Month: September 2020

Russia’s second candidate vaccine against the coronavirus is less than a month away from state approval after completing small-scale human trials, the vaccine’s developers have said this week.  The Siberia-based Vektor State Virology and Biotechnology Center concluded Phase 2 trials on 100 volunteers last week, with results due to be published Wednesday. Volunteers were said…

Russian investigators refused to allow jailed U.S. investor Michael Calvey to remove his electronic ankle bracelet in order to undergo an MRI scan required for cancer treatment, the Financial Times reported Thursday.  Lawyers for Calvey, who was detained last February on embezzlement charges that he says are being used to pressure him in a business…

New coronavirus cases in Moscow on Thursday reached the highest level since late June, raising fears of a new wave of cases in the world’s fourth most affected country. The caseload increase had remained relatively stable in the capital at around 700 per day for several months, but the numbers began to climb again from…

TikTok has deleted hundreds of Russian videos at the government’s request since the start of 2020, the popular short video app’s European policy executive said this week. The Chinese-owned app removed or restricted nearly 700 videos worldwide following government requests between Jan. 1-June 30, according to its latest transparency report published this week. Nearly 300…

Belarus police fired tear gas and arrested more than 150 protesters on Wednesday after the secret inauguration of President Alexander Lukashenko triggered new demonstrations and fresh condemnation in the West. Several thousand protesters, many carrying the red-and white opposition flag, took to the streets of the capital Minsk and other cities following a surprise announcement…

Bulgaria has expelled two Russian diplomats accused of spying on the military, the foreign ministry said on Wednesday. The pair were given 72 hours to leave the EU country, a former Russian ally during Soviet times, after the Bulgarian public prosecutor alleged they had been seeking out classified information on military modernization plans since 2016.…

The U.S. Treasury on Wednesday sanctioned associates and businesses connected with a wealthy financier close to Russian President Vladimir Putin as well as Moscow’s security service. Eight people and seven entities related to Yevgeniy Prigozhin and the Federal Security Service (FSB) were targeted in the sanctions, which Treasury said in a statement were aimed at…

Moscow said Wednesday it was expanding a list of European officials who are banned from entering Russia as a response to what it said were aggressive EU actions. A Foreign Ministry statement did not specify what the sanctions were a response to, but referred to “hostile steps” against Russia and its citizens. Russia’s ties with…

The Kremlin-funded RT broadcaster leaned into its reputation as a U.S. election bogeyman with an ad offering President Donald Trump a job as “special host” if he loses the 2020 race.  RT used deepfake technology to transport Trump 44 days into the future, where he takes up Russian President Vladimir Putin’s offer to become RT’s…

A series of nuclear byproduct shipments to Russia from Germany is likely importing more than officially declared, Greenpeace Russia said Tuesday.  European enrichment firm Urenco resumed exports of uranium hexafluoride, a byproduct known as “tails,” last year after a 10-year pause initiated by Russia’s state nuclear agency Rosatom. The shipments have sparked outcry from environmental…

A series of toxic radioactive waste shipments to Russia from Germany is likely importing more waste than officially declared, Greenpeace Russia said Tuesday.  European enrichment firm Urenco resumed exports of uranium hexafluoride, a waste product known as “tails,” last year after a 10-year pause initiated by Russia’s state nuclear agency Rosatom due to storage safety…

Yandex shares have surged to a record high after the technology giant announced it has reached a preliminary agreement on a $5.5 billion deal for Tinkoff, Russia’s leading online bank. Analysts and investors are overwhelmingly upbeat on the potential takeover, saying it will make Yandex Russia’s leading fintech player and bring together two of the…

A Russian Sukhoi Su-30 fighter jet that crashed this week may have been accidentally shot down by another plane during exercises, the state-run TASS news agency reported Wednesday. The Su-30 was on a routine training mission with two pilots on board Tuesday when it crashed near a village in the Tver region northwest of Moscow.…

Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny has been discharged from hospital after more than a month of treatment in Germany for his near-fatal poisoning with Novichok, Berlin’s Charité hospital said Wednesday. Navalny, 44, was flown to Germany two days after falling violently ill on a flight in Siberia on Aug. 20. Germany says it has evidence backed…

