Year: 2022

The Russian ambassador to Poland was attacked with red paint by pro-Ukraine activists in Warsaw on Monday when he tried to lay a wreath to mark Victory Day, according to video footage and Russian officials. Victory Day is celebrated annually on May 9 to commemorate the Soviet defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II.…

LONDON, United Kingdom – Hundreds of Russians turned out Sunday in central London to demand the withdrawal of Russian troops from Ukraine and protest against growing authoritarianism in their home country. Joined by Belarusians and Ukrainians, protesters were a mix of longtime London residents and young people newly arrived in the United Kingdom. “It is…

Russian President Vladimir Putin lashed out at Western countries and hailed Russian soldiers fighting in Ukraine on Monday as he addressed an annual military parade in Moscow that marks the Soviet Union’s defeat of Nazi Germany. “You are fighting for the motherland, for her future, and so that nobody forgets the lessons of World War…

Russia will celebrate its 1945 victory over Nazi Germany on Monday with a show of military might as its army battles Kyiv’s forces in the east of Ukraine, where 60 people were killed in an air strike on a school sheltering civilians. President Vladimir Putin is set to flaunt Russia’s power in celebration of Victory…

Some 60 people sheltering in a village school in east Ukraine are feared dead after it was hit by an air strike, the Luhansk regional governor said Sunday. “Bilogorivka (village) was hit in an air strike” on Saturday, said Sergii Gaidai. “The bombs fell on the school and unfortunately it was completely destroyed. There was…

U.S. charge d’affaires for Ukraine Kristina Kvien and her team returned to Kyiv Sunday, the embassy tweeted, in a step toward re-establishing Washington’s diplomatic presence there after it was closed days before the Russian invasion. “Just arrived in Kyiv! Delighted to be back on Victory in Europe Day. Slava Ukraini!” tweeted the U.S. embassy in Kyiv’s…

U.S. First Lady Jill Biden made an unannounced visit to Ukraine Sunday, her spokesman said, meeting her Ukrainian counterpart Olena Zelenska at a school sheltering civilians including children displaced by the conflict. “I wanted to come on Mother’s Day. I thought it was important to show the Ukrainian people that this war has to stop and…

The entire G7 club of rich nations is “committed to phasing out or banning the import of Russian oil,” the White House said Sunday, escalating pressure on President Vladimir Putin over the invasion of Ukraine. “This will hit hard at the main artery of Putin’s economy and deny him the revenue he needs to fund…

Ukraine said Saturday that all women, children, and elderly civilians were evacuated from the Azovstal steel plant in the destroyed port city of Mariupol where Ukrainian forces are holding out against Russian troops. “The President’s order has been carried out: all women, children and the elderly have been evacuated from Azovstal. This part of the…

Kyiv said Saturday it has destroyed another Russian warship near the Black Sea’s Snake Island, where Ukrainian forces were awarded for heroism after rebuffing Russian demands to surrender. Ukraine’s defense ministry said in a statement an armed drone had destroyed a Serna-class landing craft and a missile defense system at the small island under Russian…

Russia will mark Monday the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazism amid expectations that ongoing fighting in Ukraine will cast a long shadow over the popular event. In particular, the set piece military parade on Moscow’s Red Square will see significantly fewer soldiers and equipment compared to last year, which experts have linked to significant losses…

Several fires have broken out in southern Siberia, affecting about 200 buildings and causing at least five deaths, local authorities said on Saturday, adding they had placed the area under a state of emergency. The fires in the Krasnoyarsk region covered more than 16 zones, spreading to around 200 buildings, several sawmills and a children’s…

In a ceremony deserving of his rank, Russian Major General Vladimir Frolov was laid to rest in St. Petersburg’s Serafimovskoe Cemetery, where tens of thousands of victims of World War II are buried. “Today we say goodbye to a true hero. Vladimir Petrovich Frolov died a heroic death in battle with Ukrainian nationalists. He sacrificed…

A senior official from the Russian parliament said Friday that Russia will remain in southern Ukraine “forever,” speaking on a visit to the Moscow-controlled city of Kherson. “Russia is here forever. There should be no doubt about this. There will be no return to the past,” Andrey Turchak said, according to a statement from the…

