Moscow was treated to its first glimpse of summer over the weekend — and Muscovites wasted no time in flocking to the city’s most popular spots despite the coronavirus after months of self-isolation. From strolling through Gorky Park to basking in the sunshine along the Moscow River’s shoreline, residents embraced the warm weather — although…
Details
Last summer journalist Marina Dmukhovskaya and photographer Georg Wallner took a trip on the Trans-Siberian from Moscow to Vladivostok. For 28 days and almost 10,000 kilometers, they talked to dozens of people in “Seat 47” (Mesto 47) riding next to them. When they returned, they turned 38 conversations into first-person stories. Here is one of…
Details
Lawyers for a Russian suspect in the trial of four men accused of downing flight MH17 said Monday that the coronavirus pandemic has severely hampered efforts to prepare a preliminary defense. The high-profile trial on the shooting down of the Malaysia Airlines jetliner over eastern Ukraine in 2014, killing all 298 people on board, resumed…
Details
Russia has accelerated its drive to recruit Syrians to fight for Libya’s rebel leader Khalifa Haftar in May in violation of a UN arms embargo, Reuters reported Sunday. Haftar’s forces retreated from one of their last strongholds on the outskirts of the Libyan capital of Tripoli last week, ending his 14-month offensive against the country’s…
Details
Moscow officials announced plans to lift coronavirus restrictions starting Tuesday despite the Russian capital continuing to see about 2,000 new infections each day. The city of 12.7 million, which has been under lockdown since late March, is the epicenter of Russia’s coronavirus outbreak with more than 197,000 cases. Its new case numbers have gradually fallen from…
Details
Former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia have relocated to New Zealand two years after suffering a near-fatal poisoning attempt that Britain pins on Russia, The Sunday Times reported Sunday. Sergei, 68, and Yulia, 35, were exposed to military-grade nerve agent Novichok in the British city of Salisbury in March 2018. British officials…
Details
There have been 476,658 cases of coronavirus infections reported in Russia so far and 5,971 deaths. June 8: 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…
Details
Independent journalism isn’t dead. You can help keep it alive. The Moscow Times’ team of journalists has been first with the big stories on the coronavirus crisis in Russia since day one. Our exclusives and on-the-ground reporting are being read and shared by many high-profile journalists. We wouldn’t be able to produce this crucial journalism…
Details
The Russian military is using an anti-tank gun to help put out a fire that has been raging in a Siberian oil field for more than a week, The Siberian Times reported Monday. The Irkutsk Oil Company, a small producer, last week asked the Russian military to bombard a wellhead at the Yarakta oil field…
Details
Russia announced Monday it would lift a range of anti-coronavirus measures including a strict lockdown on Moscow, despite still recording thousands of new infections every day. Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said the capital’s general lockdown and pass system would end on Tuesday, allowing residents to travel freely for the first time since late March. “Moscow…
Details
Russia plans to resume international air travel on July 15 as it eyes a gradual return to normal life amid the coronavirus pandemic, the RBC news website and state-run TASS news agency reported Sunday. Russia grounded nearly all international flights in late March amid the coronavirus outbreak, allowing only special flights evacuating Russians from abroad and…
Details
Russian journalist and activist Ilya Azar was released Sunday after ten days in detention, his punishment for standing on a solo picket protest. President Vladimir Putin’s government has cracked down on opposition demonstrations, and single-person protests are the only kind allowed without prior permission from the authorities. A court sentenced the 35-year-old journalist and municipal…
Details
There have been 467,673 cases of coronavirus infections reported in Russia so far and 5,859 deaths. June 7: 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…
Details
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…
Details
The United States on Saturday offered to help Russia clean up a vast fuel spill that has fouled an Arctic river in northern Siberia. “Saddened to hear about the fuel spill in Norilsk, Russia,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo wrote on Twitter. Saddened to hear about the fuel spill in Norilsk, Russia. Despite our disagreements,…
Details
June 6 is the birthday of Alexander Pushkin, Russia’s “everything” – the person who captured Russian language in prose and poetry and gave life to the literature and national sense of self for centuries to come. So June 6 is celebrated as Russian Language Day, too. What better way to celebrate the language than with…
Details
Photographer Jason Guilbeau, who was born in Niort, France and now lives in Strasbourg, is known for his landscapes of Switzerland, Germany and Eastern Europe, in particular the relationship between form and landscape. In “Soviet Signs and Street Relics” he has taken Google Street View images of the sculptural signs so familiar to anyone who…
Details
There have been 458,689 cases of coronavirus infections reported in Russia so far and 5,725 deaths. June 6: 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…
Details
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…
Details
Background On December 23, 2019, Gazprom Pererabotka Blagoveshchensk and Gazprom completed the signing of project finance documentation for the construction of the Amur GPP. The funds are provided by 22 European, Asian and Russian banks. This deal is unprecedented in Gazprom’s history and is among the largest in Europe over the last few years. TXF and Proximo are information agencies that specialize in publishing news,…
Details
Young right-wing extremists from Germany are receiving combat training from Russian white supremacists whom the United States has blacklisted as terrorists, Germany’s Focus news magazine reported Friday. The U.S. State Department branded the Russian Imperial Movement as a foreign terrorist organization in April, saying it runs two paramilitary training camps in St. Petersburg that have…
Details
Russia’s prosecutor general on Friday ordered a review of hazardous structures built on permafrost after concluding that a huge Arctic fuel spill last week was caused by shifting ground. The office of the prosecutor general said in a statement that a preliminary conclusion of the spill’s causes is the “sagging of the ground and the…
Details
This weekend, June 6-8, the annual Red Square Book Fair is going to be held, albeit in more modest dimensions and with a lot of hurdles to keep people safe. Because quarantine is not officially over, it can be attended by book lovers and readers older than seven and younger than 65, who have registered…
DetailsOn June 5th Rosneft celebrates World Environment Day.
