President Vladimir Putin’s successor will be nearly identical to his predecessor, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Friday as the country gears up for an election in which Putin is expected to win a fifth term. Putin, 71, who has been in power since 1999, is widely anticipated to announce his 2024 re-election bid next month,…
Dozens of Russian business leaders expressed alarm to President Vladimir Putin about the “frightening” number of nationalizations that have taken place since the invasion of Ukraine, the Vedomosti business daily reported Friday, citing four anonymous sources familiar with their late-night meeting this week. One of the sources told the publication that while “everyone understands the…
Russian authorities have started collecting the personal data of academics who are in contact with foreigners, the independent investigative outlet Mozhem Obyasnit reported Thursday. The practice was compared to that of the Soviet era, when contacts between Russians and foreigners were strictly monitored. It also comes amid what the UN has called an alarming rise in Russia’s…
Alexei Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK) has been accused of creating a network of bot farms in Lithuania and Georgia for spreading “anti-government messages,” including information about the Kremlin invasion of Ukraine and its consequences for Russian citizens. The SVTV media outlet, created by libertarian politician Mikhail Svetov, published an investigation that claims that FBK created a…
The number of real estate deals made by Russians in Spain has reached its highest level since the 2014 annexation of Crimea, the RBC news website reported Thursday, citing Spanish notary public data. The 2,137 transactions on the purchase and sale of housing made by Russian nationals in January-June 2023 mark a 50% increase from the…
Russia on Thursday arrested a former regional official on allegations of financing the Ukrainian armed forces, state media reported. Moscow has made a string of arrests of people it says have sponsored the Ukrainian army since Russia launched its full-scale military campaign against its neighbor in February last year. The FSB security agency said Thursday…
Finland’s government announced Thursday it will shut down around half of its border crossings with Russia to address an increase in asylum seekers entering the country. Four checkpoints on Finland’s southeastern border with Russia will close at midnight Saturday local time, according to a cabinet statement cited by the Finnish broadcaster Yle. They will remain shuttered…
When Alexandra Skochilenko swapped price tags at a St. Petersburg supermarket with statements criticizing Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine and highlighting civilian deaths in the conflict, she didn’t expect that it could lead to her imprisonment. “Back then, it seemed safe,” Skochilenko’s girlfriend Sofia Subbotina told The Moscow Times in a phone interview. “But these past…
Three lawyers representing jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny have been added to state financial watchdog Rosfinmonitoring’s list of “extremists and terrorists,” the independent Mediazona news website reported Thursday. Vadim Kobzev, Alexei Liptser and Igor Sergunin were arrested on Oct. 13 in Moscow on accusations of participating in “extremist” activities for passing on letters written by Navalny…
A Russian court has sentenced Vladimir Milov, an exiled ally of jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny, to eight years in prison in absentia for speaking out against Moscow’s war on Ukraine, media reported Thursday. Moscow’s Basmanny District Court found Milov guilty of spreading “false information” about the Russian military in a March 2022 YouTube stream…
Russia has stepped up attacks on Ukraine’s shattered eastern frontline town of Avdiivka, its mayor said Thursday. The industrial town near the Russian-held regional stronghold of Donetsk has been under fierce attack for more than a month. “It is very hot. Indeed, in the last few days, the enemy has become more active,” Avdiivka’s Mayor…
Two executives of the major Russian brewery Baltika have been arrested on suspicion of attempts to sell the rights to its brands to Danish brewer Carlsberg, media reported Thursday, citing anonymous sources. Police and Federal Security Service (FSB) agents carried out more than a dozen searches at offices affiliated with Baltika in St. Petersburg, the…
Russia’s economy grew for a second consecutive quarter despite high inflation and Western sanctions that have weakened the ruble, official data showed Wednesday. The economy expanded by 5.5% year-on-year in the third quarter after contracting in the same period last year, according to the federal statistics agency. The Russian economy shrank in 2022 but it…
“I have seen the dead forest with my own eyes, it’s a very eerie sensation,” Andrei Ozharovsky, a nuclear physicist and antinuclear campaigner, told The Moscow Times. “The explosion happened in the 1970s — but in one direction, for about two or three kilometers, there are still dead trees standing. Coniferous trees, the taiga, are…
Cyprus has long drawn criticism for providing offshore financial services for people associated with corrupt regimes and businesses. A new series of investigations by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, along with 68 media partners, has exposed the industry’s links to President Vladimir Putin’s regime. Among the revelations is the discovery that Chelsea Football Club…
A young Komi-Karelian activist announced this month that he was able to escape Russia despite being featured as a key witness in a high-profile investigation handled by the Federal Security Service (FSB). Nikita Goldin, 18, was detained by Russian security services in the northern port city of Arkhangelsk in September and taken in for an…
