Russia’s absence from the Saudi-hosted summit to find a peace framework for the war in Ukraine exposed the Kremlin’s vulnerabilities despite the fact that no final joint statement or document was signed, four current and former Russian officials familiar with Russia’s diplomacy admitted to The Moscow Times. The weekend summit in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia was…
On August 9, the 27th meeting of the Russian-Chinese Subcommission on Nuclear Issues was held in Saint Petersburg (within the framework of the Commission for Regular Meetings of the Heads of the Governments of Russia and China). Co-Chairmen of the Subcommission are Alexey Likhachev, Director General of ROSATOM, and Zhang Kejian, Director of the China…
Ukrainian shelling on Wednesday killed one and injured four people in Russia’s border region of Belgorod, the governor said, targeting a region that has been hit by repeated Ukrainian strikes. “The village of Gorkovsky in the Graivoron district came under fire from the Armed Forces of Ukraine,” Vyacheslav Gladkov announced on social media. “One person died — a…
Installation of eight heat exchangers of passive heat removal system (PHRS) has been completed at Unit 1 of Rooppur NPP (general designer and general contractor is Rosatom State Corporation engineering Division). Each heat exchanger is a metal structure weighing over 32 tons, 8530 meters long, 5904 сеntimeters wide. The installation was performed at elevation +38.100.…
Russian movie theaters have begun showing pirated versions of the Warner Bros. blockbuster “Barbie,” media reported Wednesday, amid ongoing efforts to circumvent major Hollywood studios’ screening bans in Russia. Russian film distributors adopted an illicit scheme last year by obtaining digital copies of movies shown in Kazakhstan via the messaging app Telegram — without permission…
Moscow on Wednesday accused Poland and Finland of threatening its border security and vowed to respond to “multiplying” risks from NATO member countries along Russia’s western frontier. In recent weeks, Poland has beefed up its border security with neighboring Belarus following reports that fighters from the Wagner mercenary outfit have established a new base in…
An elite Chechen military unit has been deployed as a police force in the occupied Ukrainian nuclear city of Enerhodar, Al Jazeera reported Wednesday, citing interviews with engineers who fled the town and its remaining residents. Russian forces captured Enerhodar, which hosts the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, in the early days of its February 2022…
The International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples is celebrated on 9 August.
Updated with new injury count, death toll, missing persons. A powerful explosion ripped through an optical equipment factory outside Moscow, triggering a “total evacuation” from all nearby buildings, local authorities said Wednesday. Plumes of smoke billowed high into the air from the Zagorsk Optical-Mechanical Plant in the town of Sergiyev Posad, around 70 kilometers northeast…
Updated with new injury count. A powerful explosion ripped through an optical equipment factory outside Moscow, triggering a “total evacuation” from all nearby buildings, local authorities said Wednesday. At least 35 people were injured, with four in serious condition, authorities told state media. Plumes of smoke billowed high into the air from the Zagorsk Optical-Mechanical…
Andrzej Kshetussky was one of hundreds of thousands of Belarusians who peacefully protested against the fraudulent re-election of their country’s longtime leader, Alexander Lukashenko, in 2020. Three years after those protests were brutally repressed, he is now fighting alongside the Ukrainian army against invading Russian forces. “We lost all protest infrastructure [and] oppositional organizations in…
Grozny, the capital of Russia’s majority-muslim republic of Chechnya, has established sister city ties with the occupied southern Ukrainian city of Mariupol, over a year after it was devastated by invading Russian forces. “Grozny Mayor Khas-Magomed Kadyrov and head of Mariupol’s [Russian-installed] administration Oleg Morgun signed an agreement establishing twin city relations between the cities,”…
Russia’s state-run news agency Rossiya Segodnya has applied to trademark the brand of Ekho Moskvy, the liberal radio station that was banned following the invasion of Ukraine, according to Russia’s Federal Service for Intellectual Property (Rospatent). Sputnik Radio, one of several Rossiya Segodnya products, took over Ekho Moskvy’s FM frequencies after it was taken off…
Two Ukrainian drones headed toward Moscow were shot down Wednesday, Russian authorities said, the latest in a surge of drone attacks targeting the capital. Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said on the Telegram messaging app that “both [drones] were shot down by air defense,” noting that one was downed in the Domodedovo area on the southern outskirts of…
A former Austrian foreign minister who danced with Russian President Vladimir Putin at her wedding has been residing in a Russian village this summer, local media reported Tuesday. Karin Kneissl made headlines in 2018 when Putin attended her wedding at an Austrian vineyard, where both were photographed waltzing arm-in-arm. Kneissl revealed in an interview with…
