Some 20,000 protesters rallied in Georgia on Wednesday after lawmakers advanced a controversial “foreign influence” law that opponents say will undermine Tbilisi’s longstanding European aspirations. In a vote boycotted by opposition deputies, 83 lawmakers from the ruling Georgian Dream party passed the first reading of the bill, which has been criticized as mirroring a repressive Russian…
Near the shores of the Barents Sea in Russia’s far northwest lies Murmansk, the world’s largest city beyond the Arctic Circle and a popular destination for tourists hoping to witness the Northern Lights. In the heart of the city, Murmansk Commercial Seaport carries out coal transshipment out in the open — sending coal dust into…
Russian President Vladimir Putin called Wednesday on local leaders in Siberia and the Urals to make sure flood-hit homes are safe from looting, as authorities in the Kurgan region evacuated 14,000 people from the rising Tobol River. Russia and neighboring Kazakhstan have fought devastating floods for almost two weeks. Putin — who unlike his Kazakh…
Russia has banned the Boris Nemtsov Foundation for Freedom, the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom and Ukraine’s Center for Civil Liberties as “undesirable” organizations, the Justice Ministry said on Wednesday. Organizations labeled “undesirable” must cease all operations inside Russia, and it is illegal for individuals and media outlets in Russia to republish or share their content.…
A record number of Russian soldiers were convicted of murder in 2023, the independent Mediazona news website reported Wednesday, citing Supreme Court data. Russian courts sentenced 116 contract soldiers and conscripts for premeditated murder last year, a dramatic increase from the 13 soldiers convicted in 2022 and 21 in 2021, according to the data. Mediazona noted that…
Russia arrested four people Wednesday, accusing them of sending money to Ukrainian armed forces and planning to join Kyiv’s ranks, and separately placed an exiled feminist on its wanted list. The FSB detained two 19-year-olds in the city of Saransk in the republic of Mordovia, saying they had been planning to fight for Ukraine. Russian…
Yulia Navalnaya, the widow of late Russian opposition activist Alexei Navalny, has been included on Time magazine’s annual list of the world’s 100 most influential people. In an interview with Time — her first since Navalny’s Feb. 16 death in an Arctic penal colony — Navalnaya, 47, said she chose to enter politics to give hope to…
A Russian court has overturned the verdict of an aerospace scientist who was sentenced to 12 years in prison on charges of treason linked to his participation in a multinational high-speed flight project, the state-run RIA Novosti news agency reported on Wednesday. Valery Golubkin, 72, a professor at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, was…
The top human rights official in Russia’s Far East republic of Sakha (Yakutia) has called on federal authorities to pass a law criminalizing domestic abuse after a similar law was passed in Kazakhstan. “One cannot remain indifferent to tragic cases of domestic violence,” Sakha’s human rights ombudswoman Sardana Guryeva wrote in a VKontakte post. “The…
The Kremlin confirmed Azerbaijani media reports on Wednesday that Russian peacekeepers have started withdrawing from Nagorno-Karabakh after Baku’s forces seized the disputed region from Armenian separatists last year. “Yes, that’s really true,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters after the Azerbaijani news website Musavat reported on the Russian pullout Tuesday. Unverified footage shared on Azeri-language…
Over 50,000 Russian soldiers have been confirmed killed in Ukraine since the start of the Kremlin’s invasion over two years ago, according to an independent tally conducted by the BBC’s Russian service and the independent Mediazona news website. The two outlets have been verifying the number of Russian troops killed through open-source information including official…
Four airports in Russia’s Volga region have suspended flights due to the threat of drone strikes, local media reported, citing state civil aviation agency Rosaviatsia and the airports’ press services. Airports in Nizhny Novgorod, as well as Kazan, Nizhnekamsk and Naberezhnye Chelny in the republic of Tatarstan, have halted airline departures and arrivals as of…
Telegram founder Pavel Durov said he fled Russia over Kremlin pressure to share Ukrainian pro-democracy protesters’ personal data in 2013 in a rare interview with U.S. right-wing journalist Tucker Carlson. The eccentric tech CEO told Carlson that he and Telegram — one of the world’s fastest-growing messaging apps — relocated to Dubai in 2017 to avoid being…
A Russian strike on the northern Ukrainian city of Chernihiv Wednesday killed 11 people and 20 wounded more, as Kyiv again sounded the alarm over shortages in its air defense capabilities. First responders searched for survivors in the rubble, carrying away the wounded on stretchers as a pool of blood formed on the ground near…