Russia has lost its first soldier on home soil since the start of the country’s war with Ukraine, local media reported Thursday. Conscript Nikita Koshelev, 19, died when his base on the Ukrainian border came under bombardment, his friend Kirill Kulikov told news website NN.ru. Koshelev’s relatives in the town of Arzamas in the Russian…
Ukraine is investigating at least 10 Russian soldiers accused of committing war crimes against civilians while occupying the Kyiv suburb of Bucha last month, the country’s prosecutor general Iryna Venediktova said Thursday. Images of civilians apparently executed in the streets and harrowing accounts of torture emerged from Bucha and other Kyiv suburbs as Russian forces…
Russian energy giant Gazprom on Thursday announced a soaring net profit for 2021, boosted by high energy prices. “The main factor that affected the financial result was an increase in gas and oil prices,” the state-controlled group said in a statement. “This resulted in an increase in sales and an increase in the cost of purchased gas and oil.” The group…
Kazakhstan has admonished a pro-Kremlin television presenter after he unleashed a tirade against the ex-Soviet country over its perceived distancing from Moscow since Russian troops invaded Ukraine. Central Asia’s richest country, Kazakhstan shares a land border with Russia, has a significant ethnic Russian minority and was forced to call in troops from a Russia-led bloc to quell unprecedented unrest in January. But…
Russian tech giant Yandex will sell its digital news and blogging products to fellow internet conglomerate VK, the companies announced Thursday. The sale of Yandex.News and Yandex.Zen to VK comes as Yandex, once the jewel of Russia’s rising IT scene, faces an increasingly uncertain future due to Western sanctions and an exodus of Russian IT…
Some 1,200 Syrian and Russian mercenaries have been pulled out of Libya as Moscow’s protracted invasion of Ukraine begins to place strain on the country’s military, the Financial Times reported Thursday. Unnamed Libyan officials told FT that 1,000 Syrians and 200 Russians from the Wagner Group had been moved from the war-torn North African country in…
Western countries’ increased supply of military assistance and weaponry to Ukraine endangers the whole of Europe, the Kremlin said Thursday. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov’s comments came as British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss called on all Western countries to double their military support for Kyiv and start shipping heavy weapons to Ukraine to help the country defend…
Russia on Thursday raised the alarm over “acts of terrorism” in Moldova’s Moscow-backed breakaway region of Transnistria after separatist authorities reported several attacks there this week. “We are alarmed by the escalation of tensions in Transnistria,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said during her weekly briefing, pointing to reports of shootings and explosions. “We regard…
Occupying Russian forces have appointed a new “military-civilian administration” in Ukraine’s southern Kherson region amid pro-Kyiv protests and rocket attacks. Russian soldiers occupied the city of Kherson on the banks of the Dnieper River in early March. Russia’s Defense Ministry said it gained control of the entire Kherson region this week. Russian troops have dismissed Kherson’s…
The Russian border region of Belgorod has confirmed using its air defense systems early Thursday, the day after an unexplained fire at a nearby ammunition dump. Regional authorities told state news agencies that late-night explosions heard by residents just 30 kilometers from the Russia-Ukraine border were the work of air defense systems. They provided no further…
Russia’s war in Ukraine and double-digit inflation drove down real disposable incomes in early 2022, the Rosstat statistics agency reported Wednesday. Real disposable income, a closely tracked indicator of Russian households’ financial wellbeing, calculates the amount residents have left to spend or save after payments. According to Rosstat, Russian households spent 17.1 trillion rubles ($231…
Russia’s oil production is on track to drop to an 18-year low this year as Western sanctions and departing foreign oil companies complicate extraction and reduce demand. Finance Minister Anton Siluanov told reporters Wednesday that Russian oil output could decline 17% this year. “How sales will be conducted further is difficult to asses now,” Siluanov…
A handful of hacker groups aligned with the Russian government have carried out hundreds of cyberattacks against Ukraine since Moscow invaded, U.S. tech giant Microsoft said in a report Wednesday. It added that in “hybrid” warfare tactics, Russia often matches cyberattacks with military assaults on the battlefield. “Starting just before the invasion, we have seen…