Year: 2022

Russia said Wednesday it had shot down a Ukrainian drone overnight, marking the latest cross-border intrusion on a Russian border region amid Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. Kursk region Governor Roman Starovoit said a Soviet-era Tu-141 reconnaissance drone crossed into Russian airspace late Tuesday before being shot down. Footage shared by Starovoit showed what he said…

An EU ban on insuring ships transporting Russian oil could potentially hurt Moscow more than its embargo on the nation’s crude, analysts say. The European Union recently unveiled the insurance ban in a sixth set of economic sanctions aimed at punishing Russia over its invasion of Ukraine. In a further knock, G7 leaders are seeking…

Russia is working actively to “normalize” the situation in Afghanistan, President Vladimir Putin said Tuesday during a visit to neighboring Tajikistan, evoking Moscow’s responsibilities in the area. “We are doing everything to normalize the situation [in Afghanistan] and we are trying to build relations with the political forces that control the situation,” Putin said during talks…

Bulgaria will expel 70 Russian diplomatic staff, the EU country’s prime minister announced on Tuesday, the biggest number ordered out in one go from the Balkan nation. “Bulgaria is going to expel 70 Russian diplomats. Our services identified them as people who worked against our interests,” Prime Minister Kiril Petkov told reporters. “Everyone who works…

Russian aluminum magnate Oleg Deripaska said Tuesday it would be a “colossal mistake” for Russia to destroy Ukraine with its military offensive, a rare rebuke from a member of Russia’s business elite.  “Is it in Russia’s interest to destroy Ukraine? Of course not, that would be a colossal mistake,” he told a rare press conference in Moscow. He repeated…

Russia has shirked blame for Monday’s deadly missile strike on a central Ukrainian shopping mall that killed at least 20 people and injured dozens, calling accusations that it targeted civilians “fake” and a “provocation.” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said the attack in the city of Kremenchuk, which took place while some 1,000 civilians were inside…

Russia will by Thursday midnight block the renewal of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) permanent mission in Ukraine, ending a 23-year presence in the war-torn country, say diplomatic sources. Russia “has the power to block the mandate at the end of June and it said it was going to do so,” Danish ambassador…

Russia will end its war on Ukraine as soon as Kyiv surrenders, the Kremlin said Tuesday as Western leaders searched for new ways to amp up economic pressure on Moscow.   “The Ukrainian side can end everything before the end of today,” the state-run TASS news agency quoted Peskov as saying to reporters.  “An order for…

French tire group Michelin said Tuesday it plans to transfer its activities in Russia to local management, the latest foreign firm to exit the country following Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. Hundreds of Western companies ranging from furniture store IKEA to fast-food chain McDonald’s and sports retailer Nike have left Russia since the war erupted in late February and sanctions…

Moody’s ratings agency has confirmed that Russia defaulted on foreign debt for the first time in a century after bondholders did not receive $100 million in interest payments. “Missed coupon payment constitutes a default,” Moody’s said in a statement late Monday.  Bloomberg had earlier reported that Russia has defaulted on its foreign debt after the…

Russian aviation authorities are preventing jobless pilots from finding work with foreign airlines, the Kommersant business daily reported Tuesday, citing five unnamed industry sources.  Airlines started laying off Russian pilots in the spring after most international flights were grounded due to the risk of aircraft seizures in line with Western sanctions over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.…

Moscow opposition politician Ilya Yashin has been sentenced to jail a month after being found guilty of “discrediting” the Russian military. Independent journalist Irina Babloyan said she and Yashin were on a walk at a park in central Moscow’s Khamovniki district late Monday evening when police officers detained him and took him in an unknown…

A Russian missile strike on a crowded mall in central Ukraine killed at least 18 people in what Group of Seven leaders branded “a war crime” at a meeting in Germany where they looked to step up sanctions on Moscow. The leaders vowed that Russian President Vladimir Putin and those responsible would be held to…

A Russian missile has struck a busy shopping mall in central Ukraine, officials in Kyiv said Monday, with at least two deaths and 20 injuries among the more than 1,000 civilians said to have been inside. Video footage shows plumes of black smoke rising from the burning shopping center in the industrial city of Kremenchuk…

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Monday urged world powers to do their utmost to help end Russia’s invasion by the end of the year, as G7 leaders planned new sanctions and vowed to support Kyiv “as long as it takes.” U.S. President Joe Biden and his peers from the Group of Seven rich nations, meeting…

Ukraine’s richest oligarch has filed a lawsuit against Russia in Europe’s top human rights court, citing “grievous violations” in Russia’s seizure of Ukrainian property and resources since the start of Moscow’s invasion in late February. Rinat Akhmetov, a steel tycoon who owns Ukraine’s largest steel manufacturer Metainvest, filed the lawsuit in the European Court of…

Updated at 5:24 p.m. on June 27 to add Russia’s denial. Russia shot down reports that it defaulted on its external debt Monday, after a deadline on $100 million in interest payments passed. Bloomberg had earlier reported that Russia has defaulted on its foreign debt after the expiration of the grace period on about $100 million in interest…

