From mercenary leaders to pro-Kremlin pop stars — and from opposition activists to conservative internet crusaders — these were the biggest names in the headlines in 2023: Yevgeny Prigozhin Yevgeny Prigozhin. Lev Borodin / TASS Known as “Putin’s chef,” Yevgeny Prigozhin became a prominent restaurateur and government caterer in the 1990s after leaving prison. Today…
The past year has been another year of significant change in Russia, from drone attacks, cross-border incursions and the Wagner mutiny to the arrests of journalists, the ICC’s arrest warrant for Putin and Azerbaijan’s takeover of Nagorno-Karabakh. Here is a look back at some of the top headlines of 2023: Ukraine’s Much-Anticipated Counteroffensive Floundered Analysts…
Ukraine’s commander-in-chief said on Tuesday his forces had pulled back to the outskirts of the town of Maryinka, a day after Moscow claimed full control of the key town. “We have now moved to the outskirts of Maryinka, and in some places already beyond the boundaries of the settlement,” Valerii Zaluzhnyi told reporters in Kyiv.…
Russian celebrities and pop stars have started issuing on-camera apologies for attending a scandalous “almost naked” party that was widely condemned in pro-Kremlin circles as unpatriotic and disrespectful of Russian soldiers. After initially dismissing the public outcry over footage of scantily clad celebrities and other guests at last week’s private party at a Moscow nightclub, the party’s organizer,…
The Kremlin is investing in movements of wives and mothers who support the war in Ukraine and promote traditional values to counter the growing influence of protesting relatives of soldiers, according to a report by the independent news outlet Holod published Tuesday. Mobilized soldiers’ relatives, most notably the Put’ Domoi (Way Home) group, are demanding the return…
“Creative unions are back where they were under Soviet power — so-called ‘creatives’ feeding at the state trough and afraid of their own shadows.” That is how Nina Agisheva-Nikolaevich, a well-known Russian theater critic, commented on Facebook about one of the most significant recent cases in the Russian theater world. She was referring to Vladimir…
Over 1,000 roe deer have invaded the Omsk region in western Siberia due to abnormal weather, with around 100 animals wandering in the city of Omsk, the region’s deputy natural resources minister told local television Monday. Icy rains in late November, which were followed by severe frosts, could have triggered the sudden migration of the deer, which…
“They forced me to castrate a pig because I wanted gender-affirming surgery.” Ada Blakewell, 23, a non-binary transgender woman, was undergoing hormone therapy when in August 2022 her parents took her to a private center in the Altai region to undergo “masculinization” — an attempt to change her to her birth sex. “My parents, with…
Alexander Levenbuk, the founding father of Moscow’s only Jewish theater, died at the age of 90 from natural causes on Dec. 22, TASS news agency reported, citing Alexander Brod, a member of the Presidential Council for the Development of Civil Society and Human Rights. Levenbuk was one of the founders of Shalom, a popular Jewish…
Russian authorities have issued arrest warrants for two popular animators and exiled opposition politician Dmitry Gudkov, the independent news website Mediazona reported Tuesday. The Russian Interior Ministry’s wanted persons database lists Gudkov, who served in Russia’s lower-house State Duma from 2011-16, alongside cartoonists Oleg Kuvayev and Pavel Muntyan. Kuvayev is the creator of the long-running flash-animated series “Masyanya,” whose…
Rosneft has completed the reconstruction of five boiler stations of the Nizhny Tagil heating and power complex
Jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny on Tuesday detailed his transfer to a high-security prison colony in Russia’s Arctic that had kept him from the public eye for nearly three weeks and raised concerns about his safety. In his first public letter since unveiling an anti-Putin 2024 presidential election strategy in a Dec. 7 post, Navalny sought to…
The Kremlin on Tuesday acknowledged a Ukrainian attack had damaged a warship in the occupied Crimean port of Feodosia in what Ukraine and its Western allies called a major setback for the Russian Navy. Feodosia is home to Russia’s Black Sea Fleet naval base on the annexed Crimean peninsula. Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu informed…