Month: July 2022

One of the world’s largest restaurant companies, Yum Brands Inc, announced Tuesday it is “in advanced talks” to sell its KFC restaurants and franchise in Russia. The American company plans to fully exit the Russian market after selling the brand to a local buyer, state-run news agency Interfax reported.  The company has already sold its…

Russian officials have allegedly ordered the Jewish Agency for Israel to stop all activity inside the country in a measure that could impact thousands of Russian Jews who want to repatriate to Israel, The Jerusalem Post reported on Tuesday. The Jewish Agency in Russia confirmed that it received a letter from the Russian government earlier…

ArcelorMittal, one of the world’s largest steelmakers, has resumed shipments to Russia just a month after suspending deliveries, the Kommersant business daily reported late Monday. ArcelorMittal removed Russian materials from its supply chain in March in response to Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.  In May, Kommersant reported that the Luxembourg-based multinational had suspended supplies to Russia.…

The Russian website for home retail giant IKEA crashed Tuesday as the company launched its final sale before leaving the country. Buyers were unable to log into their accounts, add items to their carts or place orders. A message on IKEA’s website said later that online carts were unavailable for “technical reasons.”  Disruptions linked to…

Prisons and corporations across Russia are recruiting volunteers to fight in Ukraine, independent media reported this week. The effort appears to be an attempt by the Russian military to replace its depleted forces following a grinding four-month effort to capture territories in southern and eastern Ukraine. Wagner, a Kremlin-linked private military company, has allegedly offered…

An official from Russia’s powerful FSB security services took over the government of the Moscow-occupied Kherson region in southern Ukraine, Kremlin-installed authorities said Tuesday.  Sergei Yeliseyev, until now the deputy head of government in the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad, “became head of the government in the Kherson region,” said Vladimir Saldo, who heads the Russian…

Russian villages near the border with Ukraine were subjected to intense artillery fire early Tuesday, according to the governors of the Kursk and Bryansk regions.  “The morning began again with artillery shelling of the border settlements,” Roman Starovoit posted on messaging app Telegram. Starovoit later added that an unspecified number of houses were damaged and…

American basketball star Brittney Griner asked US President Joe Biden to free her from a Russian prison in a handwritten letter Monday, portions of which were made public by her family. Two-time Olympic champion Griner, detained in Russia since February on drug smuggling charges, told Biden she fears she might never be freed. “As I sit here…

Russian cosmonauts on board the ISS held a flag symbolizing pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine and congratulated Moscow’s forces on capturing the region of Luhansk, the space agency in Moscow said Monday. Roscosmos posted a photograph of cosmonauts Oleg Artemyev, Denis Matveyev and Sergei Korsakov holding the flag of the self-proclaimed separatist Luhansk People’s Republic…

Ukraine has long been hailed as one of the world’s great breadbaskets. In 2021, the country accounted for 10% of global wheat exports in 2021, according to the United Nations. Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in February saw agriculture grind to a halt. As tensions rose in the Black Sea, a blockade of Russian ships disrupted…

Moscow authorities will rename a stretch of land outside the British Embassy in honor of one of eastern Ukraine’s pro-Moscow breakaway republics, the Moscow Mayor’s Office said Monday.  The area — which runs along Smolenskaya Naberezhnaya between Protochny Pereulok and the exit onto Ulitsa Novy Arbat — will now be known as “Luhansk People’s Republic…

President Vladimir Putin said Monday that Russia will continue pressing forward in eastern Ukraine after Kyiv ordered its forces to retreat from the strategic city of Lysychansk and Russian officials claimed control over the entirety of Ukraine’s Luhansk region. “Military units … must carry out their tasks according to previously approved plans,” Putin said in…

Authorities in Uzbekistan said on Monday 18 people died in clashes in the autonomous Karakalpakstan region when mass protests erupted last week over planned constitutional changes affecting the territory’s status. The unrest, pitting protesters against security forces, represented the most significant challenge yet to the rule of President Shavkat Mirziyoyev since he rose to power…

Russian President Vladimir Putin won’t congratulate his U.S. counterpart Joe Biden on his country’s Independence Day holiday, the Kremlin said Monday.  “This is because this year, the U.S.’ unfriendly political discourse towards Russia has reached its culmination point,” Interfax quoted Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov as saying to reporters. “Under this circumstance, sending such a congratulatory…

A Siberian journalist and activist has been moved to a psychiatric hospital while facing trial for publishing “fake news” about the Russian army, her colleagues at the RusNews media outlet said.  Maria Ponomarenko, 44, was detained in St. Petersburg in April for allegedly publishing information about the Russian bombing of a theater in the Ukrainian…

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday ordered Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu to press ahead with Moscow’s offensive in Ukraine after troops took control of the entire Lugansk region.  “Military units, including the East group and the West group, must carry out their tasks according to previously approved plans,” Putin told Shoigu. “I hope that everything…

Russian troops were on Monday holding the strategic Ukrainian city of Lysychansk after Kyiv’s forces retreated, in a major boost for Russia’s campaign to seize the entire Donbas region of eastern Ukraine. With the war now well into its fifth month after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, governments and organizations gathered for a…

Chinese smartphones and home appliances are replacing major Western brands that have exited Russia over its invasion of Ukraine, the Kommersant business daily reported Monday. January-June 2022 results analyzed by the Marvel Distribution IT supplier showed at least seven Chinese smartphone brands leading sales in Russia, according to Kommersant. Tecno, Infinix, Realme and Xiaomi showed more…

Russian émigré Valentin Semyonov uses sausage as an icebreaker when he meets his Georgian neighbors. “This tastes just like the good old Soviet stuff!” the gangly 38-year-old says as he hands around sticks of salami, of which he appears to have brought an endless supply from his motherland. There is hardly a neighbor in his…

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said Sunday that Moscow’s forces have taken the Ukrainian city of Lysychansk and control the entire Luhansk region, which has been the target of fierce battles in recent weeks. “Sergei Shoigu has informed the commander in chief of the Russian armed forces, Vladimir Putin, of the liberation of the People’s Republic…

Updated with Defense Ministry spokesperson comments and new death toll. Russia said four people were killed and several injured in a Sunday strike on a city near the border with Ukraine, the most deadly attack inside Russia since the start of the invasion of its western neighbor. The explosions, which occurred in the early hours…

Fighting raged Saturday for Ukraine’s strategic Lysychansk, as Kyiv denied a claim by Moscow-backed separatists that they had encircled the eastern city. Clashes have been intense in Lysychansk, the last major city in the Luhansk region of the Donbas still in Ukrainian hands, located across the river from neighbouring Severodonetsk seized by Russia last week.…

In a grainy, black and white video published Friday, a Russian jet swoops low over Snake Island in the Black Sea, recently vacated by Russian troops, and drops several bombs.  According to the Ukrainain military. the bombs contained white phosphorus.  Russia has deployed a huge array weapons in the four months of its ongoing military…

Sweeping Western sanctions are only hastening integration between Russia and Belarus, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Friday. Western countries levied several rounds of sanctions on both Moscow and Minsk in retaliation to the Russian invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, with Belarus accused of acting as a staging ground for Russia’s incursion into northern Ukraine. …

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.…

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…

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…

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 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…

President Vladimir Putin signed a decree Thursday ordering the transfer of the Sakhalin-2 oil and gas project in Far East Russia to a new domestic operator in response to “unfriendly” Western sanctions and threats to Russia’s national interests and economic security. Foreign investors will be required to apply to retain their existing shares in the…

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…