Day: June 9, 2020

Russia confirmed Tuesday that it would open talks with the United States this month on extending a major nuclear disarmament treaty but warned that U.S. insistence on including China could scuttle efforts. Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov will meet in Vienna on June 22 with U.S. envoy Marshall Billingslea to start negotiations on New START, which…

After months under lockdown, Moscow was back to life Tuesday as restrictions eased, luring sun baskers and strollers back to the streets — along with the city’s legendary traffic jams. But all was not as before in the Russian capital, where face masks and gloves in shops and public transport remain compulsory.  Still, it was…

Two Russian cosmonauts aboard the International Space Station played chess against an Earth-bound grandmaster on Tuesday, in a celebration of the first such game half a century ago. Equipped with an electronic chessboard, cosmonauts Anatoly Ivanishin and Ivan Vagner played in zero gravity against 30-year-old Russian former child prodigy Sergei Karyakin. The game was broadcast…

A young mixed-race Russian blogger says she has faced a barrage of racist threats online after she posted a TikTok video criticizing racism in her country. Maria Magdalena Tunkara, 22, took to the popular app to dispute widespread claims that racism doesn’t exist in Russia amid a wave of anti-racism protests in the U.S. that…

A massive fuel spill in northern Siberia has reached an Arctic glacial lake after seeping through floating barriers installed to stop the leak, regional officials said Tuesday. President Vladimir Putin declared a state of emergency last Wednesday, several days after 21,000 metric tons of diesel leaked from a collapsed fuel tank outside the city of…

The trial of a decorated Russian historian accused of murdering and dismembering his young lover began Tuesday in a case that has fueled intense debate in Russia over domestic violence. Oleg Sokolov, a history lecturer who received France’s Legion d’Honneur from Jacques Chirac in 2003, was arrested last year on suspicion of murder after he was hauled…

A court in western Russia has sentenced a member of the Jehovah’s Witnesses to six and a half years in jail on charges of extremism, a prison term the religious organization described as unprecedented in length and severity. The Pskov City Court handed Gennady Shpakovsky, 61, the sentence early Tuesday after mass raids led to…

The city of Murmansk in Russia’s Arctic has opened a new coronavirus field hospital two weeks after breaking ground on construction. Nowhere in the country has a hospital been erected as quickly, regional authorities say. The 10,000-square-meter hospital in Murmashi, about 15 kilometers south of Murmansk, has 700 beds for coronavirus patients. It consists of…

Mikhail Yefremov, one of Russia’s most well-known actors, faces up to 12 years in jail for a drunken head-on collision in central Moscow that killed the driver of the vehicle he crashed into late Monday. Security camera footage captured Yefremov’s SUV driving into oncoming traffic and crashing into a van on the Garden Ring road…

New infections have plateaued 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 cast doubt…

There have been 485,253 cases of coronavirus infections reported in Russia so far and 6,142 deaths. June 9: 3 things you need to know today Moscow will end its self-isolation orders — including its digital pass system and schedule system for taking walks outside — on June 9, Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said. The city also released a schedule of which…