Year: 2019

U.S. Ambassador to Russia Jon Huntsman has boarded one of two U.S. Navy aircraft carriers that arrived in the Mediterranean on Tuesday to caution Moscow against its activities in Syria and around the world. The U.S. and other Western countries have accused Russia of a range of bad behavior, including aggression in Ukraine, involvement in…

Kim Jong Un, like Vladimir Putin, has enjoyed flourishes of bonhomie with Donald Trump only to see the relationship fray over sanctions. Now, the North Korean leader is turning to the Russian president for help. Kim left North Korea by train and crossed into Russia on Wednesday, the Interfax newswire reported, citing an unidentified official.…

President Vladimir Putin may look beyond Russia for a mechanism to keep power after his current term ends. That’s making Moscow’s closest ally nervous amid spiraling tensions over Kremlin threats to slash economic subsidies. After years of spending billions of dollars to support Belarus’s state-dominated economy, Russia is intensifying pressure on President Alexander Lukashenko to…

Sounds of explosion rocked through the borderlands as 1,000 forces and more than 340 military vehicles, tanks and aircraft engaged in military training. There was no silent Easter in the border areas between Russia and Norway. As locals on the Norwegian side relaxed in their cabins on Easter Monday, the nearby military units based in…

Russian authorities have issued the first guilty verdict under a new law criminalizing “blatant disrespect” toward the authorities for online posts calling President Vladimir Putin an expletive. A Novgorod region court 570 kilometers northwest of Moscow found a local resident guilty and fined him 30,000 rubles ($470) Monday for posts calling Putin “a fantastic f——”…

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un crossed the border into Russia on Wednesday by train, Russian media reported, for his first trip there aimed at galvanizing support from President Vladimir Putin while nuclear talks with Washington are in limbo. Kim is expected to project himself as a serious world player with his first meeting with the Russian leader and…

Vladimir Putin’s poll ratings are down after a tax hike squeezed cash-strapped consumers. But the Kremlin has opened the coffers to give as much as $8 billion this year to another key constituency: oil companies awash in record profits. The handouts are part of a complex arrangement under which oil companies agree to freeze fuel…

President Vladimir Putin has unveiled a submarine capable of carrying six thermonuclear warheads on Tuesday ahead of its deployment in 2020-2021. Russia’s naval submarine called “Belgorod” will be the world’s longest submarine ever built, measuring 184 meters, The Barents Observer has estimated. The Belgorod will be able to carry six underwater “Poseidon” drones, the state-run…

VSEVOLOZHSK, Leningrad region — When Ivan first learned he would be losing his job at the Ford factory he was floored. For more than a decade, the 50-year-old welder has been producing the frames of Focus and Mondeo cars at the U.S. automaker’s plant in Vsevolozhsk, an industrial town 30 kilometers east of St. Petersburg.…

Russian authorities raided the meeting spaces of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Siberia and the country’s Far East late last week, detaining five worshippers and holding two in pre-trial detention. Russia added the group to its registry of extremist organizations in 2017, exposing Russia’s estimated 175,000 Jehovah’s Witnesses to mass raids and forcing at least 5,000 to…

Russia’s public finance watchdog has uncovered 772.7 billion rubles ($12.12 billion) in government spending violations last year. The volume of total violations has decreased substantially from 1.87 trillion rubles in 2017 as detections increased by 43 percent, the RBC news website reported Tuesday. Procurement accounted for the highest share of budget violations at 294.6 billion…

Belarus has suspended exports of light oil products, gasoline and diesel fuel to Ukraine, Poland and the Baltic countries due to the low quality of Russian oil, the country’s exporter announced Tuesday. Russia’s pipeline monopoly Transneft and its Energy Ministry said last week there were problems with the quality of Russian oil going through the…

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un will visit Russia’s Far East capital of Vladivostok for his first summit with President Vladimir Putin on April 25, the Kremlin confirmed on Tuesday. The leaders will discuss political and diplomatic efforts to settle the nuclear issue on the Korean peninsula, and Kim’s visit is key in this process, Kremlin…

An outspoken Russian lawmaker has turned heads for arguing that civil rights are restrictive, while bans are a form of freedom. Yelena Mizulina, who successfully lobbied for Russia’s 2012 “gay propaganda” law and spearheaded efforts to decriminalize domestic violence, made the statement in defense of recent internet restriction laws. On Monday, Russian senators backed tighter…