A Siberian glacier has turned crimson red from algae bloom, raising the likelihood of even faster ice melt than at the current rate triggered by climate change, Russian scientists warned Monday. Red algae covers glaciers in the Altai Mountains near Russia’s borders with Kazakhstan and Mongolia every year, Tomsk State University’s (TSU) Faculty of Geology…
Rescue workers combed through the rubble of damaged apartments in the city of Pokrovsk in eastern Ukraine on Tuesday, a day after Russian strikes killed at least seven people. The target of the missile attack was a command post of the Ukrainian armed forces, the Russian Defense Ministry indicated in a daily briefing. Pokrovsk, which…
Russia’s largest known military equipment storage facility has been stripped of nearly half of the Soviet-era tanks and armored vehicles that were stored on its grounds before Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, The Moscow Times’ Russian service reported, analyzing satellite imagery of the storage site. The Vagzhanovo military equipment depot — located outside…
Moscow on Tuesday accused Ukraine of inciting Russians to set fire to military recruitment offices, following a recent uptick in the number of arson attacks. Since President Vladimir Putin sent troops to Ukraine last year many military recruitment offices across Russia have come under attacks. The General Prosecutor’s Office linked the attacks to the “successful advance of…
8 August 2023, Büyükeceli, Mersin Province, Turkey – Concreting of the reactor building foundation slab has been completed at the construction site of Akkuyu NPP Unit 4 of the. The completion of an important construction stage enables to proceed to the construction of the reactor cavity walls, where the reactor core localization device — the…
In early August, the pilot training course “Operational management of Engineering and Technical Means of Physical Protection Complex” for representatives of the Ruppur NPP security service (People’s Republic of Bangladesh) was completed at the Rosatom Technical Academy. The course was prepared by specialists of the Global Nuclear Safety and Security Instituite (GNSSI) of the Rosatom…
Poland has resumed pumping oil through a key pipeline linking Russia to Europe that was damaged over the weekend, the Polish pipeline operator PERN said Tuesday. Though flows through the Druzhba pipeline have dropped sharply after Russia invaded Ukraine, its operation was partly halted late Saturday after Polish operators discovered a leak at one of its sections. PERN…
Russian exports to China dropped in July, the first time since steadily rising in the months following Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Reuters reported Tuesday, citing Chinese customs data. China’s July 2023 imports from Russia declined by 8% compared to July 2022, totaling $9.2 billion. China’s overall monthly imports shrank 12.4%. It was…
Extreme heat has engulfed Moscow in recent days, with thermometers hitting 30 degrees Сelsius mark for the first time this year on Sunday. Though August 6 was the hottest day of the year so far, it wasn’t close to the record of 37.3 С measured on the same day in 2010, the weather portal Gismeteo…
Poland’s government on Monday accused Belarus and Russia of orchestrating another migration influx into the European Union via the Polish border in order to destabilize the region. “We’re talking about an operation organized by the Russian and Belarusian secret services that is getting more and more intense,” Polish Deputy Interior Minister Maciej Wasik told reporters. Tomasz Praga,…
Nearly 100 wildfires are currently burning in Russia’s Far East republic of Sakha (Yakutia), the local branch of the Russian emergencies ministry said Monday. The 98 wildfires have engulfed a combined area of 125,600 hectares (310,364 acres) of land — roughly half the size of the country of Luxembourg, authorities said. Emergency officials added that…
Russia has reallocated healthcare spending from dozens of its regions to build and repair hospitals in the occupied territories of eastern Ukraine, the Vedomosti business daily reported Monday, citing a government decree. Sixty-one out of 85 Russian regions — including annexed Crimea and the federal city of Sevastopol — saw cuts of some 2.4 billion…
The appearance of several tons of dead fish in a forest in Russia’s Far East Kamchatka region has prompted local authorities to open a probe into unauthorized dumping. The inspection was initiated after photos of the incident appeared on social media, depicting a vast amount of fish strewn across the ground. Kamchatka regional authorities said…
Russia said Monday its troops had advanced three kilometers (two miles) along the Kupiansk front in northeast Ukraine over the last three days, as it seeks to regain territories it lost earlier in its offensive. The city of Kupiansk and surrounding areas of Ukraine’s Kharkiv region were liberated by Ukrainian forces last September, but Moscow…
The first moon landing mission in Russia’s post-Soviet history will be accompanied by an evacuation of a village where rocket boosters are expected to fall this week, a local official said Monday. The Luna-25 lunar lander is scheduled to launch from the Vostochny Cosmodrome in Russia’s Far East at 23:10 GMT on Friday, Aug. 11. It…
Rosneft specialists have developed the MUZA (the Injected Agent Control Module) software to control waterflooding at the fields.
