Year: 2019

Russian schoolchildren are largely unwilling to participate in political protests but are concerned about the environment and tolerant of LGBT people, according to a newly published sociological study on the views of youngsters in the country. The report follows the involvement of thousands of young activists in anti-government protests that gripped Moscow this summer. Russian…

President Vladimir Putin’s KGB profile is now being showcased at an exhibit of declassified documents at St. Petersburg’s central state archive. Putin, who served in the Soviet spy agency between 1975 and 1991, had credited his KGB past for preparing him for the presidency. He assumed the presidency in 2000 after a stint at the…

Facebook said on Wednesday it had suspended three networks of Russian accounts that attempted to interfere in the domestic politics of eight African countries, and were tied to a Russian businessman accused of meddling in past U.S. elections. The campaigns targeted people in Madagascar, Central African Republic, Mozambique, Democratic Republic of Congo, Cote d’Ivoire, Cameroon, Sudan and…

Russians fear arbitrary exercises of power more than death, according to an independent Levada Center poll that the Kremlin dismissed as superficial. Fear of arbitrary authorities and lawlessness placed third in the pollster’s hierarchy of fears for the second year in a row in 2019. The return of mass repressions and a tighter political regime…

Denmark has granted permission for Gazprom’s Nord Stream 2 pipeline to be built through Danish waters. After months of delays, the Danish Energy Agency today announced it is finally giving its approval for the natural gas pipeline project that will transport Russian gas directly to Germany. Denmark was the final country on the planned route…

At least eight Russian nuclear-powered submarines sailed out from their homeports on the Kola Peninsula last week, Norwegian military intelligence told the country’s National Public Broadcasting Organization (NRK). The aim of the massive operation is to get as far out to the North Atlantic as possible without being discovered by NATO, the intelligence service said. Such…

Emails claiming to show how to improve Russia’s bid to host the FIFA World Cup by bribing world football’s decision-makers have leaked, the investigative news website The Insider has reported. Russia won hosting rights for the 2018 FIFA World Cup in a 2010 vote, beating out fellow contenders England, Spain-Portugal and Belgium-Netherlands. Former FIFA boss…

The U.S. House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly on Tuesday to recognize the mass killings of Armenians a century ago as a genocide, a symbolic but historic vote instantly denounced by Turkey. The Democratic-controlled House voted 405-11 in favor of a resolution asserting that it is U.S. policy to commemorate as genocide the killing of 1.5…

Russia is preparing to conduct at least five tests next year of its new ballistic missile that has been called the largest missile in history, the Vedomosti newspaper reported Wednesday. President Vladimir Putin unveiled the Sarmat missile, also called Satan-2, at an annual address last year that reportedly riled U.S. President Donald Trump. Russia went…

Russian President Vladimir Putin is facing an unwelcome new financial challenge in Syria after the U.S. pullback enabled his ally Bashar al-Assad to reclaim the biggest chunk of territory in the country still outside his control. The U.S. decision to keep forces in northeastern Syria to guard oil fields denies Assad access to desperately needed funds to…

Russia’s newest nuclear-powered submarine has for the first time test-fired an intercontinental ballistic missile ahead of the vessel’s delivery into service this year, the Defense Ministry announced Wednesday. The Knyaz Vladimir, which is expected to join the Russian Navy’s Northern Fleet in December 2019, was floated out in 2017 and embarked on its first sea…

A group of Russian scientists has revealed the first pictures of a massive fountain of methane gas bubbling from the sea floor in the eastern Siberian Sea. During the 35-day expedition that started Sept. 21, the scientific expedition expedition organized by Tomsk Polytechnic University (TPU)  noticed a spot of emerald-colored water which turned out to…

Five Russian mercenaries are believed to have been killed alongside 20 Mozambique servicemen during an ambush in the southeastern African nation, the independent Carta de Moçambique news outlet reported Tuesday. The unconfirmed report comes a month after the reported arrival of 200 Russian mercenaries and three helicopters to help Mozambique’s government forces fight jihadists amid Moscow’s wider…

Russia’s state nuclear firm Rosatom has declassified the personal files of German scientists involved in the Soviet nuclear program after World War II. The Soviet Union tested its first atomic bomb ahead of schedule in 1949, an achievement largely attributed to German experts and Soviet espionage on the U.S. Manhattan Project. Stalin had awarded prestigious state…

Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union, on Monday published a new book titled “What is at stake: The future of the global world.” The 88-year-old Nobel Peace Prize laureate’s new book touches on a wide range of topics, including his thoughts on Russia’s bruised relations with the West, the rise of global…

Ukraine’s military said the withdrawal of government and Russian-backed rebel troops started at 12:00 p.m. local time on Tuesday in Zolote, a town in the eastern Ukrainian region of Luhansk. Ukrainian forces have fought rebels in the Donbass region in a conflict that has killed more than 13,000 people. Both sides have agreed to modest troop…

