Russia on Monday called for “collective action” to end fighting between Israel and Hamas, almost a month into the war that has left thousands dead. Moscow maintains ties with both the Hamas militant group and Israel and has said it can mediate the war which began in early October. “Amid the unprecedented escalation of violence…
Russian President Vladimir Putin has decided to run in next year’s presidential election, Reuters reported Monday, citing six anonymous sources familiar with the matter. In power since 2000, Putin is widely expected to run for a fifth term as president in the 2024 election, a move made possible by constitutional changes that allow him to…
Russia’s Olympic body on Monday launched an appeal against its suspension by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) at the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), the sports tribunal said. The IOC suspended the Russian Olympic Committee (ROC) on Oct. 12 for violating the territorial integrity of Ukraine’s membership after it recognized Olympic regional organizations in…
Northern lights lit up most of Russia on Sunday after solar flares collided with Earth’s magnetic field and unleashed a strong geomagnetic storm. Known as aurora borealis, the dancing scarlet and green lights were visible from Russia’s Far East and Siberia, to the Ural mountains and North Caucasus. The rare night-time light show was also spotted…
Russian and Ukrainian activists have taken over a vacant building in the Dutch capital of Amsterdam that purportedly belongs to the Russian government, the Dutch newspaper Het Parool reported Sunday. Citing a member of the self-identified “group of international artists,” the publication said the four-story corner building in southern Amsterdam is believed to be “owned…
Ukraine said Monday that Russian forces had launched four missiles and nearly a dozen attack drones from occupied regions of the country in the south overnight. “Fifteen Shaheds and one Kh-59 air-guided missile were shot down,” the Ukrainian air force said, referring to the Iranian-designed kamikaze unmanned aerial vehicle. Ukrainian Presidential Chief of Staff Andriy…
Ukraine has opened an investigation after it was reported a number of its soldiers were killed by a Russian missile strike during an “award ceremony” this week, officials said. The Ukrainska Pravda media outlet said over 20 Ukrainian soldiers from an assault brigade died in the attack, which took place in the southern region of…
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Sunday he was “not ready” for talks with Russia unless its troops withdraw from his country, denying Western officials had suggested holding peace negotiations. He was commenting on reports that US and European officials had spoken with his government about negotiations to end the war, and after a senior Ukrainian…
Russia said Sunday it had successfully test-launched an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of carrying nuclear warheads from one of its submarines. The launch of the “Bulava” missile, the first in just over a year, comes as Russia ramps up nuclear rhetoric since revoking its ratification of a key nuclear test ban treaty. “The new nuclear-powered…
Ukraine said Saturday its forces struck a shipyard in the port city of Kerch, on the east coast of the Russian-annexed Crimean Peninsula. Since launching its counteroffensive against Moscow’s forces this summer, Kyiv has ramped up attacks on the Black Sea peninsula that Russia seized in 2014. “On the evening of November 4, the Armed…
President Volodymyr Zelensky denied on Saturday that Ukraine’s war with Russia had reached a “stalemate”, pushing back at suggestions Western leaders were lobbying for peace talks. The sprawling frontline between the two warring sides has barely moved in almost a year, with one senior Ukrainian official warning this week that the conflict was deadlocked. “Time…
Ukraine said Saturday it had filed criminal charges against Patriarch Kirill, the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church, in absentia for ‘justifying’ Russia’s invasion. Moscow’s most influential spiritual leader, a fervent supporter of President Vladimir Putin, has called the war a historic battle against the ‘forces of evil’. The Security Service of Ukraine said it…
Russia said Friday that Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas had ‘postponed’ a trip to Moscow that was planned for this month. Russia – which has working relations with Israel, with Palestinian authorities and with Hamas – has said several times that a visit by Abbas to Moscow was possible without previously giving a date. Russia’s deputy…
Hundreds of works of fiction have been written about Russia in the 1920s: satirical short stories, long novels, documentary dramas by Andrei Platonov, Mikhail Bulgakov, Mikhail Zoshchenko, Ilya Ilf and Yevgeny Petrov. Have you ever wondered why? It’s a good question. Why has this period — certainly not the best from the point of view…
When Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Chernyshenko walked up to the state-run TASS news agency’s Soviet brutalist headquarters a few blocks from the Kremlin on July 5, no one suspected that he would announce the appointment of a new general director. TASS’s general director Sergei Mikhailov, 54, who was honored with the presidential Order of Friendship…
Four Russian fertility clinic employees and two surrogate mothers have been handed jail sentences of varying lengths as part of the country’s first surrogacy investigation, state media reported Friday. Authorities launched Russia’s first-ever surrogacy probe in 2020 after one of the babies born to a surrogate mother was found dead in an apartment outside Moscow. Moscow’s…
Russia intends to stick to a nuclear test ban moratorium despite withdrawing its ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, the Foreign Ministry said Friday. “We intend to keep the moratorium that was introduced more than 30 years ago in place,” said a ministry statement. But any nuclear tests by the United States would…
Russia’s oil pipeline monopoly Transneft sent hundreds of its employees to fight in Ukraine last summer as the Kremlin struggled to recruit soldiers for its war, according to an investigation by the independent news website IStories. Journalists said that, in the months before President Vladimir Putin announced a “partial” mobilization in September 2022, Transneft was sending and…
Втайне: secretly, in secret A translator friend of mine recently announced with some fanfare that he had found the most misspelled word in the Russian language. He had documented 11 misspellings, which is impressive — although I’m sure my personal record for misspelling здравствуйте over the years has topped that. In any case, the word…
Russia’s fourth-largest city of Yekaterinburg has been plagued by snow sculptures of erect penises over the past week, prompting calls among some residents for authorities to crack down on the practice. Local media first spotted a giant snow penis in a public square outside the Yekaterinburg Opera and Ballet Theater and the Ural State University on…
Alexander Lukashenko, President of the Republic of Belarus, and Alexey Likhachev, Rosatom Director General, visited Belarus NPP. The ceremony at the NPP was attended by Alexander Lukashenko, President of the Republic of Belarus, and the management of the fuel and energy sector of the country. Alexey Likhachev, ROSATOM Director General, and Viktor Karankevich, Minister of…
The Kremlin on Friday dismissed a new package of U.S. sanctions, saying Russia had learned to “overcome” such economic hurdles since the Ukraine conflict began. Washington on Thursday sanctioned several Russian energy and finance companies as well as individuals and firms in Turkey, China and the United Arab Emirates it said were supporting Russia’s offensive…
Russian left-wing activist and anarchist Lev Skoryakin has been found inside a Moscow detention center weeks after going missing in the Central Asian republic of Kyrgyzstan, the Memorial human rights group said Friday. Skoryakin was allegedly tortured at Moscow’s Butyrka detention center after being abducted from a Kyrgyz jail on Oct. 17 and flown to Moscow…
A court in St. Petersburg made an unusual move to hold a session inside a strip club as part of litigation over unauthorized renovations. The court described the off-site session at the X.O. Men’s Club as an “official necessity” in a tongue-in-cheek statement released Thursday. Local authorities accuse X.O. Men’s Club of “impacting the apartment building”…
Russia’s Tver region has outlawed the act of “coercing women” into undergoing an abortion, becoming the second such region to do so amid growing concerns about a looming nationwide abortion ban. “Persuading, suggesting, bribing or deceiving” a woman into having an abortion is now punishable by a range of fines, according to the new regional law…
When Father Alexei Volchkov signed an open letter to the Russian government in March 2022 calling for peace and an end to the war in Ukraine, he knew there would be backlash. “What happened was inevitable, really,” he told The Moscow Times. “I was severely reproached by people who were close to me. Some thought…
A Moscow court has sentenced exiled Russian-Canadian activist Pyotr Verzilov to more than eight years of prison in absentia for spreading “war fakes,” the Mediazona news website reported Friday. Moscow’s Basmanny District Court found Verzilov, who is currently residing outside Russia, guilty of spreading “deliberately false” information about the Russian Armed Forces. He was handed…
A Russian drone manufacturer announced this week it would open a production line in Uzbekistan, as one local official said Thursday the drones were designed for “agricultural” purposes only. Flyseeagro, a Russian firm which says it makes drones for crop spraying, said this week it had signed an agreement to build drones in Uzbekistan’s Navoi…
