Jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny’s “Smart Voting” bot has disappeared from the Telegram messenger app following similar moves by Apple and Google on Friday at the start of a three-day parliamentary vote in Russia. The bot, which instructed Navalny supporters which candidate they should back to unseat Kremlin-aligned politicians, was removed after Telegram announced it…
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Voting is open across Russia’s 11 time zones to elect the 450 members of the country’s lower chamber of parliament, the State Duma. Here’s the latest (Moscow time): 08:00: Voting has resumed in Moscow on the second day of Russia’s 2021 State Duma Elections. 00.30: Telegram founder Pavel Durov said on Friday evening that the instant messenger…
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Russia and China’s leaders on Friday urged the new Taliban government in Afghanistan to remain peaceful to its neighbors and combat terrorism and drug trafficking. Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping spoke via video link at a summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), an eight-member group that promotes itself as an antidote…
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Russia’s three-day voting periods are likely here to stay, the head of the country’s Central Election Commission (CEC) said Friday, a move that critics warn will make it easier to commit voter fraud. Ella Pamfilova’s comments came as Russia kicked off a parliamentary election with both in-person and online voting from Sept. 17-19. This weekend’s…
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The Kremlin praised Google and Apple’s move to take down jailed opposition figure Alexei Navalny’s tactical voting strategy apps on Friday, saying the “Smart Voting” recommendations harm voters. The Western tech giants earlier in the day removed Navalny’s apps from their online stores over a Moscow court ruling that declared his electoral network a banned…
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Background The International Business Congress (IBC) is a non-governmental and non-profit organization. The IBC consists of more than 100 companies and organizations from 23 countries, among them Gazprom, Bank of China, China National Petroleum Corporation, Comita D. D., DNV GL AS, Ernst and Young BV, Huawei Technologies Co Ltd., Mitsubishi, Mizuho Bank, N.V. Nederlandse Gasunie, OMV AG, Pietro Fiorentini S.P.A., Petrovietnam, SAP LLC, Siemens,…
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Opera legends Opera stars including Placido Domingo, Cecilia Bartoli and Rolando Villazon will sing in honor of Russian soprano Anna Netrebko’s 50th birthday on Saturday in the State Kremlin Palace. Leading Russian music producers Filipp Kirkorov and Igor Krutoy will also perform. Ticket prices start at 5,000 rubles ($69) and are as high as 65,000…
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Russia’s Foreign Ministry claimed Friday that the Soviet invasion of Poland during World War II was an act of liberation, reanimating a years-old debate over a secret Hitler-Stalin pact to carve up Eastern Europe between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. “On Sept. 17, 1939, the Red Army began a liberation campaign on the territory of…
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This weekend, Muscovites hoping to vote for Communist Party (KPRF) candidates in elections to Russia’s State Duma will have to be careful to tick the right box. In the Russian capital, KPRF candidates Vitaly Petrov, Nikolai Volkov and Anastasia Udaltsova will run against Vasily Petrov, Alexei Volkov and Anna Udalova, all from the much smaller…
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10.20: Over 10% of Russians that applied for electronic voting have already voted, the Ministry of Digital Science said. 10.13: Apple and Google deleted jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny’s apps from their online stores after Russian authorities threatened jail time for their employees, Navalny’s aides said Friday. 08.01: Polling stations have opened in Russia’s regions that belong to…
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Apple and Google have deleted jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny’s apps from their online stores after Russian authorities threatened jail time for their employees, Navalny’s aides said Friday. The move comes as voting gets underway in parliamentary elections overshadowed by an unprecedented crackdown on the opposition. The Navalny app contained recommendations for its supporters to…
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Russian President Vladimir Putin will travel to China for next year’s Winter Olympic Games, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Thursday, while Moscow remains under penalties for state-sponsored doping. “Putin with delight has accepted the invitation of Xi Jinping to visit the Winter Olympic Games in February 2022,” Lavrov said during a meeting with his Chinese…
DetailsEnsuring the sustainability of its production activities, Rosneft works continuously to minimise its impact on the environment in order to preserve it for the benefit of current and future generations.