Russia’s Communist Party has launched a campaign urging supporters to vote against a set of constitutional amendments that would allow President Vladimir Putin to stay in power for the next decade and a half. Russians are set to vote on July 1 to approve Putin’s changes to Russia’s basic law that would, among other things,…
DetailsZvezda shipbuilding complex has launched the construction of an Aframax tanker for PJSC Sovcomflot.
The Czech Republic has expelled two Russian diplomats after a Russian embassy employee spread a hoax about a planned poison attack on three Prague politicians, officials said on Friday. In April, Respekt newspaper cited security sources as saying that a Russian national using a diplomatic passport had arrived in Prague carrying ricin, a toxic poison…
Details
Over the past year, Siberia has seen disaster on a biblical scale. Last spring, forest fires enveloped an area larger than Greece, causing $100 million in damage. In what Greenpeace called a “climate catastrophe,” the fires emitted more carbon dioxide in June alone than Sweden does in an entire year. Then, as those fires were…
Details
Russia has managed to contain a massive diesel spill into a river in the Arctic, a spokeswoman for the emergencies ministry told AFP on Friday. “We have stopped the spread of the petroleum products,” the spokeswoman for the taskforce in charge of the accident clean-up said. “They are contained in all directions, they are not…
Details
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday said he expected metals giant Norilsk Nickel to fully restore the environment after an unprecedented Arctic fuel spill, as responders said they had managed to stop the slick from spreading further. A national-level state of emergency was announced after 21,000 tons of diesel fuel spilled from a reservoir that…
Details
Moscow and central Russia’s Nizhny Novgorod region will be able to cast their votes online on a set of constitutional amendments that would allow President Vladimir Putin to extend his rule into the next decade, election officials said Thursday. The vote was originally set for April 22 but was pushed back to July 1 due…
DetailsLaunched at the Zvezda Shipyard on May 12, the first Russian tanker of Aframax type Vladimir Monomakh is ready for sea trials.
