The Kremlin’s wartime campaign of forced nationalization has hit the Ural Mountains region of Chelyabinsk, a major industrial center, harder than most. Since the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Russian prosecutors have targeted 55 enterprises — metals, chemicals, agribusiness and even a major car dealership — for compulsory state takeover, according to figures from the…
A memoir written by the late Russian opposition activist Alexei Navalny will be published posthumously this fall, his wife and allies announced Thursday. Navalny died at an Arctic penal colony on Feb. 16 while serving a 19-year sentence on “extremism” charges widely seen as politically motivated. As one of President Vladimir Putin’s most vocal political opponents, the…
Russia has nationalized the country’s largest winemaker linked to an arrested billionaire whose business assets were confiscated earlier this year, the RBC news website reported Thursday, citing the tax service’s corporate database. Kuban Vino, which produced 95.5 million bottles of wine in 2023, was reportedly one of four nationalized wine and food companies that were…
The Pushkin House has announced six books shortlisted for its 2024 Book Prize. The books cover a broad range of topics, time periods and places, from the mountain ranges of the Caucasus in the south to the Arctic snowfields in the north, from Stalin’s labor camps to the war Russia is waging in Ukraine today,…
Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) said Thursday that it thwarted an attempted landing in southern Ukraine’s partially occupied Kherson region carried out by Ukrainian special forces who received training from British commandos. A video published by the Russian Defense Ministry broadcaster Zvezda showed what was said to be the Ukrainian special forces’ landing boat being…
Moscow on Thursday called on Iran and Israel to exercise restraint amid spiraling tensions in the Middle East. Tehran has issued fresh threats against Israel over a strike earlier this month that killed two Iranian generals, triggering U.S. President Joe Biden to pledge “iron-clad” support for Israel on Wednesday. “It is very important for everybody…
Russia successfully launched its Angara A5 space rocket from the Vostochny Cosmodrome on Thursday afternoon after two aborted liftoff attempts earlier this week. The heavy-lift rocket was initially scheduled for launch on Tuesday at the Amur region spaceport in Far East Russia. Previously, all three Angara A5 launches were based out of northern Russia’s Plesetsk Cosmodrome.…
Updated with Putin’s videoconference. The southern Russian city of Orenburg is expected to face major flooding in the next 24 hours as water levels in the nearby Ural River continue to rise, local authorities said Thursday, urging residents in impacted areas to evacuate. “I think [water levels] will peak in Orenburg within a day, followed…
In the north, Kharkiv — pounded almost daily in recent days — was also attacked, a day after a strike killed three people there. Ukraine’s Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko called the attack “massive” and said it lasted “for several hours.” Ukrainian media reported that an attack “completely destroyed” the Trypilska power station in the Kyiv…
The southern Zaporizhzhia and Odesa regions and the western region of Lviv were also hit, officials said. Zelensky urged Ukraine’s Western partners not to “turn a blind eye” to what was happening and to provide Kyiv with more air defense systems. His call came as he traveled to Lithuania — one of Kyiv’s staunchest allies…
Russian law enforcement agents in the North Caucasus republic of Kabardino-Balkaria killed two armed militants during a counterterrorism operation, the National Anti-Terrorism Committee (NAC) said Thursday. A firefight erupted between “members of a gang that is part of an international terrorist organization who were planning to commit a number of acts of sabotage and terrorism”…