Day: June 3, 2020

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday ordered a state of emergency and criticized a subsidiary of metals giant Norilsk Nickel after a massive diesel spill into a Siberian river. The spill of over 20,000 tons of diesel fuel took place on Friday. A fuel reservoir collapsed at a power plant near the city of Norilsk,…

President Vladimir Putin signed a nuclear deterrence policy document Tuesday which reaffirms Russia’s allowance of first nuclear strikes in retaliation to non-nuclear attacks. Its publication, which has until now has been classified, comes less than a year before the last major U.S.-Russian nuclear arms control treaty is set to expire without extension. The world’s two…

Russian election officials say activists are not allowed to campaign against a package of constitutional amendments that would allow President Vladimir Putin to extend his 20-year rule into the next decade, the RBC news website reported Tuesday. Putin announced the vote will take place on July 1 after the coronavirus outbreak that has infected more…

Cities across the United States have been rocked by a week of protests against police brutality and injustice toward African-Americans that have at times turned violent and destructive. Multiple incidents involving police violence against demonstrators and journalists were broadcast live at riots nationwide following the killing of an unarmed black man, George Floyd, in police…

There have been 432,277 cases of coronavirus infections reported in Russia so far and 5,215 deaths. June 3: 3 things you need to know today Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin has ordered to lift some of Moscow’s coronavirus restrictions starting June 1. All non-food shops and some service sector businesses will be able to re-open, he said. The city will…

Russia saw its first coronavirus infection in mid-to-late January, a Moscow city official has said, contradicting official reports which say that Russia’s “patient zero” appearing in March. The statement comes amid reports that China, the country where the pandemic originated, withheld critical information about the new coronavirus from the World Health Organization in the early…

A legal agreement was reached Wednesday between France’s far-right National Rally party led by Marine Le Pen and a Russian firm suing it over a massive unpaid loan, a Moscow court said. “An amicable agreement was reached between the parties. The judge approved it,” a court spokeswoman told AFP after the first hearing into the…

Russian air strikes have hit Syria’s last major rebel bastion for the first time since a March ceasefire came into force, a war monitor said on Wednesday. The Russian strikes on Tuesday evening and at dawn on Wednesday hit an area of the northwest where the boundaries of Hama, Idlib and Latakia provinces meet, the…

One person has died in a fire at a hospital in Russia’s second city St. Petersburg, emergencies services and hospital staff said Wednesday. Bedsheets caught on fire in one of the buildings of the Botkin hospital around 6:00 a.m., first responders told the state-run TASS news agency.  “The patient was alone in the room. There…

New infections have been steadily dropping since mid-May when officials were reporting daily increases of around 11,000 cases. Officials say Russia’s high virus count is the result of mass testing and that a steady decline in new infections and its low fatality numbers mean the country can begin to return to normal. Yet critics have…

Wildfires in Russia have burned across a combined area the size of Greece so far in 2020, surpassing official estimates threefold, Greenpeace Russia said as it braces for blazes to erupt this week and peak next month. Russia’s Federal Forestry Agency has identified 12.3 million acres of wildfires raging across the country’s forests so far…