Getting Stronger Every Day in Every Way

Крепись: keep the faith The other day a friend and I were talking about keeping our spirits up in these dark times. She tried to console me with a well-known Russian phrase: “Нас бьют — мы крепчаем! (literally “they beat us, we get stronger!” — similar to “when the going gets tough, the tough get…

Beet This: Ukraine Wins Fight To Protect Borshch Soup

The UN’s cultural agency on Friday inscribed the culture surrounding beetroot soup known as borshch in Ukraine on its list of endangered cultural heritage, a recognition sought urgently by Kviv after its invasion by neighboring Russia. Ukraine prizes borshch, a nourishing soup with beetroot as its base, as a national dish even though it is…

Russia Threatens to Shut Down Bulgaria Embassy

Russia on Friday threatened to close its embassy in Bulgaria and shut down the EU country’s mission in Moscow as tensions rage over Moscow’s offensive in Ukraine and espionage concerns. This week Bulgarian Prime Minister Kiril Petkov said his country would expel 70 Russian diplomatic staff, the biggest number ordered out from the Balkan nation.…

Russian ATMs Reject New 100-Ruble Bill – Kommersant

Russia’s new 100-ruble bill will not be introduced into circulation anytime soon due to difficulties stemming from Western ATM and point-of-sale service providers’ exit over the war in Ukraine, the Kommersant business daily reported Thursday.  Russia’s Central Bank introduced the new 100-ruble banknote — depicting the Kremlin’s Spasskaya Tower on the front and the Rzhev…

Students’ working semester has started at ROSATOM Engineering Division facilities under construction

The students working semester has started at facilities of ROSATOM’s Engineering Division on July 01. For two summer months, 176 senior students of the Engineering Division specialized universities will work at construction sites of Kursk NPP-2 power units and the overseas construction sites – Belarus NPP, Rooppur NPP (the People’s Republic of Bangladesh) and El-Dabaa…

U.S. Basketball Star Goes on Trial in Russian Court

American basketball star Brittney Griner went on trial in a Russian court Friday amid a historic low point in relations between Washington and Moscow. The WNBA champion and two-time Olympic gold medalist was detained at a Moscow airport in February after security officers allegedly found vape cartridges containing cannabis oil in her luggage. Griner was…

Strikes Kill 21 in Ukraine’s Odesa

Missile strikes slammed into a residential building and a recreation centre early Friday, killing 21 people and wounding dozens in Ukraine’s Odesa region, in attacks swiftly condemned by Germany. Two children were among the dead and six others among the injured, Ukrainian officials said, one day after Russia abandoned positions on a strategic island in…

Russia Drops Remaining Covid-19 Restrictions

Russia has canceled its nationwide mask mandate, federal health authorities announced Friday, as the coronavirus pandemic has been pushed into the background amid the country’s military campaign in Ukraine.  Rospotrebnadzor, Russia’s consumer protection watchdog, said the country’s caseload has “steadily” declined over the past four months. It claimed that 93% of currently confirmed cases are either…

Siberian Scientist Battling Late-Stage Cancer Arrested in Hospital for Treason – Reports

A Siberian spectral imagery scientist battling late-stage cancer was arrested in hospital and brought to Moscow on accusations of treason, the Tayga.info news website reported Thursday. Dmitry Kolker, Ph.D., heads the Novosibirsk State University’s quantum optical technologies laboratory, which partners with Germany’s Max Born Institute and France’s National Institute of Metrology. “They took a sick…