Day: June 5, 2020

Young right-wing extremists from Germany are receiving combat training from Russian white supremacists whom the United States has blacklisted as terrorists, Germany’s Focus news magazine reported Friday. The U.S. State Department branded the Russian Imperial Movement as a foreign terrorist organization in April, saying it runs two paramilitary training camps in St. Petersburg that have…

Russia’s prosecutor general on Friday ordered a review of hazardous structures built on permafrost after concluding that a huge Arctic fuel spill last week was caused by shifting ground. The office of the prosecutor general said in a statement that a preliminary conclusion of the spill’s causes is the “sagging of the ground and the…

Russia’s Communist Party has launched a campaign urging supporters to vote against a set of constitutional amendments that would allow President Vladimir Putin to stay in power for the next decade and a half. Russians are set to vote on July 1 to approve Putin’s changes to Russia’s basic law that would, among other things,…

The Czech Republic has expelled two Russian diplomats after a Russian embassy employee spread a hoax about a planned poison attack on three Prague politicians, officials said on Friday. In April, Respekt newspaper cited security sources as saying that a Russian national using a diplomatic passport had arrived in Prague carrying ricin, a toxic poison…

Over the past year, Siberia has seen disaster on a biblical scale.  Last spring, forest fires enveloped an area larger than Greece, causing $100 million in damage. In what Greenpeace called a “climate catastrophe,” the fires emitted more carbon dioxide in June alone than Sweden does in an entire year. Then, as those fires were…

Russia has managed to contain a massive diesel spill into a river in the Arctic, a spokeswoman for the emergencies ministry told AFP on Friday. “We have stopped the spread of the petroleum products,” the spokeswoman for the taskforce in charge of the accident clean-up said.  “They are contained in all directions, they are not…

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday said he expected metals giant Norilsk Nickel to fully restore the environment after an unprecedented Arctic fuel spill, as responders said they had managed to stop the slick from spreading further. A national-level state of emergency was announced after 21,000 tons of diesel fuel spilled from a reservoir that…

Moscow and central Russia’s Nizhny Novgorod region will be able to cast their votes online on a set of constitutional amendments that would allow President Vladimir Putin to extend his rule into the next decade, election officials said Thursday. The vote was originally set for April 22 but was pushed back to July 1 due…

Facebook has started labeling media organizations whose editorial decisions may be under the influence of governments, including Russia, and said it will begin blocking ads from those outlets later this year. The move comes after Facebook faced scrutiny for failing to stem foreign interference in the 2016 U.S. election and amid heated debate over how…

There have been 449,834 cases of coronavirus infections reported in Russia so far and 5,528 deaths. June 5: 3 things you need to know today Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin has ordered to lift some of Moscow’s coronavirus restrictions starting June 1. All non-food shops and some service sector businesses will be able to re-open, he said. The city…

New infections have been steadily dropping since mid-May when officials were reporting daily increases of around 11,000 cases. Officials say Russia’s high virus count is the result of mass testing and that a steady decline in new infections and its low fatality numbers mean the country can begin to return to normal. Yet critics have…

Tensions flared between Russia and the United States as the Russian military reportedly seeks to expand its presence in U.S.-controlled northeastern Syria, news outlets reported this week. The latest flare-up follows the Russian military’s reported attempt to build a base near the Turkish and Iraqi borders last week. President Vladimir Putin has ordered talks with Russia’s ally…