Year: 2019

Russian lawmakers have slammed what they called the United States’ interference in Venezuela’s affairs as the country’s opposition leader declared himself interim president in a coup attempt. Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido declared himself interim president on Wednesday, winning the backing of Washington and many Latin American nations and prompting socialist Maduro, who has led…

Prosecutors in Far East Russia have announced an inspection into a lecture on sexual preferences reportedly given by local crime bosses at a village school. According to media reports, parents of fifth- and seventh-graders in the village of Pervomaisky expressed outrage after learning that men believed to be local criminal kingpins had been invited to their…

Russia’s Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday that private Russian companies were training the army in Sudan, confirming for the first time their presence in a country shaken by protests against its president, a close Russian ally. Demonstrators have been on the streets near-daily since Dec. 19, initially to protest against an economic crisis then to call for…

Russian President Vladimir Putin held talks with Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan on Wednesday after which the Russian leader said the two men had discussed how they planned to stabilize the situation in Syria’s Idlib province. The Russian Foreign Ministry said earlier on Wednesday that the situation in the region, where Moscow and Ankara have tried…

Recep Tayyip Erdogan / Kremlin.ru Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan will get another chance to lobby Vladimir Putin to protect Turkish interests as the U.S. prepares to withdraw from Syria, leaving Russia as the key power broker in that war-ravaged nation. The two leaders meet again in Moscow on Wednesday to discuss coordination in Syria, where…

Above all, ending the decades-long territorial dispute will be good for business, some say. Shinzo Abe and Vladimir Putin / Kremlin.ru As Shinzo Abe and Vladimir Putin met this week in Moscow, Japanese expats in Moscow were watching closely. “My Russian colleagues and I hope a peace treaty will be reached,” said Hiroshi Makino, the…

Customers across Russia owe a regional subsidiary of the Gazprom gas giant 30.1 billion rubles ($455 million) in accumulated debt, the subsidiary told Russian media on Wednesday. Last week, a court in the North Caucasus republic of Chechnya ruled to erase 9 billion rubles of its residents’ gas debts after local prosecutors warned of rising…

Russia said on Wednesday that Israel should stop carrying out what it called arbitrary air strikes on Syria days after the Israeli air force targeted Iranian forces there. Israel, which regards Iran as its biggest threat, has repeatedly attacked Iranian targets in Syria and those of allied militia, including Lebanon’s Hezbollah. “The practice of arbitrary…

The Cold War can wait over a hot slice. Taking a page out of their Canadian colleagues book, air traffic controllers based in Far East Russia have reportedly ordered pizza for their American neighbors across the Bering Strait. Some 800,000 U.S. federal government workers – including an estimated 10,000 air traffic controllers – have been furloughed or…

Russia should not unleash an oil price war against the United States but rather stick with output cuts even at the cost of losing market share in the medium term, one of the main Russian architects of a production pact with OPEC said. Since 2017, Russia and OPEC have cut oil production jointly for the first time in an…

The situation in Syria’s Idlib province where Russia and Turkey have tried to create a de-escalation zone is rapidly deteriorating, Maria Zakharova, a Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, said on Wednesday. The territory is now almost under full control of Nusra militants, she said. “Continuing provocations pose a threat to civilians, Syrian military personnel and the Russian Khmeymim air base,”…

Bulgaria has revoked the Bulgarian citizenship of Russian telecoms millionaire Sergei Adoniev over a 20-year-old fraud conviction in the United States, the justice ministry said on Wednesday. Eager to join EU’s border-check-free Schengen zone, Bulgaria said on Tuesday that it plans to stop letting wealthy foreigners buy citizenship, which allows free movement within the entire European…

Russia showed foreign military attaches and journalists a cruise missile system on Wednesday that the United States says breaches a Cold War-era arms control pact, its latest attempt to disprove an allegation it denies and stop Washington quitting the treaty. Washington has threatened to pull out of the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF), alleging…

