Month: October 2019

Russia said on Wednesday that Syrian and Turkish military forces should work out how to cooperate in northern Syria based on the Adana accord, a 1998 security pact, the state-run RIA news agency reported. Moscow would be prepared to help with that cooperation, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in the southern Russian city of Sochi.…

A growing chorus of voices expressing environmental concerns has prompted the Russian government to consider setting up a “Green Party” controlled by the Kremlin, the RBC news website reported Wednesday. President Vladimir Putin’s administration has been jolted into action by Russia’s nascent climate protest movement and frustration with nationwide waste-collection reforms, which critics warned would…

Footage of an abandoned U.S. military base in the town of Manbij in northeast Syria shared by pro-Russian government media shows the haste with which U.S. troops pulled out of the city they had patrolled for a year. The Russian-backed Syrian army entered Manbij on Tuesday, taking advantage of an abrupt U.S. retreat from Syria…

Police violence and radiation prompted the highest levels of anxiety among Russians on social media, according to a quarterly analysis cited in Russian Forbes on Wednesday.  The findings by Russian PR firm CROS follow a summer of mass anti-government protests in Moscow, where police detained thousands of demonstrators, and two high-profile nuclear accidents that sparked…

A Moscow court on Tuesday handed down Russia’s first fine for spreading “fake news” against an online media outlet over its interviews about this summer’s Moscow opposition rallies. President Vladimir Putin signed legislation into law this year that fines online media for spreading “fake news.” Observers warned that the “fake news” and “disrespect for authority”…

A group of Russian journalists who investigated the activities of a secretive group of Russian mercenaries in Africa and the Middle East have been subject to a campaign of physical threats and harassment, their editor-in-chief said. “Proekt,” an independent Moscow-based online news outlet which specializes in investigations, began to publish a series of articles in…

Senior officials and their relatives in the North Caucasus republic of Chechnya are being held and tortured in secret prisons in the region, the independent Novaya Gazeta newspaper reported Monday. The crackdown is targeting officials deemed to be showing disrespect and disloyalty toward Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov and his family, Novaya Gazeta reported, citing unnamed…

Russian attitudes toward Ukraine have improved since the beginning of the year thanks to the election of Volodymyr Zelenskiy as Ukraine’s president, a joint study by the independent Levada Center pollster and the Kiev International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) has said. Ties between the two neighbors have been fraught since 2014, when Russia annexed the…

The Kremlin’s envoy for Syria on Tuesday called Turkey’s military offensive in northeast Syria “unacceptable” and denied Ankara’s operation had been cleared by Moscow in advance, Russian news agencies reported. Alexander Lavrentiev, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s envoy for Syria, was speaking to reporters in Abu Dhabi during an official visit there by Putin. He made…

Russia called Turkey’s military incursion into northeast Syria “unacceptable” and said on Tuesday the operation had to be limited in time and scale, a rare broadside that suggests Moscow’s patience with Ankara is wearing thin. In Russia‘s strongest criticism since Turkey launched its military operation last week, President Vladimir Putin’s envoy for Syria indicated Moscow…

The United States has “handed over” the northern Syrian city of Manbij to Russia, Newsweek magazine reported as Russia announced that its military was patrolling the area. The abrupt U.S. withdrawal from the eight-year Syrian war, and the Syrian army’s return to the Kurdish-controlled northeast, are major victories for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his…

A Russian national indicted in the United States for meddling in the country’s 2016 presidential election was briefly detained in Belarus, the state-run RIA Novosti news agency reported Tuesday. U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller in 2018 charged 13 Russians and three companies for allegedly carrying out a sophisticated, years-long conspiracy to meddle in the 2016…

Crimea could be set for a fresh round of tax breaks and investment incentives to support the annexed peninsula’s tourism industry, according to Russian daily Kommersant. An influential business group founded by the Kremlin has called on the government to give tax breaks on land, real estate and utilities to Crimean businesses, while also offering…

A man Britain suspects of poisoning former Russian spy Sergei Skripal has been filmed attending the wedding of the daughter of an alleged top military intelligence unit commander, according to media reports.  British prosecutors last year accused two Russians they said were operating under aliases of trying to murder GRU defector Skripal and his daughter…

Three Russian universities topped a list of the best universities in Eastern Europe and Central Asia compiled by British education marketing company Quacquarelli Symonds.  Lomonosov Moscow State University, St. Petersburg State University and Novosibirsk State University took the top three spots, while Tomsk State University, the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology and the Higher…