A prominent Russian opposition journalist has been arrested in absentia on charges of publishing “fake” news about the Russian military’s air strike on a maternity hospital in southern Ukraine, Interfax reported Friday. Alexander Nevzorov, a former MP who has worked with independent media outlets like Dozhd and Ekho Moskvy, is one of the dozens of Russians…

Russia on Friday allowed for hundreds of categories of goods to be imported without the agreement of the intellectual property owner in order to bypass restrictions imposed over the Ukraine conflict. Among the list published by the Industry and Commerce Ministry are Apple and Samsung smartphones, major car brands, game consoles, and spare parts used…

The Pentagon on Friday denied reports that it helped Ukrainian forces sink the Russian warship Moskva in the Black Sea last month in a stunning setback for Moscow’s invasion. “We did not provide Ukraine with specific targeting information for the Moskva,” Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said in a statement. Kirby said the U.S. had “no…

Russian state enterprises with seemingly little affiliation to the military are recruiting “mobilization and wartime experts,” the independent Sota news outlet has reported. The report comes as top Russian officials continue to deny speculation that the Kremlin plans to announce a full mobilization as soon as May 9, when Russia celebrates the Victory Day holiday.…

A Belarusian court has sentenced student Sofia Sapega, the Russian girlfriend of a Belarusian dissident journalist, to six years in prison following a closed trial, Belarus’ Viasna human rights group said Friday.  Sapega and her boyfriend, Roman Protasevich, were on a Ryanair flight from Athens to Vilnius in May 2021 when Belarusian authorities forcibly diverted…

More than 3.8 million Russians have left the country in the first three months of 2022, according to data from Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) published this week.  A total of 3,880,679 Russians traveled for work, business, tourism and private reasons between January and March. Former Soviet countries saw significant spikes in arrivals after Russia…

Moscow-backed separatists in southeastern Ukraine said they had taken down traffic signs spelling out the name of the besieged city of Mariupol in Ukrainian and English and replaced them with Russian ones. “Updated road signs have been set up at the entrance to Mariupol,” the transportation ministry of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic said in…

U.S. exports to Russia dropped to a 20-year low in March as Washington hit Moscow with a series of punishing economic sanctions over its invasion of Ukraine, according to the latest U.S. Census Bureau data. U.S. exports to Russia dropped from $497.5 million in February to $101.1 million in March, according to the U.S. Bureau…

An elderly Ukrainian woman who became a symbol of support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has been located in a Ukrainian hospital and filmed suggesting that her image was co-opted by Russian officials and state-owned media. The pensioner known as “granny Anya” was last month caught on camera mistakenly greeting Ukrainian soldiers with a Soviet flag. The…

U.S. intelligence helped Ukraine sink Russia’s Moskva missile cruiser last month, NBC News reported Thursday as the Pentagon pushed back on a previous report saying U.S. intelligence has allowed Kyiv to kill Russian generals. Ukrainian forces targeted the Moskva on April 13 after asking the U.S. to help identify and confirm its location in the…

Two men are on the run after attacking a conscription office in western Siberia with Molotov cocktails.  In a dramatic video shared by news outlet Baza on Thursday, the pair are seen throwing at least seven Molotovs through the window of a recruitment office in the city of Nizhnevartovsk. In the clip, flames can be…

Israel’s Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said Thursday that Russian leader Vladimir Putin has apologized for remarks made by Moscow’s top diplomat, Sergei Lavrov, who claimed Adolf Hitler may have had “Jewish blood.” The comments had sparked outrage in the Jewish state. “The Prime Minister accepted President Putin’s apology for Lavrov’s remarks and thanked him for…

Russia on Thursday said Western aid to Kyiv had slowed its offensive in Ukraine but would not thwart its victory, as conflicting reports emerged about efforts to rescue civilians from a besieged steel plant in the devastated city of Mariupol. Nearly 10 weeks into a war that has left thousands of people dead, flattened Ukrainian…

Russia should consider developing a domestic alternative to Wikipedia, President Vladimir Putin said Thursday, questioning the quality of information published in the online encyclopedia.   “Objective, useful, thought-through, but also beautifully and masterfully presented information is in high demand because it is impossible to use Wikipedia alone,” Putin said during a meeting with Maxim Dreval, CEO…

