Annexed Crimea plans to open first direct international flights to Armenia this spring, a senior lawmaker in the region’s Moscow-backed parliament told the state-run RIA Novosti news agency Friday. The Simferopol-Yerevan route will launch in March, marking the first international flight to the Crimean peninsula since Moscow seized it from Ukraine in 2014, said the…
Russian authorities have ramped up the persecution of Jehovah’s Witnesses in the country in the past 12 months, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said Thursday. The religious group estimates that 313 people have been charged or convicted since Russia’s Supreme Court banned the Jehovah’s Witnesses as an “extremist” organization in 2017. Eighteen worshippers were convicted in…
Since the late 1980s, Memorial has engaged in investigations of Soviet political repression. That work is becoming increasingly complicated. The organization has been repeatedly fined by Russian authorities for violations of the country’s so-called foreign agent law. The latest fine was issued on Dec. 9 as Memorial lost a case in Moscow’s Tverskoy District Court.…
January 1, 2020, the Federal Environmental, Industrial and Nuclear Supervision Service (Rostechnadzor) issued a new license for the right to operate Unit 1 of Rostov NPP. The license was received as planned due to expiry of the preceding license and will be valid until the end of 2031. As of January 9, 2020, Unit 1…
Russia‘s first plan to adapt to climate change is a tardy but much-needed acknowledgement of the risks and opportunities presented by global warming, although it lacks concrete action to address the increasingly evident threats, analysts said. The document, published this month on a government website, said climate change would have a significant and growing influence…
A Russian national has been sentenced to seven years in German prison for selling sensitive military technology and chemicals to Russia, the Deutsche Welle broadcaster reported Thursday. Authorities detained the man, identified as Vladimir D., in December 2018 and his trial began in November 2019. German prosecutors accused the defendant, who reportedly lived in Germany…
An Iranian missile likely accidentally brought down a Ukrainian passenger plane that crashed near Tehran, killing all 176 aboard, Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Thursday. The Ukraine International Airlines flight to Kiev from Tehran crashed Wednesday, hours after Iran fired ballistic missiles at two U.S. military bases in Iraq. The U.S. government believes Iran…
Iraq has resumed talks with Russia to buy its S-300 surface-to-air missile systems, a senior Iraqi lawmaker told the state-run RIA Novosti news agency following the U.S. killing of a top Iranian commander and Iran’s retaliatory missile strikes there. Meanwhile, firebrand lawmaker Vladimir Zhirinovsky urged Iran to buy Russia’s advanced S-400 missile systems in the…
Canada said on Thursday that a surface-to-air missile brought down a Ukrainian airliner in Tehran, while the Ukrainian government said it was investigating reports of debris from a Russian-made Tor-M1 missile. The Tor, also called the SA-15 Gauntlet by NATO, is a short-range “point defense” system that integrates the missile launcher and radar into a single…