Update: Karelin removed his amendment from consideration after Putin rejected the proposal in a surprise Duma speech. Russian lawmakers will consider holding early parliamentary elections this year, the speaker of Russia’s lower house of parliament has said on the day of a key vote for President Vladimir Putin’s sweeping constitutional amendments Tuesday. The State Duma…
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Russia’s Central Bank has swept in to help support the Russian ruble and push the currency up from its four-year low against the U.S. dollar. The bank started selling foreign currency reserves — in other words, buying rubles — Tuesday, adding that it was “ready to use additional tools to maintain financial stability.” The ruble…
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Veterinarians in Far East Russia have put down around 200 stray animals who they said had come into contact with a rabid dog, authorities announced Monday. The news came after an animal rights group found empty dog and cat cages at the facility in the city of Yakutsk. They later discovered the carcasses of what…
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The Russian stock market plunged 10% on opening Tuesday morning, following the rout on global financial markets Monday. Russia’s oil companies were hit hardest, with giants Rosneft and Lukoil leading the loserboard with falls of more than 10%. The fall appeared softer than traders had been anticipating, however, as the MOEX Index of leading Russian…
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The Russian government has allegedly hired British politicians, former intelligence officers and PR firms to advance its interests in Britain’s politics and form a “western buffer network,” The Guardian reported Monday. The claims are based on U.S.-born financier Bill Browder’s Sept. 2018 testimony submitted to the British parliament for its report on alleged Russian interference…
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SCHIPHOL, The Netherlands — In a crowded and heavily guarded court near Schiphol, the airport MH17 took off from six years ago, a murder trial opened against four men charged with the killing of 298 victims on the ill-fated flight. The first day of proceedings saw the head judge, the prosecutors and defense team present their…
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As the new coronavirus that has killed more than 3,000 people continues to spread around the world, Russia has stepped up measures to tackle the health risk, including closing most entry points along its 4,200-kilometer border with China, ordering people returning from high-risk areas to self-quarantine and temporarily banning Chinese citizens from entering the country. …
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SCHIPHOL, The Netherlands — A court in the Netherlands is conducting a landmark hearing to try to determine criminal responsibility for the downing of Flight MH17 six years ago. The Moscow Times is covering the MH17 trial live from the courtroom in The Netherlands. Follow along here: March 9 14.45: Oleg Pulatov’s defense team gives…
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Leading Russian firms saw their share prices collapse Monday, as the fallout from Moscow rejecting an oil production pact with Saudi Arabia rocks global financial markets. Among the biggest losers were state-backed lenders Sberbank and VTB, which both plunged by more than 20% when European markets opened. Oil major Rosneft, also state-owned, recorded a 20%…
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The Russian ruble plummeted almost 10% Monday, falling to its lowest level in more than four years, as oil prices crashed following the breakdown of the Russia-Saudi Arabia pact to limit production. The ruble was trading at 75 to $1 on Monday evening in Moscow — a 9.5% drop — after another wild start to…
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Moscow city authorities threatened prison terms of up to five years on Sunday for people failing to self-isolate in their homes for two weeks after visiting countries hit hard by the coronavirus outbreak. The city government had announced a “high alert regime” and imposed extra measures on Thursday to prevent a spread of the illness…
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Tomorrow, a court in the Netherlands will start a landmark hearing to try to determine criminal responsibility for the downing of Flight MH17 six years ago, although it’s unlikely the suspects will appear in the dock. The war in eastern Ukraine between Kiev’s forces and pro-Russian separatists has claimed more than 13,000 casualties according to…
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As the new coronavirus that has killed more than 3,000 people continues to spread around the world, Russia has stepped up measures to tackle the health risk, including closing most entry points along its 4,200-kilometer border with China and temporarily banning Chinese citizens from entering the country. Russia has a total of 17 confirmed coronavirus…
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As the new coronavirus that has killed more than 3,000 people continues to spread around the world, Russia has stepped up measures to tackle the health risk, including closing most entry points along its 4,200-kilometer border with China and temporarily banning Chinese citizens from entering the country. There have been 15 cases of coronavirus infections…
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Four new cases of coronavirus have been identified in Russia, Russian news agency RIA Novosti reported Saturday. The new cases take the total number of people who have been infected with coronavirus in Russia to 17, three of whom have since recovered. Three of the four live in Lipetsk, a city 250 miles south of…