Pro-Kremlin TV host Vladimir Solovyov has launched a digital bot to help Russians report anti-war activity. Would-be informers in Russia’s fourth-largest city Yekaterinburg can use a bot linked to Solovyov’s local Telegram channel, UralLive, to fill in a form on supposed opposition sentiment. “If you have information about anti-Russian activities in the Urals, write about…

Rehearsals are underway for Russia’s upcoming Victory Day celebrations, when the country marks the anniversary of the Soviet Union’s 1945 defeat of the Nazis with a massive military parade on Red Square. May 9 is one of Russia’s most significant holidays, as many Russians are related to someone who was killed during World War II.…

Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko has said he didn’t anticipate the war in Ukraine would “drag on this way,” over two months after close ally Russia invaded its pro-Western neighbor that also shares a border with Belarus. Analysts have said Russia’s leadership aimed to swiftly crush Ukraine’s military and take the capital Kyiv in the days…

A Russian car plant is handing out farmland to workers facing furlough after Western automakers left Russia over Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. The Avtotor factory, based in Russia’s western enclave of Kaliningrad, has earmarked 300 hectares (740 acres) for its garden giveaway.  Avtotor said that giving land so that workers could grow their own produce…

The Kremlin on Thursday accused the West of preventing a “quick” end to Russia’s military campaign in Ukraine by supplying weapons to the pro-Western country. Asked about a New York Times report that U.S. intelligence helped Ukraine kill a number of Russian generals, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said: “The United States, Britain, NATO as a…

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s deputy chief of staff has unveiled a statue symbolizing support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in the occupied city of Mariupol. Sergei Kiriyenko gave a speech alongside the monument, which depicts an elderly Ukrainian woman holding a Soviet flag, on the city’s Leninsky Komsomol Square. The pensioner, known as babushka Anya,…

Russia said Wednesday its forces had carried out simulated nuclear missile strikes in the western enclave of Kaliningrad on the border with the European Union. The announcement came on the 70th day of Moscow’s military action in the pro-Western country, with thousands killed and more than 13 million displaced. After sending troops to Ukraine in…

Officials in Russian-controlled Crimea said Thursday they have ended an eight-year Ukrainian blockade of the peninsula and begun restoring traffic via formerly Ukraine-held territory. Ukraine suspended train and bus services to Crimea and imposed a blockade on freight shipments in the months after Russia seized it from Kyiv in 2014. “The transportation blockade of Crimea…

A Russian-announced ceasefire was due to begin Thursday at the besieged Azovstal steel plant in the devastated Ukrainian city of Mariupol to allow civilians to flee. The three-day halt in Russia’s attack on the Azovstal steelworks was announced as EU member states debated a proposed ban on Russian oil, the bloc’s toughest move yet over…

U.S. intelligence has helped Ukraine kill some of the 12 Russian generals who died on the frontlines of the Russia-Ukraine war, The New York Times reported late Wednesday.  Real-time U.S. battlefield intelligence reportedly included locations of the Russian military’s mobile headquarters and anticipated troop movements, according to unnamed U.S. officials.  The officials cited by the…

As many as 600 people could have been killed when the Mariupol theater sheltering hundreds of civilians was shelled by Russian forces in March, a new investigation by the Associated Press (AP) reported Wednesday. The Donetsk Academic Regional Drama Theater was hit by a Russian air strike on March 16, killing an unknown number of…

A Russian army helicopter violated Finland’s airspace on Wednesday, the Finnish defense ministry said, as the country mulls an increasingly likely NATO membership bid. “The aircraft type is a Mi-17 helicopter and the depth of the suspected violation is about four to five kilometers”, a ministry spokesman told AFP. This is the second Russian airspace…

A spate of airstrikes by Russian combat jets in eastern Ukraine last week was a sign that Russia’s Air Force may be changing tack after failing to achieve aerial superiority over Ukraine, analysts told The Moscow Times.  Russian pilots have largely taken a risk-averse approach to air combat in the two-month war, choosing to attack…

An elderly Ukrainian woman has become a symbol of support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine after the pensioner mistakenly greeted Ukrainian soldiers with a Soviet banner. Her viral popularity comes in the run-up to Russia’s May 9 holiday Victory Day, when nostalgia for the Soviet Union and its defeat of Nazi Germany in World War…