Updated with reports from Fontanka, Mash and lawyer’s remarks. A Russian woman accused of killing military blogger Vladlen Tatarsky pleaded partially guilty during a court hearing on Wednesday. Investigators say Darya Trepova, 26, assassinated Tatarsky on orders from Ukraine and working with the help of anti-Kremlin activists, while Kyiv has pointed to domestic Russian infighting.…
Moscow has recruited its annual target number of contract soldiers into the military ahead of schedule, Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said Wednesday. More than 22,000 people signed contracts with Russia’s military, according to Sobyanin, as the country continues to wage its war against neighboring Ukraine. “Thus, we’ve fulfilled the Defense Ministry’s task ahead of schedule for…
Northern Russia’s Leningrad region has sent half a million pine seedlings to the occupied Ukrainian region of Donetsk, Russian authorities announced Tuesday. The so-called “green humanitarian aid” is just the latest in a series of seedling shipments from the Leningrad region to occupied Donetsk, with authorities having already sent around 100,000 pine and spruce seedlings…
When the Russian military retreated from the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson in November last year, they stole a number of prized items: paintings from local museums, World War II memorabilia, monuments to 18th-century military commanders — and 2,000 Ukrainian prisoners. Almost a year on, more than 1,500 Kherson prisoners still remain in prisons in…
Russia’s security service (FSB) accused a resident of Tyumen in Siberia of handing military information to Ukraine and detained him, state-run news agencies reported Wednesday. This is the latest in a string of treason or espionage cases linked to Ukraine, with trials often held behind closed doors and few details seeping through. The FSB said…
Russia said Wednesday for the first time that some Ukrainian troops had established positions on the Moscow-held side of the Dnipro River, the vast waterway that splits the frontline in southern Ukraine. A sustained Ukrainian breakthrough across the river would mark a significant tactical success for Kyiv, whose wider counteroffensive has so far failed to…
Cyprus has long drawn criticism for providing offshore financial services for people associated with corrupt regimes and businesses. A new series of investigations by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, along with 68 media partners, has exposed the financial services industry’s links to President Vladimir Putin’s regime. Among the revelations is the discovery that German…
Police in Armenia have detained a young Russian woman fleeing domestic violence after her family filed complaints to local authorities, Russian media reported Wednesday, citing the human rights group Marem. According to the independent news website Holod, Fatima Zurabova, 21, fled her home earlier this month in the republic of Ingushetia, a Muslim-majority region in Russia’s…
Russia said Wednesday that it “deeply regretted” Finland’s move to consider closing its border crossings with Russia amid an uptick in asylum seekers from the Middle East and Africa entering the country. Helsinki on Tuesday accused Moscow of deliberately allowing migrants to enter Finland without having proper travel documents, suggesting it was a tactic to destabilize the…
Russian authorities have launched a criminal investigation into terrorism over a blast at an explosives factory in central Russia’s Tambov region, the Kommersant business daily reported Wednesday, citing unnamed sources. Police investigators have reportedly found fragments of a drone that attacked the Tambov gunpowder factory late Saturday, which caused a fire at the plant, though…
A Russian delegation led by Natural Resources Minister Alexander Kozlov is visiting Pyongyang, North Korea’s state media said Wednesday, with the two countries’ growing cooperation triggering concern in Washington and Seoul. The visit comes less than a week after U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned that ties between Pyongyang and Moscow were “growing and…
Cyprus vowed Tuesday to investigate new allegations by a group of international journalists that it was a hub for Russian money-laundering enabling oligarchs to bypass sanctions. According to an investigation by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and 67 media partners, the east Mediterranean island “plays an even bigger role than was commonly known…
Russia on Tuesday sentenced a man to six years in prison for vandalizing posters of Russian soldiers decorated as “heroes” for fighting in Ukraine. Moscow has banned criticism of the Ukraine offensive and punished thousands of citizens for denouncing the dragging military campaign. Russia’s Investigative Committee said the man’s sentence had come into force after…
Moscow’s Sheremetyevo International Airport has installed an AI-powered radar system to detect and deter drones, Russian state media reported Tuesday. Sheremetyevo, along with the Russian capital’s three other airports, repeatedly shut down due to drone attacks this summer as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine dragged on for a second year. The new anti-drone defense system, dubbed “Yenot-SD,” is operated by…
Russia’s Marine Rescue Service has begun pumping fuel from an oil tanker that last week ran aground off the southwestern coast of Sakhalin Island, the state-run TASS news agency reported Tuesday. The stranded Victoria oil tanker, which is reportedly carrying 760 tons of fuel, ran aground on Friday after experiencing an engine failure that prompted the ship’s…
Finland’s government is considering closing its border crossings with Russia amid a rising number of asylum seekers from the Middle East and Africa, the broadcaster YLE reported Tuesday, as Finnish officials suggest that Moscow is trying to destabilize the country. Interior Minister Mari Rantanen told reporters that her agency was drafting proposals that would allow…