Russia is on track to open more criminal cases for treason in 2023 than over the past 20 years combined, Russia’s independent news website Kholod reported Monday. Authorities launched 82 treason investigations between January and July — a fourfold increase from the 20 cases investigated in all of 2022 — Kholod said, citing publicly available…
Russian President Vladimir Putin can choose not to hold presidential elections next year because he will “obviously” win re-election, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said late Sunday. Putin is widely expected to declare his bid for a sixth overall presidential term. Pre-war constitutional changes allow him to remain president until 2036. “Although elections are a requirement…
European companies have suffered at least 100 billion euros ($110 billion) in direct losses from operations in Russia since Moscow launched its invasion of Ukraine, the Financial Times reported late Sunday. A survey of major European companies showed that a total of 176 companies that have posted annual reports for 2022 and financial statements this…
A youth delegation of ROSATOM attended in the 5th BRICS Youth Energy Summit, which closed August 4 in Johannesburg. Attended by over 400 delegates from 30 countries of the world, the event brought together South African energy industry executives, international experts, and young entrepreneurs, researchers, and community leaders from the G5 countries and the global…
Russia said Monday it had shot down a Ukrainian drone southwest of Moscow, as drone attacks on the Russian capital and its surrounding regions have surged in recent weeks. Authorities said the drone was downed in the central Kaluga region, less than 200 kilometers from Moscow, adding that the incident “affected neither people nor infrastructure.” The drone…
Russia said Sunday that its forces struck military airbases in the Khmelnytskyi and Rivne regions in western Ukraine and that “all targets were hit.” “Overnight Russia’s armed forces carried out strikes… on Ukrainian armed forces airbases around the settlements of Starokostiantyniv in the Khmelnytskyi region and Dubno in the Rivne region,” the Russian Defense Ministry said. Ukraine said it…
Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said Sunday that Russian air defense had destroyed a drone nearing the capital, which had been rarely targeted throughout the conflict in Ukraine until several attacks this year. “Today at around 11 am a drone attempted to make a breakthrough toward Moscow. It was destroyed while approaching by air defense forces,”…
Moscow escalated its attacks in Ukraine on Saturday, with President Volodymyr Zelensky denouncing a deadly strike on a blood transfusion centre as a “war crime.” A separate strike struck a key factory, both attacks coming just hours after Kyiv hit a Russian tanker in the Kerch Strait. The attacks were the latest since Moscow exited…
Russia said Saturday it scrambled an Su-30 fighter jet to “prevent a violation of the Russian state border” by a U.S. Reaper MQ-9 military drone over the Black Sea. “As the Russian fighter approached, the foreign reconnaissance drone performed a U-turn away from the border,” the Russian Defense Ministry said. The ministry said the drone belonged…
There is an old Russian saying: “A spoonful of tar spoils a barrel of mead” — which means that a small defect can ruin something big and beautiful. But wait a minute — could a tiny speck of tar really ruin an entire barrel of mead? Why couldn’t you just spoon it out along with…
Russia on Saturday said it captured a settlement in northeastern Ukraine, where Kyiv has reported increased attacks. “In the area of Kupiansk, as a result of the competent and professional actions of the military units of the Western command, the settlement of Novoselivske was liberated,” the Russian Defense Ministry said on Telegram. It added “offensive…
A Russian tanker was hit by Ukrainian drones in the Kerch Strait, briefly halting traffic on the strategic bridge linking Crimea to Russia, Russian media reported early Saturday. The tanker was damaged in the attack and two tugboats had arrived at the scene, the state-run TASS news agency said, citing the Maritime Rescue Center. No…
The speaker of Russia’s lower house of parliament said that lawmakers will ditch their foreign-made cars for domestic car brands, Interfax reported Friday. “We discussed with the heads of the State Duma factions the issue of the use of domestically assembled cars by deputies. Everyone supports this decision. We agreed that the deputies will use Moskvitch,…
President Vladimir Putin on Friday signed a law allowing Russian banks and other financial institutions to block the assets of sanctioned foreign organizations and individuals. The law allows Moscow to freeze the funds and property of legal entities controlled by foreign citizens and organizations against whom Russia has imposed what it calls “special economic measures.” It…
