Year: 2020

Four new cases of coronavirus have been identified in Russia, the state-run RIA Novosti news agency reported Saturday. The new cases take the total number of people who have been infected with coronavirus in Russia to 17, three of whom have since recovered. Three of the four live in Lipetsk, a city 460 kilometers south…

Two Russian citizens have been arrested in Sweden suspected of a hammer attack last month on a  blogger critical of Chechen strongman leader Ramzan Kadyrov, media reported Saturday. A district court in the central Swedish town of Gavle on Friday ordered a Russian woman in her thirties held in custody, suspected of being an accessory…

OPEC and its allies failed to reach a deal on oil production cuts on Friday, after Moscow refused to tighten supply to counter the effects of the coronavirus outbreak. The day before, OPEC ministers had recommended reducing output by 1.5 million barrels per day in face of the global slowdown caused by the epidemic and…

Russian President Vladimir Putin said Friday he would not bend the law to extend his term in power and is seeking to amend the constitution to secure the country’s future for decades to come. Speculation has swirled over the 67-year-old president’s future after he unleashed a political storm in January by proposing major constitutional changes.…

Shares of Russian businessman Oleg Tinkov’s credit card supplier TCS plummeted Friday after the U.S. Department of Justice charged its founder with fraud and demanded his extradition from Britain. Shares of TCS (Tinkoff Credit Systems) group were showing a loss of more than 17%t on the London Stock Exchange and 24% on the Moscow Exchange…

Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny lodged a complaint against Russia at the European Court of Human Rights on Friday to contest a money-laundering investigation he says authorities have opened to thwart his political activities. Russian investigators opened the case against Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation last August after he called on people to attend rallies that grew…

As the new coronavirus that has killed more than 3,000 people continues to spread around the world, Russia has stepped up measures to tackle the health risk, including closing most entry points along its 4,200-kilometer border with China and temporarily banning Chinese citizens from entering the country.  Russia has a total of seven confirmed coronavirus…

Experts are attributing a sharp drop in the number of deaths from alcohol poisoning in Russia to the unseasonably warm winter. Some 619 people died from alcohol poisoning in January 2020, down 37.3% from January 2019, Russia’s National Center for Alcohol Policy Development said Thursday. The past winter was the warmest since records began in…

Before Vyacheslav Makarov announced in January he was leaving gaming, few could have expected the man who helped create the mega-hit World of Tanks wanted a career in Russian politics. Yet on the sidelines of a digital technologies conference in Moscow on Thursday, the 40-year-old online gaming legend launched his latest creation: the Direct Democracy…

Two-thirds of Russians would not be happy to have a woman as president, the state-funded VTsIOM polling agency said Friday ahead of International Women’s Day on March 8. Some 68% of people surveyed said they opposed a female president, up from 61% in an identical VTsIOM’s poll in 2016. The pollster noted that both male…

Russia is hoping to lure more people to live in the Arctic with promises of payouts and infrastructure development in the environmentally vulnerable territory, according to its 15-year strategy published Thursday. The Kremlin document on the “foundations of state policy in the Arctic to 2035”, signed by President Vladimir Putin, set out its policy plans for…

As the new coronavirus that has killed more than 3,000 people continues to spread around the world, Russia has stepped up measures to tackle the health risk, including closing most entry points along its 4,200-kilometer border with China and temporarily banning Chinese citizens from entering the country.  Russia has a total of seven confirmed coronavirus…

Turkey and Russia announced a ceasefire in northern Syria on Thursday, agreeing to end weeks of heavy fighting that sparked a humanitarian disaster and raised fears of their armies clashing. After more than six hours of talks in Moscow, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan agreed on the ceasefire to take…

Russia’s tourism sector has already taken a 27 billion ruble  ($406 million) hit from the impact of coronavirus, the head of the Russian Association of Tour Operators said on Thursday in a plea for government support. The coronavirus outbreak has caused havoc across the global travel industry as companies restrict employee trips, airlines axe flights,…

OPEC agreed on Thursday to cut oil output by an extra 1.5 million barrels per day (BPD) in the second quarter of 2020 to support prices that have been hit by the coronavirus outbreak but made its action conditional on Russia and others joining in. The oil demand outlook has been pummelled by global measures…