Six convicted criminals in the southern Russian republic of Dagestan have escaped from prison by digging a tunnel, authorities said Wednesday.  Wardens discovered the tunnel during a routine inspection around midnight and found out after a roll call that they were six prisoners short, the regional prison service said in a statement. Images shared on social media…

A senior Russian narcotics officer is suspected of growing marijuana with the intent of planting the drugs on innocent people, investigators have said. Authorities opened the investigation after the suspect, the deputy head of a local drug enforcement agency, staged a drug bust in the western Russian town of Velikiye Luki last week. Investigators and…

Russian officials are continuing to reassure the public that they won’t reimpose lockdown measures despite a renewed rise in coronavirus cases. Russia has seen an uptick in its daily Covid-19 caseload in September, with more than 5,000 confirmed infections per day since the start of the month and more than 6,000 in each of the…

President Vladimir Putin in a speech at the United Nations on Tuesday boasted of Russia’s creation of the world’s first coronavirus vaccine, though it has not completed large-scale clinical trials. Putin in a video address to the General Assembly said that Russia was open to partnership with other countries over “the first vaccine in the…

Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny may have poisoned himself with Novichok, Russian President Vladimir Putin reportedly told French President Emmanuel Macron in a recent phone call. Navalny, 44, who came out of a coma two weeks ago after falling violently ill on a flight in Siberia, mocked Putin’s reported claims as illogical. Germany says it has…

Russian authorities are considering chartering a plane from China to fly over parents who have been estranged from their babies born to surrogates in Russia due to coronavirus restrictions, they said Tuesday. With the practice banned in China,  parents pay to have surrogate babies abroad, but the system has been tipped into chaos by the pandemic, which…

A week after Belarus’ contested presidential elections, senior police investigator Andrei Ostapovich decided he could no longer stay silent.  He had already started to lose faith in President Alexander Lukashenko and even took part in one of the first post-election protest marches. The turning point came on his first weekend shift after the Aug. 9…

Russia’s nuclear-powered icebreaker Arktika, touted as the most powerful of its kind and a symbol of Moscow’s Arctic ambitions, set off on its maiden voyage on Tuesday. Designed to transport liquefied natural gas from the Arctic, the giant vessel is 173 meters (570 feet) long and 15 meters high. “The unique domestically-built vessel will for…

At least 10 members of Russia’s lower house of parliament are currently hospitalized with coronavirus and more than 50 have developed antibodies, its speaker said Tuesday. State Duma speaker Vyacheslav Volodin admonished elderly deputies for attending in-person sessions after the legislative body came back from summer recess last week.  “To date the number of those…

Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich used offshore companies to secretly invest in football players who were rivals to his Chelsea football club, a BBC Panorama investigation published Monday said.  The information was obtained during the FinCEN Files investigation, which is led by 108 media outlets worldwide and based on thousands of leaked suspicious activity reports (SARs)…

President Vladimir Putin has created a new post in Russia’s National Guard to ensure ideological education and political unity amid questions over the country’s return to once-abolished Soviet practices. The Russian military has gained political influence in both domestic and foreign policy since the 2014 annexation of Crimea from Ukraine and renewed geopolitical tensions with…

A Siberian messianic cult leader and his deputies have been detained at one of their communes on accusations of using followers’ money and psychological violence to inflict harm, Russia’s Investigative Committee said Tuesday. Armed agents were filmed storming the Church of the Last Testament’s compound in a southern district of the Krasnoyarsk region. The agents can…

Belarus’ opposition is not anti-Russian despite its objections to recent Russian-Belarusian deals made amid mass post-election protests, exiled opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya said in an interview published Sunday. Tikhanovskaya had on the eve of last week’s meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Belarus’ Alexander Lukashenko vowed to “reconsider” any newly reached agreements if she…

Recruits in Moscow have reported no side effects after taking China’s candidate coronavirus vaccine as part of large-scale clinical trials, the Russian pharmaceutical company working with the vaccine’s Chinese developers announced Monday. Russia approved Phase 3 trials of the Chinese vaccine developed by CanSino Biologics and the Chinese military’s research arm last month. Russia’s Petrovax pharmaceutical…