Russia was named the second-most powerful and influential country on the global arena as it returned to the top 25 list of countries ranked for the Davos economic forum. The U.S. News & World Report’s “Best Countries” annual rating ranks 80 countries across a range of metrics, including quality of life, openness to business, culture…

The head of Russia’s SVR foreign intelligence agency Sergei Naryshkin on Monday met Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, as well as the head of the kingdom’s intelligence services, the Interfax news agency said on Wednesday. Naryshkin discussed cooperation in the fight against international terrorism with his Saudi counterpart, Interfax cited Russia’s Foreign Intelligence…

Russian oligarchs Arkady and Boris Rotenberg have been forced by their Swiss bank to sell their private jets on the back of U.S. sanctions, Forbes Russia reports. The Rotenberg brothers, childhood friends of President Vladimir Putin, were first hit by U.S. sanctions in March 2014 over the annexation of the Crimean peninsula from Ukraine. The…

Any deal to end a territorial row with Japan needs public backing, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Tuesday after meeting Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, giving a nod to widespread Russian opposition to ceding territory to Japan. Shortly before Putin met Abe in the Kremlin for the latest round of talks on the dispute…

Mikhail Dzhaparidze / TASS The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) said on Tuesday it had decided not to re-impose a suspension on Russian anti-doping agency RUSADA despite Moscow missing a deadline to hand over laboratory data. RUSADA had asked WADA last week not to suspend it after missing the Dec. 31 deadline, which was a condition…

Russian Bobsleigh Federation president Alexander Zubkov said on Tuesday he was temporarily stepping down from his post after being banned from the sport for two years over doping violations. The International Bobsleigh and Skeleton Federation (IBSF) last week suspended Zubkov from any activities related to the sport for a two-year period. “I took this step…

A woman has been detained on suspicion of beating up a taxi driver and stealing his vehicle in central Moscow after a disagreement over the fare, police said Tuesday. The unnamed 27-year-old suspect was detained after police issued an alert in connection with the incident on Oruzheiny Pereulok near the Garden Ring, police said in…

A model from Belarus who claimed to have evidence of Russian interference in U.S. President Donald Trump’s election was freed from Russian police custody on Tuesday, but remains a suspect in an unrelated criminal case, the TASS news agency reported. Anastasia Vashukevich and three others were detained upon arrival at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport on Thursday…

A board game that traces the paths of two alleged Russian agents believed to be behind the poisoning of a former spy and his daughter in England last year is reportedly now on sale in Russia. Britain charged two Russian citizens in absentia for the attempted murder of ex-agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia…

A commercial airliner flying from Siberia to Moscow made an unplanned landing in the city of Khanty-Mansiysk on Tuesday after a passenger demanded the plane change course, Russian security officials said. There were conflicting reports about the passenger, with some Russian news agencies saying he had been detained by police on landing while others said…

Dennis Christensen / Jehovah’s Witnesses The first Jehovah’s Witness detained for extremism in Russia has likened the authorities’ behavior to that of Josef Stalin’s Soviet Union ahead of a verdict in his trial. Armed police scaled the gates of a compound where the Christian denomination was meeting in Oryol, some 320 kilometers south of Moscow, in May…

At least three crew members were killed and one injured when a military strategic bomber crashed in northwestern Russia on Tuesday, the Defense Ministry has said. Interfax quoted the ministry’s press service as saying that the Tupolev Tu-22M3 made a “hard landing” and was destroyed after getting caught in a snow squall in the Murmansk…

Russians have one of the lowest levels of institutional trust in the world, including trust in NGOs, businesses and international organizations, according to a survey of 26 major economies published this week. Russia has consistently ranked as having one of the lowest levels of public trust in the annual “Trust Barometer” survey conducted by Edelman,…

Russian police detained 11 protesters outside the Japanese embassy in Moscow as they rallied against the idea of ceding control over disputed islands to Japan, OVD-Info, a Russian organisation that monitor protest, said on Tuesday. The detentions took place ahead of talks in Moscow between President Vladimir Putin and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to discuss…

