June 12 marks Russia Day: a national holiday that sees Muscovites flock to festivities and firework shows across the city. First celebrated in 1992, the date commemorates when the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic first declared state sovereignty in 1990. But 30 years on, the holiday is not only being celebrated in Russia itself —…
When Vadim and Fyodor waited outside the first McDonald’s to open in the Soviet Union, they stood in line with an estimated 30,000 other people for more than three and a half hours. Thirty-two years later, the pair were again in line on Sunday as McDonald’s reopened in Russia after a lightning sale and hurried…
Former Crimean Prosecutor Natalya Poklonskaya has been dismissed from her post in the Russian government, weeks after criticizing Moscow’s war in Ukraine. President Vladimir Putin removed Poklonskaya from her post as the deputy head of Rossotrudnichestvo, Russia’s federal agency for international outreach, on Monday. The 42-year-old took up the role in February 2022, after declining…
Nearly 70 Moscow metro passengers and pickters have been detained across the Russian capital on the Russia Day national holiday Sunday, an independent watchdog has said. “At least 67 people were detained by police on Russia Day,” the OVD-Info police-monitoring website said. “Most of them — 43 people — were detained in the Moscow metro…
Russian forces said Sunday they had struck a site in western Ukraine storing US- and EU-supplied weapons, as fighting intensified in an eastern region where the country’s top commander said the land “is covered in blood.” The strike on the town of Chortkiv, a rare attack by Russia in the relatively calm west of Ukraine,…