Belarus has pardoned Sofia Sapega, the Russian ex-girlfriend of Belarusian dissident journalist Roman Protasevich, the state-run Belta news agency reported Wednesday. Sapega and her then-boyfriend Protasevich were detained in May 2021 when their Ryanair flight from Athens to Vilnius was forcibly diverted in Minsk, with Belarusian authorities citing a bomb threat. The 25-year-old law student…
An Air India flight from New Delhi to San Francisco on Tuesday was forced to make an emergency landing in the Far East Russian city of Magadan due to an engine malfunction. After disembarking, the flight’s passengers — most of whom are likely citizens of India and the U.S. — found themselves stranded in a…
Russian law enforcement officials arrested six former and current members of the democratic youth organization Vesna on charges of “extremism,” state-run media outlets reported Wednesday. The individuals — who were detained in various cities across Russia — are accused of “forming an extremist organization.” “All of those arrested were taken to Moscow. Before that, their…
Regional authorities in Russia have been tasked with distributing free plots of land to veterans of Moscow’s war against Ukraine, according to a decree signed by President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday. Those eligible to receive land include combat veterans, as well as military personnel, volunteer fighters, and employees of the Russian National Guard who have…
Moscow said Wednesday that a Ukrainian “sabotage” group had blown up the Tolyatti-Odesa pipeline that Russia used to export ammonia before the start of its 15-month offensive. “A Ukrainian sabotage and reconnaissance group blew up the Tolyatti-Odesa ammonia pipeline” near the village of Masyutovka in the northeastern Kharkiv region on Monday evening, the Russian Defense…
“A Blank Space on the Map” is the first chapter of “Belarus in Crisis” – a fitting title for a country that faded from world news after its revolution stalled. Hansbury’s book on this “blank space” is a concise and yet wide-ranging study that corrects this cartographic crime. While the focus of the book is…
Overnight drone strikes on a power station across the state border have caused blackouts in two Russian villages, the regional governor said Wednesday amid an intensifying spate of cross-border attacks. Roman Starovoit, the governor of Russia’s Kursk region, said Ukrainian forces dropped two explosives on a substation in the village of Popovo-Lezhachi 4 kilometers east of…
Norway rescued a Russian in need of emergency medical assistance on board a scientific vessel stuck in ice near the North Pole in a spectacular helicopter operation, its rescue services said Wednesday. The evacuation took place on Tuesday evening from the Russian ship Severny Polyus (North Pole), located at the 86th parallel north, above Norway’s…
Russia’s domestic intelligence agency has arrested a resident of the country’s Far East on suspicion of spying for Ukraine, the state-run TASS news agency reported Wednesday. “Acting on the instructions of the Ukrainian military intelligence, the Primorye region resident collected and transmitted information about the region’s law enforcement agencies and military infrastructure,” the Federal Security Service…
Plaques honoring the victims of the Soviet gulag forced labor camps have started to disappear from buildings across Moscow, the Kommersant business daily reported Wednesday. The palm-sized plaques first started appearing on building facades as part of a non-government-affiliated memorial project called Last Address in 2015. They feature the gulag victims’ names, occupations and birth and…
China’s total trade with Russia in May soared to levels not seen since the beginning of Moscow’s war in Ukraine, official data showed Wednesday, as Beijing steps up support for its sanctions-hit ally. Trade between the two countries last month was worth $20.5 billion, data from Beijing showed, with Chinese imports from Russia worth $11.3…
Ukraine’s dam break is posing “no short-term risk” to Europe’s biggest atomic plant, despite falling water levels in a reservoir used to cool its reactors, according to the UN nuclear watchdog agency. Ukraine’s Kakhovka hydroelectric dam was breached on Tuesday following an attack that Moscow and Kyiv have blamed on each other. The Kakhovka dam…
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Tuesday that the partial destruction of the Kakhovka dam in Ukraine was “another devastating consequence” of Russia’s invasion of its neighbor. An attack on the major Russian-held dam in southern Ukraine unleashed a torrent of water that flooded a small city, inundated two dozen villages and sparked the evacuation…