Russia has resumed flights to neighboring Belarus, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan and will resume flights to South Korea from Sept. 27, a government decree said Saturday.  Citizens and permanent residents of these countries will be permitted to enter Russia through air checkpoints, and Russians will be able to enter these countries without restrictions as well. The…

Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny said Monday that Western laboratories had found traces of a Novichok nerve agent in and on his body and demanded that Moscow return his clothes. Navalny, who is recovering in Berlin’s Charite clinic, fell violently ill during a flight from Siberia to Moscow on Aug. 20. He spent two days…

Russian lawmakers may have been the ultimate recipients of some of the nearly 400 kilograms of cocaine that were seized from the Russian Embassy in Argentina in 2018, an investigative report said Sunday.  Four suspects are facing a closed trial in Russia after a yearlong investigation into the discovery of 350 kilograms of cocaine worth…

Russia has confirmed 1,109,595 cases of coronavirus and 19,489 deaths. Sept 21: What you need to know today Russia confirmed 6,196 new Covid-19 cases Monday, bringing the country’s official number of cases to 1,109,595 as the number of new infections across the country continues to rise. Authorities in China’s eastern Jilin province have discovered traces of coronavirus on packages of frozen…

Authorities in China’s eastern Jilin province have discovered traces of coronavirus on packages of frozen squid imported from Russia, China’s state-run Xinhua news agency reported Sunday.  The regional capital Changchun’s Covid-19 prevention office detected the virus particles during a routine screening, Xinhua reported.  All individuals who came into contact with the packages in Changchun were…

Russian tycoons close to President Vladimir Putin have used some of the world’s largest banks to move massive sums of allegedly dirty money, according to an international journalism investigation published Sunday. The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and BuzzFeed News said that big banks flagged $2 trillion worth of suspicious transactions between 1999-2017. The…

Tens of thousands of opposition supporters marched in the Belarusian capital of Minsk on Sunday despite authorities deploying a heavy police presence. The protest came a day after officers detained hundreds of demonstrators at a women’s march in the capital. The opposition movement has kept up a wave of large-scale demonstrations every Sunday since President…

A scientist involved in the secret Soviet program to create the Novichok nerve agent has apologized to the Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny, who is recovering from poisoning in Berlin. Vil Mirzayanov, a chemist who was the first to reveal Novichok’s development, in an interview with Russia’s TV Rain on Saturday evening said he wanted…

Riot police on Saturday detained hundreds of women, dragging many into vans, as opposition protesters marched through the Belarusian capital Minsk demanding an end to President Alexander Lukashenko’s rule. The women were seized by riot police in black uniforms and balaclavas as well as officers in unmarked khaki uniforms and plain-clothed officers in face masks.…

Alexei Navalny has said he has difficulty performing everyday functions and that he faces a “long road” of recovery after his Novichok poisoning which left him in a coma. The opposition leader posted an update to his Instagram page Saturday from the Charite clinic in Berlin where he is being treated, outlining more details about…

Russia has confirmed 1,097,251 cases of coronavirus and 19,339 deaths. Sept 19: What you need to know today Russia confirmed 6,065 new Covid-19 cases Saturday, bringing the country’s official number of cases to 1,097,251. It is another daily increase in cases and the first time Russia has reported more than 6,000 new infections since July 19. Russia said it…

A vehicle driven by a Russian national crashed through the perimeter of Spaso House, the U.S. Ambassador to Russia’s central Moscow residence, the U.S. Embassy’s spokeswoman said Friday. The unnamed Russian driving the vehicle was intercepted by Embassy staff and handed over to local authorities, spokeswoman Rebecca Ross said on Twitter. Ambassador John Sullivan was…

A court in Far East Russia has jailed a second North Korean poacher for attacking Russian border guards at sea last year, the Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty news outlet reported Friday.  The court in the city of Nakhodka 6,500 kilometers east of Moscow found the North Korean citizen guilty and sentenced him to seven years…