“I miss Komi, I miss Syktyvkar. I even thought about coming back, but I realized that I would be coming back to jail,” said Valera Ilyinov, an exiled native of Russia’s republic of Komi, located about 1,000 kilometers northeast of Moscow. His reservations about returning home are not unwarranted. Last month, the 24-year-old founder of…
Bulgaria’s sole nuclear power plant on Monday began using atomic fuel produced by the U.S.-based Westinghouse Electric Corporation, a key step as the country shifts away from its reliance on Russian energy. The state-owned Kozloduy plant on the Danube River supplies more than a third of the country’s electricity and has so far relied on…
A Russian state television cameraman was injured in a mine explosion in the western Belgorod region, local authorities said Monday. “In the city of Shebekino, four people were blown up by a mine, three of them regional defense fighters and one employee of the Rossiya 24 TV channel,” Belgorod region Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov wrote on…
Russia’s Defense Ministry said Monday its forces seized control of a village in the southern part of eastern Ukraine’s partially occupied Donetsk region. Russian troops “continued to advance into the depths of the enemy’s defense and liberated the settlement of Staromaiorske,” located southwest of the Russian-held city of Donetsk. Ukrainian troops had retaken the village…
President Vladimir Putin will travel to North Korea and Vietnam in the coming weeks, the business newspaper Vedomosti reported Monday, citing Russian diplomats familiar with the matter. Russia’s Ambassador to North Korea Alexander Matsegora told the newspaper that he is “actively preparing” for the Kremlin leader’s visit to Pyongyang but otherwise did not specify an…
The Kremlin said Monday it is “attentively observing” the gains of far-right parties in the EU elections, which prompted French French President Emmanuel Macron to announce a snap general election. “As far as we can see, the majority will be pro-European and pro-Ukrainian… but we see the trend of rising popularity of right-wing parties,” Kremlin spokesman…
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Monday denied Russian troops had captured a village in the northeastern Sumy region, where the Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov previously claimed Moscow’s forces had advanced. Kadyrov said on Sunday that Russian forces had seized the border village of Ryzhivka. There was no immediate comment from Russia’s Defense Ministry and a…
A court in Russia’s Urals region has sentenced a man to three years in prison for insulting a child who wore a pro-war hat, regional prosecutors announced Monday. The Oktyabrsky District Court in Yekaterinburg found Alexander Neustroev guilty of “hooliganism committed with the threat of violence, motivated by hatred against a social group,” according to the…
U.S. President Joe Biden’s national security advisor said on Sunday that Russia’s advance on northeastern Ukraine’s Kharkiv region “has stalled.” “The momentum of that operation in Kharkiv has stalled out,” Jake Sullivan told CBS. “Kharkiv is still under threat but Russians have not been able to make material progress on the ground in recent days…