A Moscow court has sentenced jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny to 19 years in prison, Interfax reported Friday, on a string of new “extremism” charges that his supporters have called an attempt to keep him out of politics forever. President Vladimir Putin’s most vocal domestic opponent, who is already serving a nine-year prison sentence on…
Блат: crimes (in prison and among criminals); connections (outside prison by everyone else) Alexei Navalny got in trouble in prison again, this time for saying two words: крыша (roof) and хата (hut or peasant house). So what is the problem with those two words? He was told that they “входят в сборник жаргонных слов и…
President Vladimir Putin has signed a law that raises the upper age limit for military conscription, as Moscow continues its efforts to widen the pool of potential recruits for its war in Ukraine. Under previous Russian law, all men aged 18-27 were required to complete a one-year term of compulsory military service, a requirement that…
Poland on Friday said it had detained a Belarusian man on suspicion of being part of a “Russian spy ring” which it claimed planned to derail trains carrying aid to Ukraine. Poland, a key ally of Ukraine, had previously reported arrests in the investigation, including that of a Russian ice hockey player in June who…
An elderly man charged with trying to set fire to a Russian military enlistment office has been found dead in his home near St. Petersburg, local media reported late Thursday, amid a nationwide wave of arson attacks linked to phone scams. The 76-year-old was detained on Wednesday after cameras captured him throwing Molotov cocktails at an…
In June and July, Rosneft subsidiaries released more than 17.1 million fry of various fish species into Russian rivers.
Rosneft and the Voronezh Tourist Information Centre (TIC) presented a joint project to develop car tourism.
Authorities in northern Russia are seeking millions of dollars in damages from neighboring Norway after a herd of wild reindeer crossed over the border and damaged a protected nature reserve last winter, The Barents Observer reported. Natalya Polikarpova, director of the Murmansk region’s Pasvik nature reserve, said the animals ate away moss and shrubs and…
Russia has nearly doubled its defense budget plan after spending more in the first half of 2023 than originally targeted for the entire year, Reuters reported Friday, citing a government document it obtained. Defense spending has increased every month since President Vladimir Putin sent troops into Ukraine in February last year. In June, Russia stopped the…
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu visited the war zone in Ukraine to inspect a command post and captured Western military hardware, the army said Friday. Footage published by the Defense Ministry showed Shoigu boarding a helicopter, meeting with officers and inspecting a Swedish armored combat vehicle captured by Russian forces. The footage also showed Shoigu…
Russia claimed Friday it had thwarted Ukrainian sea and air drone attacks on a naval base in the Black Sea and the Crimean peninsula. “Tonight, the Armed Forces of Ukraine, with the use of two unmanned sea boats, attempted an attack on the Novorossiysk naval base of the Russian Armed Forces,” the Defense Ministry said…
Russia said Friday it had thwarted Ukrainian sea and air drone attacks on a naval base in the Black Sea and the Crimean peninsula. The number of attacks in the sea has increased from both sides since Moscow exited a deal last month that had allowed Ukrainian grain exports via the shipping hub during the…
Collage artist GM_collage combines photos of symbolic people, places and things in surreal arrangements to lay bare the contradictions, nuances and hypocrisies of modern Russia. When contacted by The Moscow Times, the artist declined to share details about their identity, only saying that they are from Belarus and now live in Georgia. The Moscow Times…
At least 79 civilians have been killed on Russian soil since Moscow launched its invasion of Ukraine last year, the independent news website 7×7 reported Tuesday. The Belgorod region which borders Ukraine, which has regularly been targeted by drone attacks and shelling, saw the highest share of civilian losses, with 48 people killed. Other casualties were…
Russia has enlisted over 230,000 additional personnel into the army since the start of the year, Moscow’s Deputy Security Council Chairman Dmitry Medvedev said on Thursday. Moscow has conducted an aggressive military recruitment campaign this year as it seeks to stave off an ongoing Ukrainian counteroffensive and hold territories it has captured during the conflict. “According…