A parallel central bank in eastern Libya stepped up deliveries of new banknotes from Russia this year, before and after eastern-based commander Khalifa Haftar launched a military offensive to capture Tripoli, Russian customs data show. The data obtained by Reuters shows nearly 4.5 billion Libyan dinars ($3.22 billion) were dispatched in four shipments from February to June. Haftar launched his campaign…

The black labor market in Russia is shrinking as fewer people try to keep their work off the books and their wages away from the taxman. So said a recent survey by the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA), which found one in three Russians are currently engaged in the so-called…

A Russian aluminum plant closed as a result of U.S. sanctions is set to be transformed into a bitcoin mining hub. The Nadvoitsy Aluminum Plant in Russia’s northern Karelia region, owned by Russian metals giant Rusal, stopped production last summer after it lost access to American customers following the introduction of U.S. sanctions against Rusal…

Sberbank, Russia’s largest bank, is to purchase a $170 million stake in tech giant Mail.Ru. The deal will see Sberbank buy into a company called MF Technologies, which owns a majority of Mail.Ru’s voting rights, from Gazprombank — another state-owned Russian financial outfit. Sberbank’s 35% stake in MF Technologies would give it control of one-fifth…

President Vladimir Putin has granted Russian citizenship to eight leaders of Old Believer communities in the United States and Brazil who are planning to move back to their motherland, authorities have said. Thousands of Old Believers — members of a traditionalist Christian denomination at odds with the Orthodox Church — fled Russia in the 19th…

Officials from Russia, Ukraine and the European Union met again on 28 October in Brussels to discuss terms for the transit of Russian gas via Ukraine next year, with still no breakthrough in negotiations in sight. Ukraine is the largest single transit route for Russian gas entering Europe, handling 86.8 billion cubic meters (bcm) of…

Russia’s counter-sanctions against western food imports cost its citizens $70 per person every year through higher prices. New research into the impact of Russia’s counter-sanctions and its import substitution policies found that the costs to Russian shoppers through higher prices for food, including fish, meat, cheese and vegetables far outweigh any of the program’s benefits.…

A Russian history magazine featuring a 1939 caricature of Stalin in a wedding gown holding hands with Hitler on its cover has sparked a backlash that led at least one Moscow bookstore to pull the issue from its shelves. The latest edition of the Diletant monthly featured a colorized U.S. cartoon criticizing the Soviet Union’s…

An Indian citizen has been held in Russia for more than three months after being caught in a Moscow airport transit zone with half a gram of marijuana while traveling, the Mediazona news website has reported. Aashish Bhadurya’s detention comes less than a month after the sentencing of a U.S.-Israeli citizen to 7.5 years in…

Microsoft Corp said it has tracked “significant” cyberattacks coming from a group it calls “Strontium” or “Fancy Bear,” targeting anti-doping authorities and global sporting organizations. The group, also called APT28, has been linked to the Russian government, Microsoft said in a blog post. At least 16 national and international sporting and anti-doping organizations across three continents…

A Russian court on Monday ordered opposition leader Alexei Navalny and his allies to pay $1.4 million in damages, a blow to the Kremlin critic’s group, whose bank accounts have been frozen amid what he says is a broad government crackdown. The Moscow Arbitration Court told Navalny, his Anti-Corruption Foundation and ally Lyubov Sobol each to…

A Russian diplomat who Bulgarian prosecutors suspect was involved in espionage has the left Bulgaria, the Bulgarian foreign ministry said on Monday. The ministry had asked for his recall in a meeting with the Russian ambassador on Friday. The exact circumstances of the diplomat’s departure were not clear. “A request has been made to the Russian institutions to…

Poland has detained and charged a man with spying for Russia, the country’s state broadcaster TVP reported Monday. The arrest is the latest in a string of espionage-related cases in Russia, which sentenced a Polish national to 14 years in prison in June, and Poland, which sentenced an ex-government employee to three years in July.…

Russia’s military top brass are forcing junior officers to serve in the armed services against their will, often long after they apply for dismissal, the investigative Novaya Gazeta newspaper reported Monday.  Russian law makes it “nearly impossible” to resign from the army without a compelling reason, lawyers say.   “This issue affects everyone [in the military],…

Russian national Maria Butina arrived in Moscow on Saturday after serving 18 months in American prison after admitting to working as a Russian agent.  Butina pleaded guilty in December last year to one count of conspiring to act as a foreign agent for Russia by infiltrating a gun rights group and influencing U.S. conservative activists…