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Four new cases of coronavirus have been identified in Russia, the state-run RIA Novosti news agency reported Saturday. The new cases take the total number of people who have been infected with coronavirus in Russia to 17, three of whom have since recovered. Three of the four live in Lipetsk, a city 460 kilometers south…
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Everyone knows Maria Sharapova and Catherine the Great, but what about some of the singers, scientists, artists, and other brilliant women who have left an indelible mark on Russian and Soviet history? This Women’s Day, we bring you five lesser-known Russian women whose legacies continue to inspire. Anna German, 1970s TASS Anna German (1937-1982) One…
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Two Russian citizens have been arrested in Sweden suspected of a hammer attack last month on a blogger critical of Chechen strongman leader Ramzan Kadyrov, media reported Saturday. A district court in the central Swedish town of Gavle on Friday ordered a Russian woman in her thirties held in custody, suspected of being an accessory…
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Restive Russian-speaking minorities, contentious memory politics, and turbulent Europeanization. No, we are not talking about Ukraine, but the Baltic states: Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia, and these are just some of the themes that Aliide Naylor covers in “The Shadow in the East: Vladimir Putin and the New Baltic Front.” In this riveting debut, Naylor combines…
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OPEC and its allies failed to reach a deal on oil production cuts on Friday, after Moscow refused to tighten supply to counter the effects of the coronavirus outbreak. The day before, OPEC ministers had recommended reducing output by 1.5 million barrels per day in face of the global slowdown caused by the epidemic and…
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Russian President Vladimir Putin said Friday he would not bend the law to extend his term in power and is seeking to amend the constitution to secure the country’s future for decades to come. Speculation has swirled over the 67-year-old president’s future after he unleashed a political storm in January by proposing major constitutional changes.…
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Shares of Russian businessman Oleg Tinkov’s credit card supplier TCS plummeted Friday after the U.S. Department of Justice charged its founder with fraud and demanded his extradition from Britain. Shares of TCS (Tinkoff Credit Systems) group were showing a loss of more than 17%t on the London Stock Exchange and 24% on the Moscow Exchange…
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Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny lodged a complaint against Russia at the European Court of Human Rights on Friday to contest a money-laundering investigation he says authorities have opened to thwart his political activities. Russian investigators opened the case against Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation last August after he called on people to attend rallies that grew…
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As the new coronavirus that has killed more than 3,000 people continues to spread around the world, Russia has stepped up measures to tackle the health risk, including closing most entry points along its 4,200-kilometer border with China and temporarily banning Chinese citizens from entering the country. Russia has a total of seven confirmed coronavirus…
DetailsBackground OMV AG is Gazprom’s main partner in Austria. The companies cooperate in gas production, transportation and supplies. On October 3, 2018, Gazprom and OMV signed the Basic Agreement on Asset Sale. In accordance with the document, OMV will obtain a 24.98 per cent stake in the project for developing Blocks 4A and 5A in the Achimov formations of the Urengoyskoye field. As a result, the Gazprom Group’s stake in the project will…
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Experts are attributing a sharp drop in the number of deaths from alcohol poisoning in Russia to the unseasonably warm winter. Some 619 people died from alcohol poisoning in January 2020, down 37.3% from January 2019, Russia’s National Center for Alcohol Policy Development said Thursday. The past winter was the warmest since records began in…
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Today marks the 83rd birthday of Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman in space. She remains the youngest woman to ever venture into space (at age 26) and the only woman to embark upon a solo mission. Tereshkova was born in 1937 in the Yaroslavl region. Her parents were collective farmers, although her father would die…
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Yevgenia Markova dreamed of being a truck driver all her life. There was just one problem — working as one would have been against the law. “I’ve loved everything that can be driven since childhood — cars, river boats, trains. But these were all forbidden,” she told The Moscow Times. For decades, women in Russia…
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Before Vyacheslav Makarov announced in January he was leaving gaming, few could have expected the man who helped create the mega-hit World of Tanks wanted a career in Russian politics. Yet on the sidelines of a digital technologies conference in Moscow on Thursday, the 40-year-old online gaming legend launched his latest creation: the Direct Democracy…