Dozens of Russian women in a camp for Islamic State prisoners in northern Syria are seeking help from their motherland as Turkey’s incursion against the Kurds has thrown the region into disarray, the international Russian language news outlet RTVI reported on Monday. Turkey’s defense minister said Monday that Syrian Kurdish YPG fighters had emptied a…

Swathes of Russia’s arctic seas are closed off for huge nuclear war games taking place this week. Five submarines, more than 100 aircraft, 200 missile launchers and 12,000 Russian troops will be taking part in the exercise, the Defense Ministry said Monday — the latest major drill testing the readiness of Russia’s strategic nuclear forces. …

The first year of President Vladimir Putin’s experiment in diversifying away from the U.S. dollar cost Russia about $7.7 billion in potential returns. Russia’s central bank added exposure to underperforming currencies such as the euro and yuan just as it missed out on a 6.5% rally in the greenback.  If it had maintained the previous…

Police searched the homes of opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s supporters in at least 12 Russian cities overnight following mass raids last month, the police-monitoring website OVD-Info reported Tuesday. News of the latest wave of early-morning home searches came from cities including Yekaterinburg, Krasnodar in the south and Arkhangelsk in the north. Police carried out more…

Thousands of people marched through central Kiev on Monday to protest against President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s deal with Moscow to grant special status to a pro-Russian rebel-held region of eastern Ukraine as part of efforts to end a five-year conflict there. Around 20,000 people, including war veterans, took part in the rally ‘No capitulation’ against what…

President Vladimir Putin signaled Moscow’s growing Middle East clout on Monday by visiting Saudi Arabia for the first time in over a decade, buoyed by Russian military gains in Syria, strong ties with Riyadh’s regional rivals and energy cooperation. Moscow accrued power in the Middle East in 2015 by sending troops to Syria, where it and…

Russia announced on Monday it would hold a large test of its Strategic Missile Forces that will see it fire ballistic and cruise missiles from the land, sea and air this week. The exercise, from Oct. 15-17, will involve around 12,000 military personnel, as well as aircraft, including strategic nuclear bombers, surface ships and submarines,…

Authorities have opened a criminal case into abuse of authority after a prison warden was caught on video beating an inmate in northern Russia, investigators said Monday. Russia’s prison system has faced tighter scrutiny since the summer of 2018, when revelations of torture prompted nationwide inspections and dozens of legal cases. On Oct. 8, President…

Russian police have arrested four people on suspicion of assaulting police officers at opposition protests this summer, the Investigative Committee said on Monday, an announcement likely to be condemned by the Kremlin’s critics. The jailing of a handful of other protesters on charges including assaulting police at political rallies that began in July caused a…

An undocumented American citizen has been detained south of Moscow on suspicion of beating a Russian police officer, authorities said Monday. The unnamed 68-year-old American faces up to five years in prison if found guilty of assaulting a police officer, prosecutors in the Kaluga region said in a statement. “The man struck the police officer…

The Kremlin said on Monday it did not want to entertain the possibility of a clash in Syria between Russian and Turkish forces and said Moscow was in regular contact with Ankara, including at a military level. The Kremlin was commenting after Syrian Kurdish leaders said they had struck a deal with the Syrian government, brokered…

Russia has denied an explosive New York Times report saying it bombed Syrian hospitals, including four in one day in May, insisting that its planes attacked a “terrorist bunker” rather than an underground hospital. Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Major General Igor Konashenkov said Monday that the ministry last week organized a press tour for dozens…

Russian jets have repeatedly bombed Syrian hospitals, including at least four in one day this spring, The New York Times reported, citing intercepted Russian Air Force radio recordings, witness accounts and data gathered by plane spotters. Western states have accused Russia and its ally Syria of targeting civilians in northwest Syria, a charge that Moscow…

Police have detained an activist identified by state television as an “organizer” of this summer’s election protests in Moscow, the MBKh Media news website reported Monday. Russia’s Ren-TV state broadcaster said in July that Danny Kulinich had organized protests over the exclusion of opposition candidates from local elections held last month. Kulinich, who is a…

The Syrian government and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) have been holding negotiations with Russian participation, a Syrian Kurdish politician said on Sunday, expressing hope for a deal that would halt a Turkish attack. Ahmed Suleiman, a senior member of the Kurdish Democratic Progressive Party in Syria, said the talks were being held at…

Russia can play a positive role in easing tensions in the Gulf following a spate of attacks in the region, President Vladimir Putin said in comments published on Sunday before his first visit to Saudi Arabia in over a decade. He cited good Russian ties with Gulf Arab states and Iran in an interview with Arab broadcasters,…

