Russian authorities on Thursday added prominent human rights lawyer Pavel Chikov and journalist Ilya Varlamov to the country’s controversial “foreign agents” registry. Chikov and Varlamov were designated foreign agents for allegedly spreading “inaccurate information about the decisions made by public authorities,” the Justice Ministry said. Chikov, whose Telegram channel has more than 500,000 subscribers, was…
World Athletics on Thursday lifted the ban on the Russian track and field federation for state-sponsored doping although its athletes remain barred from competition while Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine continues. The Russian federation was banned in 2015 after a damning World Anti-Doping Agency report identified “a deeply-rooted culture of doping.” For the athletics superpower to return to…
The head of the 11th-century Kyiv Pechersk Lavra, Ukraine’s most significant Orthodox monastery, has said that the monks facing eviction because of their church’s links to Russia will not leave. The golden-domed religious complex overlooking the Dnipro River has a population of monks that were until recently under Moscow’s jurisdiction. The branch of the Ukrainian…
Russia’s only active female cosmonaut Anna Kikina on Thursday described a “wonderful” atmosphere during her mission to the International Space Station where she traveled aboard a SpaceX spaceship. The orbital station is one of the few remaining areas of cooperation between Moscow and Washington amid a breakdown of ties since Moscow sent troops to Ukraine.…
March 21, 2023, Moscow, Russia. – National Research Nuclear University MEPhI (NRNU MEPhI) announced enrollment of citizens of the Republic of Türkiye to study in the master’s program in Nuclear Physics and Technology. It is planned to enroll 25 students within the program of training qualified engineers for Akkuyu NPP, which is under construction in…
A Russian entrepreneur accused of smuggling American technologies to Russian arms manufacturers has escaped from house arrest in Italy 24 hours after a court there approved his extradition to the U.S., the Italian newspaper La Stampa reported Thursday. Artyom Uss, 40, the son of the governor of Russia’s Krasnoyarsk region, was one of five Russians…
Russian politician Maxim Katz has been arrested in absentia on charges of spreading “fake news” about the Russian Armed Forces, the independent Mediazona news website reported Thursday. Katz, 38, is well-known for his YouTube channel, where he discusses and criticizes Russia’s military actions in Ukraine to his more than 1.7 million subscribers. In October, Russia’s…
A court in Belarus sentenced a journalist to three years in prison on Thursday for writing an article critical of the authoritarian country’s powerful KGB secret police, state-run media reported. Moscow-aligned Belarus, ruled by President Alexander Lukashenko since 1994, has forced most independent media into exile, while critical journalists who remain in the country have…
The head of Russia’s Wagner mercenary group is likely to shift his attention away from the war in Ukraine, Bloomberg reported Thursday, citing sources familiar with the matter. According to Bloomberg’s sources, Yevgeny Prigozhin plans to turn his focus back to Africa, where his fighters are believed to have a presence in Sudan, the Central African…
Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) has banned the family of prominent Russian-Armenian climate activist and anti-war campaigner Arshak Makichyan from entering Russia for the next 50 years, he announced on social media Wednesday. “It is a lifetime ban, even for my younger brother,” the activist tweeted. Arshak Makichyan, whose family fled the war in Nagorno-Karabakh…
Russia’s economy will have finished adapting to Western sanctions by 2024, Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin told the State Duma on Thursday, adding that the country had survived the international attempts to isolate it. After the Kremlin sent troops to Ukraine last year, Moscow’s economy was hit with a flurry of sanctions and the exit…
A massive new gas pipeline to China could help reduce Russia’s reliance on European buyers, but analysts say the project reveals a growing imbalance between the longtime strategic allies. Beijing emerged as an economic lifeline for Moscow last year, above all for its energy purchases, after Western sanctions over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine cut Russia…
The Kremlin sees no point in resuming talks with the United States on the New START nuclear arms control treaty, a senior diplomat said Wednesday. Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov called Moscow’s recent suspension of New START, the last remaining arms control agreement between the world’s two biggest nuclear powers, “almost inevitable” given the “cumulative circumstances…
Russia’s AYYA T1 smartphone brand has sold fewer than 1,000 units since it came to market over a year ago, the Vedomosti business daily reported Thursday, citing unnamed sources close to retailers. Only 905 AYYA T1 devices have been purchased since retail chains began selling them in October 2021, just 18% of the 5,000 AYYA T1…
Russia has significantly raised its volume of gasoline exports in recent months after rerouting supplies to Africa and the Middle East due to Western sanctions, the Vedomosti business daily reported Thursday, citing trade data. Russian gasoline exports averaged 193,250 barrels per day (bpd) between December 2022 and March 2023 so far, according to estimates by…