Year: 2019

Russian and Syrian state museums have signed two agreements to begin restoring the ancient city of Palmyra after it was heavily damaged by the Islamic State, the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg has said. Aided by Russian airstrikes, the Syrian army captured Palmyra from the Islamic State twice in March 2016 and March 2017.…

Russia’s largest lender, Sberbank, has added driverless cars to its list of technology ventures, by teaming up with artificial intelligence (AI) transport developer Cognitive Technologies, the two companies said Thursday. Sberbank and Cognitive Technologies have signed a legally binding document to create a new company, Cognitive Pilot, they said in a statement. Sberbank will have…

Russia has banned a prominent French sociologist from entering the country for 10 years after she arrived to give a lecture on France’s yellow vest protests, the Kommersant business daily reported Thursday. Carine Clément was due to give a lecture in Moscow on Friday on yellow vest protesters in Paris, which she researched for a…

Russian space agency Roscosmos has been recruited to help the United Arab Emirates (UAE) launch the gulf state’s Falcon Eye 2 spy satellite into orbit, Russian news site Vedomosti has reported. The Russian-made Soyuz ST rocket launcher will be used for the Falcon Eye 2 launch next year, replacing the European Vega launcher which was…

The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) said on Wednesday that a recommendation to bar Russia from hosting major sporting events will not affect the Euro 2020 football championships or the 2021 Champions League final. A WADA committee this week recommended Russia be handed a four-year ban from the Olympics and world championships in a number of…

The number of people studying Russian worldwide has halved in the 30 years since the Soviet Union collapsed and is anticipated to decline further, according to state estimates cited by the RBC news website Thursday. Russian ranks as the world’s 10th-most widespread language with speakers in 27 countries, according to a report by the Higher…

Ukraine and Russia have reached the final stages of an all-for-all prisoner exchange agreement ahead of a key peace summit next month, the RBC news website reported Thursday. Russia and Ukraine swapped 35 prisoners each in September, a move that appeared to presage a thaw in relations that have been frozen since Moscow annexed Crimea…

Ukraine said on Wednesday Apple did not “give a damn” about its pain, after the U.S. tech giant began referring to the Russian-annexed Crimean peninsula as part of Russia in its Maps and Weather apps for Russian users. Russia and Ukraine have both been highly sensitive to the way global companies identify Crimea, since Russian troops seized the territory and Moscow…

The head of a prominent Russian investigative website said on Wednesday he had been attacked in Moscow by an assailant who punched him and splashed him with an antiseptic green dye, echoing past assaults on opposition politicians. Ruslan Leviev, founder of Conflict Intelligence Team, which investigates Russian military and mercenary activity, posted pictures of himself on Facebook…

The Kremlin on Wednesday paid tribute to a late Soviet intelligence officer it credits with helping foil a Nazi plot to kill Winston Churchill, Josef Stalin and Franklin Roosevelt, saying her career may have changed the course of history. Goar Vartanyan, who died on Monday at the age of 93, was an undercover field operative…

Russia has revealed a new drone prototype capable of tracking, intercepting and disarming enemy drones, the state-run TASS news agency reported Wednesday.  Unlike existing Russian means of countering enemy unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), these “killer drones” will scramble their enemies’ networks to disable them, TASS quoted Viktor Kladov, director of international cooperation and regional policy…

The British military would be “outgunned” along NATO’s eastern flank in the event of a conflict with Russia, according to a think tank report cited by the BBC on Wednesday. The London-based Royal United Services Institute’s assessment comes after the head of the British army warned earlier this month that Russia could inadvertently trigger a…

A court in Kazan has rejected asylum claims from Chinese Uighur-Tatar twin brothers who fear deportation and imprisonment in China, their lawyer told The Moscow Times. Shahrizat and Shahdiyar Shavkat (23) moved to Russia in 2015 to study at Kazan’s Federal University.  Chinese immigration authorities told the twins last year that they would need to…

As the only remaining independent, English-language news source reporting from Russia, The Moscow Times plays a critical role in connecting Russia to the world. Editorial decisions are made entirely by journalists in our newsroom, who adhere to the highest ethical standards. We fearlessly cover issues that are often considered off-limits or taboo in Russia, from…

Sweden, Estonia, Lithuania and Ukraine have called on Russia to ensure that Kiev keeps its freedom of navigation in the sea bordering Russia, annexed Crimea and Ukraine. The four countries issued the joint statement in support of Ukraine’s sovereignty Tuesday a week after Russia returned three Ukrainian ships it had captured in the Kerch Strait…

