Year: 2020

The rapid spread of mobile internet around the world over the last decade has directly contributed to falling levels of trust in government and a surge in populism, according to a recent paper by a group of Russian economists. The research shows that as 3G internet spreads, millions of people gain access to new sources…

The Netherlands’ top court ruled Friday that shareholders in dismantled oil giant Yukos can continue to pursue Russia for $50 billion (41 billion euros) in compensation pending a final judgement in a long legal saga. Russia was ordered to make the payout in 2014 by the Hague-based international Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA), but has…

President Vladimir Putin has called on Moscow’s allies to mass produce the country’s vaccines.  In a statement on Friday, Kazakhstan’s presidency said the country would begin producing Sputnik V from Dec. 22, with plans to begin inoculating vulnerable groups in early 2021. The developers of Sputnik V — named after the Soviet-era satellite — have…

Russian authorities have said they want to relocate all prisons out of major cities, sparking concerns from activists that the move could violate prisoners’ rights and complicate visits by lawyers and relatives. Justice Minister Konstantin Chuichenko told state television that the mass prison relocation is part of the Federal Prison Service’s “transformation” toward “effective and…

One person has been killed in a shootout that took place after three armed men tried to illegally cross the border from Ukraine to Russia, Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) said Friday.  Russian border patrol officers opened fire on the Ukrainians after they resisted arrest at the border near Belgorod, the state-run TASS news agency…

Russia’s Pobeda low-cost airline plans to debut its own “flight to nowhere” for cooped-up passengers looking to recreate the travel experience this month, popular Pobeda pilot and flight podcast host Alexei Kochemasov has said.  Passengers will take off from Moscow’s Vnukovo International Airport, then land 1.5 hours later at… Vnukovo Airport. “We guarantee the crew’s…

Pussy Riot member Margarita Konovalova, also known as Rita Flores, has been sentenced to 20 days in jail for staging an anti-police brutality protest near the Kremlin, the Apologia Telegram channel reported Thursday.  During the Nov. 28 protest, Pussy Riot members in traditional Russian folk costumes tied artist Farhad Israfilli-Gelman, who was wearing an OMON…

Russia is pushing ahead with its domestically produced Sputnik V vaccine as the global race for a safe and effective vaccine that can put an end to the coronavirus pandemic heats up. Hours after Pfizer-BioNTech made headlines Wednesday by winning the first official general-use vaccine approval in the western world, President Vladimir Putin ordered large-scale…

Russian rights activists on Thursday condemned draft legislation including a significant expansion of who can be labelled a “foreign agent” as a new clampdown on dissent. Lawmakers in Russia’s lower-house State Duma last month proposed a series of bills that would give authorities sweeping powers to designate individuals as foreign agents and further limit public…

Russia has confirmed 2,375,546 cases of coronavirus and 41,607 deaths. Dec. 3: What you need to know today Russia confirmed a new record of 28,145 coronavirus cases and 554 deaths. Moscow will start vaccinating at-risk groups against the coronavirus this weekend, Mayor Sergei Sobyanin announced Thursday. Online booking for health workers, teachers and social service workers deemed at higher risk of…

Moscow will start vaccinating at-risk groups against the coronavirus this weekend, Mayor Sergei Sobyanin announced Thursday after President Vladimir Putin ordered large-scale immunization across the country. Online booking for health workers, teachers and social service workers deemed at higher risk of severe infection will open Friday, Sobyanin wrote on his website. “The vaccination centers will…

A U.S. human rights activist who has defended the interests of Russian citizens in Europe’s human rights court faces expulsion from Russia, she has said. Authorities informed Vanessa Kogan that she “poses a national security threat” when they rejected her fast-track citizenship application and revoked her permanent residence earlier this week, Kogan told the Ekho Moskvy…

Housewives in Russia should earn a wage for their domestic labor, State Duma deputy Oksana Pushkina has said. Pushkina’s statement in a Wednesday interview on the Komsomolskaya Pravda radio station comes amid growing calls for governments to level the financial inequities traditionally faced by women. Last month, Scotland became the first country to guarantee free…

Turkey is willing to support the Russia-annexed Crimean peninsula’s return to Ukraine, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Wednesday.  The statement comes amid an already uneasy relationship between Moscow and Ankara, which are traditionally partners but have recently been at odds over the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, the Syrian conflict and Libya’s civil war. In October, Turkish…

More than 100,000 Russians at higher risk of severe coronavirus cases have been vaccinated with the domestically made Sputnik V vaccine, Health Minister Mikhail Murashko said Wednesday. His announcement at a special session of the UN General Assembly presenting Sputnik V came as President Vladimir Putin ordered the large-scale vaccination of priority groups such as…

President Vladimir Putin named a replacement for Anatoly Chubais, the head of state nanotechnology firm Rusnano, on Wednesday, exposing a rift between the president and the former deputy prime minister whose popularity has waned in recent years. During his 12 years as Rusnano’s head Chubais, who had been an architect of Russia’s 1990s privatizations as…

Russia reported more than 28,000 coronavirus cases in a single day for the first time since the start of the pandemic, the latest record amid the second wave plaguing the country’s major cities and far-flung regions. Health officials reported 28,145 new infections across every Russian region Thursday, bringing the total caseload to 2,375,546. Russia has…

Russia’s Pobeda low-cost airline has canceled 110 flights to seven cities over a disruptive airspace overhaul that resulted in outdated flight charts and databases for western Russia, media reported Wednesday. European regulators last month warned of major changes to departure and arrival procedures after the restructure covering 49 airports across European Russia which takes effect…

