Month: November 2019

Russian sports officials on Tuesday spoke out against a World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) committee’s recommendations that the country be banned from the Olympics for four years, saying this was overly harsh and would hurt sport there. The recommendations, published on Monday, mean Russia could miss out on the next two Olympic Games and world championships…

Plastic waste makes up one-quarter of polar bears’ diet as climate change pushes them closer to human settlements, Russian scientists have said while warning that the plastic risks killing the animals. Polar bears have been forced to scavenge for food on land as climate change damages their sea-ice habitats. The animals have increasingly come into…

The number of young Russians who would like to move out of their home country has soared to a 10-year high, according to an independent Levada Center poll published Tuesday. Sociologists have warned that younger generations’ increasing willingness to move abroad risks hurting Russia’s economy, while the Kremlin dismissed it as no cause for alarm.…

Hundreds of feminist activists rallied in central Moscow on Monday night to call for Russia’s government to re-criminalize domestic violence amid intensifying calls for the legislation to be passed. President Vladimir Putin in 2017 passed a law easing punishments for most first-time offenders, which critics say has strengthened Russia’s culture of impunity toward domestic violence.…

Russia hopes to seal a deal to supply Turkey with more S-400 missile systems in the first half of next year, the head of Russian state arms exporter Rosoboronexport was cited on Tuesday as saying. Such a move could further sour ties between Turkey and the United States, which has suspended Ankara from the F-35…

The grass is greener in a virtual world. That’s what Moscow region farmers were aiming for when they fitted their dairy cows with virtual-reality headsets to test their milk production.  “Experts noted reduced anxiety and improved overall emotional mood in the herd” during the VR experiment, said the regional agriculture administration. The second phase of…

Russia should be hit with a four-year Olympic ban and barred from all world championships for the manipulation of data retrieved from a tainted Moscow laboratory, the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) said on Monday. The recommendations were made by WADA’s independent Compliance Review Committee (CRC) and will be put to the executive committee at meetings in…

Russia should be hit with a four-year Olympic ban and barred from all world championships for the manipulation of data retrieved from a tainted Moscow laboratory, the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) said on Monday. The recommendations were made by WADA’s independent Compliance Review Committee (CRC) and will be put to the executive committee at meetings in…

Former Russian President Boris Yeltsin’s chief of staff Valentin Yumashev has made headlines for his candid interview about President Vladimir Putin’s career in the late 1990s. Shortly after Yumashev’s appointment as unsalaried adviser appeared on the Kremlin’s website in June 2018, the Kremlin revealed that he had actually served in that role for 18 years…

Cold War sleuths have discovered a fourth Soviet spy within the United States’ atomic bomb project whose work helped the Soviet Union end Washington’s monopoly on nuclear arms, The New York Times reported Saturday. The Soviet Union detonated its own atomic bomb just 49 months after the U.S. detonated the world’s first atomic bomb in…

A Moscow deputy has called for President Vladimir Putin to block a prominent homeless NGO from opening a shelter in Russia’s capital, warning of the organization’s foreign backing and the spread of diseases. The Nochlezhka homeless charity, founded in St. Petersburg in 1990, has faced strident criticism from Muscovites opposed to its plans to open…

At least eight suspected Russian intelligence officers traveled to Bulgaria around the time a local arms dealer was poisoned in 2015, the investigative outlet Bellingcat reported on Saturday. Bulgarian arms dealer Emilian Gebrev survived the April 28, 2015, poisoning attempt in Sofia. Investigators reopened Gebrev’s case in 2018 when he linked his poisoning with that…

Officials from Russia’s North Caucasus republic of Chechnya have called on members of its diaspora to stop their countrymen from “disgracing the Chechen people,” the independent Novaya Gazeta newspaper reported Monday. This is the first time that the Chechen diasporas of the U.S. and especially Canada have been called upon to stop fellow Chechens who behave…

Turkey will test a component of its newly acquired Russian air defense system, a step that risks escalating a dispute with the U.S. and touching off possible sanctions. The lira reversed gains. Military aircraft will be used in the capital Ankara on Monday and Tuesday during the testing of the S-400 system’s radar-detection equipment, a…

Four out of five women convicted for premeditated murder in Russia had been defending themselves from domestic violence, according to machine-learning research published by the Novaya Gazeta newspaper and the Mediazona news website Monday. Critics say Russia’s 2017 decriminalization of some forms of domestic violence has eroded protections for women, while supporters defend it for…