The number of Russians eligible for bankruptcy has passed one million for the first time in history, research by a credit ratings agency has shown. Russians can declare bankruptcy if they have debts of at least 500,000 rubles ($7,800) and are more than 90 days behind in their repayment schedule. For comparison, the average Russian…

As the only remaining independent, English-language news source reporting from Russia, The Moscow Times plays a critical role in connecting Russia to the world. Editorial decisions are made entirely by journalists in our newsroom, who adhere to the highest ethical standards. We fearlessly cover issues that are often considered off-limits or taboo in Russia, from…

Cyprus has stripped Kremlin-friendly Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska and two other Russian nationals of Cypriot passports after admitting flaws in its citizenship-for-investment program, Cyprus’ Politis newspaper reported Wednesday. Cyprus said this month it had started a process to strip 26 individuals of citizenship they received under a secretive passports-for-investment scheme. Sources on the Mediterranean island…

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy are “close to 100%” likely to meet for the first time in Paris next month, the Kommersant business daily reported Wednesday. The face-to-face is expected to take place on the sidelines of their anticipated four-way summit with French and German leaders on Dec. 9. The summit…

Nikolai Kholodov has been driving his truck along the highway from St. Petersburg to Moscow for two decades. This week, he’ll finally be able to make the trip without worrying about diversions, traffic jams and animals running onto the road. After eight years of construction, a 669-kilometer toll highway as wide as 10 lanes in…

Russian and Chinese intelligence services are behind the most aggressive spying activities in the Czech Republic, the Central European nation’s counterintelligence agency said Tuesday in a report for 2018. The countries’ activities were connected to politics, diplomacy, espionage, economy and information warfare, the Czech counterintelligence agency BIS said. It said Russia’s foreign, military and domestic…

The impact of Russian trolls on U.S. voters may have been exaggerated, according to a preliminary U.S. study of Twitter interactions with troll accounts published Monday. U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that the Kremlin used social media to interfere in the 2016 presidential election through disinformation and other tactics. Calls for research to measure the…

Russia’s Central Bank is warning Russian lenders against conducting operations in euros, governor Elvira Nabiullina has said. Nabiullina said doing business in euros brings no profits to Russian banks because of the negative interest rate environment in the eurozone, and the Central Bank is pushing Russian financial institutions not to have “excessive” foreign currencies on…

Moldova’s new prime minister on Tuesday raised the possibility of a “pause” in its cooperation with the International Monetary Fund, a day after he said his ex-Soviet republic was negotiating a $500 million loan with Russia. Ion Chicu’s comments and actions, including a trip to Moscow last week, suggest a likely pivot back towards Russia…

As the only remaining independent, English-language news source reporting from Russia, The Moscow Times plays a critical role in connecting Russia to the world. Editorial decisions are made entirely by journalists in our newsroom, who adhere to the highest ethical standards. We fearlessly cover issues that are often considered off-limits or taboo in Russia, from…

Sales of luxury Moscow apartments are set to be worth a total of 82 billion rubles ($1.3 billion) in 2019 — the highest annual level since 2014, analysts at real estate firm Knight Frank have said. The figure represents a 6% jump on last year and takes the total amount spent on luxury real estate…

Russian sports officials on Tuesday spoke out against a World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) committee’s recommendations that the country be banned from the Olympics for four years, saying this was overly harsh and would hurt sport there. The recommendations, published on Monday, mean Russia could miss out on the next two Olympic Games and world championships…

Plastic waste makes up one-quarter of polar bears’ diet as climate change pushes them closer to human settlements, Russian scientists have said while warning that the plastic risks killing the animals. Polar bears have been forced to scavenge for food on land as climate change damages their sea-ice habitats. The animals have increasingly come into…

The number of young Russians who would like to move out of their home country has soared to a 10-year high, according to an independent Levada Center poll published Tuesday. Sociologists have warned that younger generations’ increasing willingness to move abroad risks hurting Russia’s economy, while the Kremlin dismissed it as no cause for alarm.…

Hundreds of feminist activists rallied in central Moscow on Monday night to call for Russia’s government to re-criminalize domestic violence amid intensifying calls for the legislation to be passed. President Vladimir Putin in 2017 passed a law easing punishments for most first-time offenders, which critics say has strengthened Russia’s culture of impunity toward domestic violence.…

Russia hopes to seal a deal to supply Turkey with more S-400 missile systems in the first half of next year, the head of Russian state arms exporter Rosoboronexport was cited on Tuesday as saying. Such a move could further sour ties between Turkey and the United States, which has suspended Ankara from the F-35…

