President Vladimir Putin said Friday it was “obvious” Ukraine shot down a Russian IL-76 military transport plane carrying Ukrainian prisoners over the border region of Belgorod this week. According to Moscow, the plane was traveling to the region ahead of a prisoner swap on Wednesday when it was struck by anti-aircraft missiles. It said there…
A man who was detained in Russia’s republic of Bashkortostan amid a region-wide crackdown on protesters and activists has died in police custody, the human rights group Za Prava Cheloveka (ZPC) reported Friday, citing the man’s sister. Law enforcement officers detained Rifat Dautov following a protest last Friday in Bashkortostan’s capital of Ufa, his sister, identified…
Russia’s regions stand to experience the effects of climate change in diverse ways, with some hit much harder than others, according to a recent study co-authored by Moscow-based climatologist Alexander Chernokulsky and economist Igor Makarov. As manmade global warming progresses — with 2023 marking the warmest year ever recorded — Russia may soon find itself…
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday gave the green light for a new nuclear-powered icebreaker, as Moscow seeks to step up commercial trade across its Arctic north. Under Western sanctions for its Ukraine offensive, Russia is hoping to rely on the Northern Sea Route — a shipping lane that traverses the Arctic Ocean — to…
Russian law enforcement officials said Friday that the Il-76 military transport plane that crashed this week was shot down by a Ukrainian missile fired from a village in the northeastern Kharkiv region. The announcement comes a day after Russia’s Investigative Committee, which probes major crimes, opened a terrorism investigation into the crash. Moscow has accused Kyiv of…
Russia and Ukraine said Friday that they have exchanged the bodies of 132 fallen soldiers, just two days after Moscow accused Kyiv of killing dozens of its own servicemen by shooting down a Russian warplane. Moscow received the remains of 55 soldiers, according to Russian lawmaker Shamsayil Saraliyev, the RBC news website reported. Meanwhile, Ukraine repatriated…
Феминитив: feminine job title The decision of Верховный Суд Российской Федерации (The Supreme Court of the Russian Federation) about the so-called Международное движение ЛГБТ (International LGBT Movement) that was made public without authorization last week is an extraordinary document. It is 19 pages of paragraph-long sentences, lists of violations, accusations, sins, instructions, directives and so on without any facts,…
Authorities in Russia’s republic of Bashkortostan on Friday held a pro-government rally amid their efforts to contain the public backlash that ensued following the imprisonment of a prominent Bashkir activist. Last week, Bashkortostan witnessed some of the largest protests in Russia since the invasion of Ukraine as thousands gathered in the Ural Mountains region to…
It’s been almost two years since Russians began migrating to Serbia, which is now home to one of the largest Russian war diasporas, totalling 370,000 by the end of 2023. Yet the community still largely lives in a parallel world of their establishments — bars, restaurants, music nights and art exhibitions. In an attempt to…
The Russian military is withholding payments and pardons promised to convicted criminals who signed up to fight in some of the most dangerous hotspots in Ukraine, the investigative news outlet IStories reported Thursday. Journalists said they had obtained a copy of a letter sent to President Vladimir Putin by a group of convicts-turned-soldiers, who expressed…
The Kremlin on Friday denied reports that President Vladimir Putin is probing to see whether the United States is willing to engage in talks for ending the war in Ukraine. A Bloomberg report published the day before cited two anonymous sources close to the Kremlin as saying that Putin had indirectly “put out feelers” to unidentified…
Anti-war presidential hopeful Boris Nadezhdin said Thursday that he will not submit signatures endorsing his candidacy that were collected abroad to Russia’s election authorities. According to Russian election laws, a presidential hopeful running from a party not represented in parliament must collect 100,000 unique signatures endorsing his or her candidacy. Nadezhdin, who hopes to run…
The possibility of a nuclear disaster at the Russian-held Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in Ukraine remains “very real,” according to the head of the UN’s nuclear watchdog. Russian forces captured the Zaporizhzhia plant, Europe’s largest, in March 2022 shortly after the Kremlin ordered the invasion of Ukraine. Regular shelling and drone attacks around the plant have raised…
A Moscow court on Friday extended the detention of American reporter Evan Gershkovich for two months. “The period of detention of Evan Gershkovich… is extended by two months… until March 30,” the court said on the messaging app Telegram. Gershkovich, a reporter for the Wall Street Journal, was arrested during a reporting trip at the end…