September 16, 2021, 17:15 A working meeting between Alexey Miller, Chairman of the Gazprom Management Committee, Alexander Dyukov, Director General of Gazprom Neft, and Vagit Alekperov, President of LUKOIL, took place today in St. Petersburg. The parties discussed the state and prospects of strategic interaction between the Gazprom Group and LUKOIL aimed at, inter alia, implementing joint projects for the exploration, production,…
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Employees of Russian online retailer Wildberries have launched a work-to-rule strike, denouncing a drop in wages at the company run by the country’s richest woman, Tatyana Bakalchuk. In a petition published on Wednesday, employees announced the start of work-to-rule action in the group’s network across several regions, meaning they will do no more than the…
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Alyona Popova fears that if she is not elected to Russia’s lower house of parliament on Sunday, the passing of a law to protect women from domestic violence will be put on the back burner for another five years. Popova, 38, a women’s rights activist turned politician, has been working with lawyers and lawmakers on…
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September 16, 2021, 15:00 Gazprom’s overall amount of investments for 2021: RUB 1,185 billion. Growth from the investment program approved in December 2020: RUB 283 billion. Final investment program and budget to be approved by the Gazprom Board of Directors. The Gazprom Management Committee endorsed the revised drafts of the investment program and budget (financial plan) for 2021. As per the revised investment program for 2021, the…
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Authorities in eastern Ukraine’s breakaway Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) have readied nearly 1,000 buses and trains to neighboring Russia for residents to cast ballots in this weekend’s parliamentary elections, a move slammed by officials in Kiev. An estimated 600,000 Russian passport holders from the DPR and the Luhansk People’s Republic (LNR), separatist-held regions that have…
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President Vladimir Putin on Thursday urged Russians to vote in parliamentary elections later this week in which most vocal Kremlin critics have been barred from running. “I count on your responsible, balanced, patriotic civic position,” Putin said in a video address published overnight on the Kremlin website. Putin’s United Russia party is widely expected to…
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An unknown assailant has opened fire and detonated a bomb outside a police station in southern Russia’s Voronezh region, seriously wounding at least one officer, authorities said early Thursday. “An unknown person entered the territory of the district police department in Liski, Voronezh region, today at 05:30 [Moscow time], injured a police officer and disappeared…
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Russian mobile network providers have begun blocking Google Docs after jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny’s team used the platform in its campaign to defeat ruling party incumbents, independent monitors said Wednesday. The outages affected users of Russia’s state-run telecommunications provider Rostelecom, as well as the mobile networks Megafon and MTS, according to GlobalCheck, a service…
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Russian President Vladimir Putin said Thursday that dozens of people in his entourage tested positive for the coronavirus before he went into self-isolation earlier this week. The Russian leader, who announced in March he had been vaccinated, started self-isolating on Tuesday after being identified as a coronavirus contact. “You know that unfortunately I had to…
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Dozens of people in Vladimir Putin’s entourage have tested positive for the coronavirus, the Russian leader said Thursday, as his country struggles with high infection rates and a vaccine-skeptic population. Earlier this week, 68-year-old Putin canceled all in-person events and said he was self-isolating after announcing an outbreak in the Kremlin. “Cases of the coronavirus…
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The World Health Organization (WHO) has suspended its approval process for Russia’s Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine, pending a fresh inspection of at least one Russian factory manufacturing the shot. Speaking at a press briefing of the Pan American Health Organization, a regional branch of the WHO, Assistant Director Jarbas Barbosa said Russia’s bid for emergency…
DetailsRENERA, Rosatom’s integrator company for energy storage business (a subsidiary of TVEL Fuel Company of Rosatom), and the Government of Kaliningrad Region have signed an agreement on accomplishment of an investment project, aimed at building of a plant for production of lithium-ion cells and energy storage systems in Russia’s Western exclave region. Enertech International Inc.,…
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Soviet and Russian animator Yuri Norstein was born on this day in 1941. Norstein has been behind some of the most iconic cartoons from the Soviet era, and The Washington Post has said “he is considered by many to be not just the best animator of his era, but the best of all time.” Norstein…
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Countries allied with Russia and China were preparing for a series of meetings on Afghanistan Wednesday held in the crisis-hit country’s neighbor, Tajikistan. Moscow and Beijing have moved to assert themselves as key players in the region, after the United States’ hasty retreat from Afghanistan and the Taliban’s takeover of the country. Two regional security…
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The Kremlin said Wednesday there were no formal discussions on military cooperation with Mali after France warned the West African country against hiring hundreds of Russian mercenaries linked to Moscow’s foreign conflicts. French sources told AFP this week that the Malian government was nearing a deal with the secretive Russian firm Wagner to hire nearly…
