Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday thanked Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan for mediating talks on the export of grain from Ukraine, saying there was some progress. “I want to thank you for your mediation efforts,” Putin told Erdogan during a meeting in Tehran in comments released by the Kremlin. “With your mediation, we have…
The capital of Russia’s Far East republic of Sakha was covered in a thick layer of harmful smog Tuesday as wildfires continued to rampage across the country’s eastern regions. “An excess of the maximum permissible concentrations of three kinds [of air pollutants] was revealed in the city of Yakutsk,” Natalya Borisova, the regional representative of…
North Korea could send builders to eastern Ukraine’s separatist regions to aid in their “reconstruction” after they have been devastated by months of war, Russia’s Ambassador to Pyongyang said Tuesday. “Highly qualified, hardworking, and ready to work in the most difficult conditions, Korean builders will be an asset in the serious task of restoring social,…
Russian President Vladimir Putin arrived in Tehran for talks Tuesday on the Syrian war at a three-way summit overshadowed by fallout from his country’s war on Ukraine. Putin traveled abroad for only the second time since ordering the invasion of Ukraine in order to attend the gathering that also involves Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.…
A prominent opera singer from Russia’s North Caucasus has been sentenced to 10 years in prison for calling on his home city to protest coronavirus lockdown measures in the early weeks of the pandemic, the state-run TASS news agency reported. Vadim Cheldiyev in April 2020 posted a video calling on people to attend a planned…
Russia’s police force has added Dmitry Gordon, a prominent Ukrainian journalist, to its wanted list months after he became one of the first non-Russians to be charged under new laws cracking down on information about the war in Ukraine. Gordon appeared in the Russian Interior Ministry’s database of wanted persons on Tuesday. But the specific…
Russia’s state-owned energy giant Gazprom is blaming cuts in gas deliveries to Europe on “force majeure,” two major German customers said on Tuesday, adding to fears about further disruptions. “We confirm that we have received a letter from Gazprom Export claiming force majeure retroactively for past and current gas supply shortfalls,” said Uniper, one of…
Russia will launch a football league for “friendly” Moscow-occupied and separatist territories in Ukraine and Georgia, a sporting official said Monday. The league will consist of clubs from annexed Crimea, the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhask People’s Republics and the Russian-held Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions in southern Ukraine, as well as the breakaway Georgian regions of…
Armenia will withdraw all troops from the contested Nagorno-Karabakh region – over which it has fought two wars with arch-foe Azerbaijan – by September, officials said Tuesday. Six weeks of fighting between the Caucasus neighbors in autumn 2020 claimed more than 6,500 lives and ended with a Russian-brokered ceasefire. Under the deal, Armenia ceded…
At least 300 soldiers from a single unit in Russia’s North Caucasus refused deployment to Ukraine in the first month of the war, The Moscow Times’ Russian service has reported. The men from the republic of Dagestan were deployed in the pro-Russian separatist region of Donbas in eastern Ukraine, according to activists cited by MT…
Russian world number 12 Daria Kasatkina criticized her country’s attitude toward homosexuality in a video published on Monday as she announced she was a lesbian. The 25-year-old’s comments come after Russian deputies proposed on Monday a new law which would ban information on all non-traditional sexual relationships in the public sphere. Broadcasting homosexual “propaganda” to…