Pro-Kremlin television host Vladimir Solovyov visited the besieged Ukrainian port city of Mariupol, he said in a YouTube broadcast Tuesday.  Solovyov was pictured at a metallurgical plant in Mariupol alongside Denis Pushilin, the head of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR). In the photo, the state television anchor can be seen dressed in military fatigues…

The European Union’s executive unveiled Wednesday plans for a gradual ban on Russian oil imports as part of a raft of new sanctions to punish Moscow for invading Ukraine. The proposed measures include moves against Russia’s biggest bank and the targeting of Patriarch Kirill, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church. If approved, the oil…

Stanislav Shushkevich, the first leader of independent Belarus who played a key role in the dissolution of the Soviet Union, died Wednesday at age 87. Shushkevich’s wife told journalists her husband passed away in the Belarusian capital of Minsk as a result of Covid-19 complications. He was placed in intensive care last month. “We hope…

Belarus, a Moscow ally that shares a border with Ukraine, launched “surprise” military maneuvers on Wednesday, to test the reactive capacity of its army, its defense ministry said.  Belarus military units were testing their capacity to “go on the alert, move to predetermined zones and undertake combat training,” the ministry said in a statement.  “The…

A Russian military plane was flying in the skies over Berdyansk, a city in southern Ukraine, but no one took much notice. “Nothing to worry about,” said an older woman sitting on a bench in a small square on a sunny weekend afternoon. “It’s one of ours.” Russian forces took control of this port city…

Russia has spent one-tenth of its expected budget on Ukrainian refugees as some emergency accommodation sites remain empty, according to public procurement data and interviews with officials. “Official figures say more than 1 million refugees have entered Russia, but we’re not feeling it,” Yelena Rusakova, a Moscow municipal deputy who volunteers to assist refugees, told…

Russian President Vladimir Putin banned Tuesday economic relations with sanctioned individuals from “unfriendly countries” on a soon to be published list. The move was a response to “unfriendly and contradictory to international law actions of the United States and foreign states and international organizations that joined it, which are aimed at illegally depriving and restricting…

Russian forces launched a major assault Tuesday on the Azovstal steel plant, the last holdout of Ukrainian forces in the devastated southern port city of Mariupol, as 101 civilians who had been trapped in the site for weeks were finally brought to safety. “We are so thankful for everyone who helped us. There was a…

The United States said Tuesday that Russia has unjustly detained basketball star Brittney Griner, a finding that steps up efforts to free her more than two months after she was seized in Moscow. “The Department of State has determined that the Russian Federation has wrongfully detained U.S. citizen Brittney Griner,” a State Department spokesperson said.…

Anti-war Russians who fled abroad in the wake of the invasion of Ukraine are looking to the upcoming annual celebrations of the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany on May 9 in order to gauge the viability of returning home. There has been much speculation that Russian President Vladimir Putin will use the occasion, which…

Russian President Vladimir Putin told French counterpart Emmanuel Macron Tuesday the West must stop supplying weapons to Ukraine and accused Kyiv of not taking talks to end the conflict seriously, the Kremlin said. Accusing Ukrainian forces of committing war crimes and claiming the EU was “ignoring” them, Putin told Macron “the West could help stop…

The founder of one of Russia’s largest banks has condemned Russia’s business elite for refusing to speak out against Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. Oleg Tinkov became one of the few influential Russian business owners to protest the war when he denounced the conflict as a “massacre” in an Instagram post on April 19. He later told…

Russian forces have relaunched their attack on Ukrainian fighters inside the Azovstal Iron and Steel Works in the besieged city of Mariupol. Troops began a fresh bombardment of the factory on Tuesday May 3 after accusing Ukrainian fighters of violating a ceasefire agreement. The Ukrainian military said that armoured vehicles and ground troops were also…

Russia’s Foreign Ministry has accused the Israeli government of supporting a “neo-Nazi regime” in Ukraine. In a text published online Tuesday, officials accused Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid of making “anti-historical statements” which “explained the course of the current Israeli government in supporting the neo-Nazi regime in Kyiv.” The statement comes after Lapid criticized his…