A young male polar bear who washed up on an ice floe in Russia’s Far East has been helicoptered closer to its natural habitat, the Kamchatka region administration announced. Residents of Kamchatka region villages spotted the bear — who was nicknamed Umka after a cartoon polar bear character from a popular Soviet-era animation film —…

Volodymyr Zelenskiy will be inaugurated as Ukraine’s new president in about a month with questions still swirling about his true policy positions toward neighboring Russia. A native Russian speaker with no political experience, Zelenskiy has been accused by critics of having adopted a soft stance toward Russian aggression — including the annexation of Crimea in…

You can rent it and set out on the journey of a lifetime to places others can’t reach, the billionaire’s promotion page reads. Why not take off with one of the two on-board helicopters as a mother polar bear and her two cubs sit on an ice-floe just in front of the luxury yacht. Or…

Russian President Vladimir Putin will not officially congratulate Ukrainian president-elect Volodymyr Zelenskiy on his landslide victory, the Kremlin said on Monday. Ukraine has entered uncharted political waters after near final results show Zelenskiy, a comedian, winning Sunday’s presidential election by a landslide, dramatically upending the political status quo in the ex-Soviet republic. It’s “too early”…

A Yandex Food delivery man’s death while working in St. Petersburg has triggered outrage on social media over the Russian company’s treatment of its couriers. Artyk Orozaliev died at age 21 on Wednesday after what his colleagues said was a 10-hour-straight bicycle shift for Yandex Food. His relatives told local media that Orozaliev’s death was…

Anti-Communist activists have made a visual call to take down Moscow’s largest surviving statue of Lenin on the Soviet leader’s 149th birthday. Several republics of the former Soviet Union have dismantled and replaced Lenin statues since the USSR collapsed in 1991. Russian politicians have continued to debate whether to bury Lenin’s body or preserve it…

A region in Russia’s Far East has bolstered its capabilities to combat wildfires after the first wave injured dozens and left hundreds more homeless. Wildfires that tore through Zabaikalsky region injured at least 34 people, four of them critically, and left more than 400 people homeless. Authorities estimate the blaze, which was swept in from Mongolia by high winds,…

Volodymyr Zelenskiy, a comedian and actor with no political experience, swept to victory on Sunday in the second round of Ukraine’s presidential election, in a race that has fascinated the country’s looming neighbor to the north. The victory triggered speculation in Russia on Sunday that relations between the neighboring countries might improve. It also presented…

Felix Sater argued that a skyscraper in Moscow bearing Donald Trump’s name could be the key to putting the real-estate tycoon in the White House. “Buddy our boy can become President of the USA and we can engineer it,” Sater, a Moscow-born businessman, wrote to Trump’s then-lawyer, Michael Cohen, on Nov. 3, 2015, according to…

Ukraine entered uncharted political waters on Sunday after an exit poll showed a comedian with no political experience and few detailed policies had easily won enough votes to become the next president of a country at war. The apparent landslide victory of Volodymyr Zelenskiy, 41, is a bitter blow for incumbent Petro Poroshenko who tried…

Russia has received a debt payment from Venezuela under the terms of a $3.15 billion restructuring deal agreed to in 2017, Russian news agency Interfax reported, citing Finance Minister Anton Siluanov. The debt payment was due in March, but Siluanov said at the beginning of April that a grace period gave Venezuela another month to…

Maria Butina, who has admitted to working as a Russian agent to infiltrate an influential U.S. gun rights group and make inroads with conservative activists and Republicans, asked the court to sentence her to time served ahead of her April 26 sentencing, according to court documents. Butina, 30, a former graduate student at American University who…

The U.S. State Department spokesperson has called on countries to “follow Malta’s example” and block Russian military planes en route for Venezuela from using their airspace. On Thursday, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said that Malta refused a Russian request to use its airspace to fly military aircraft from Syria to Venezuela on April…

The Rosneft oil giant has threatened to ban Reuters from operating in Russia after the international news agency released a report saying that Venezuela had sold oil to Russia in an attempt to evade U.S. sanctions. Venezuelan state oil company PDVSA has started passing invoices from its oil sales to Rosneft, Reuters reported Friday, citing…

Russia sent the United States a draft joint declaration on how to prevent nuclear war, only to never hear back from Washington, the Kommersant business daily reported on Friday. The U.S. and Russia are suspending the 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty this summer. The only U.S.-Russia arms control pact limiting deployed nuclear weapons —…

The Kremlin said on Friday that U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s long-awaited report did not contain any evidence the Russian state had meddled in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Mueller’s report, released on Thursday, details extensive contacts between Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russian operatives who, it said, sought to tilt the election in Trump’s favor. However,…