Russia has managed to almost entirely circumvent a G7 price cap on its oil exports, with Moscow claiming average sales at more than $20 per barrel above the imposed limit, the Financial Times reported Tuesday, citing Western officials and Russian export data. According to an unnamed senior European official who spoke to FT, “almost none” of Russia’s…
Russian authorities have forcefully deported Vladislav Ivanenko, a Kazakh national who worked as a journalist in Russia, to the country of his citizenship, his employer Properm.ru reported Tuesday. Ivanenko was arrested early on Nov. 9 at his home in the Ural Mountains city of Perm and taken to a temporary detention facility for foreign nationals…
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Tuesday Russia was increasing its attacks across the front line, as Kyiv called for the West to boost its weapons supplies ahead of winter. Neither side has made any significant territorial gain for months, but both Zelensky and the Kremlin have denied the conflict has ground to a stalemate.…
Preparatory work is being intensively carried out at the construction site of the Paks-II NPP by both Russian and foreign companies. Alexey Likhachev, Director General of Rosatom, met with Péter Szijjártó, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade of Hungary, followed by a visit to the construction site of the Paks-II NPP. During the meeting it…
President Vladimir Putin has pardoned one of the convicted killers of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya after he fought for the Russian army in Ukraine, the RBC news website reported Tuesday. Sergei Khadzhikurbanov, a former police officer, was handed a 20-year prison sentence nearly a decade ago for his involvement in the 2006 killing of Politkovskaya, an investigative journalist…
President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday signed changes to Russia’s presidential election laws that allow for voting to take place in territories under martial law and introduce new restrictions on media coverage at polling places. The amendments come just weeks ahead of Putin’s anticipated announcement to run for a fifth term in office as president, though…
An Iraqi television network on Monday broadcast a video showing a captive Israeli-Russian academic, the first sign of life from her since she was abducted in Baghdad nearly nine months ago. Israeli authorities revealed in July that Elizabeth Tsurkov had been kidnapped, blaming pro-Iranian militants after she had gone missing in Iraq in late March.…
Russia foiled an attempted overnight drone attack by Ukraine in and around the Moscow region as well as near the border with Ukraine, the Defense Ministry said Tuesday. The military said its on-duty air defense forces destroyed the aircraft-type drones over the Moscow, Tambov, Bryansk and Oryol regions. Bryansk, a western Russian region on the border…
Russian attacks on Ukraine’s southern region of Kherson on Monday killed three civilians and injured 15, including a two-month-old child, officials said. Two were killed — a 62-year-old woman and a 45-year-old man — in a “massive” Russian attack of rocket and artillery fire on the city center in the early afternoon, Kherson’s Governor Oleksandr…
Brussels is aiming to present proposals on Wednesday for a new round of sanctions on Russia over the war in Ukraine, including banning Moscow’s lucrative diamond exports, the EU’s foreign policy chief said Monday. The 27-nation bloc has already imposed 11 rounds of unprecedented sanctions on Russia since the Kremlin launched its all-out invasion of…
Lithuania’s Interior Ministry has moved to strip a Russian-Lithuanian ballerina of her citizenship after she praised Russian President Vladimir Putin, the Baltic country’s media reported Monday. Ilze Liepa is a dual Russian-Lithuanian citizen who performed at the Bolshoi Theatre in the 1980s and 1990s. The 59-year-old, who received Lithuanian citizenship in 2000, said during a Russian-language YouTube interview…
President Vladimir Putin’s oldest daughter has been appointed to the board of the Moscow Society of Medical Genetics, the independent news outlet Mozhem Obyasnit reported Monday, citing her public profile on the organization’s website and a video in which she criticizes laws adopted during her father’s time in office. Maria Vorontsova is a candidate of medical…
A Moscow municipal deputy who was imprisoned under Russia’s wartime censorship laws faces additional criminal charges of justifying terrorism, his supporters said Monday. Alexei Gorinov, 62, was sentenced to seven years in prison in April 2022 for spreading “knowingly false information” about the Russian military, charges that he denies. Gorinov’s supporters say investigators launched a…
Russia said it carried out air strikes in Syria’s Idlib province that killed more than 30 members of a “terrorist group.” Moscow is Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad’s key supporter, providing him with military, political and economic support throughout the country’s decade-long civil war. “On Nov. 11, Russia’s aerospace forces carried out air strikes in Idlib…
An ally of jailed opposition activist Alexei Navalny and former municipal deputy in Siberia’s Tomsk region has been moved from house arrest and sent to a detention center, her associate wrote on social media Monday. Ksenia Fadeyeva is a former municipal deputy in the city of Tomsk and was added to Russia’s “terrorist” list in…
Rosneft’s Samara group of enterprises — Samaraneftegaz, Novokuibyshevsk Refinery, Kuibyshev Refinery, Syzran Refinery, Novokuibyshevsk Petrochemical Company, and Novokuibyshevsk Oil and Additives Plant — summed up the results of the first competition of the grant programme for a project to study the nesting sites of the white-tailed eagle in Samara Region.
