Finland’s President-elect Alexander Stubb said Monday his country will not maintain high-level ties with Russia until the Kremlin ends its war in Ukraine. Relations between Moscow and Helsinki have sharply deteriorated since the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, prompting Finland to drop decades of military non-alignment and join NATO. “We do not have a political relationship…
Russia is gaining the advantage in the war in Ukraine, owing to its greater number of troops and arms supplied by China, North Korea and other countries, Norway’s intelligence service warned on Monday. Presenting its annual risk report along with other Norwegian security services, the head of the military intelligence unit Nils Andreas Stensones said…
Russian lawmakers on Monday introduced a bill that would expand current legislation on “undesirable” organizations to include state-sponsored entities in addition to non-governmental organizations. Since launching their “undesirable” list in 2015 to crack down on foreign-funded NGOs, Russian authorities have expanded the law to target independent news outlets, human rights groups, environmental organizations and educational institutions. Vasily Piskarev,…
“The Master and Margarita” was only released less than a month ago but it has already become one of the highest grossing and most talked about films in Russia in recent years. In the first weekend alone the film amassed almost half a billion rubles. The film is based on the eponymous novel by Mikhail…
Pro-peace presidential hopeful Boris Nadezhdin announced Monday that he has filed two lawsuits with Russia’s Supreme Court challenging the decision by election authorities to bar him from running in the March presidential race. Russa’s Central Election Commission (CEC) voted unanimously Thursday to disqualify Nadezhdin over alleged errors in thousands of signatures endorsing his candidacy. “Real…
Ukrainian military intelligence claims that Russian forces in occupied areas of the country are using Starlink satellite technology to communicate. The GUR said Sunday that they had intercepted radio transmissions from the Donetsk region in which Russian soldiers discussed using Starlink terminals. Activated after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Starlink satellite internet replaced conventional internet…
Russia has added 18 British military, political and academic figures to its entry ban list in response to London’s efforts “to reduce Moscow’s influence in the international arena,” Russia’s Foreign Ministry announced Monday. “Russophobic British officials don’t shy away from… discrediting our country’s constitutional order and social and political processes,” the ministry said. Minister of…
Three former employees of Russian media influencer Ksenia Sobchak were sentenced to at least seven years in prison for trying to extort money from the head of state-owned defense conglomerate Rostec. Multiple criminal cases were launched in August 2022 after Rostec CEO Sergei Chemezov and his aides accused the managers of several Telegram news channels of…
Officials from Russia’s state civil aviation agency Rosaviatsia have been accused of de-registering aircraft that were later used by the Ukrainian military, the pro-Kremlin tabloid Izvestia reported Monday, citing anonymous law enforcement and Transportation Ministry sources. A Transport Ministry inspection in July revealed that 59 planes and helicopters had been illegally removed from Russia’s civil…
Russian exports to Europe dropped by more than two-thirds in 2023, as the EU drastically cut its purchases of Russian oil and gas, Russia’s customs agency said Monday. EU countries halted the vast majority of their energy purchases from Russia in a bid to exert economic pressure on Moscow over its military offensive against Ukraine.…
The governor of western Russia’s Kaliningrad region blamed the 18th-century German enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant for the outbreak of war in Ukraine. “He is directly related to the military conflict in Ukraine,” Anton Alikhanov, who governs the western exclave of Kaliningrad, said Friday at a local political science forum. According to the regional news outlet FederalPress, Alikhanov…