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Message to the Media September 15, 2021, 15:05 According to preliminary data, Gazprom produced 357.7 billion cubic meters of gas in the first 8.5 months of 2021, which is 17.8 per cent (or 53.9 billion cubic meters) more than in the same period of last year. Gazprom ramped up its domestic supplies from the gas transmission system by 14.8 per cent (or by 21.3 billion cubic meters) over said period…
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The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), which has authored several high-profile investigative reports into fraud in Russia and the post-Soviet world, has announced its closure in Russia on Wednesday. Since its founding in 2006, OCCRP has released bombshell reports into alleged multibillion-dollar offshore schemes involving figures close to Russian President Vladimir Putin as part of…
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Jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny’s team has published its long-anticipated roster of candidates it hopes supporters will rally behind to oust pro-Kremlin incumbents during this weekend’s parliamentary elections. With virtually all of Navalny’s allies shut out from the ballot, his team says it is backing a total of 1,234 candidates for Russia’s lower-house State Duma…
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After Moscow’s election authorities blocked Anastasia Bryukhanova from standing for City Council in summer 2019, she vowed not to back down. Bryukhanova, now 28, was one one of more than a dozen independents barred when the election commission ruled the mandatory signatures she had collected were fake. Critics saw the decision as a move to…
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Fans of European giants Real Madrid and Inter Milan will see their teams face unusual competition this autumn: a club from a tiny separatist region in one of Europe’s least-known countries, Moldova. After a couple of failed attempts, Sheriff FC are making their debut this week as the first club from the ex-Soviet country to…
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The Moscow metro has added Uzbek- and Tajik-language signage at two stations leading to migrant processing centers outside the Russian capital, local media reported Tuesday. The signs at the Prokshino and Lesoparkovaya stations on the southern outskirts of Moscow are designed to help migrants from the two ex-Soviet Central Asian republics board buses toward the…
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A Russian Soyuz rocket has blasted into space carrying 34 new satellites from British operator OneWeb, which aims to provide broadband internet everywhere in the world. The rocket, operated by Europe’s Arianespace, took off at 18:07 GMT Tuesday from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, broadcast live by the Russian Roscosmos space agency. “The launch went…
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Russia has deadlocked the Security Council over the one-year renewal of the United Nations political mission in Libya, threatening international unity ahead of a presidential election on Dec. 24, diplomatic sources said Tuesday. Moscow, which has veto-wielding power, did not approve the language in a resolution drafted by Britain on the withdrawal of foreign troops…
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Mali’s military junta is in talks with Russian private security group Wagner to hire up to a thousand mercenaries in the West African country, two French sources said on Tuesday. Such a deal could push already fraying relations between Paris and Mali to breaking point, and underscore a growing Russian influence in a region where…
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Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has a secret mistress who wields significant influence within the ministry and owns several luxury properties, according to a new investigation by the Important Stories (iStories) investigative outlet published Tuesday. Svetlana Polyakova, who has worked at the Foreign Ministry since 2014, has a “long-standing and very close” relationship with Lavrov,…
DetailsJSC UECC (an enterprise of Fuel Company of ROSATOM TVEL, Novouralsk, Sverdlovsk Region) let loose more than 3,000 of baby carps in the Ob River in Sverdlovsk Region. Total weight of two-month baby carps was nearly 100 kg. Baby carps were brought up in the special fishery, FSUE Glavrybvod, by a JSC UECC’s order. They…
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Background Gazprom Armenia, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Gazprom, supplies natural gas to Armenia’s domestic market. In addition, the company transports, stores, distributes and sells gas, as well as upgrades and expands the gas transmission system and underground gas storage facilities in the Republic of Armenia. In 2020, Gazprom supplied 2.2 billion cubic meters of gas to Armenia.
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Russia fined Facebook and Twitter on Tuesday for not deleting banned content, adding to a slew of penalties the government has imposed on foreign tech giants. Russia has recently been tightening controls over U.S.-based tech companies and last week accused them of interfering in parliamentary polls this weekend. A court in Moscow slapped Facebook with…
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Ukraine said Tuesday that one of its soldiers had been killed by pro-Russian separatists in the east of the country, amid a fresh outbreak of fighting in the years-long conflict. The Ukrainian military has been battling with fighters in two breakaway regions bordering Russia since 2014 when Moscow annexed the Crimean peninsula from Ukraine. Fighting…
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Russian electric car drivers will be able to access toll roads at no cost starting from 2022 in a new trial experiment, the RBC news website reported Monday, citing a recently published draft government plan. The initiative, part of the new Development Concept for the Production and Use of Electric Automobile Transport signed by Prime…
DetailsAn Armenian delegation of mass media representatives and nuclear power experts paid a visit to Kola NPP to learn from experience in upgrading and service life extension of power units. The press tour participants were journalists from Golos Armenii, information agencies Sputnik Armenia, Novosti-Armenia, specialists from Scientific and Educational Foundation Noravank and CJSC RI ARMATOM.…
