Month: March 2021

Moscow hotels have the highest occupancy rates in Europe, the Vedomosti business daily reported Wednesday, citing data from consulting company Cushman & Wakefield.  Unlike other European cities, the Russian capital has remained relatively open with only limited restrictions imposed when new coronavirus infections began to soar in the fall. Since late January, most restrictions have…

Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov has named another relative to a high-level government post in the southern Russian republic that enjoys federal subsidies while maintaining relative autonomy from Moscow, state media reported Tuesday. Kadyrov’s third cousin Khas-Magomed Kadyrov, 30, follows in the footsteps of two Kadyrov daughters in their early 20s as well as two nephews…

The Moscow metro plans to implement contactless fare payment using facial recognition technology at all metro stations by the end of the year, Interfax reported Tuesday, citing metro security service head Andrei Kichigin.  To use the FacePay system, passengers must have a Russian bank account that has their biometric data on file, according to Kichigin.…

A top aide of Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny called for sanctions on top Russian oligarchs in an interview with AFP, as the United States followed the EU in imposing sanctions on some officials. Leonid Volkov also said Navalny’s anti-corruption movement was hoping to unseat “at least 60 to 70” deputies from President Vladimir Putin’s United…

Russia has warned the United States not to “play with fire” after it imposed sanctions Tuesday in response to the poisoning of opposition leader Alexei Navalny. The U.S. froze assets and criminalized transactions with seven senior Russian officials, including the head of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB), and blacklisted 14 companies and entities for export…

European Council chief Charles Michel said Tuesday the EU has no plans to lift punishing sanctions against Russia that were imposed over the conflict in Ukraine. Ukraine has been fighting Russia-backed separatists in the eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions following Moscow’s annexation of the Crimean peninsula in 2014.  Ukraine and its Western allies accuse Russia…

Russian law enforcement is investigating the theft of radio equipment from a launch site at the Baikonur cosmodrome, the state-run RIA Novosti news agency reported Tuesday.  Traces of a break-in at launch pad No. 110 were first discovered on Feb. 19. The launch pad’s entrance was broken open and radio parts containing rare earth metals…

The United States and the European Union have imposed new sanctions on senior Russian officials over the poisoning and imprisonment of opposition leader Alexei Navalny, officials announced Tuesday. President Joe Biden’s first Russia sanctions since taking office in January are coordinated with EU actions against four top Russian justice and law enforcement officials. A senior U.S.…

Non-renewable energy was used to move frozen wind turbines back online in Texas during last month’s deep freeze, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Tuesday. An unprecedented winter storm in the southern U.S. state knocked out half of its wind power as well as natural gas and coal capacities. Pundits and state officials said that iced-over…

A year after the coronavirus pandemic plunged the global economy into turmoil and sent stock markets tumbling, Russia has emerged as one of the world’s best performers. Russia’s economy shrank by just 3.1% in 2020 — far less than advanced economies — and could reach its pre-pandemic size within the next 12 months. The most…

Armenia has faced days of political crisis after its prime minister’s remarks on a Russian missile system that Yerevan used during last fall’s war against Azerbaijan sparked demands for his resignation. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan clashed with the general staff of Armenia’s armed forces after he claimed that Iskander missiles supplied by Russia — Armenia’s…

Azerbaijan had deployed an Israeli-made defense system to shoot down a Russian-made missile that Armenia launched in the closing days of last fall’s war over the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh, the Middle East Eye news website reported Monday. An unnamed official said Yerevan had launched a Russian Iskander missile “directly into the capital” of Azerbaijan…

Slovakia on Monday received a first shipment of Russian vaccines as it battles the world’s highest Covid death rate, the second EU state after Hungary to receive the Sputnik doses. “You can see behind me the first shipment of the two million Sputnik V vaccines,” Slovak Prime Minister Igor Matovic told reporters at a press…

The Kremlin has dismissed research findings which showed Russians were more likely to be financially suffering as a result of the coronavirus than households in other countries. A Nielsen survey, published Monday, found 53% of Russian respondents said they were worse off as a result of the crisis — that was twice the level recorded…

Two UN human rights experts called Monday for an international investigation into the poisoning of Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny, and demanded his “immediate release” from a Russian penal colony. Agnes Callamard, the UN’s top expert on extrajudicial, summary and arbitrary executions, and Irene Khan, the expert on freedom of opinion and expression, made the call…

Two UN human rights experts called Monday for an international investigation into the poisoning of Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny, and demanded his “immediate release” from a Russian penal colony. Agnes Callamard, the UN’s special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary and arbitrary executions, and Irene Khan, the top expert on freedom of opinion and expression, stressed the…

A U.S. warship docked in Sudan Monday a day after a Russian frigate arrived in the same key Red Sea port where Moscow is planning to establish a naval logistics base, an AFP correspondent said. The arrival of the guided-missile destroyer USS Winston S. Churchill to Port Sudan follows Washington’s delisting of Khartoum as state…

A second Russian police officer has been suspected of leaking security officers’ travel data from the day of opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s poisoning, the Kommersant business daily reported Monday.  A major media investigation in December published the names of Federal Security Service (FSB) chemical-weapons experts who it said tailed Navalny for years, including on the…

In accordance with a now-established custom, Kyrgyzstan’s president performed his first foreign visit by going to Russia and paid tribute to President Vladimir Putin. The trip produced little of substance beyond mutual commitments of goodwill. That was important enough in and of itself, however, since Sadyr Japarov’s credentials with Moscow have to date not looked…

Nearly two out of three Russians believe the conspiracy theory that the coronavirus is a bioweapon created by humans, a survey by the independent Levada Center polling agency said Monday. According to Levada’s results, 64% of Russian respondents said Covid-19 was artificially created as a new form of biological weapon. That compares with 23% who…

Russia’s state communications regulator on Monday has accused Twitter of “maliciously violating Russian law” by failing to take down thousands of tweets containing banned information. According to Roskomnadzor, Twitter has not deleted 2,862 posts out of the more than 28,000 requests for removal the agency has sent since 2017. This includes 2,336 posts relating to…

Russia has confirmed 4,257,650 cases of coronavirus and 86,455 deaths. March 1: What you need to know today Russia on Monday confirmed 11,571 new coronavirus cases and 333 deaths. Around 4 million Russians have been vaccinated against the coronavirus so far, state-run TASS news agency reported Friday citing Russia’s Health Ministery representative.  Guatemala became the latest country to…

Freezing winds blow through a vast hangar in the Russian Arctic where giant, once-gleaming machines are still and a layer of snow has covered empty vats. Owned by the mining giant Norilsk Nickel, a leading operator in Russia’s northwestern resource-rich region of Murmansk, the Nikel metallurgical plant was a major source of pollution for decades.…