The United States has made a “substantial proposal” to Russia to free Americans including basketball star Brittney Griner, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Wednesday, as he announced he will speak to his Moscow counterpart for the first time since the Ukraine war. Blinken said he expected a telephone call “in the coming days” with…
Jailed Kremlin critic Vladimir Kara-Murza faces a second criminal case, Novaya Gazeta Europe reported Wednesday. Kara-Murza, 40, has been in pre-trial detention since his April 12 return to Russia on charges of spreading “false” information about the Russian military and faces 10 years in prison. Authorities now accuse him of cooperating with an “undesirable” foreign…
US basketball star Brittney Griner said at her trial Wednesday she had no intention of smuggling drugs into Russia and that she came to the country despite U.S. warnings so as not to let down her Russian team. Griner, a two-time Olympic basketball gold medalist and Women’s NBA champion who had played in Russia, was detained…
Russia has handed down its first-ever sentence against a surrogate mother on human trafficking charges, Russian media reported Wednesday. A court in the Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk found Kazakh citizen Tamara Yandieva, 29, guilty of human trafficking and sentenced her to three years in prison, the state-run TASS news agency reported. Although surrogacy is legal…
A barrage of Ukrainian rocket fire on the Russian-controlled Antonovskiy Bridge in the occupied Kherson region late Tuesday appeared to signal intensifying military preparations for Ukraine’s first major counteroffensive of the war. Video footage Wednesday showed huge craters in the strategic bridge over the Dnipro River that is part of a major highway connecting the…
The Philippines has scrapped a deal to buy 16 Russian military-transport helicopters over fears of U.S. sanctions, the Associated Press reported Wednesday. The $227 million deal to acquire Mi-17s from Moscow was approved in November and canceled in June, before the end of then-President Rodrigo Duterte’s term in office. “We could face sanctions,” Former Defense…
Russia’s prisons hope to replace Western brands like IKEA with products made by inmates as the government races to carry out its import substitution program, reports said Wednesday. State and municipal companies have signed 600 million rubles ($10 million) of contracts with penal colonies from the Middle Urals region so far this year, the local…
The Kremlin on Wednesday vowed to hinder work of Western media in Russia after a European court upheld a broadcast ban imposed on Russian news channel RT France. “Of course, we will take similar measures of pressure on Western media that operate in our country,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters. “We will also not…
Supplies of Russia’s Sputnik Light Covid-19 booster shot have run out in most regions as the country sees a new resurgence in the virus, the Kommersant business daily reported Wednesday. Russia on Wednesday recorded over 9,000 new coronavirus infections, an increase of nearly 3,000 compared to Tuesday. Sputnik Light consists of the first dose of…
Russian tourist Alexandra Rumyantseva is tanning on a beach in Moscow-annexed Crimea, not far away from the front lines of Ukraine’s eastern and southern territories. Sitting on a rock in a white bikini by clear Black Sea waters on the outskirts of Sevastopol, Rumyantseva looks up as a Russian fighter jet whizzes through the perfectly…
The European Union agreed to reduce gas consumption to break its dependence on Russia on Tuesday, as missile strikes on Ukraine’s Black Sea coast cast doubt on a grain export deal. The effort to help Germany wean itself off Russian gas for the winter came as Turkey announced a meeting in Russia next week between…