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What started as an ordinary game of chess in Siberia took a dark turn and ended in double murder, Russian authorities said Monday. According to the Krasnoyarsk region Investigative Committee, which probes major crimes, a conflict erupted Sunday in the stairwell of an apartment block where a game was underway between two 34-year-old neighbors. They were…
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Russian President Vladimir Putin said he is going into self-isolation after “several” people in his inner circle contracted the coronavirus, and that he hopes Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine will protect him. In a videoconference meeting with officials on Tuesday, Putin said he had been in close contact with one infected individual “all of yesterday.” The…
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The man accused of killing a Russian meat magnate in his sauna with a crossbow has been caught after escaping from jail, investigators said Tuesday. Vladimir Marugov had been known as Russia’s “sausage king” for his career in the meat-producing industry and ownership of some of the country’s largest meat processing plants. Police found him…
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ULYANOVSK – When Airat Gibatdinov was born in 1986, Mikhail Gorbachev’s Perestroika had already set the Soviet Union on its path to oblivion. But now, the local lawmaker and deputy head of Russia’s revived Communist Party in Ulyanovsk — the Volga riverside hometown of the U.S.S.R.’s founding father Vladimir Lenin — has dedicated his life…
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Syrian President Bashar Assad met with his Russian counterpart and ally Vladimir Putin during an unannounced visit to Moscow on Tuesday, the Kremlin said. Putin congratulated Assad on his re-election to a fourth term this year after official results showed the Syrian leader winning 95% of the vote that foreign powers have dismissed as illegitimate. “The…
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September 14, 2021 On August 19, 2021, Linde Severstal, a joint venture between Severstal and Linde, shipped the final coil wound heat exchanger (CWHE) for the Amurskiy Gas Processing Plant (AGPP). The first two CWHEs were shipped in 2018 and 2019. CWHEs are used in helium production at the units for extraction, liquefaction and filling…
DetailsIn early September, the first groups of specialists from Egypt’s El-Dabaa NPP began training at the St. Petersburg branch of Rosatom’s Technical Academy. The training programme is being carried out in the framework of contracts pertaining to the construction of Egypt’s first nuclear power plant. The opening ceremony for the training programme was attended by…
DetailsRosatom representatives participated in the World Nuclear Association (WNA) Symposium, which was held online September 8-10. The WNA Symposium is one of the main annual events of the global nuclear industry, which traditionally brings together key players to discuss the current agenda and plans for the future. Due to coronavirus restrictions, the symposium has been…
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Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny has urged Russians to vote out ruling party candidates in the country’s upcoming parliamentary elections in a social media post written from jail Monday. With a number of independent and opposition candidates barred from running, Navalny’s team has in recent years switched tactics to promote a “Smart Voting” strategy that seeks…
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Two new monuments to the first Soviet secret police chief credited with architecting Stalin’s repressions have appeared in southern Russia and annexed Crimea, sparking mixed reactions. The busts of Felix Dzerzhinsky in the Russian city of Krasnodar and the Crimean city of Simferopol were unveiled on Sept. 11, his 144th birthday. Veterans of state security…
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If there’s one district Russia’s beleaguered opposition should be able to win in Sunday’s parliamentary elections, it’s Moscow’s 197th, Kuntsevsky. Named for the suburb where Josef Stalin had his dacha, the district is one of 225 that collectively elect half the members of Russia’s lower house of parliament, the State Duma. It runs through the…
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Belarus leader Alexander Lukashenko on Sunday said Minsk planned to buy $1 billion worth of Russian arms as he oversaw massive Moscow-led military drills that rattled some EU countries. Sporting green military uniform at a test range near the city of Baranovichi in western Belarus, the strongman praised Russian and Belarusian troops for their “high state of…
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Four people were killed and 12 others injured Sunday after a plane crashed in eastern Siberia, Russian authorities said. The L-410 plane carrying 16 people on a short-range flight crashed during a second landing attempt in the Irkutsk region, trapping passengers inside. The Czech-made aircraft operated jointly by the regional airlines SiLA and Aeroservis was flying…
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Daniil Medvedev shattered Novak Djokovic’s Grand Slam dream with a straight sets victory in the U.S. Open final Sunday, denying the world number one a record-breaking 21st major men’s singles title. Russia’s second-ranked Medvedev dominated Djokovic 6-4, 6-4, 6-4 to prevent the first calendar-year Grand Slam since 1969 and keep Djokovic level with Roger Federer…
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September 13, 2021 PAO Severstal, one of the world’s leading vertically integrated steel and steel-related mining companies, has bought an additional 24.5% stake of joint venture WRS Towers from JSC RUSNANO. The transaction was closed in September 2021, and Severstal’s share in the joint venture has increased to 49% as a result. Spanish company Windar…
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Russia on Saturday said it was ready to resume anti-terrorism cooperation with the United States as America marked the 20th anniversary of 9/11. In a statement released by Moscow’s diplomatic mission in Washington, ambassador Anatoly Antonov said Russia was grieving together with the United States and proposed reviving cooperation on the fight against terrorism despite a…
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