Berlin prosecutors said Monday they had charged a 55-year-old Russian man with attempted murder for trying to set fire to a building housing employees of Russia’s RIA Novosti news agency. The man is suspected of having placed an improvised incendiary device in a basement shaft of the apartment building in late April 2022, just weeks after Russia’s…
Russia’s first transgender politician announced Monday that she will not run in this year’s upcoming gubernatorial elections as federal lawmakers pursue a ban on legal or surgical sex changes. Yulia Alyoshina, the former head of the Civic Initiative party in Siberia’s Altai region, had been nominated as her party’s candidate for the regional governor elections…
Moscow is unaware of the missing Israeli-Russian academic Elizabeth Tsurkov’s Russian citizenship and has not been approached by her relatives, the country’s ambassador in Iraq said Monday. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said Wednesday that Tsurkov — an Israeli-Russian dual citizen — was being held by a pro-Iranian Shiite militia in Iraq, where she…
Updated with Lobanov’s comments to The Moscow Times. Prominent Kremlin critic and trade union activist Mikhail Lobanov said Monday he had fled Russia, just hours after revealing that he was fired from a leading Moscow university. “Our team made a decision: I am going on a long-term trip abroad,” the activist wrote on the Telegram messaging app,…
President Vladimir Putin met with Russia’s Wagner mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin and his fighters after their failed mutiny, the Kremlin confirmed Monday. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters that Putin had welcomed Prigozhin and 34 Wagner commanders at the Kremlin on June 29. “The commanders themselves outlined their version of events, emphasizing that they are soldiers…
Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov said Sunday that his Akhmat military unit has been deployed to the site of “difficult” fighting in the embattled eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut. Fighting has picked up near Bakhmut, the site of the longest battle of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, in recent days despite the Wagner mercenary group claiming to have…
Russia’s top military commander in Ukraine Valery Gerasimov on Monday made his first public appearance following Yevgeny Prigozhin’s failed mutiny last month. Gerasimov was shown in a Defense Ministry video listening to reports and instructing subordinates on Russia’s response to increased Ukrainian missile attacks on Russian territory and annexed Crimea. “I’m tasking the Aerospace Forces…
Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev has won a third term that will keep him in charge of the tightly controlled, gas-rich Central Asian state until 2030, the electoral commission said on Monday. The 65-year-old has promised to open up Uzbekistan to foreign investment and tourism and implement major reforms in Central Asia’s most populous country. Mirziyoyev,…
Russian shelling on an aid hub in the town of Orikhiv in southern Ukraine has killed four people, the regional governor said on Monday, calling it a “war crime.” “They hit a humanitarian aid delivery spot in a residential area… Four people died on the spot: women aged 43, 45 and 47 and a 47-year-old…
Heavy rains struck southern Russia’s Black Sea coast over the weekend, leading to evacuations as overflowing rivers washed away cars and flooded homes. Emergency authorities in southern Russia’s Krasnodar region issued a flash flood warning from late Sunday into Monday due to the heavy rains. Footage published early Sunday showed several cars piled together in…
At least 47,000 Russian troops have been killed fighting in Ukraine, the independent news outlets Mediazona and Meduza reported in an investigation published Monday. Citing data from Russia’s national probate registry — a public database that records information on inheritances — and the government statistics agency Rosstat, journalists used a surge in probate cases opened…