Facebook has started labeling media organizations whose editorial decisions may be under the influence of governments, including Russia, and said it will begin blocking ads from those outlets later this year. The move comes after Facebook faced scrutiny for failing to stem foreign interference in the 2016 U.S. election and amid heated debate over how…
Details
There have been 449,834 cases of coronavirus infections reported in Russia so far and 5,528 deaths. June 5: 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…
Details
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…
Details
Tensions flared between Russia and the United States as the Russian military reportedly seeks to expand its presence in U.S.-controlled northeastern Syria, news outlets reported this week. The latest flare-up follows the Russian military’s reported attempt to build a base near the Turkish and Iraqi borders last week. President Vladimir Putin has ordered talks with Russia’s ally…
Details
June 5, 2020 PAO Severstal (MICEX-RTS: CHMF; LSE: SVST), one of the world’s largest vertically integrated steel and mining companies, announces the appointment of Olga Kalashnikova as its new Head of Environment to lead the Company’s strategy to reduce its carbon footprint and meet the climate challenge. The creation of this new role underlines Severstal’s…
Details
A court in Russian-annexed Crimea on Thursday sentenced a Jehovah’s Witness to six years in prison for organizing an extremist organisation, in the latest harsh sentence against the Christian movement. Crimea’s Supreme Court at an appeal hearing sentenced Artyom Gerasimov to six years in a penal colony, the Jehovah’s Witnesses religious organization said in a…
Details
Russia plans to start clinical testing of a coronavirus vaccine on paid volunteers from the general public from next week, Vadim Tarasov, the director of the institute in charge of the study told The Moscow Times on Thursday. According to Tarasov, there will be 50 participants, and those who complete the full trial will be…
Details
Authorities have blocked access to a city in far northern Russia located near the site of last year’s mysterious nuclear testing accident as the coronavirus outbreak there intensified. The governor of the Arkhangelsk region signed an order to close public access to the city of Severodvinsk this Saturday, the city’s press service said Thursday. Severodvinsk…
Details
President Vladimir Putin has ordered the military to set up a field hospital in a Far East Russian region he described as the latest coronavirus hotspot as Russia’s outbreak continues to shift outside Moscow. Putin shifted his focus to the remote Zabaikalsky region of 1 million residents some 5,000 kilometers east of Moscow two weeks…
Details
Russian emergency workers and marine clean-up specialists on Thursday intensified efforts to clean up a major fuel spill that environmentalists say is the first such accident in the Arctic polar region. A diesel reservoir collapsed at a power station outside the northern Siberian city of Norilsk on Friday, releasing 15,000 tons of fuel into a…
Details
For Sasha, a queer, non-binary person from Moscow, the clashes at home first started around age 13 or 14. “It was basically made clear to me that I’ll never be accepted in my own family if I ‘keep having homosexual tendencies,’” Sasha, now 18, told The Moscow Times. For years they coped with the tension…
Details
The city of Moscow will end up spending a total of 250 billion rubles ($3.1 billion) on fighting the coronavirus outbreak but will lose double that amount in revenue, Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said Thursday. The epicenter of Russia’s outbreak with over 40% of its 441,108 cases, Moscow allowed shops to reopen and residents to leave…
Details
There have been 441,108 cases of coronavirus infections reported in Russia so far and 5,384 deaths. June 4: 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…
Details
A US military plane carrying 150 donated ventilators to help coronavirus patients landed in Moscow on Thursday in the second such delivery to Russia, the U.S. embassy said. The plane brought the number of U.S.-manufactured ventilators sent by the United States to Russia to 200, after the first delivery arrived two weeks ago. U.S. ambassador…
Details
A massive diesel spill into a Siberian river caused at least 6 billion rubles (more than $76 million) in damages to waterways above the Arctic Circle, Greenpeace Russia said Wednesday. President Vladimir Putin ordered a state of emergency Wednesday five days after more than 20,000 metric tons of diesel fuel spilled into rivers near the…
Details
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…
Details
Russia’s second-largest city St. Petersburg recorded almost 30% more deaths in May 2020 compared to its average May total over the past decade, official data said Wednesday. St. Petersburg saw 6,427 deaths in May this year, about 28% more than the nine-year average of 5,027 for May, according to civil registry data. The figures, first…
Details
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,…
Details
News from projects and regions June 3, 2020, 18:50 Trade unions within the Gazprom Workers’ Union Interregional Organization have provided over RUB 70 million to support the efforts aimed at preventing the spread of the coronavirus. The funds are to be used to purchase protective and preventive products: face masks, disinfectants, non-contact thermometers, germicidal lamps, bactericidal air recirculators, medications, etc. The Presidium of the…
Details
News from projects and regions June 3, 2020, 18:45 Gazprom Mezhregiongaz Izhevsk has taken stock of the work done by its subscriber service in the first five months of 2020. From January through May of this year, more than 9,000 users created personal accounts at the мойгаз.смородина.онлайн website, as a result of which its subscriber base expanded to 55,461 people. This period of operation partially overlapped…
Details
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…
Details
News from projects and regions June 3, 2020, 18:30 The remote customer support services offered by Gazprom Mezhregiongaz Rostov-on-Don worked even more effectively in the period of self-isolation. The company’s call center received over 122,000 inquiries and submissions from March 31 to May 31. The operators receive more than 1,600 calls a day. In April and May, the specialists of the call…
Details
This weekend you can pretend it’s summer by ordering in a Mexican meal from the Hyatt Regency Petrovsky Park. A big variety of meaty and meatless dishes for two (or many more) is 3,500 rubles, which includes free delivery within the Third Ring Road and Horchata Blanca (a traditional Mexican rice drink). For the “do-it-yourself”…
Details
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…
Details
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…
Details
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…
Details
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…
Details
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…
Details