A Kyrgyz court has handed a 10-year sentence to a man who fought for Russia in Ukraine, at a time when Moscow is trying to boost recruitment of people from ex-Soviet Central Asian countries. Dozens of nationals of Central Asian countries have been killed in Ukraine in recent months, local media say, most of them…
Russia’s gross domestic product shrank by 1.9% in the first quarter of 2023, the country’s statistic agency Rosstat said Wednesday. The economy was weighed down by another wave of sanctions imposed over its offensive in Ukraine, including a ban by the European Union on Russian petroleum products, on top of a price cap agreed with…
Russia has agreed to extend the Ukraine Black Sea grain deal for another two months, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced Wednesday, just a day before a 60-day extension agreed to back in March was set to expire. “Our Russian friends said that they will not interfere with Turkish ships leaving [Ukraine’s] ports. We thank…
Dozens of Europe-based companies have continued to do business with Russian firms that supply Moscow’s military with critical goods and equipment as it wages war on Ukraine, according to a report published Wednesday by investigative news outlet The Insider. The outlet found that 25 companies from Germany, France, Switzerland, Hungary, Slovakia, Italy, Estonia, Lithuania, Austria…
Tax incentives introduced by the Russian government for reconstructing occupied areas of Ukraine have provided large profits for the black market, The Moscow Times’ Russian service reported Tuesday. Mariupol, a port on the Sea of Azov with a pre-war population of 400,000, was nearly completely destroyed in a brutal Russian siege last spring. The Russian…
A Moscow court has sentenced opposition figure and anti-war activist Mikhail Krieger to seven years in prison. Krieger, 63, was arrested in November 2022 and charged with “justifying terrorism” over a 2020 social media post in which he praised two men who staged attacks at Federal Security Service (FSB) buildings as “heroes.” He was also charged with…
Iran and Russia agreed Wednesday to collaborate on the construction of the final part of a commercial transport network linking to the Gulf and India while avoiding Western sea lanes. Iranian Transport Minister Mehrdad Bazrpash, who signed the agreement with his Russian counterpart in Tehran, said the 164-kilometer (102-mile) railway in Iran’s north would be…
YouTube has started taking down videos about Russia’s Wagner mercenary group, The Moscow Times’ Russian service reported Tuesday. Wagner, which has been at the front of Russia’s war effort in eastern Ukraine for months, has been accused of brutality and war crimes in Ukraine and other war zones abroad. The Google-owned video platform said in a…
Finland’s Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto said Wednesday that Russia had frozen in late April the bank accounts of its embassy in Moscow and consulate in St. Petersburg. “The accounts of the Finnish missions in Russia are frozen and cannot be used at the moment,” Haavisto told a press conference, adding that Finland had been in…
Russia’s Central Election Commission on Wednesday revealed the official logo for the country’s upcoming regional elections which features a large letter V, one of the symbols of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. “It depicts both the familiar checkmark and the letter V in the colors of the Russian flag — as a symbol of support for…
Russian authorities have suspended the release of an award-winning film about a serial killer who targets sex workers in Iran, a distributor said on Tuesday. “Holy Spider,” directed by Danish-Iranian Ali Abbasi, was inspired by a true story about a veteran of the Iran-Iraq war who killed 16 sex workers in the early 2000s in…