South Africans were left angry and baffled on Friday after the US accused their country of secretly shipping a South Africans were left angry and baffled on Friday after the US accused their country of secretly shipping arms to Russia, a charge that triggered both a government rebuke but also the announcement of an inquiry.rms…
French drinks giant Pernod Ricard said Friday it had stopped exporting all its brands to Russia and would no longer distribute them following public pressure over its business activities there. The group, which owns a host of premium drinks brands including Havana Club rum, Jameson whiskey and Mumm champagne, stopped exporting to Russia at the end of April, it…
A pro-Russian official in Ukraine’s partially occupied Zaporizhzhia region has been injured in an explosion that authorities called an assassination attempt, the state-run TASS news agency reported Friday. Russia’s Investigative Committee, which probes major crimes, said that an explosive device was placed in a trash can at the entrance of an apartment building in the city of…
Russia said Friday a decision by the U.K. to deliver Storm Shadow long-range missiles to Ukraine was an extremely hostile move. By announcing it would deliver the air-launched deep-strike weapon, Britain became the first country to provide longer-range armament to Kyiv. “We see this decision as an extremely hostile step from London, aimed further pumping…
President Vladimir Putin on Friday ordered officials to develop measures aimed at reversing the mass emigration of Russian citizens sparked by the invasion of Ukraine and the country’s “partial” mobilization of reservists. Putin’s decree on amendments to Russia’s state migration policy notes that the emigration of Russian nationals abroad “increased” in 2022 “due to changing…
Residents of Yuldus, a Tatar village in western Siberia destroyed by ongoing forest fires, have called on the head of Russia’s republic of Tatarstan to invest 500 million rubles ($6.5 million) into the area’s reconstruction. “The republic won’t lose much [by allocating] half a million, but…we will know that Tatarstan hasn’t forgotten about us,” local…
The head of Russia’s private Wagner mercenary group Yevgeny Prigozhin on Friday said Moscow’s conventional army was leaving its positions near the eastern Ukraine hotspot town of Bakhmut. His comments came just after Russia’s Defense Ministry announced it had redeployed forces around to take up stronger defensive positions north of Bakhmut. “This is not called…
A major university in Russia’s Volga region is urging students to report “suspicious” peers to the authorities amid heightened anxieties over possible sabotage acts aimed at hampering the war effort. Penza State University’s vice-rector in charge of security, Vladimir Shimkin, flagged a Federal Security Service (FSB) warning that a group of 15-to-21-year-olds are allegedly plotting attacks…
Police in Russia’s second-largest city St. Petersburg have formed a special unit for shooting down drones, the city’s Interior Ministry said Friday, as concerns have risen over drone attacks on Russian territory amid its war on Ukraine. The so-called “sky control unit” in St. Petersburg mainly consists of officers who have served in Russian-occupied areas…
Измена: replacement (sometimes); betrayal (sometimes) If there is one bit of Russian that continues to confuse me, it’s prefixed verbs. You know — when you take a basic verb and then add при-, от-, из-, пере-, об-, за-, or по-, at the beginning of the verb to get seven new verbs with 27 meanings, except…
British consumer goods giant Unilever has doubled profits and increased ad spending in Russia despite its pledge to stop profiting from the market after Moscow invaded Ukraine last year, investigative media reported Friday. Unilever became the first major European food company to stop imports and exports from Russia, as well as media and ad spending there,…
The Kremlin on Friday denied it was meddling in Turkey’s presidential election campaign, after Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s main rival accused Moscow of spreading “deep fakes” targeting him. Turkish opposition candidate Kemal Kilicdaroglu claimed earlier this week that Russia was behind an online smear campaign against him ahead of the crucial election on Sunday. …
When an oil depot in Russian-annexed Crimea was attacked in late April, the resulting fire sent a plume of thick black smoke into the sky. The incident at the facility in Sevastopol was one of at least five attacks on oil infrastructure in southern Russia in less than two weeks. There was also a double…
Ukraine claimed Friday to have retaken swathes of ground near the frontline city of Bakhmut, as Russia reported having repelled an attack along a broad stretch of the front line. The rival reports from the battlefront indicated an increase in fighting after months of relative stability, as expectations grow over Kyiv’s spring offensive. Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head…
The United States is considering easing sanctions against Moscow in order to secure the release of jailed Americans Evan Gershkovich and Paul Whelan from Russian prison, CNN reported Thursday, citing unnamed senior White House officials. The U.S. has classified Gershkovich, a Wall Street Journal reporter, and Whelan, a former U.S. Marine, as “wrongfully detained.” The “narrow…
Ukrainian forces have launched preparatory strikes on Russian military targets ahead of their highly anticipated counteroffensive, CNN reported Friday, citing a senior unnamed U.S. military official. “Shaping” operations prepare the battlefield for advancing forces by attacking weapons depots, command centers and armor and artillery systems. CNN describes these operations as a standard tactic employed ahead…