Year: 2019

Only four out of Russia’s 22 ministry websites are transparent, a government audit has revealed. Experts commissioned by Russia’s Audit Chamber assessed the ministries’ openness of information, data and dialogue, assigning a letter grade to each of the three categories. Only the interior, culture, finance and energy ministries received AAA ratings, according to the study…

A former U.S. Marine held in Russia on suspicion of spying is being illegally isolated in a Moscow pre-trial detention center and prevented from communicating with visitors, Russian rights activists and U.S. diplomats said. Paul Whelan, who holds U.S., British, Canadian and Irish passports, was detained in a Moscow hotel room on Dec. 28 and…

The good news for Russian President Vladimir Putin is that his premier investment event won’t be dominated this year by discussions about sanctions. The bad news is that attention will be fixed instead on the arrest of American private equity manager Michael Calvey. Calvey, who remained a Russia advocate even after sanctions caused foreign investment to shrivel…

Russia must pay $1.8 million to the families of 20 people abducted from Chechnya during separatist fighting in the 2000s, Europe’s top human rights court has ruled. The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has in recent years awarded damages to the relatives of individuals who disappeared during the second Chechen war of 1999-2009. Activists…

The United States believes Russia may be more amenable than in the past to addressing U.S. and Israeli concerns about Iran’s influence, including in Syria, when national security leaders meet in Jerusalem this month, a U.S. official said on Tuesday. The United States announced last week that John Bolton, White House national security adviser, would…

The Russian economy will grow by 1.2 percent in 2019, the World Bank said in at least the third downgrade Tuesday. The Washington-based institution previously downgraded its forecast of Russia’s growth from 1.8 percent to 1.5 percent in early 2019, then again to 1.4 percent in April. Its latest revision — made in the twice-yearly…

Almost half of Russians are concerned about the environment in their regions, according to a study by the Moscow-based NAFI Research Center obtained by the state-run TASS news agency. Environmental issues have taken center stage at protest rallies across Russia over the past year, with citizens drawing attention to concerns including landfills, air pollution and…

A Russian fighter jet made a dangerous high-speed pass that put a U.S. Navy surveillance aircraft at risk during an intercept over the Mediterranean Sea on Tuesday, the U.S. Sixth Fleet said, but Moscow said its pilot had behaved responsibly. “While the Russian aircraft was operating in international airspace, this interaction was irresponsible,” the Sixth…

President Vladimir Putin has inaugurated on Tuesday a monument dedicated to Jewish heroes of resistance in Nazi concentration camps and ghettos during World War II. Putin opened construction of the monument at the Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center in Moscow with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in January 2018. Members of the Jewish resistance “are…

Russian internet giant Yandex said on Tuesday it wanted to abide by the law but not to violate its users’ privacy after a media report said security services had demanded it hand over its encryption keys. The RBC media portal reported earlier on Tuesday that Russia‘s Federal Security Service (FSB) had asked Yandex to hand over…

Opponents of a controversial landfill in northwest Russia clashed with riot police in the latest violent episode of ongoing protests against plans to take in garbage from Moscow. Protests against the $162 million landfill in Shiyes, Arkhangelsk region have become a symbol of Russia’s growing trend of issues-based local activism. Almost a year of demonstrations…

Tourists are not traveling to Moscow because they think it’s too expensive and unsafe, according to a Boston Consulting Group (BCG) survey obtained by Russia’s RBC news website on Tuesday. BCG polled 3,500 tourists and classified their answers into two categories to reflect the respondents’ biases and structural barriers. The consulting group didn’t disclose the…

The Kremlin said on Tuesday it didn’t know where U.S. President Donald Trump had got the idea Moscow had removed most of its military specialists from Venezuela, who it said continued to work there. Trump tweeted on Monday that Russia had told the United States it had removed “most of their people” from Venezuela, where Moscow has…

The Tinder dating app has denied sharing the personal data of its Russian users amid reports that it had been added to a registry of entities required to hand over such data to the authorities. Russia said on Monday it had added Tinder to a list of entities required to hand over user data and…

Russia’s Kommersant business daily, plagued by a censorship scandal that led to a mass walkout of its reporters, is now facing fines under a law that punishes media for disseminating state secrets. Under the law prohibiting “abuse of the freedom of mass media,” the disclosure of state secrets by a news outlet is punishable by fines between…

President Donald Trump said on Monday that Russia told the United States it had removed “most of their people” from Venezuela, where Moscow has maintained military and economic ties with socialist President Nicolas Maduro. Trump posted a message on Twitter about the alleged Russian drawdown while on a state visit to London but did not…

Russia has tested a new unidentified missile at a launch site where the country had previously test-launched missiles designed to protect Moscow’s airspace, the Russian military said. The Russian Defense Ministry test-launched its anti-ballistic missile at the Sary-Shagan missile testing site in Kazakhstan at least twice in 2018. Those tested missiles had been deployed to…

Unlike their peers abroad, who worry about climate change, Russian millennials say they’re most concerned by corruption and inequality, according to a recent poll by Deloitte. We headed to the streets of Moscow to ask young Russians what their major concerns are.

