A pair of Russian university students staged a protest at their graduation ceremony Thursday in support of Novaya Gazeta journalist Yelena Milashina, who was brutally attacked in Chechnya earlier this week. St. Petersburg State University student Yelizaveta Antonova and her fellow classmate displayed a poster of Milashina in a hospital gown with her face visibly…
Ukraine and Russia’s tank numbers are now roughly equal to one another’s, Bloomberg reported Thursday, citing the Kiel Institute for the World Economy and the Oryx open-source analysis website. The figures underscore the extent to which Russia’s advantage in heavy weapons has been reduced since it sent troops into Ukraine over 16 months ago. According…
The Russian ruble tumbled past 102 against the euro and 93 against the dollar on Thursday, hitting a new 15-month low as part of a monthslong depreciation that was exacerbated even further last month as Yevgeny Prighzohin’s armed revolt set markets on edge. Russia’s Central Bank said Thursday that the ruble’s weakening was brought on…
Austria’s Raiffeisen Bank is hoping the war in Ukraine will end “soon” to avoid a costly exit from Russia, Reuters reported Thursday, citing multiple sources familiar with the matter. The news outlet said Austrian officials are resisting pressure from the European Central Bank (ECB) for Raiffeisen to spin off its Russian subsidiary by September. Vienna…
Ukraine said Thursday that “tension” around the Moscow-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant was “decreasing,” after Kyiv and Moscow accused each other this week of plotting provocations at the atomic facility. “Tension is gradually decreasing,” Nataliya Gumenyuk, an army spokeswoman, said, adding that this was thanks to the “powerful work” of Kyiv’s military and diplomatic efforts…
Russia announced Thursday that it was shuttering Finland’s consulate in St. Petersburg and expelling nine of its diplomats, calling the move a response to a “confrontational anti-Russian policy” being pursued by Helsinki. NATO’s newest member Finland, which shares a long border with Russia, earlier this month expelled nine diplomats working at the Russian Embassy in Helsinki for…
A Russian court has sentenced two Ukrainian citizens to more than 20 years in prison over an attempted assassination of a Russian-installed official in occupied Ukraine, state media reported Thursday. Yury Domanchuk and Vitaly Skakun were arrested in December 2022 shortly after an explosion injured Vitaly Bulyuk — the Kremlin-backed deputy governor of southern Ukraine’s partially occupied…
Russian authorities are still investigating Wagner Group founder Yevgeny Prigozhin over his failed mutiny last month despite the Kremlin’s promise to drop the criminal charges against him, state television reported late Wednesday. “Nobody planned to close this case,” journalist Eduard Petrov said on a state-run political talk show, referring to Prigozhin as a “traitor.” Petrov did…
Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) has shot and killed a man it accused of trying to blow up a gas distribution network in the western Siberian region of Tyumen, state media reported Thursday. The FSB said it had foiled a terrorist attack “carried out by Russian supporters of nationalist ideas, who acted under the command…
Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin is still in Russia and none of the mercenary group’s fighters have set up in Belarus, its president said Thursday, casting doubt on a Kremlin deal to end their insurrection. “As far as Prigozhin is concerned, he is in St. Petersburg… He is not in Belarus,” Alexander Lukashenko told reporters. He spoke to…
Russian police have carried out searches at the liberal Yabloko party’s regional branch in the northwestern city of Pskov, just weeks after authorities labeled its chairman a “foreign agent,” the branch said Wednesday. Police confiscated office equipment, personal laptops and cellphones belonging to employees and activists present at Yabloko’s Pskov regional office. The party said…
A missile attack on an apartment block in western Ukraine’s Lviv killed four people on Thursday, in what its mayor said was the largest attack on civilian infrastructure in the city since Russia launched its invasion. “The third and fourth floors in two sections of the building were destroyed… As of 7:00 am, four people…