The grass is greener in a virtual world. That’s what Moscow region farmers were aiming for when they fitted their dairy cows with virtual-reality headsets to test their milk production.  “Experts noted reduced anxiety and improved overall emotional mood in the herd” during the VR experiment, said the regional agriculture administration. The second phase of…

Russia should be hit with a four-year Olympic ban and barred from all world championships for the manipulation of data retrieved from a tainted Moscow laboratory, the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) said on Monday. The recommendations were made by WADA’s independent Compliance Review Committee (CRC) and will be put to the executive committee at meetings in…

Russia should be hit with a four-year Olympic ban and barred from all world championships for the manipulation of data retrieved from a tainted Moscow laboratory, the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) said on Monday. The recommendations were made by WADA’s independent Compliance Review Committee (CRC) and will be put to the executive committee at meetings in…

Former Russian President Boris Yeltsin’s chief of staff Valentin Yumashev has made headlines for his candid interview about President Vladimir Putin’s career in the late 1990s. Shortly after Yumashev’s appointment as unsalaried adviser appeared on the Kremlin’s website in June 2018, the Kremlin revealed that he had actually served in that role for 18 years…

Cold War sleuths have discovered a fourth Soviet spy within the United States’ atomic bomb project whose work helped the Soviet Union end Washington’s monopoly on nuclear arms, The New York Times reported Saturday. The Soviet Union detonated its own atomic bomb just 49 months after the U.S. detonated the world’s first atomic bomb in…

A Moscow deputy has called for President Vladimir Putin to block a prominent homeless NGO from opening a shelter in Russia’s capital, warning of the organization’s foreign backing and the spread of diseases. The Nochlezhka homeless charity, founded in St. Petersburg in 1990, has faced strident criticism from Muscovites opposed to its plans to open…

At least eight suspected Russian intelligence officers traveled to Bulgaria around the time a local arms dealer was poisoned in 2015, the investigative outlet Bellingcat reported on Saturday. Bulgarian arms dealer Emilian Gebrev survived the April 28, 2015, poisoning attempt in Sofia. Investigators reopened Gebrev’s case in 2018 when he linked his poisoning with that…

Officials from Russia’s North Caucasus republic of Chechnya have called on members of its diaspora to stop their countrymen from “disgracing the Chechen people,” the independent Novaya Gazeta newspaper reported Monday. This is the first time that the Chechen diasporas of the U.S. and especially Canada have been called upon to stop fellow Chechens who behave…

Turkey will test a component of its newly acquired Russian air defense system, a step that risks escalating a dispute with the U.S. and touching off possible sanctions. The lira reversed gains. Military aircraft will be used in the capital Ankara on Monday and Tuesday during the testing of the S-400 system’s radar-detection equipment, a…

Four out of five women convicted for premeditated murder in Russia had been defending themselves from domestic violence, according to machine-learning research published by the Novaya Gazeta newspaper and the Mediazona news website Monday. Critics say Russia’s 2017 decriminalization of some forms of domestic violence has eroded protections for women, while supporters defend it for…

Konstantin Malofeyev rose to fame in Russia’s corporate wars of the late 2000s. He became one of the most powerful people in telecommunications, but the devoutly Orthodox tycoon almost lost everything in a bitter dispute with state-owned bank VTB. In 2014, he was sanctioned by the West for providing support to rebels in eastern Ukraine.…

On the morning of Nov. 11, 36-year-old Lyudmila Sokolova gathered her two children into her arms and jumped out of the window of her ninth-floor apartment in northeast Moscow. Her baby girl died with her and her six-year-old son was hospitalized in serious condition. Sokolova had called an ambulance four times that morning because her…

Russia is again facing a possible Olympic ban after the World Anti-Doping Agency’s Compliance Review Committee (CRC) recommended on Friday that the Russian Anti-Doping Agency (RUSADA) be ruled non-compliant. The CRC put forward the recommendation after WADA’s Intelligence and Investigations Committee found evidence of manipulation of data retrieved from a tainted Moscow laboratory in January. A report…

A Russian agent briefly jailed in the United States and then deported back to Moscow has accepted a state job to defend Russians imprisoned abroad, the state-run TASS news agency reported Friday. Maria Butina, 31, pleaded guilty in a U.S. court last December to one count of conspiring to act as a foreign agent for Russia by infiltrating a…

Russian lawmakers have an image problem and they know it. One think tank may have the solution ahead of a crucial parliament vote: be kinder and temper your repressive urges. The pro-Kremlin United Russia party’s brand became so toxic amid anti-government protests this summer that many of its members ran for Moscow’s city council as…