Russia could be banned from competing in the second consecutive Olympics over allegedly forged medical documents, Britain’s The Sunday Times reported. High jumper Danil Lysenko, 22, had been one of the Russians cleared to compete internationally for having demonstrated he was training in a doping free-environment. However, he lost his status and was provisionally suspended…

Russia told a hearing at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on Monday that the court lacks jurisdiction in a case filed by Ukraine against Moscow over its alleged support of pro-Russian separatists in Crimea and eastern Ukraine. In a 2017 filing to the ICJ, also known as the World Court, Ukraine asked judges to…

Russian-annexed Crimea has experienced the fastest economic growth in Russia in 2019 so far, the RBC news website reported on Monday. Crimea has received large cash injections from Moscow since 2014, when Russia annexed the Black Sea peninsula from Ukraine. More than $13 billion in Russian funds will have been spent on the Crimean economy…

The Tinder dating app is now required to share its user data with Russian authorities, according to Russia’s Roskomsvoboda internet rights group. Legislation that came into force in 2016 requires social media companies to store user data on servers located in Russia and provide this data to the authorities on demand. Russia last year issued…

The Kremlin rebuffed criticism from U.S. President Donald Trump of Russian and Syrian government military action in Syria’s rebel-held Idlib province, saying on Monday it was needed to shut down rebel attacks being launched from there. Trump on Sunday urged Russian and Syrian government forces to stop bombing Idlib, following a Friday Kremlin statement that…

Russia will in the near future send 30 military personnel to the Central African Republic where they will form part of a United Nations mission to help stabilize the country, Interfax news agency quoted a Russian foreign ministry official as saying. Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree in April on the despatch of the…

Leaked footage of Russian prisoners chanting criminal underworld slang during their Easter celebrations has sparked scandal in a prison system already under national scrutiny. Russia’s Federal Prison Service (FSIN) has been rocked by scandal in the past year as footage of guards violently beating inmates has leaked. Last fall, FSIN launched a probe into lax…

The Kremlin on Monday called an embezzlement case against prominent U.S. investor Michael Calvey regrettable and said it hoped he would be freed from house arrest and be able to attend an economic forum in St. Petersburg later this week. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told the RT TV channel in an interview that Calvey was…

Russian airline Aeroflot has scaled back the number of Sukhoi Superjet 100 flights it operates after one of its planes made a crash-landing last month, killing 41 people, according to data provided by a flight tracking website. Flightradar24 data shows Aeroflot has also at times substituted Airbus or Boeing planes for the Superjet, the first…

Russian kindergarteners are being given tours of the controversial pens that hold 10 killer whales and 87 beluga whales in the country’s Far East, an animal rights activist said Monday. Images of the mammals kept in enclosures in a bay near the Sea of Japan port of Nakhodka first appeared after they were caught for…

At least two people were missing on Saturday after blasts at the explosives plant Kristall in the central Russian town of Dzerzhinsk, Interfax and RIA news agencies reported. “As we understand, two went missing,” deputy governor Dmitry Krasnov was quoted by RIA as saying in a statement broadcast by Russian state TV channel Rossia 24.…

Out with the old, in with the new. Airports in dozens of Russian cities will now bear the names of their famous residents after President Vladimir Putin issued a decree on the name change Friday. Here’s a look at some of the newly minted names of some of Russia’s most popular airports. Hopefully, this will help…

Four out of 10 Russians believe their country is going in the wrong direction, a poll by the independent Levada Center polling agency said. Approval for Russia’s direction peaked at 61 percent in 2008 – the tail end of the economic boom – and at 60 percent shortly after the Crimean annexation in 2014. It…

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Friday he hopes that European Union sanctions on Russia will remain in place until Ukrainian territories are returned, according to a statement released on the presidential website. The West imposed sanctions on Russia following Moscow’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 and support for separatist fighters in eastern Ukraine. “Thank…

The Kremlin said on Friday it was Turkey’s responsibility to stop rebels in Syria’s Idlib province from firing on civilian and Russian targets, signaling it would continue to back a Syrian government offensive there despite Ankara’s protests. The month-long offensive, the biggest escalation of the war between President Bashar al-Assad and his enemies since last summer,…

The Kosovo government said on Friday that a Russian national working for the UN mission would not be allowed back into the country after his expulsion. It said the UN staffer, Mikhail Krasnoshchenkov, had been declared persona non grata. The UN mission, UNMIK, said on Thursday the Russian had sustained injuries when he was arrested during a…

Public trust in President Vladimir Putin has more than doubled hours after the Kremlin asked sociologists to explain why his trust and approval ratings differ. A state-funded survey published May 24 said that trust in Putin slipped to a 13-year low of 31.7 percent. The Kremlin on Thursday asked the VTsIOM pollster to explain how…

Russia has launched a powerful European-made communications satellite for the state energy giant Gazprom from Kazakhstan. Gazprom’s space subsidiary, Gazprom Space Systems, runs Yamal satellites to broadcast to customers in Russia, western and central Europe, the Middle East and North Africa. France’s Thales Alenia Space company manufactures the satellites for Gazprom. The Yamal-601 satellite launched…

The U.S. Department of Defense will ban space launch and satellite cooperation with Russia in 2023, the Pentagon said, drawing ire from Russia’s space agency. The U.S. has been trying to cut reliance on Russian-made rocket engines, eyeing 2022 as the latest deadline, amid strained relations. Last year, Russia’s top defense and space industry official…

Russia has deleted gay sex and drug scenes from the Russian-language version of a newly released Elton John biopic, the Dozhd TV news channel reported Friday. “Rocketman” premiers throughout Russia on June 6, but viewers in Moscow were treated to a prescreening on Thursday. A racy 40-second scene featuring two nude actors playing John and…

Russia has rejected an Iranian request to buy S-400 missile defense systems, concerned that the sale would stoke more tension in the Middle East, according to two people with knowledge of the matter, including a senior Russian official. The request was rebuffed by President Vladimir Putin, the people said on condition of anonymity because they’re…