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Two-thirds of Russians would not be happy to have a woman as president, the state-funded VTsIOM polling agency said Friday ahead of International Women’s Day on March 8. Some 68% of people surveyed said they opposed a female president, up from 61% in an identical VTsIOM’s poll in 2016. The pollster noted that both male…
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Russia is hoping to lure more people to live in the Arctic with promises of payouts and infrastructure development in the environmentally vulnerable territory, according to its 15-year strategy published Thursday. The Kremlin document on the “foundations of state policy in the Arctic to 2035”, signed by President Vladimir Putin, set out its policy plans for…
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As the new coronavirus that has killed more than 3,000 people continues to spread around the world, Russia has stepped up measures to tackle the health risk, including closing most entry points along its 4,200-kilometer border with China and temporarily banning Chinese citizens from entering the country. Russia has a total of seven confirmed coronavirus…
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Turkey and Russia announced a ceasefire in northern Syria on Thursday, agreeing to end weeks of heavy fighting that sparked a humanitarian disaster and raised fears of their armies clashing. After more than six hours of talks in Moscow, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan agreed on the ceasefire to take…
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Russia’s tourism sector has already taken a 27 billion ruble ($406 million) hit from the impact of coronavirus, the head of the Russian Association of Tour Operators said on Thursday in a plea for government support. The coronavirus outbreak has caused havoc across the global travel industry as companies restrict employee trips, airlines axe flights,…
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OPEC agreed on Thursday to cut oil output by an extra 1.5 million barrels per day (BPD) in the second quarter of 2020 to support prices that have been hit by the coronavirus outbreak but made its action conditional on Russia and others joining in. The oil demand outlook has been pummelled by global measures…
DetailsOn March 3d, 2020, ROSATOM participated in Africa Energy Indaba Forum, which was hosted in Cape Town, South Africa. Ryan Collyer, acting CEO of Rosatom Central and Southern Africa highlighted the global shift towards nuclear, not only in the energy sector but also to address a myriad of other issues. His speech was focused on…
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Hollywood star Arnold Schwarzenegger is suing Russia’s robot maker Promobot for using his likeness without permission, the TMZ tabloid reported Wednesday. Schwarzenegger’s company is demanding $10 million in damages, as well as profits made off the lookalike robot and other expenses, according to TMZ. It also reportedly wants an injunction blocking Promobot from using the…
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This week on the podcast: — The leaders of Russia and Turkey meet in Moscow on Thursday in a bid to de-escalate fighting in Syria which has brought the two countries to the brink of direct military confrontation. It is the latest episode in a fraught nine-year civil war that has killed hundreds of thousands,…
DetailsVolgodonsk Branch of AEM-technology’s Atommash (belongs to the engineering division of ROSATOM – Atomenergomash) performed the fit up and welding of set of steam generators for Unit 1 of Rooppur NPP (Bangladesh). Steam Generator is a heat exchanger, it is part of a reactor plant and belongs to products of the first safety class. The…
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Three Russian passenger planes flying domestic routes on Thursday were targeted with anonymous bomb threats while airborne, local media said. Anonymous messages were passed to emergency services and a Moscow airport warning that the planes had a bomb on board, Russian news agencies said. One plane was flying from Saint Petersburg to the Crimean city…
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The first Russian national to test positive for the coronavirus while in the country has received a test result indicating he no longer has the virus, he told The Moscow Times on Thursday. David Berov, 29, was quarantined in Moscow on Feb. 27, less than a week after returning from a ski trip in northern…
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A court in annexed Crimea sentenced a Jehovah’s Witness to six years in prison on charges of extremism Thursday in the ongoing crackdown on the religious group in Russia. Sergei Filatov, the local branch leader, was among several worshippers swept up in raids in the Crimean town of Dzhankoy in 2018. Russia, which seized the…
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Passerby, a new exhibition at Garage museum, presents a visual and social history of the humble shop mannequin. This mass-produced everyday object is revealed to be a surprisingly rich social phenomenon; the clothes mannequin is, on one hand, a disposable life-sized coat hanger, but in Passerby it is reimagined as an art object, a human…
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Moscow authorities have drafted an emergency plan that envisions a shutdown of the Russian capital in case of a coronavirus outbreak, BBC Russia and the Vedomosti business daily reported Wednesday. Russia has confirmed seven coronavirus cases, two of whom have recovered last month, with the latest case reported Thursday. Temperature checks in arrivals for international…
DetailsEric Liron, Rosneft’s Vice President for In-House Services, joined the annual round-table meeting of members of the international initiative the Methane Guiding Principles.
