

On the night of Aug. 8, the last of 120 reactor compartments from Cold War-era submarines were docked and brought safely into the storage pad in Saida Bay on the Kola Peninsula. Bringing the last reactors onshore improves the environmental situation in the Barents Sea, said SevRAO, the northern branch of Russia’s state radioactive waste management company.…

The radioactive-particle sensors of at least one of the stations in Russia that went offline after a mysterious blast in the country’s far north are transmitting again, the operator of the global network to which they belong said on Tuesday. Four of the stations that scan for so-called radionuclide particles wafting through the air for…

Russia told an international organization set up to verify a ban on nuclear tests that a military testing accident in northern Russia earlier this month was none of its business and that handing it radiation data was entirely voluntary. Russia has acknowledged that five nuclear workers were killed in the explosion on Aug. 8, which…

Russia and seven of its allies, including China and India, will send 128,000 soldiers to train in mass anti-terrorism drills next month, the country’s Defense Ministry has announced. The upcoming maneuvers will take place a year after Russia and China staged 300,000-strong anti-missile exercises near the Chinese border. Those exercises, which were Russia’s largest war…

Russia said on Tuesday that the U.S. test of a ground-launched cruise missile was regrettable and showed that Washington had long been preparing for the demise of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty. The Pentagon said Monday that it tested a ground-launched cruise missile with a range of more than 500 kilometers, the first such…

Russia’s Norilsk smelter complex and a town in South Africa’s eastern coal mining province have the highest sulfur dioxide (SO2) emissions in the world, according to satellite data from U.S. space agency NASA. The NASA-compiled data published on Monday was commissioned by environmental group Greenpeace India and used the space authority’s satellites to track anthropogenic…

President Vladimir Putin rebuked his French counterpart on Monday, saying he did not want “yellow vest” protests to spring up like in France, after Emmanuel Macron urged the Russian leader to abide by democratic principles following weeks of protests in Moscow. Macron, who was meeting Putin at his summer residence in southern France five days before…

Nearly one in five Russians plays video games, according to a new state-funded survey. Research says that Russia has the world’s sixth-largest video game market, with 66.1 million gamers counted in 2018. Previous polling has said that most Russians prefer to spend their free time watching movies and television. Nineteen percent of Russian respondents said they…

Pro-Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine have rejected newly published evidence of Russia’s military involvement in one of the deadliest battles of Ukraine’s five-year conflict. The battle of Ilovaysk, which pitted Ukrainian forces against Russian-backed rebels in August 2014, resulted in hundreds of deaths on both sides. Russia has consistently denied that it has provided arms or…

Two of Moscow’s transportation authorities and a restaurant owner are seeking nearly $200,000 in damages from opposition figures over alleged traffic disruptions and lost revenue during protests they organized last month, Moscow City Court said Friday. Thousands took to the streets and hundreds were detained on July 27 during unauthorized demonstrations in support of candidates…

Two of Russia’s nuclear radiation monitoring stations went silent two days after a mysterious explosion that led to a radiation spike in northern Russia earlier this month, The Wall Street Journal reported. Russian officials say at least five nuclear engineers were killed during a rocket test involving “isotope power sources” on a platform in the…

Seventeen countries owe Russia a total of $27 billion, with most of the country’s lending made through arms deals or unreported political loans, according to a tally by Russia’s RBC news website. The Finance Ministry estimated this year that 25 countries and other legal entities owe Russia $39.4 billion, including through government bonds. Russia classifies…

Russia is set to open a new tourism center in Franz Josef Land, a remote Arctic archipelago, in response to heightened interest in traveling above the Arctic Circle. The visitor center is located on Guker Island, one of the largest in the archipelago. On this site in 1929, Soviet explorers established the very first research…

French President Emmanuel Macron hosts Russian leader Vladimir Putin at his summer residence on Monday and his office is adamant about what the get-together is not. France isn’t playing the role of go-between with Russia and other world powers, Macron’s office says, after being stung by a tweet from President Donald Trump earlier in August that suggested…

Russia will not deploy new missiles as long as the United States shows similar restraint in Europe and Asia, Russian defense minister Sergei Shoigu said on Sunday, after Washington’s withdrawal from a Soviet-era arms pact. The United States formally left the Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty with Russia earlier this month after accusing Moscow of violating the treaty and…

Block 4 of Russia‘s Beloyarsk nuclear power station in the Urals mountains was switched off on Sunday following a “false” response by the safety system, a subsidiary of state nuclear corporation Rosatom said. It said the block was halted at 09.15 (0415 GMT). “The stoppage was carried out under a routine algorithm,” Rosenergoatom said in a…

Russian opposition activists staged a string of pickets in central Moscow on Saturday to call for free elections and for charges against protesters detained at recent rallies to be dropped. Moscow has been rocked by weekly protests for more than a month since the authorities barred opposition candidates from running in an election for the…

The three injured men arrived at the hospital around 4:30 pm, naked and wrapped in translucent plastic bags. The state of the patients made staff suspect they were dealing with something very serious. But the only information they had at the time was that there had been an explosion at a nearby military site around…

Russia’s prison authority has confirmed reports of abuse at Europe’s largest pre-trial detention center days after new video footage renewed concerns about conditions in Russia’s penitentiary system. Russia’s prison system has been under scrutiny since mid-2018, when revelations of torture set off nationwide inspections and dozens of legal cases. Last week, a prisoners’ rights NGO…

Women in Russia will soon be able to work in more than 350 job positions they’d previously been barred from under largely unchanged Soviet-era labor restrictions. Russia currently prohibits women from holding 456 jobs in dozens of industries that involve physically strenuous tasks or harmful working conditions. Previous media reports suggested that the Labor Ministry…