Moscow is not blaming U.S. President Donald Trump for failing to improve U.S.-Russian relations, a pledge he had made during his election campaign, Russian President Vladimir Putin said in an interview with Arab broadcasters. “We know that, including during his previous election campaign, he spoke in favor of a normalization (of U.S.-Russia relations), but unfortunately it has…

Russian Economy Minister Maxim Oreshkin said the country is considering alternatives to the U.S. dollar for energy transactions and is exploring currency settlements in euros and rubles for energy exports to minimize U.S. exposure. “We have a very good currency, it’s stable. Why not use it for global transactions?” Oreshkin said in an interview with…

Israel asked Russian President Vladimir Putin on Sunday to pardon a U.S.-Israeli woman given a 7.5-year jail sentence for drugs found in her luggage as she transited through a Moscow airport. Naama Issachar’s case has opened up an unusually public rift between Israel and Russia. Her family says she is being punished disproportionately to pressure Israel into…

Syria must be freed from foreign military presence, Russian President Vladimir Putin according to Russian news agencies. “Everyone who is illegitimately on the territory of any state, in this case Syria, must leave this territory. This applies to all states,” Putin told RT, Arabik Sky News and Al Arabiya in an interview, excerpts from which were quoted by the…

Shares in Russian tech giant Yandex have plummeted after reports the Kremlin is backing plans to limit the stakes of foreign owners in Russian IT companies. Yandex shares fell by 17% in the first minutes of trading on the Nasdaq exchange in New York on Friday, wiping more than $1 billion from the company’s value.…

A Russian court has sentenced a U.S.-Israeli woman to seven and a half years in prison on charges of drug possession and smuggling, her lawyer told Russian media Friday. Police detained Naama Issachar, 25, in April while in transit in a Moscow airport and accused her of having 9 grams of cannabis in her bag,…

Three Russian women said to be followers of the Islamic State terrorist group are suspected of killing a prison guard in Pakistan, Russia’s Foreign Ministry has said. The three women were charged with premeditated murder after the 23-year-old warden’s body was discovered by the gate of the women’s barrack near the city of Karachi, Pakistani…

Soviet cosmonaut Alexei Leonov, who made history by becoming the first man to walk in space, has died Friday at age 85. Leonov’s pioneering spacewalk marked a crucial step for the development of moon landing programs and the International Space Station. On March 18, 1965, Leonov became the first man to walk in space when…

Russian crew members are believed to be onboard a plane that vanished off radar and crashed in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Russian diplomats told state media Friday. A cargo plane carrying eight passengers and crew, including DRC presidential staff, crashed in a forest in the country’s east on Thursday. The Antonov An-72…

A pair of notorious Russian pranksters duped U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham into telling them this summer that he supported Turkey’s stance against Kurdish separatists in marked contrast to his public statements, according to audio of their phone talks published Friday. Turkey launched a military operation Wednesday against Kurdish fighters in Syria as U.S. Republicans condemned President…

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Thursday held a marathon 14-hour press conference with journalists in a Kiev food court.  During the event, which reportedly set a record for the world’s longest press conference, Zelenskiy answered more than 500 questions about topics ranging from the Trump-Zelenskiy phone call to his relations with Russian President Vladimir Putin.…

Russian President Vladimir Putin warned on Friday that Islamic State militants held in northeast Syria could escape as a result of a Turkish military operation there, Interfax  reported. The Turkish offensive against U.S.-allied Kurdish forces in the northeast of Syria opens one of the biggest new fronts in years in an eight-year-old civil war that…

Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny said on Friday that Russian prosecutors had asked a court to seize his Moscow apartment as collateral in a lawsuit over opposition protests he helped organize. Russia’s National Guard, which polices political rallies, wants Navalny and others to pay it 4 million rubles ($62,336) to compensate it for overtime paid to…

Residents took to the streets of a southern Russian city to demand that police give up a suspect in the murder of a local schoolgirl for extrajudicial punishment, news outlets have reported. The 9-year-old’s body was found Thursday in the city of Saratov a day after she disappeared on her way to school. Police detained…

ST. PETERSBURG — Marina Pogolsha gestures toward two scantily clad women gyrating in the window of a new strip club across the road from her apartment building on Rubinstein Street in St. Petersburg’s historic center.  “That’s what the view from my living room window is now, welcome to hell,” she says.  Locals like Marina, 52,…