Konstantin Malofeyev rose to fame in Russia’s corporate wars of the late 2000s. He became one of the most powerful people in telecommunications, but the devoutly Orthodox tycoon almost lost everything in a bitter dispute with state-owned bank VTB. In 2014, he was sanctioned by the West for providing support to rebels in eastern Ukraine.…

On the morning of Nov. 11, 36-year-old Lyudmila Sokolova gathered her two children into her arms and jumped out of the window of her ninth-floor apartment in northeast Moscow. Her baby girl died with her and her six-year-old son was hospitalized in serious condition. Sokolova had called an ambulance four times that morning because her…

Russia is again facing a possible Olympic ban after the World Anti-Doping Agency’s Compliance Review Committee (CRC) recommended on Friday that the Russian Anti-Doping Agency (RUSADA) be ruled non-compliant. The CRC put forward the recommendation after WADA’s Intelligence and Investigations Committee found evidence of manipulation of data retrieved from a tainted Moscow laboratory in January. A report…

A Russian agent briefly jailed in the United States and then deported back to Moscow has accepted a state job to defend Russians imprisoned abroad, the state-run TASS news agency reported Friday. Maria Butina, 31, pleaded guilty in a U.S. court last December to one count of conspiring to act as a foreign agent for Russia by infiltrating a…

Russian lawmakers have an image problem and they know it. One think tank may have the solution ahead of a crucial parliament vote: be kinder and temper your repressive urges. The pro-Kremlin United Russia party’s brand became so toxic amid anti-government protests this summer that many of its members ran for Moscow’s city council as…

Russian television presenter and onetime presidential candidate Ksenia Sobchak is the country’s highest-earning Instagrammer, Forbes Russia has said in its list of the top 15 earners on the social media app in 2019. The magazine ranked each user by the income they earn from advertising and sponsored posts on their Instagram pages. All 15 names…

Orthodox Christianity and Islam are based on the same fundamental values, President Vladimir Putin said in an address to a religious conference in Kyrgyzstan. The conference, titled “Orthodoxy and Islam — Religions of Peace,” aimed to promote interethnic and interreligious dialogue between Russia and Kyrgyzstan. “Islam and Orthodox Christianity, just like other world religions, are…

As the only remaining independent, English-language news source reporting from Russia, The Moscow Times plays a critical role in connecting Russia to the world. Editorial decisions are made entirely by journalists in our newsroom, who adhere to the highest ethical standards. We fearlessly cover issues that are often considered off-limits or taboo in Russia, from…

Russian gas goliath Gazprom raked in $3 billion Friday selling shares to an unknown mystery buyer in an unconventional share deal. Gazprom sold 3.6% of its own shares in a 188 billion ruble ($3 billion) deal, almost completing a share-offloading program announced in the summer by CEO Alexey Miller, the firm confirmed in submissions to…

Alina Afasyeva wears black leather gloves as she delicately picks through mountains of trash bags in Moscow’s elegant central Tverskaya neighborhood.  This is the fourth or fifth dumpster she’s visited tonight, but none of them have yielded results so far. Despite the early winter chill in the air, the smell is pungent — equal parts…

Spain has opened an investigation into the role of a secret Russian military unit in Catalonia’s 2017 independence referendum, the country’s El Pais newspaper reported Thursday. The Spanish government tried to prevent Catalonia’s independence referendum that it declared illegal, leading to hundreds of injuries. Spanish ministers said in 2017 that Russia-based groups promoted the referendum…

Baring Vostok — the Russian investment house at the centre of the high-profile fraud case involving its founder U.S. citizen Michael Calvey — has cancelled plans to launch a new investment fund, bne IntelliNews has reported. The company suspended plans to launch a sixth fund, citing investor fears over “contradictions in Russian and international arbitration…

The president of Russia’s athletics federation and several other federation officials were suspended on Thursday by the Athletics Integrity Unit (AIU) for serious breaches of anti-doping rules, adding to the federation’s woes ahead of next year’s Olympics. The AIU, which oversees integrity issues in global athletics including doping, said the provisional suspensions were linked to…

Serbian intelligence agencies have uncovered a wide-ranging intelligence operation involving Russian spies and members of the Serbian military, President Aleksandar Vucic said on Thursday. Vucic’s remarks came after a meeting of the National Security Council which he convened after a video showing a Russian intelligence officer handing money to a Serbian man in Belgrade was…

President Vladimir Putin said Thursday that the scientists killed in a mysterious nuclear explosion in northwestern Russia this summer had been testing an “unparalleled” weapon. A liquid propulsion system blast on Aug. 8 at a naval missile test facility in Nyonoksa in Arkhangelsk region killed five people and led to a brief radiation spike nearby.…