This unseasonably mild winter has caused the in Moscow Zoo bears to wake up earlier than usual, the city’s mayor’s office said Wednesday. Last year, the two Himalayan bears and one Kamchatka brown bear began coming out of hibernation in April. “Our zoologists were preparing for the bears to wake up earlier due to the…
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The leaders of Russia and Turkey meet in Moscow on Thursday in a bid to ease tensions that have threatened to bring their two countries into direct conflict in Syria. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said he would be looking for Russia’s Vladimir Putin to agree to a rapid ceasefire in Idlib, the northwestern province…
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Russia’s oil giant Rosneft and the Russian government will join forces to develop gene-editing technology, according to a government decree published Wednesday. The deal, which President Vladimir Putin ordered in December, aims to accelerate Russia’s $1.6 billion program to create 30 new varieties of genetically modified crops and animals by 2027. Rosneft is tasked with…
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False rumors about the new coronavirus circulating in Russia are being directed from abroad, President Vladimir Putin claimed Wednesday at a government meeting. He told ministers the country’s FSB security service had reported to him that false information was being planted to create panic, while in reality the situation is not critical. “As for these provocative fake…
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A secret witness will implicate Kremlin-linked catering magnate Yevgeny Prigozhin in plans to influence elections abroad at a trial next month, Politico reported Wednesday, citing a U.S. prosecutor. The St. Petersburg-based Concord Management and Consulting firm goes on trial in the United States in April after it was charged with conspiracy to defraud the U.S.…
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Although competitive figure skating is a relatively young sport, Russia is already well-established as a powerhouse of the icy stage. In the lead-up to International Women’s Day and as skater Adelina Sotnikova has just announced her retirement, we look back on some of the women who have defined Russian and Soviet skating in the past…
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At least 20 football fans have been detained in Moscow after mass brawls broke out over the weekend, the state-run TASS news agency reported Wednesday. Several clashes took place between fans of FC Spartak and FC Dynamo on the day of the Moscow derby Saturday. Footage showed scenes of violence on the Moscow metro and…
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As the new coronavirus that has killed more than 3,000 people continues to spread around the world, Russia has stepped up measures to tackle the health risk, including closing most entry points along its 4,200-kilometer border with China and temporarily banning Chinese citizens from entering the country. Russia reported its first two cases of coronavirus…
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President Vladimir Putin’s new package of social spending initiatives will not be enough to hit the country’s ambitious poverty-reduction targets, a government watchdog has said. In its assessment of the government’s spending plans for the next few years, the Audit Chamber said the package of new measures, such as higher allowances for new mothers to…
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Even skeptics can no longer ignore the effects of climate change in Russia. First, there’s the weather. Last year was the hottest on record; the ice in the Arctic is melting at a dramatic pace, as is the permafrost; while forest fires and flash floods have ravaged swathes of Siberia, and methane is spewing from…
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A Russian passenger plane crash in Egypt was not an act of terrorism and the identities of its victims are unknown, an Egyptian appeals court ruled recently, according to the Kommersant business daily. Metrojet Flight 9268 crashed minutes after takeoff from the Egyptian resort Sharm el-Sheikh to St. Petersburg on Oct. 31, 2015, killing all…
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Russia has banned the export of masks, respirators and hazmat suits to ensure access to the items for medics treating coronavirus patients and the public, under a decree published Wednesday. The ban covers 17 types of equipment including face masks, plastic shoe covers, gloves, surgical scrubs, gas masks, hazmat suits and “reusable anti-plague” suits. The ban…
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Garage Museum of Contemporary Art is almost just as famous for its architecture as its art; first housed in a disused public bus garage from the 1920s, now it is in a former Soviet café in the middle of Gorky Park, an iconic cuboid of steel, glass and sharp corners. This famously austere space, however,…
DetailsEast Siberian Oil and Gas Company (Vostsibneftegaz), Rosneft’s subsidiary, started new grant scheme for the realization of the most important scientific projects in the Krasnoyarsk Region.
A Moscow court ruled on Tuesday that the city’s facial recognition system does not violate the privacy of its citizens, a lawyer for one of the plaintiffs told Reuters — a blow to activists who had hoped to ban the technology’s use. Lawyer and activist Alena Popova and opposition politician Vladimir Milov of the Solidarnost…
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