St. Petersburg authorities have ordered the city’s cafes, restaurants, museums, theaters and concert halls to shut down during the New Year holiday, the most festive time of the year in Russia, due to the coronavirus. The stricter restrictions will be in place from Dec. 30 until Jan. 10, according to the decree signed by St.…

When 94-year-old World War II veteran Vasily’s family made their regular check of his mailbox on Saturday they found a formal summons from the prosecutor’s office in Volgograd, a city in southern Russia previously known as Stalingrad. It said he had to attend a hearing on Dec. 1 to be questioned as a witness in…

A former police chief in Russia’s third-largest city of Novosibirsk has been convicted for accepting bribes in the form of the popular Georgian dumpling khinkali, authorities and media said Wednesday. Alexander Grashchenkov was accused of extending criminal patronage to three local entrepreneurs in exchange for free meals, the Kommersant business daily reported earlier this fall. Between…

President Vladimir Putin has ordered the mass vaccination against coronavirus among the Russian population to start late next week, with doctors and teachers first in line to receive the country’s Sputnik V jab. The order came hours after Britain became the first western country to issue general-use approval for Pfizer-BioNTech’s jab starting next week. “Let’s…

Russian President Vladimir Putin has urged fellow members of a post-Soviet military bloc to support Armenia’s prime minister as he grapples with domestic pressure over his agreement to a Moscow-brokered peace deal with Azerbaijan. Nikol Pashinyan has faced a wave of outrage at home since the Nov. 9 peace deal ended more than six weeks…

Russia is seeking to label any politically active individual a “foreign agent” in the latest move to broaden a law that critics say curbs free speech. Under current law, the “foreign agent” label may be extended to civil society groups, media outlets, as well as individual journalists and bloggers in Russia. The latest flurry of…

Russia has confirmed 2,347,401 cases of coronavirus and 41,053 deaths. Dec. 2: What you need to know today Russia confirmed 25,345 new coronavirus cases and a new record of 589 coronavirus deaths. Russia’s Accounts Chamber Chairman and famed liberal economist Alexei Kudrin was diagnosed with coronavirus, said the message published on his social media Monday.  Russia’s food retailers have…

Russia will continue to pose one of the main threats to NATO in the next decade, a high-level report for the Western military alliance said Tuesday. “While Russia is by economic and social measures a declining power, it has proven itself capable of territorial aggression and is likely to remain a chief threat facing NATO…

Not satisfied with just being Russia’s largest financial institution and most valuable company, Sberbank is now going all in on its ultra-ambitious technology transformation, aiming to become the country’s biggest e-commerce player. That was the plan at the core of the bank’s new strategy — unveiled this week in a glitzy two-day online event for…

Japan has rebuked Russia’s deployment of S-300 surface-to-air missile systems on a chain of islands in the Far East that Tokyo claims as its own, media reported Tuesday. The Russian Defense Ministry said its S-300V4 large air defense system went on combat duty on Iturup, one of four Russian-held Kuril Islands, Reuters reported earlier. Japan’s…

Global climate change is behind this year’s extraordinarily warm autumn in Moscow and St. Petersburg, experts interviewed by The Moscow Times said.  Russia’s two largest cities experienced the warmest autumn temperatures of their recorded histories in 2020, official weather services reported Tuesday.  And it’s only the beginning, experts say.  Over the next 10 years, Russia…

Russia’s ultra-wealthy have increased their net worth by nearly $500 million in 2020 thanks to a historic stock market rally in November, according to the Bloomberg list of billionaires. Altogether, the 22 Russian billionaires added $486 million to their net worth between the start of the year and Dec. 1. Sixteen of them added just…

Russian authorities have detained a man suspected of murdering dozens of elderly women in the republic of Tatarstan and nearby regions nearly a decade ago. Unofficially known as the “Volga maniac,” the murderer has been linked to the killings of anywhere from 19 to 32 female pensioners, most of whom were strangled to death between…

The Azerbaijani takeover of Lachin, the last of three districts handed back by Armenia under a deal to stop fighting over Nagorno-Karabakh, ends the first stage of a Russian-brokered peace process. But the decades-old dispute over Karabakh, an ethnic Armenian region that broke away from Azerbaijan during a war in the 1990s, is far from…

The European Court of Human Rights said Tuesday that Russian authorities denied a top physicist a fair trial ahead of his 2004 conviction on claims of passing state secrets to China, which saw him imprisoned in Siberia for eight years. Accused of spying for China as well as embezzlement, Valentin Danilov was arrested in 2001,…

Russian authorities are probing opposition figure Alexei Navalny’s comments during the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic for inciting extremism, news agencies quoted law enforcement sources as saying Tuesday. Moscow investigators are reportedly examining whether Navalny’s April 27 interview with the liberal Ekho Moskvy radio station contained calls for a violent overthrow of the Russian…

Turkey and Russia have agreed to monitor a truce over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region from a joint peacekeeping center, Ankara’s defense ministry said on Tuesday. The deal comes after days of talks between Turkish and Russian officials about how the two regional powers would jointly implement a Moscow-brokered ceasefire signed this month between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Technical…

A majority of Russians doubt that relations between their country and the United States will improve under President-elect Joe Biden, a new poll by the independent Levada Center has said. Biden, who helped lead the failed push for a “reset” in U.S.-Russia ties as former President Barack Obama’s vice president, is expected to take a…

Four Jehovah’s Witnesses have been convicted and sentenced on extremism charges in southwestern Siberia, the religious organization banned in Russia said Monday. A court in the city of Omsk found husband and wife Sergei and Anastasia Polyakov guilty of recruiting others to join an “extremist” group. Two other Jehovah’s Witnesses, Dinara Dyusekeyeva and Gaukhar Bektemirova,…