Day: February 5, 2020

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…

An Italian court froze assets belonging to a Kremlin adviser’s sister as part of his ownership dispute over a Russian bank with Michael Calvey, a prominent American investor who’s awaiting trial in Moscow on embezzlement charges. A judge in the Tuscan city of Lucca ruled last month that Artem Avetisyan’s sale of real estate holding…

The number of hate crimes against members of Russia’s LGBT community increased in 2019, according to an annual report by the prominent SOVA Center nonprofit, which tracks xenophobia and racism in the country. At the same time, the SOVA Center noted Tuesday that the number of crimes against ethnic and religious minorities, as well as…

Winter is high season for tourism around Lake Baikal in Siberia, but the coronavirus outbreak has curtailed its main source of income: Chinese holidaymakers. They account for more than two-thirds of foreign tourists to the world’s largest freshwater lake, a significant part of the around two million Chinese who visited Russia last year, spending more…

A new $231 billion tax regime for the Russian Arctic is to provide for an unprecedented wave of investments in icy drilling. The new legislation was hammered through the government on Jan. 30. It will give national oil companies incentives for major investments in Arctic oil, the country’s new Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin says. “These…

Scores of Russians began two weeks of quarantine and coronavirus tests in a camp in Siberia on Wednesday after being flown home from China’s Wuhan, the city at the epicenter of an outbreak of the fast-spreading disease. Russia, which has restricted crossings along its 4,300 km (2,670-mile) land border with China, last week reported its first…

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…

Fifty Russian citizens have been awarded compensation totaling more than 1 million euros ($1.1 million) for police brutality and illegal searches, according to four European human rights court rulings issued Tuesday. Russia paid more than 600 million rubles ($9.5 million) to its citizens in compliance with European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) rulings in 2019,…

The Taiga forests of Siberia have expanded north toward the Arctic as a result of warming temperatures over the past four decades, a team of Russian and Finnish scientists has said. Climate change is heating Russia at a rate more than twice the global average, thawing what was once permanently frozen ground in the Arctic…

Two Jehovah’s Witnesses have been convicted of extremism in Russia’s Far East, the group said Tuesday amid what activists say is an escalating crackdown on the religious group. The ruling to hand the two worshippers in the Khabarovsk region a two-year suspended sentence comes after Russia’s Supreme Court declared the Jehovah’s Witnesses an “extremist” organization…

Update: According to a journalist who spoke to prominent Ukrainian anti-corruption worker Yelena Tregub, the NV news website misquoted Pompeo. “When the international community sees Crimea as lost, it’s important to keep the issue and fate of Crimean Tatars in public eye and the U.S. plays a role in this,” BuzzFeed journalist Christopher Miller quoted Tregub as…

Russia plans to start deliveries of its S-400 air defense system to India late next year, a Russian official said Wednesday of the arms deal that risks landing Delhi under U.S. sanctions. India, the largest purchaser of Russian military hardware, agreed on the roughly $5 billion deal in 2018. The U.S. has said countries trading…