The Kremlin said on Monday that U.S. President Donald Trump will have made a major contribution to the fight against international terrorism if a U.S. assertion that Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is dead is true. Trump on Sunday announced that Baghdadi had killed himself during a daring overnight raid by elite U.S. special…

“What are your five reasons to live?” Moscow-based Instagrammer Natalya Krom asked her 116,000 followers last month in a post aimed at suicide prevention.  Krom was diagnosed with bipolar personality disorder at 15. Now 20, she has been sharing everything from her daily life, including time spent in a psychiatric facility and coping techniques, since…

The Russian military has for the first time deployed the S-300 surface-to-air missile system at its military base near Afghanistan, the Defense Ministry has announced. Russia maintains troops at its military base in the ex-Soviet republic of Tajikistan, near the Afghan border, as a bulwark against the threat of Islamist radicals and drug trafficking. The…

An estimated 50 Russian women have disappeared after fleeing from a prison camp for the wives and children of Islamic State fighters in northern Syria, BBC Russia has reported. Russian women held in the Ain Issa camp had sought Moscow’s help earlier this month amid Turkey’s mounting offensive to clear the region of Kurdish rebels.…

On Oct. 27 Vladimir Bukovsky, one of the most important figures in the human rights movement in the Soviet Union and the world, died of heart failure in a hospital in Cambridge, U.K. He was 76 years old. Bukovsky was born in what is now the Republic of Bashkortostan and soon moved to Moscow, where…

U.S. President Donald Trump on Sunday thanked countries including Russia for their roles in an overnight raid led by U.S. military forces in Syria that killed Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. “I want to thank the nations of Russia, Turkey, Syria and Iraq and I also want to thank the Syrian Kurds for certain…

Russia‘s Defense Ministry on Saturday attacked U.S. plans to maintain and boost the American military presence in eastern Syria as “international state banditry” motivated by a desire to protect oil smugglers and not by real security concerns. U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper said on Friday Washington would send armored vehicles and troops to the Syrian…

Russian national Maria Butina, who was jailed in the United States in April after admitting to working as a Russian agent, arrived in Moscow on Saturday, greeted by her father and Russian journalists who handed her flowers. “Russians never surrender,” an emotional Butina told reporters at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport, flanked by her father and the…

SOCHI — Last winter, the head of Ghana’s state news agency received a message: Russia’s ambassador to the West African country wanted the agency to discuss a partnership with TASS, its Russian counterpart.  For many years, Albert Kofi Owusu had thought negatively about Russia, a perception he attributes to the Western media and Hollywood films.…

Russia has unveiled a new combat icebreaker vessel in St. Petersburg on Friday which it says will help defend its national interests in the Arctic, the state-run TASS news agency reported. The launch of the Ivan Papanin comes amid Russia’s rapid military and economic development in its strategic Arctic region. Earlier this month, over 12,000 troops…

An American citizen whose Russian ex-wife is jailed in the United States could face up to 40 years in an American jail for drug smuggling after his arrest in Russia, the Fontanka news website reported Friday.  A court in St. Petersburg ordered Aleth Terada, 50, to leave Russia by Nov. 1 after finding that he…

Russia’s flagship tech companies, Mail.Ru and Yandex, both reported strong third-quarter results this week amid ongoing concerns over government proposals to limit foreign ownership in Russia’s largest technology companies. With revenues and earnings up at both companies, representatives confirmed they were lobbying the government to water down the potentially damaging legislation to the two publicly…

Convicted Russian agent Maria Butina has been released from a U.S. prison after more than 15 months behind bars, CNN reported Friday, citing the U.S. Federal Bureau of Prisons. Butina, 31, a former graduate student at American University who publicly advocated for gun rights, pleaded guilty in December 2018 to one count of conspiring to…

A steppe eagle from Russia’s republic of Khakasia has been sending hundreds of expensive SMS messages to scientists after she flew into Iran, effectively bankrupting their research. Siberian scientists had equipped Min the eagle with a tracking device that sends SMS messages to document her flight movements. Min, who spent the summer in Kazakhstan with…

A Russian conscript serving in the Far East of the country shot dead eight other soldiers and badly injured two others on Friday after having a nervous breakdown, the Defense Ministry said, Interfax reported. The conscript has been detained, the ministry said, and the two injured troops are being treated in a military hospital. Their lives…

Traffic almost ground to a halt in Russia’s second-largest city of St. Petersburg following a series of police raids on bus and taxi drivers this week. Social media channels said that afternoon inspections created massive bottlenecks Thursday on a road leading to Pulkovo Airport. Passengers got out of their taxis and continued their journey on…

The Bank of Russia has cut interest rates to 6.5% on the back of low inflation, weak domestic growth and fears of a global slowdown. The central bank said further rate cuts could be on the horizon if inflation, which it expects to come in between 3.2-3.7% this year, does not pick-up. Announcing the cut…