Almost half of the alcohol products sold in Russia last year were on the market illegally, the state Federal Alcohol Market Regulation Service (Rosalkogolregulirovanie) said this week. Sales of alcoholic beverages in Russia rose by 4.6 percent in 2018, according to Nielsen estimates, while official statistics show a 1.5-percent decline in vodka sales to 786…

After Western sanctions gutted Russia’s financial system five years ago, a new bank card began appearing in the wallets of many Russians. Now the country is hoping to introduce its cards, known as Mir cards, to foreign markets where Russian nationals live and travel, Vladimir Komlev, the head of Russia’s National Card Payment System (NSPK),…

Special Counsel Robert Mueller may not have found evidence of a criminal conspiracy between Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russia, but his report details extensive contacts between the campaign and Russian operatives who sought to influence the U.S. election. Many of the contacts in the report were already known. They included former national security adviser…

Ukraine’s new president could regain control over the separatist-controlled east of his country within months and get cheap gas and major investment from Russia if he repairs ties with Moscow, the Kremlin’s closest ally in Ukraine said. Viktor Medvedchuk, a prominent figure in Ukraine’s Russia-leaning opposition, outlined the prospect in an interview before a presidential election runoff in…

President Nicolas Maduro is funneling cash flow from Venezuelan oil sales through Russian state energy giant Rosneft as he seeks to evade U.S. sanctions designed to oust him from power, according to sources and documents reviewed by Reuters. The sales are the latest sign of the growing dependence of Venezuela’s cash-strapped government on Russia as the…

The United States and Russia both said on Thursday they could not support a United Nations Security Council resolution calling for a ceasefire in Libya at this time, diplomats said, as mortar bombs crashed down on a suburb of the Libyan capital, Tripoli. Russia objects to the British-drafted resolution blaming eastern Libyan commander Khalifa Haftar for the latest…

U.S. Attorney General William Barr on Thursday offered some details of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report on Russia‘s role in the 2016 U.S. election before making it public, emphasizing that it found no collusion between President Donald Trump’s campaign and Moscow. Barr, a Trump appointee, gave a news conference ahead of the planned release of the…

A marijuana business has helped Roman Abramovich’s associate Andrei Bloch return to Forbes magazine’s list of richest Russians. Bloch briefly served as president of oil producer Sibneft from 1998 until Abramovich sold it to Russia’s state energy firm Gazprom in 2005. Bloch and another partner bought Abramovich’s Unimilk dairy business in 2004 — which merged…

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un will travel to Russia in the second half of this month and meet President Vladimir Putin, the Kremlin said on Thursday. The announcement coincided with a moment of discord in efforts by U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration to reach a deal with Kim to end nuclear tensions on the Korean peninsula.…

Russia’s internet sector has contributed 3.9 trillion rubles ($60.8 billion) to the overall economy last year, an 11 percent increase from 2017, according to the Russian Association of Electronic Communications. The study correlates with Kremlin estimates that Russian internet companies account for about 4 percent of gross domestic product. E-commerce accounts for half of Russia’s…

A sharp decline in chestnut trees caused by a parasitic fungus in Russia’s southern Krasnodar region is threatening the area’s honey production, according to local beekeepers and scientists. Asya Minasyan and her husband say they used to produce 500 kilograms of honey per year, but that the situation now is changing rapidly. “The bee is…

Oleg Deripaska’s van maker GAZ is asking the government for almost 30 billion rubles ($468 million) in support because it claims U.S. sanctions could slash production by almost 40 percent in the second half of the year, the Kommersant business daily reported on Thursday. Kommersant cited a March 29 letter from GAZ Deputy General Director…

Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev has signed a decree banning Russian exports of coal, crude oil and oil products to Ukraine, he told government officials in televised comments on Thursday. Starting June 1, the export of products listed in the decree will require a special permit, Interfax reported. The decree will also ban the import into Russia of…

Fiona Hill, an adviser to U.S. President Donald Trump, visited Moscow this week and discussed bilateral relations with Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Thursday. Ties between Washington and Moscow are at post-Cold War lows and later on Thursday a long-awaited report on Russia’s role in the 2016 U.S. election…

Russia has been rated 149th out of 180 countries for press freedom, according to an annual index published by international media watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF). Russia and Turkey (ranked 157th) continue to be the biggest players in the suppression of free speech in the region, RSF researchers said. A recently passed law that punishes “fake…