U.S. basketball star Brittney Griner, who is in detention in Russia on drug charges, will go on trial in Russia on July 1, a court said on Monday. Griner, a two-time Olympic gold medalist and WNBA champion, was detained at a Moscow airport in February after she was found carrying vape cartridges with cannabis oil…

“No war” and “They are lying to you” were not messages Russian viewers expected to see during a news bulletin on state-run television.  But that was exactly what happened when producer Marina Ovsyannikova stormed a live broadcast waving an anti-war poster shortly after Russia’s attack on Ukraine.  “The atmosphere was terrible at Channel One at…

Russia-based web searches for pirated Microsoft products including the Windows operating system have skyrocketed after the company halted sales in the country over Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, the Kommersant daily reported Monday.  The U.S. tech giant behind the software that runs on over 1 billion devices worldwide announced the suspension of new sales in Russia…

Russian student Sofia Sapega has sought a pardon from Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko a month after being sentenced to six years in prison on extremism charges, the BBC’s Russian service reported Monday.  Sapega and her then-boyfriend, Belarusian dissident Roman Protasevich, were detained in May 2021 when Minsk authorities forcibly diverted their international flight as it flew…

President Volodymyr Zelensky will urge world powers to step up their support for Ukraine when he addresses the G7 summit on Monday, as Kyiv reels from the first Russian strikes on the capital in weeks. U.S. President Joe Biden and his counterparts from the Group of Seven wealthy democracies, meeting in the Bavarian Alps, have…

Political science graduate Yevgeny Zhukov used to own a small coffee shop in Moscow, but when the war in Ukraine began he decided to pack up and leave. Joining the tens of thousands of Russians that have fled their country, Zhukov traveled to neighboring Georgia where he helped set up an NGO to aid Ukrainian…

Four G7 powers will ban Russian gold exports in a new bid to stop oligarchs from buying the precious metal to avoid the impact of sanctions against Moscow, Britain said Sunday. The joint action taken by Britain, Canada, Japan and the United States, “will directly hit Russian oligarchs and strike at the heart of (President…

Updated at 5:30 p.m. on June 26 to clarify the number of victims. Russia’s early morning strikes on Kyiv on Sunday killed one person and wounded six, including a seven-year-old girl, the Ukrainian capital’s mayor said, updating the toll. “A body was found. Six residents were wounded. Four of them were hospitalized, including a seven-year-old…

Russia will deliver missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads to Belarus in the coming months, President Vladimir Putin said Saturday as he received Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko. “In the coming months, we will transfer to Belarus Iskander-M tactical missile systems, which can use ballistic or cruise missiles, in their conventional and nuclear versions,” Putin said…

Ukraine’s Severodonetsk was “fully occupied” by the Russian army, its mayor said on Saturday, after weeks of fighting over the key eastern city. “The city has been fully occupied by the Russians,” mayor Oleksandr Striuk said. The Ukrainian army on Friday said it would withdraw its forces from the city of some 100,000 inhabitants before…

Russia has quietly made it easier to build pipelines in nature reserves, scrapped regulations on automobile emissions and pushed back measures to reduce pollution as part of a broad rollback of environmental regulations that looks set to gather pace amid the war in Ukraine and a deep economic recession.  Business organizations are lobbying for many…

Russian authorities have removed a Polish flag from a memorial commemorating the thousands of Poles killed by the Soviet Union, amid heightened tensions between Moscow and Warsaw over the Ukraine conflict. Historians and visitors to the Katyn memorial in western Russia’s Smolensk region noted the flag’s disappearance on social media on Friday. The mayor of…

Ukraine on Saturday said Russia was aiming to drag its ally Belarus into the war, after reporting that missiles which struck a border region near Kyiv came from Belarusian territory. Twenty rockets fired from Belarusian territory and the air targeted the village of Desna in the northern Chernigiv region at around 05:00 a.m. (02:00 GMT)…

A two-month Russian assault on the Ukrainian city of Sievierodonetsk entered its final phase Friday after Ukrainian forces were ordered to retreat.  The capture of the city, where 100,000 people lived prior to Russia’s invasion, represents a small but significant victory for Russian forces that are poised to take control of eastern Ukraine’s entire Luhansk…

Russian President Vladimir Putin denied on Friday that Moscow is stopping Ukraine from exporting grain as Russia’s ongoing Black Sea port blockade continued to raise fears of a global food crisis. Kyiv is one of the world’s major exporters of wheat, corn and sunflower oil, but its shipments have been blocked since the Kremlin’s invasion…

Kazakhstan, which shares the world’s longest continuous border with Russia, has long balanced its status as Moscow’s most trusted ally in ex-Soviet Central Asia with attempts to maintain cordial ties with the West. But Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, combined with Russian perceptions that the Kremlin secured the Kazakh regime during a political crisis earlier this…