Russia‘s lower house of parliament passed legislation on Thursday that will allow individual journalists to be labeled foreign agents, a move that critics say will tighten curbs on the media. Russia adopted an initial foreign agent law in 2012 which gave the authorities the power to label non-governmental organizations and human rights groups foreign agents. The…

The Kremlin on Thursday distanced itself from a video showing four Russian-speaking men torturing, stabbing and beheading a Syrian man in 2017 and said the incident had nothing to do with Russia’s military. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said he had not seen the footage, but said: “I am certain that this has no relation to…

Schoolchildren in Siberia are now required to stand and sing the Russian national anthem during morning assembly under a new decree. Aisen Nikolayev, the head of the republic of Sakha, signed the decree Wednesday as part of a regional initiative aimed at turning each student into “a patriot who is ready to learn and work…

Nine Russian television channels have been banned from broadcasting in Latvia due to ongoing EU sanctions against their co-owner, the Russian billionaire Yury Kovalchuk, Latvian media reported Thursday. Kovalchuk, a banker close to President Vladimir Putin, was one of several individuals added to the EU blacklist in 2014 in response to Russia’s annexation of Crimea…

Russia did not remove equipment including toilets from three Ukrainian naval vessels before returning them this week, the Federal Security Service (FSB) said Thursday. The chief of Ukraine’s navy said Russia “took off lamps, power outlets and toilets” from the two small armored artillery vessels and a tugboat that it had held for a year.…

A foundation run by President Vladimir Putin’s alleged daughter has earned a record 488 million rubles ($7.6 million) last year, the Open Media news website reported Wednesday. Katerina Tikhonova, 33, is widely believed to be Putin’s younger daughter, though the president has neither confirmed nor denied this. Tikhonova’s foundation operating under the Innopraktika brand boasts…

The Russian company that provides free public Wi-Fi in Moscow and St. Petersburg will also supply the capital’s facial recognition network, the Kommersant business daily has reported.Maxima Telecom company won a 1.15 billion-ruble ($18 million) contract to provide the servers for Moscow’s facial recognition system, which authorities have been establishing for the past two years,…

Russian investigators said on Thursday they had opened two criminal cases into the management of a company involved in building the Vostochny Cosmodrome, a space center in the country’s Far East. The announcement came less than two weeks after President Vladimir Putin complained to government officials about corruption at the facility and called for further…

This article contains graphic content which may be disturbing to some readers. Four Russian-speaking men who were filmed beheading, dismembering and setting fire to a Syrian man in 2017 are believed to be private mercenaries for the Kremlin-linked Wagner Group, the investigative Novaya Gazeta newspaper reported Wednesday. Novaya Gazeta said it has identified one of…

Russian airlines are ‘desperate’ for compensation from the government after its ban on direct flights to Georgia cost them a combined 3.2 billion rubles ($50 million), the Vedomosti business daily reported Wednesday.  President Vladimir Putin ordered the temporary ban of passenger flights from Russia to Georgia this summer following an outbreak of unrest in Tbilisi…

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic ordered an investigation on Wednesday into a video clip that purportedly shows a Russian intelligence officer handing over money to a Serbian man, in an incident that could strain normally warm bilateral relations. A Bulgaria-based investigative reporter, Christo Grozev, said on his Twitter account at the weekend that the clip, posted on…

Russia‘s FSB security service has detained a Russian serviceman suspected of spying for Ukraine, the RIA news agency reported on Wednesday. The serviceman was allegedly gathering secret information for Ukraine’s intelligence service and is being investigated for treason, RIA reported, citing the FSB.  The independent CIT outlet identified the suspect as Ruslan Artykov, born in 1991.…

Producing energy without carbon emissions will send humanity back to the prehistoric period, Russian President Vladimir Putin told an investment forum Wednesday. Putin has joked about climate change in the past, saying in 2003 that warmer weather could increase grain harvests and cut spending on fur coats. This summer he criticized wind turbines, saying they…

Ukrainian naval ships, captured by Russia last November and released on Tuesday to be returned to Ukraine, are in very poor condition and cannot move independently, the commander of Ukraine’s navy said on Wednesday. Russia seized three ships in the Kerch Strait last year after opening fire on them and wounding several sailors. Moscow said the ships — two…

The share of Russians who view free speech, the right to a fair trial and other civil rights as important freedoms has increased by double digits in two years, according to the independent Levada Center pollster. Experts and sociologists link the double-digit growth in the importance of civil rights issues among Russians to events surrounding…