The lawyer for a former U.S. marine accused of spying by Russia said on Tuesday that his client had been misled before his arrest and believed that a thumb drive handed to him in a hotel room had contained cultural rather than secret information. Russia’s Federal Security Serviced detained Paul Whelan, who holds U.S., British,…

Russia’s oldest human rights organization, the Moscow Helsinki Group, has chosen three members to succeed the late Lyudmila Alexeyeva this week. Alexeyeva, who was a driving force behind the Soviet civil-rights movement, died at age 91 on Dec. 8, 2018. Alexeyeva and other dissidents founded the Moscow Helsinki Group in 1976 to monitor Soviet compliance…

Russia’s overall foreign debt fell by $64.4 billion last year to reach a 10-year low, Central Bank data showed Monday. Foreign debt has been falling since 2014, when Western sanctions imposed over the conflict in Ukraine made it harder for companies to borrow abroad. Read More Central Bank Says Russia’s Foreign Debt Fell $130 Billion…

The European Union sanctioned on Monday the heads of Russia’s military intelligence and two of their officers blamed for poisoning a former Russian double agent in Britain last year, a decision Moscow dismissed as groundless. The EU travel bans and asset freezes included two men Britain has named as intelligence officers Alexander Petrov and Ruslan…

Russia said on Monday it was unacceptable for the United States to demand Moscow destroy its 9M729 cruise missile, a weapon Washington alleges is in violation of a landmark Cold-War era treaty. Washington called on Moscow to destroy the new cruise missile system which it said was a “direct and continuing violation” of the Intermediate-range…

Internet users throughout the world will soon need IDs to go online as anonymity will gradually fade into oblivion, Russia’s culture minister predicted on Monday. Russia has for years called for international regulations cementing state control over the internet, arguing that national governments are otherwise left vulnerable to cyberattacks from foreign powers. Russian lawmakers submitted…

With a workforce of elderly women and using local ingredients, a honey and confectionery business put together with funds raised online is breathing life into an ailing Russian village. Cocco Bello Honey in Maly Turysh, in Sverdlovsk region around 1,500 kilometers east of Moscow, employs local residents, many in their sixties and over, left behind…

Three Russian servicemen were reportedly killed when their armored vehicle fell into a gorge in the Georgian breakaway republic of Abkhazia. Online footage of the incident’s aftermath showed a BTR-80 armored personnel carrier (APC) in a ravine below a mountainous road. The RBC news website cited Russia’s Southern Military District as saying the vehicle fell…

The United States called on Russia on Monday to destroy a new cruise missile system which it said constituted a “direct violation” of the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, and accused Moscow of destabilizing global security. “Unfortunately, the United States increasingly finds that Russia cannot be trusted to comply with its arms control obligations and…

A woman who is reported to be the oldest in Russia has died in the North Caucasus at age 128, local officials announced Monday. The Russian Book of Records certified Nano Shaova as the country’s oldest person on July 4, 2017, when her age was given as 126 years, 11 months and 19 days. Shaova’s…

While the world set their eyes on the sky for 2019’s first and only super blood wolf moon, residents of Moscow were out of luck as cloudy skies hid the phenomenon from view. People in other parts of Russia had better chances, though, as the full phase of the eclipse could be seen in the…

A slew of emailed bomb threats sparked mass evacuations on Monday in Magnitogorsk, an industrial Russian city that was rocked by an apartment building explosion late last month that killed over three dozen people. Russian investigators have said that a gas leak was the most likely cause for the Dec. 31 blast that killed 39…

Russia’s communication watchdog said on Monday it was opening administrative proceedings against Twitter and Facebook for failing to explain how they plan to comply with local data laws, the Interfax news agency reported. Roskomnadzor, the watchdog, was quoted as saying that Twitter and Facebook had not explained how and when they would comply with legislation…