Hollywood star Arnold Schwarzenegger is suing Russia’s robot maker Promobot for using his likeness without permission, the TMZ tabloid reported Wednesday. Schwarzenegger’s company is demanding $10 million in damages, as well as profits made off the lookalike robot and other expenses, according to TMZ. It also reportedly wants an injunction blocking Promobot from using the…

This week on the podcast: — The leaders of Russia and Turkey meet in Moscow on Thursday in a bid to de-escalate fighting in Syria which has brought the two countries to the brink of direct military confrontation. It is the latest episode in a fraught nine-year civil war that has killed hundreds of thousands,…

Three Russian passenger planes flying domestic routes on Thursday were targeted with anonymous bomb threats while airborne, local media said. Anonymous messages were passed to emergency services and a Moscow airport warning that the planes had a bomb on board, Russian news agencies said. One plane was flying from Saint Petersburg to the Crimean city…

The first Russian national to test positive for the coronavirus while in the country has received a test result indicating he no longer has the virus, he told The Moscow Times on Thursday. David Berov, 29, was quarantined in Moscow on Feb. 27, less than a week after returning from a ski trip in northern…

A court in annexed Crimea sentenced a Jehovah’s Witness to six years in prison on charges of extremism Thursday in the ongoing crackdown on the religious group in Russia. Sergei Filatov, the local branch leader, was among several worshippers swept up in raids in the Crimean town of Dzhankoy in 2018. Russia, which seized the…

Moscow authorities have drafted an emergency plan that envisions a shutdown of the Russian capital in case of a coronavirus outbreak, BBC Russia and the Vedomosti business daily reported Wednesday. Russia has confirmed seven coronavirus cases, two of whom have recovered last month, with the latest case reported Thursday. Temperature checks in arrivals for international…

This unseasonably mild winter has caused the in Moscow Zoo bears to wake up earlier than usual, the city’s mayor’s office said Wednesday. Last year, the two Himalayan bears and one Kamchatka brown bear began coming out of hibernation in April. “Our zoologists were preparing for the bears to wake up earlier due to the…

The leaders of Russia and Turkey meet in Moscow on Thursday in a bid to ease tensions that have threatened to bring their two countries into direct conflict in Syria. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said he would be looking for Russia’s Vladimir Putin to agree to a rapid ceasefire in Idlib, the northwestern province…

Russia’s oil giant Rosneft and the Russian government will join forces to develop gene-editing technology, according to a government decree published Wednesday. The deal, which President Vladimir Putin ordered in December, aims to accelerate Russia’s $1.6 billion program to create 30 new varieties of genetically modified crops and animals by 2027.  Rosneft is tasked with…

False rumors about the new coronavirus circulating in Russia are being directed from abroad, President Vladimir Putin claimed Wednesday at a government meeting. He told ministers the country’s FSB security service had reported to him that false information was being planted to create panic, while in reality the situation is not critical. “As for these provocative fake…

A secret witness will implicate Kremlin-linked catering magnate Yevgeny Prigozhin in plans to influence elections abroad at a trial next month, Politico reported Wednesday, citing a U.S. prosecutor. The St. Petersburg-based Concord Management and Consulting firm goes on trial in the United States in April after it was charged with conspiracy to defraud the U.S.…

At least 20 football fans have been detained in Moscow after mass brawls broke out over the weekend, the state-run TASS news agency reported Wednesday. Several clashes took place between fans of FC Spartak and FC Dynamo on the day of the Moscow derby Saturday. Footage showed scenes of violence on the Moscow metro and…

As the new coronavirus that has killed more than 3,000 people continues to spread around the world, Russia has stepped up measures to tackle the health risk, including closing most entry points along its 4,200-kilometer border with China and temporarily banning Chinese citizens from entering the country.  Russia reported its first two cases of coronavirus…

President Vladimir Putin’s new package of social spending initiatives will not be enough to hit the country’s ambitious poverty-reduction targets, a government watchdog has said. In its assessment of the government’s spending plans for the next few years, the Audit Chamber said the package of new measures, such as higher allowances for new mothers to…

Even skeptics can no longer ignore the effects of climate change in Russia. First, there’s the weather. Last year was the hottest on record; the ice in the Arctic is melting at a dramatic pace, as is the permafrost; while forest fires and flash floods have ravaged swathes of Siberia, and methane is spewing from…

