The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for a gun attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday, which Russian authorities said killed at least 40 people. IS fighters “attacked a large gathering… on the outskirts of the Russian capital Moscow,” the group said in a statement on the Telegram messaging app. The IS statement said…
Russia is reeling from a mass shooting and blaze at a Moscow rock concert, which the government has labeled a “terrorist attack.” Here is a look back at previous attacks on the city in the past 25 years. Apartment building bombed, 118 dead (1999) A bomb blast in the early hours of Sept. 13, 1999,…
The White House said on Friday it had no initial indication that Ukraine, which is fighting an invasion by Russia, was involved in a “terrible” attack on a concert hall in Moscow. National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said the United States was still gathering information after Russian officials said gunmen opened fire in a…
A court in southwestern Russia’s Voronezh region has sentenced a man to 23 years in maximum-security prison on accusations that he sought to blow up a railway station, independent media reported Friday. Alexander Dimitrenko was detained in Voronezh in May 2022, two months after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Dimitrenko had accused agents…
Rescue workers drilling through a gold mine in Far East Russia hope to reach over a dozen miners trapped under a rockslide within the coming days, Russia’s Emergency Situations Ministry said Friday. A rockslide at the Pioneer mine in the Amur region on Monday covered the 13 miners in rubble, with officials saying they believe…
Фейк: fake I have been remiss. Although I have mentioned the “Russian” word фейк in many columns, I’ve never really focused on it. I suppose it’s because, well, what’s there to say? Фейк is the standard Russian insult for anything purported to be false, particularly factual information from non-Russian sources. There are plenty of official…
Russia’s state financial watchdog Rosfinmonitoring has added the so-called “international LGBT public movement” to its list of terrorists and extremists. Being added to the registry allows the authorities to freeze designees’ bank accounts without a court order. It was not immediately clear how Rosfinmonitoring planned to enforce its rules against the vaguely defined “LGBT movement,”…
Russia’s Central Bank left interest rates unchanged on Friday, as the war in Ukraine continues to fuel stubbornly high inflation and labor shortages across the economy. The regulator has progressively hiked rates to 16% over the past year in a bid to ease price pressures, and analysts are waiting for the bank to signal whether…
Updated with comments from source close to Russia’s Defense Ministry. Russia is planning to recruit 300,000 soldiers for a renewed offensive to seize the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, the investigative news outlet Vyorstka reported Friday, citing sources in the Kremlin, Defense Ministry and regional governments. “We’re 300,000 snouts short, that’s why everything’s ready for ‘mobilization…
Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) has arrested seven Moscow residents said to be linked to a pro-Kyiv militia accused of attacking Russia’s border regions, state news agencies reported on Friday. The arrests come days after Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the FSB to wage an unrelenting crackdown on volunteer units fighting on the side of…
Updated with Peskov’s remarks during Friday’s press briefing. Russia has found itself in a “state of war” with Ukraine, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in an interview with the pro-government newspaper Argumenty i Fakty published on Friday. Moscow officially refers to its full-scale invasion of Ukraine as a “special military operation,” seeking to downplay the impact of the two-year…
The Russian navy accidentally fired on a fishing trawler during training exercises earlier this week, causing an explosion and killing three people on board the vessel, the independent broadcaster Dozhd reported, citing one of the victims’ relatives. Authorities said Tuesday that one fisherman had died and four others were injured in a fire that had broken out…