Igor Sofonov, who was recruited to fight in Ukraine from a Russian penal colony where he was serving a sentence on drug charges, returned to civilian life this spring after he was pardoned as part of a deal with the Russian military. Sofonov’s acquaintances told The Moscow Times that his military service had “changed him…
Russia’s elections chief said Friday that Russia has no use for Western-style democracy, just weeks before regional elections are set to take place across the country. Central Election Commission head Ella Pamfilova — who is known for overseeing the widespread implementation of controversial online voting, the “resetting” of presidential term limits, and sham referendums in occupied…
Potato conspiracies, Brezhnev’s funeral, and the Soviet Union are just a few of the topics covered in a video art exhibition in Moscow called Based on Real Events. The exhibition — the largest of its kind in recent years — showcases more than 30 videos that touch on politics, social issues, and everyday life. It…
A Russian court has ordered the closure of the Sakharov Center, one of the country’s oldest human rights groups, Interfax reported Friday. The center, which was founded to honor the memory of Soviet dissident and Nobel Peace Prize winner Andrei Sakharov, had been an iconic place for exhibitions and discussions about human rights since its…
Russia’s Orthodox Church announced late Thursday it had launched an internal investigation into a priest who blessed a recently erected monument to Soviet leader Josef Stalin. Father Anatolyi was filmed dousing holy water on the eight-meter Stalin statue earlier this week during an unveiling ceremony in Velikiye Luki, located in northwestern Russia’s Pskov region. While he admitted that…
Employees of the Saratov Oil Refinery (an enterprise of Rosneft Oil Company’s refining complex) cleaned the Volga flows and banks from garbage as part of an environmental campaign.
Russian authorities have charged prominent Chechen human rights lawyer and activist Abubakar Yangulbaev with “calls for terrorism,” the Ostorozhno Novosti news outlet reported Friday. Chechen law enforcement officials opened the charges in response to a post made by Yangulbaev on the Telegram messaging app last year, according to unnamed sources cited by the outlet. The post,…
Senior Chechen officials applauded the son of Chechen strongman Ramzan Kadyrov for allegedly beating up a teenager who was detained earlier this year on charges of burning the Koran. Nikita Zhuravel, 19, was detained in May on suspicion of publicly burning a Koran in the southwestern region of Volgograd. The criminal case against him was…
A Moscow court has placed a dual U.S.-Russian citizen, who is serving a prison sentence for bribery, in pre-trial detention on charges of espionage, according to court data published Thursday. Russian-born American Gene Spector faces 20 years in prison if convicted. Few details outside the court ruling have been made public, as espionage cases are held…
Russian forces have destroyed a Ukrainian drone targeting Moscow, officials said, the latest in a series of attacks on the capital. Russia’s Defense Ministry said its air force downed a Ukrainian drone over the Russian capital at around 04:00 am on Friday. “The unmanned drone, after being exposed to air defense weapons, changed its flight…