A Russian passenger plane crash in Egypt was not an act of terrorism and the identities of its victims are unknown, an Egyptian appeals court ruled recently, according to the Kommersant business daily. Metrojet Flight 9268 crashed minutes after takeoff from the Egyptian resort Sharm el-Sheikh to St. Petersburg on Oct. 31, 2015, killing all…

Russia has banned the export of masks, respirators and hazmat suits to ensure access to the items for medics treating coronavirus patients and the public, under a decree published Wednesday. The ban covers 17 types of equipment including face masks, plastic shoe covers, gloves, surgical scrubs, gas masks, hazmat suits and “reusable anti-plague” suits. The ban…

A Moscow court ruled on Tuesday that the city’s facial recognition system does not violate the privacy of its citizens, a lawyer for one of the plaintiffs told Reuters — a blow to activists who had hoped to ban the technology’s use. Lawyer and activist Alena Popova and opposition politician Vladimir Milov of the Solidarnost…

Russian tech giant Yandex’s taxi service shares passengers’ ride history with law enforcement authorities, according to the testimony of an ex-policeman on trial for wrongfully detaining an investigative journalist. Igor Lyakhovets was among the several police officers who had arrested journalist Ivan Golunov on drug charges in June 2019. An unprecedented public outcry led to…

As the only remaining independent, English-language news source reporting from Russia, The Moscow Times plays a critical role in connecting Russia to the world. Editorial decisions are made entirely by journalists in our newsroom, who adhere to the highest ethical standards. We fearlessly cover issues that are often considered off-limits or taboo in Russia, from…

An elite Dutch military unit was on hair-trigger alert to deploy to separatist-controlled eastern Ukraine to secure the Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 crash site until a last-minute stand-down order in 2014, the Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf reported Tuesday. The report comes one week ahead of the first hearing in a key trial of three Russian…

The Moscow metro has begun random checks of passengers’ temperatures at station entrances to check for the coronavirus, Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said Monday as he announced a slew of measures to prevent its spread.  Russia has reported a total of six coronavirus cases, among them two Chinese citizens who have since recovered. The latest patient,…

As the only remaining independent, English-language news source reporting from Russia, The Moscow Times plays a critical role in connecting Russia to the world. Editorial decisions are made entirely by journalists in our newsroom, who adhere to the highest ethical standards. We fearlessly cover issues that are often considered off-limits or taboo in Russia, from…

A Russian man has been jailed for nine years for stabbing to death a popular Instagram influencer who modeled herself on Audrey Hepburn. A Moscow court on Monday convicted Maxim Gareyev for the murder of 25-year-old Yekaterina Karaglanova, a medical student whose naked body was found with more than 19 knife wounds in a suitcase…

Russian President Vladimir Putin mockingly suggested on Tuesday that participants in unsanctioned protests were welcome to go to prison and “get shaved.” In the latest in a series of interviews with state-run news agency TASS, Putin said opposition supporters who take part in unapproved rallies should expect to be given jail time. “If you have…

Russia’s main opposition leader Alexei Navalny said Tuesday that authorities had frozen all of his bank accounts and those of his family, including his elderly parents. “All accounts have been blocked,” Navalny, an anti-corruption campaigner who has emerged as President Vladimir Putin’s most prominent critic, said on Twitter.  His spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh told AFP that…

The Russian Navy has dispatched a fourth warship to Syria’s Mediterranean coast as tensions over the northwestern province of Idlib spiral with Turkey, amateur ship spotters reported Monday. The large landing ship Novocherkassk was photographed crossing Turkey’s busy Bosphorus strait days after Russia sent two warships equipped with Kalibr cruise missiles toward the Syrian coast.…

The Russian police force’s official gazette has interviewed an expert who claims to be able to identify criminals based on their name, birth date and other traits.  Psychologist Boris Khigir claims his method, which he says is based on personal observations and statistics, has an 80% accuracy rate. Critics have questioned the reliability of criminal…

Little Big, the self-described punk-pop-rave juggernaut behind the infectious Skibidi Challenge, will represent Russia at the Eurovision song contest this spring, organizers announced Monday. The choice represents a break with Russia’s reliance on more traditional pop stars to bring home the trophy and hosting rights for the first time in more than a decade. This…

Russian Cossacks have been told by one of their leaders not to kiss icons or clerics’ hands to try to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. The order was issued by Gennadiy Kovalev, head of the Council of Cossack Hetmans (leaders) of Russia which represents several thousand Cossacks, traditional militia units that once protected Russia‘s borderlands. Kissing icons…