“My entire life is packed in this one suitcase,” a man said as he boarded a minivan from Goris, southern Armenia, to the capital Yerevan amid the mass exodus of the ethnic Armenian population from Nagorno-Karabakh. The man, 70-year-old Armen from Stepanakert, who had just arrived in Goris, shared his last days in Karabakh and…
Finland is considering banning Russian citizens from buying property in the country, with a final decision on the matter possibly coming as soon as this spring, the Finnish Defense Minister said Monday. Tensions between the Nordic country and Moscow have risen sharply since the invasion of Ukraine, with Helsinki temporarily closing its border with Russia last…
A number of Finland-based companies are exporting high-tech goods to Russian buyers with known links to Moscow’s defense industry and intelligence services, Finnish broadcaster Yle reported Monday, citing customs data. At least 20 companies owned by “people of Russian origin” are either exporting goods directly to Russia or acting as intermediaries between foreign sellers and…
Specialists from Rosneft’s Tyumen Scientific Institute have identified an underground reservoir potentially suitable for injection and storage of more than 300 million tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) during geological exploration of the subsoil in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous District.
Agents from Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) raided a Jehovah’s Witnesses office in the occupied Ukrainian city of Mariupol, state media reported Monday. “The FSB and military counterintelligence have uncovered a location in Mariupol that was used by the Jehovah’s Witnesses to promote extremist ideology,” Zvezda, the Russian Defense Ministry’s broadcaster, reported. In 2017, Russia’s…
Thousands of protesters in central Russia’s republic of Bashkortostan braved freezing temperatures on Monday as they called for the release of an activist who is standing trial on charges of inciting ethnic hatred. Authorities accuse Fayil Alsynov of inciting ethnic hatred against migrant workers when he spoke at a rally in April 2023, referring to…
The Kremlin said Monday it has “no information” about Russian military aircraft that Ukraine claims to have shot down over the Azov Sea. Ukraine’s top general Valerii Zaluzhnyi announced earlier on Monday that a Russian A-50 long-range radar detection aircraft and an Il-22 aerial command center had been “destroyed” over the Azov Sea, which lies…
Russia has sentenced more than 200 Ukrainian prisoners of war to lengthy jail sentences, state-run media reported Monday, citing a top law enforcement official. Since invading Ukraine, Moscow is believed to have captured thousands of Ukrainian soldiers, many of whom were taken during the siege of the port city of Mariupol in early 2022. Kyiv…
Alcohol dependency in Russia has increased for the first time in 10 years, Russia’s business daily Kommersant reported Monday, citing data from the state statistics agency Rosstat. In the decade between 2010 and 2021, first-time alcohol use disorder diagnoses declined from 153,900 to 53,300. But in 2022, doctors issued 54,200 first-time diagnoses of alcohol use…
Russia has handed a five-year jail sentence to a 20-year-old student for allegedly working with Ukrainian special services and planning sabotage attacks on military bases, law enforcement authorities said Monday. The Kurgan region branch of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) said the student, whose name it did not provide, had been detained earlier on suspicion…