The Kremlin has ordered regional officials to file weekly reports on the recruitment of marginalized people in Russia for its war in Ukraine, the investigative news website IStories reported Thursday, citing an official letter it obtained. The letter, which is dated Oct. 3, lists the office of the Presidential Envoy to Russia’s Central Federal District…
Kyiv on Thursday named Swiss food giant Nestle as a “sponsor of war” over the Kit Kat-maker’s continued operations in Russia. Hundreds of Western firms quit the Russian market following Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in February last year, and Kyiv has not shied away from publicly criticizing those that have remained. “Despite Russian aggression, Nestle…
An opposition deputy who ran for governor of Siberia’s Krasnoyarsk region this fall has been arrested on charges of extortion, which the politician on Thursday dismissed as politically motivated. Investigators accuse Alexander Gliskov of blackmailing a state-owned company executive in 2016-17 in order to receive a large bribe. Krasnoyarsk’s Tsentralny District Court ruled after a…
The United States announced sanctions Thursday on individuals and companies it accused of abetting Russia’s war against Ukraine, targeting entities in Turkey, China and the United Arab Emirates in a bid to disrupt Moscow’s supply chains. This comes as Russia has offshored the production of technology, equipment and other goods it needs for its military,…
Russia said Thursday it had intercepted nine Ukrainian drones near the Ukrainian city of Enerhodar, where the Moscow-controlled Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant is located. The plant, which was captured by Russian forces in March 2022, has been rocked by repeated drone attacks and shelling that Kyiv and Moscow have blamed on each other. “At around 12:30…
The leader of Russia’s Jewish communities has condemned what he called the “propaganda of hate” after anti-Israeli riots rocked the country’s North Caucasus republic of Dagestan. Chief Rabbi Berel Lazar linked Sunday’s violence at Makhachkala International Airport to previous anti-Semitic attacks in Russia’s Muslim-majority regions that took place in the weeks since Israel launched a…
Anti-war activist and punk musician Ayhal Ammosov has been granted asylum seeker status by Kazakh authorities, his lawyer said on social media Wednesday, just weeks after his arrest in Kazakhstan. Ammosov, a Russian national hailing from the republic of Sakha (Yakutia), was ordered to 40 days of arrest by an Almaty-based court on Oct. 9 in connection with…
Israel has no right to self-defense against Hamas militants in Gaza as an occupying power in Palestine, Russia’s ambassador to the United Nations said Wednesday. Vasily Nebenzya used his speech at the special UN General Assembly session on Palestine to condemn Western “hypocrisy” over Palestinian civilian deaths amid their criticism of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.…
Ukraine said Thursday that Russian assaults on the nearly encircled eastern town of Avdiivka had eased as the Kremlin rejected Kyiv’s assessment that the 20-month conflict was deadlocked. Avdiivka, an industrial hub at the center of fighting between Ukrainian and Russian forces since 2014, came under a renewed Russian effort last month to besiege the…
President Vladimir Putin on Thursday signed into law Russia’s de-ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), a landmark agreement that aims to completely ban all nuclear tests. The law’s text on Russia’s legal portal states that Moscow will no longer be bound by the UN-backed nuclear test ban starting Nov. 2. Both Russia and the…
Russian billionaire Alexei Kuzmichev, an associate of Vladimir Putin targeted by EU sanctions, was charged with tax fraud in France on Wednesday, the country’s financial prosecutor said. Kuzmichev was “placed under judicial supervision” and banned from leaving the country, according to the French National Financial Prosecutor’s Office (PNF). He also faces charges of concealing work…
U.S. prosecutors charged two Russian nationals and a Russian-American Wednesday over an alleged plan to evade export controls to help Moscow’s war effort in Ukraine, a day after three others were charged in a similar scheme. Nikolay Grigorev, Nikita Arkhipov and Artem Oloviannikov were charged by federal prosecutors in the Eastern District of New York…
Russia said Wednesday it had sentenced three more Ukrainian soldiers who fought in the city of Mariupol to jail, as it continued to put soldiers held in captivity on trial. Around 2,500 people were taken into Russian captivity after the fall of Mariupol last May, some of whom were sent to Russia or occupied east…
Russia’s Wagner mercenary group has resumed recruiting fighters in at least two regions months after the death of its founder and longtime leader Yevgeny Prigozhin, local media have reported. Wagner halted recruitment in the chaotic months following Prigozhin’s late-June mutiny against Russia’s military leadership. In August, Prigozhin and his close associates were killed in a…
