The law aims to overhaul the mobilization system, including by toughening penalties against draft dodgers and by forcing men to keep their military registration up to date. The suspension of consular services was needed to “resolve technical issues” linked with the implementation of the new legislation, the ministry said. It said men would be able…
Russia will ramp up strikes on Western weapons delivered to Ukraine, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said Tuesday following the U.S. Congress’ long-delayed approval of fresh military aid to Kyiv. “We shall increase the intensity of strikes against logistics centers and storage facilities of the Western armament,” Shoigu told the ministry’s advisory board. “Russian servicemen [have] defused…
A Moscow court on Tuesday denied U.S. journalist Evan Gershkovich’s appeal against the extension of his pre-trial detention in the espionage case that he and American authorities have rejected as false. Gershkovich, 32, a reporter for The Wall Street Journal, has been in Moscow’s notorious Lefortovo prison for more than a year after he was…
The Russian Embassy in Turkey has urged citizens to avoid flying Turkish Airlines due to a recent uptick in passengers being denied boarding on connecting flights from Istanbul to Latin American destinations. “We’re compelled to advise our citizens to carefully weigh the advisability of using the services of this airline,” the embassy said in a statement…
Russia is canceling a popular procession to commemorate World War II victims for a second straight year due to growing security concerns, officials announced Tuesday. For more than a decade, Russians across the country have paraded through cities each May 9 holding portraits of relatives who were killed in what Russia calls the “Great Patriotic…
Some 120 civilians have been killed in southwestern Russia’s Belgorod region near the border with Ukraine since Russia invaded its neighbor in February 2022, Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov has said. Belgorod has been repeatedly targeted by what Russian officials have called indiscriminate Ukrainian attacks since the start of the conflict. “The situation is extremely complicated, the [cross-border]…
Russian drone and rocket attacks on Ukraine throughout Tuesday injured more than a dozen people, Ukrainian officials said. Nine were wounded, including four children, in the southern city of Odesa, by falling debris from an overnight drone attack, the emergency services said. The port city on the Black Sea has been targeted by Russian missile…
A union of leading Russian publishers and libraries has created an advisory body that would evaluate books for their compliance with the country’s increasingly repressive legislation, the Vedomosti business daily reported Tuesday. The Russian Book Union’s so-called expert center will issue recommendations on individual books, but leave the final decision to pull the books from sale…
Ten years ago, Alexander Krasnogorodtsev, an artist from St. Petersburg, told his parents he was going on a trip to the White Sea to paint Russia’s northern landscapes and would be off the grid for a while. Instead, the 24-year-old drove to Rostov-on-Don, a city about 1,500 kilometers to the south, crossed the Ukrainian border…
Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov appeared to show off his physical fitness in a workout video after independent media reported that the 47-year-old has been living with pancreatic necrosis for over five years. Citing anonymous sources at the Moscow Central Clinical Hospital where he was allegedly treated, the news website Novaya Gazeta Europe reported Monday that…