Officials in Russia’s Far Eastern republic of Sakha (Yakutia) have failed to meet quotas on recruitment of military volunteers for the war in Ukraine set by the Kremlin, according to leaked recordings of closed-door government meetings published by the Free Yakutia Foundation anti-war movement. Sakha’s military recruitment head Alexander Avdonin said the republic recruited the…
Jailed Russian opposition activist Alexei Navalny on Monday accused prison officials of withholding letters from his wife over claims that they contained “signs of preparation for a crime.” Navalny, who is being held in a high-security prison colony some 250 kilometers east of Moscow, said he has received daily updates from prison administrators that they cannot…
The Kremlin has begun compiling a list of influential figures that would campaign on behalf of President Vladimir Putin as he seeks re-election next year, the Kommersant business daily reported Monday, citing several anonymous sources familiar with the matter. According to the newspaper, work on organizing a so-called “initiative group” of campaign surrogates suggests that…
Ukraine said Sunday that a blast triggered by “local resistance movements” in the Moscow-controlled Ukrainian city of Melitopol the previous day killed at least three Russian officers. Melitopol, with a pre-war population of around 150,000 people, was captured shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine in February last year and now lies behind the front line further…
After living for two weeks in a psycho-neurological internat, a facility where Russia confines those with psychiatric illnesses and no relatives willing to care for them, journalist Elena Kostyuchenko believed she had seen the “real face of my state.” Inside the institution, she speaks to women who have been forcibly sterilized, shows a doctor poetry…
Russia on Sunday accused Ukraine of carrying out a series of attacks in the border regions of Bryansk and Belgorod, damaging five train carriages and causing one injury. Moscow said it would open an investigation into a Ukrainian strike that injured a civilian in a village near the Ukrainian border but did not provide further…
Russia has begun evacuating its citizens who are trapped in the besieged Gaza Strip, according to a statement released by the Emergency Situations Ministry on Sunday. “The Emergency Situations Ministry together with Russian diplomats have organized the evacuation of civilians from the Gaza Strip,” read the statement, which was published on the messaging app Telegram.…
A senior Ukrainian military officer with intelligence ties coordinated the sabotage attack on the Nord Stream gas pipelines last year, The Washington Post and Der Spiegel reported Saturday, citing anonymous Ukrainian and European officials, as well as other people familiar with the operation. Moscow and Kyiv’s Western allies have traded blame over the subsea blasts that…
Russian authorities said Saturday they had launched a “terrorism” probe after the derailment of a goods train southwest of Moscow. An “improvised explosive device” caused the derailment of 19 of the train’s wagons in the Ryazan region on Saturday, the state investigation committee said in a social media announcement. Several sabotage attempts have been made…
Russia on Saturday denied stealing Carlsberg’s business, saying its seizure was legal, in reaction to remarks made almost two weeks ago by the head of the Danish brewery company. Carlsberg had announced in June that a buyer had been found for Baltika, which it has owned since 2000, and its 8,400 employees. But a decree…
A missile targeted Kyiv on Saturday, ending nearly two months of relative calm in the Ukrainian capital, while frontline regions fended off waves of drone attacks overnight. Ukraine is bracing for a renewed Russian aerial onslaught this winter, after systematic strikes last year targeted the country’s energy grid, leaving thousands without heating or electricity in…
A missile targeted Kyiv on Saturday without causing casualties but ending nearly two months of relative calm in the Ukrainian capital, while frontline regions fended off waves of drone attacks overnight. Ukrainian officials also hailed the anniversary of the recapture of Kherson city, the regional capital liberated a year ago in the last major frontline…