Seda Suleimanova, a young woman from Russia’s republic of Chechnya, was detained in St. Petersburg and returned to her home region last summer. She had fled Chechnya, a conservative, majority Muslim region of the North Caucasus, after her family threatened to kill her for being “insufficiently religious.” This month, rights activists announced that she may have been…
India said Thursday it was working to secure the release of around 20 of its citizens who are “stuck” in the Russian army. Several Indian recruits told AFP this month that they had been lured into joining the Russian military by promises of high salaries and Russian citizenship. “It is our understanding that 20-odd people…
Russian TV personality and blogger Anastasia Ivleeva said Thursday that she will vote for Vladimir Putin in next month’s presidential election after facing a conservative backlash for organizing her “nearly naked” party in December. Ivleeva and several other celebrities issued public apologies after pictures from the private event at a Moscow nightclub were leaked online,…
A Swedish agency for grants for faith institutions said Thursday it was cutting support to the Russian Orthodox Church, after Sweden’s intelligence service warned the church was used for intelligence activities. The Swedish Agency for Support for Faith Communities said in a statement that it was also cutting financial support for the Church, also known…
The European Parliament said Thursday that Russian President Vladimir Putin bore “criminal and political responsibility” for the death of opposition activist Alexei Navalny and should be held to account. Navalny, one of Putin’s most vocal critics, died in prison on Feb. 16 in unclear circumstances but EU leaders have blamed the Russian leader. “The Russian…
Funeral homes in Moscow are refusing to transport the body of opposition activist Alexei Navalny to the church where his public memorial ceremony will take place on Friday, his allies said. “All the hearse services are getting calls from unknown people who threaten them so that they don’t take Alexei’s body anywhere,” Navalny’s spokeswoman Kira…
Updated with court ruling. A Moscow court has fined the editor-in-chief of the independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta for breaking wartime censorship laws, the publication reported Thursday. Sergei Sokolov, who replaced Nobel Peace Prize winner Dmitry Muratov as Novaya Gazeta’s head editor last year, was found guilty of “discrediting” the Russian military in an article published…
President Vladimir Putin has secretly assigned “political instructors” to Russian government ministries and state agencies to ensure loyalty among officials, the independent news outlets Meduza and IStories reported Thursday, citing leaked Kremlin files obtained by an international team of journalists. The political instructors — called “deputy heads for social and political work” — are tasked with instructing…
Russia said Thursday it had defeated an attempted landing by Ukrainian special forces on the Tendra Spit sandbar in the Black Sea held by Russian troops, killing “up to 25” Ukrainian personnel. “Russian forces… destroyed a Ukrainian commando group…. trying to land on speedboats,” the Defense Ministry said in its daily update. It said that…
A court in a Russian border region on Thursday sentenced a Ukrainian man to 12 years in prison on espionage charges for passing military information to Ukraine’s secret services. Russia has arrested and imprisoned dozens of people for allegedly cooperating with Ukraine’s army and intelligence agencies since it launched its full-scale military offensive in February…
Thanks to the support of RN-Uvatneftegaz (an enterprise of Rosneft Oil Company’s upstream complex), scientists from the Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences have confirmed the fact that the red-nosed forest reindeer is a permanent resident of the Tyumen Region.
President Vladimir Putin delivered his annual State of the Nation address on Thursday, using the speech to send a message of defiance to the West, which he accused of instigating the war in Ukraine, but also to highlight state social support programs and the Russian economy’s resilience against Western sanctions. “The West miscalculated and ran…
New Zealand announced Thursday that it has imposed a new round of sanctions against Russia aiming to curb Moscow’s efforts to evade current restrictions over its war in Ukraine. “By targeting evasion methods, the government is contributing to the robustness of the sanctions system,” Foreign Minister Winston Peters said in a statement, describing Russia’s sanctions…