The Kremlin said Friday it hopes that Ukraine and Moldova’s already strained ties with Moscow will not be worsened by the countries’ new status as candidates for European Union membership. EU leaders on Thursday agreed to grant candidate status to Ukraine, whose outgunned military has been battling Russian forces for four months, and Moldova in…

Russia plans to scale up industrial drone production following China’s exit from the commercial market and increasing demand from the Russian military in Ukraine, the Kommersant business daily reported Friday. The open-source drone manufacturer Copter Express (COEX) sold its industrial division to the drone nest maker Hive for an undisclosed sum, the publication reported. Industrial…

A Russian-appointed official in southern Ukraine’s occupied city of Kherson was killed in an apparent car bomb attack, local authorities reported Friday. Kherson’s so-called “military-civilian” administration told the state-run TASS news agency that one person died in a car explosion in a residential neighborhood in the early morning. “Today, my friend, head of the department of family,…

Ukrainian forces will retreat from Severodonetsk in the face of a brutal Russian offensive that is reducing the battleground city to rubble, a senior Ukrainian official said Friday. The news came shortly after the European Union made a strong show of support for Ukraine, granting the former Soviet republic candidate status, although there is still…

Driving out of the devastated eastern Ukrainian city of Lysychansk Thursday, AFP journalists twice had to jump out of cars and lie on the ground as Russian forces shelled the city’s main supply road. Soon after noon (0900 GMT), an AFP team saw dark smoke rising over the road ahead. They heard artillery fire and…

A Russian military cargo plane crash landed south of Moscow on Friday, killing at least four out of nine to 10 people on board, according to media reports. The Il-76 cargo aircraft crashed in the city of Ryazan 200 kilometers southeast of Moscow, officials said in a statement carried by news agencies. Reports said it was…

European Union leaders on Thursday agreed to grant candidate status to Ukraine and Moldova, in a show of support in the face of Russia’s war. “A historic moment. Today marks a crucial step on your path towards the EU,” Michel wrote on Twitter during a summit in Brussels.  “Our future is together.” Ukraine applied to…

EU leaders met Thursday to discuss Ukraine’s long-sought bid to join the bloc, even as tensions between Brussels and Moscow deepened over gas supplies and Russia closed in on key cities in the embattled Donbas region. “This is a decisive moment for the European Union… A choice must be made today that will determine the…

U.S. telecoms equipment maker Cisco will end operations in Russia and Belarus in response to the war in Ukraine, the company told Reuters on Thursday. The company had initially suspended its operations in Russia, including sales and services, in March after the Kremlin ordered troops into neighboring Ukraine.  Hundreds of foreign businesses have exited Russia…

Russian authorities have launched a campaign to recruit essential workers for the “reconstruction” of eastern Ukrainian territories occupied by its forces, according to public online job postings and news reports. Since shifting the focus of its invasion eastward following a failed effort to capture Kyiv, Russia has said its main objective is to “liberate” areas…

Russia has made two interest payments on dollar-denominated debt in rubles, the country’s finance ministry said Thursday, as Moscow faces the risk of an external debt default. “Funds for the payment of coupons on external bonds of the Russian Federation maturing in 2027 and 2047 in the total amount of 12.51 billion rubles (the equivalent…

The first shipments of smartphones and game consoles under Russia’s so-called “parallel import” scheme have arrived in the country, Kommersant newspaper reported Thursday. The scheme was was designed as a way to maintain imports of consumer goods into Russia despite Western sanctions and an exodus of Western firms from the Russian market.  Mobile retailer Svyaznoy…

Nike will make a complete departure from Russia in the coming months, Reuters reported Thursday, citing an emailed statement from the company. The exit comes nearly four months after the U.S. athletic-wear giant suspended its Russian operations on March 3 following the country’s invasion of Ukraine.  “Nike has made the decision to leave the Russian…

Before being allowed to enter Russia last month, a business owner from a European Union member state was forced to give border officials at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport the name of every Ukrainian in his cell phone contact list. “He [the border guard] searched my phone and wrote down about eight or nine Ukrainian numbers on…

UN experts have confirmed the full or partial destruction of 152 cultural and historic heritage sites in Ukraine since Russia invaded the country, its cultural agency said Thursday. They include museums and monuments, churches and other religious buildings, and libraries and other exceptional buildings, UNESCO said in an update of its efforts to assist Ukraine…

Russia plans to replace the badly damaged Azovstal steel plant in the captured Ukrainian port city of Mariupol with either an industrial park or a leisure zone, a Russian minister said Wednesday. Deputy Prime Minister Marat Khusnullin said rebuilding was already underway the site, which became a symbol of Ukrainian resistance after its outnumbered defenders held…

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s global ratings have sunk to 20-year lows as the Russia invasion of Ukraines enters its fourth month, according to a Pew Research Center poll published Wednesday. A median of 9% of respondents in 18 countries said they have confidence in Putin “to do the right thing regarding world affairs,” Pew said.…