Bulgaria on Wednesday said it had expelled the correspondent of the Russian state-owned newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta, weeks after sending home the head of the local Russian Orthodox Church. Journalist Aleksander Gatsak had been found to be performing “activity that poses a threat to Bulgaria’s national security,” Bulgaria’s State Agency for National Security said in a…
One of Russia’s youngest lawmakers and a fugitive deputy sentenced in absentia on bribery charges have been kicked out of Russia’s lower-house State Duma. Vasily Vlasov, 28, and Vadim Belousov, 63, were formally dismissed for skipping committee meetings for more than a month, Russia’s lower house of parliament said in a statement on Wednesday. Vlasov…
When Fatima Abdulkarim arrived in her native republic of Dagestan early on Sunday, she had hoped to take care of business matters, visit family and — not least importantly — obtain a permit to hold a rally in support of Palestine in the region’s capital Makhachkala. “We applied for a protest permit to ensure that…
Members of the feminist activist group Pussy Riot on Wednesday released their latest anti-war music video “Swan Lake,” where they decry the effects of Kremlin propaganda and call for the return of Ukrainian children forcibly transferred to Russia since the start of the war. “Children are the most vulnerable in this war. Children should not suffer,” the group said…
Russian courts have sentenced 15 anti-Israeli rioters who stormed an airport in the North Caucaus republic of Dagestan to short terms in prison. Hundreds of protesters overran Dagestan’s Makhachkala International Airport on Sunday, charging onto the tarmac and jumping onto an airplane as they searched for Israelis rumored to have arrived on a flight from Tel…
A volcano in Far East Russia’s Kamchatka region has begun spewing large amounts of ash and lava, destroying roadways and forcing schools and kindergartens in surrounding areas to close, Russian media reported Wednesday. The Klyuchevskaya volcano, one of the world’s most active volcanoes, began erupting in late June, although experts said at the time that it…
The NPP has become the first fully implemented ROSATOM’s foreign project with the latest III+ VVER-1200 reactors. On November 01, 2023, power unit No. 2 of the Belarus NPP (its general designer and general contractor being the ROSATOM Engineering Division) has been put into commercial operation. The acceptance committee signed the acceptance certificate for the…
The elderly father of jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny’s top aide Ivan Zhdanov has been released from prison, he said Wednesday, after serving what his son called a political sentence. Yury Zhdanov, 69, the father of lawyer Ivan Zhdanov, wrote on Instagram that he was released from a prison colony in northwestern Russia’s Arkhangelsk region. “I’ve had…
North Korea has sent Russia over one million artillery shells to use in its war against Ukraine, with Pyongyang appearing to receive advice on the development of satellite technology in return, a South Korean lawmaker said Wednesday, citing information provided by Seoul’s spy agency. Russia and North Korea are both heavily sanctioned by Western nations —…
A “large number” of aerial weapons targeted annexed Crimea on Wednesday, Russian-installed authorities said. “The military is working to destroy a large number of various air targets in different areas throughout the peninsula,” Mikhail Razvozhayev, governor of the Crimean port city of Sevastopol, said on the Telegram messaging app. He did not specify what types of…
President Vladimir Putin has replaced the governor of northwestern Russia’s Vologda region in what observers see as the start of annual cadre changes ahead of key elections. Late Tuesday, Putin signed an executive order “accepting the voluntary resignation” of Governor Oleg Kuvshinnikov and appointing Georgy Filimonov as Vologda’s Acting Governor until the next regional elections, which…
Ukraine said on Wednesday that Russia had shelled more than 100 settlements over the last 24 hours — more than in any single day so far this year. Moscow has fired millions of artillery shells on Ukrainian cities, towns and villages along the frontlines since it launched its offensive last February, reducing several across the…
Three Russian nationals were arrested Tuesday in New York for evading U.S. sanctions on the shipping of dual-use electronic components to Russia. Nikolay Golstev, 37, and his wife, Kristina Puzyreva, 32 — both Russian-Canadian citizens — were arrested along with their alleged partner Salimdzhon Nariddinov, 52, who has Russian-Tajik citizenship. The trio is accused of evading sanctions…
A Russian court on Tuesday denied an appeal by Russian-American journalist Alsu Kurmasheva against her pre-trial detention on charges of failing to register as a “foreign agent.” Kurmasheva is the second U.S. journalist to be arrested in Russia this year after Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich was detained in March for “spying” — a charge that…