President Vladimir Putin warned on Wednesday that unregulated cryptocurrency mining risks overloading Russia’s electrical grid and causing widespread power outages. “An uncontrolled increase in electricity consumption for mining cryptocurrencies can lead to power shortages in certain regions,” Putin told senior government officials at a meeting focused on the economy. Russia’s Energy Ministry estimates that crypto mining consumes…
Lithuania will no longer allow passenger vehicles with Belarusian license plates to enter the country, the Baltic nation’s customs agency announced on Wednesday. The ban, which takes effect Thursday, applies to passenger cars “regardless of the nationality of their owner or driver,” the agency said. An exception will be made until Aug. 16 for Belarusian…
A young couple was killed in a Ukrainian drone strike while driving in southwestern Russia’s Belgorod region, Russian authorities said Wednesday. Belgorod region Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said the latest attack took place in the village of Tserkovny, less than 10 kilometers from the border with northeastern Ukraine’s Kharkiv region. “As a result of a car fire,…
In a forest in the Kharkiv region, Commander Vyacheslav walks briskly, his eyes fixed on the sky. The radio on his shoulder crackles: “The sky is clear, no more drones, we can go.” The men of one Territorial Defense Brigade of Kharkiv have come to locate a Ukrainian tank destroyed earlier by a Russian drone…
The Kremlin on Wednesday dismissed suggestions that its ground offensive on northeastern Ukraine’s Kharkiv region had failed, coming a day after Russian officials said they would seal off border villages to protect civilians from Ukrainian shelling. Russia launched a surprise assault into the Kharkiv region in early May in a bid to push Ukrainian forces…
Russia and Ukraine have exchanged 190 captured soldiers as part of a deal mediated by the United Arab Emirates, the Russian Defense Ministry announced Wednesday. “As a result of a negotiation process, 95 Russian servicemen … have been returned,” the ministry wrote on Telegram, adding that 95 Ukrainian soldiers had also been released. Ukraine’s human…
Russian media executive Andrei Shmarov, whose short stint as editor-in-chief of the business daily Vedomosti was marred by censorship scandals, has died at the age of 69, the newspaper said Wednesday, citing a family friend. Vedomosti did not name the cause of Shmarov’s death, but anonymously run Telegram news channels with links to Russia’s law…
Around 650,000 Russians have left the country and not returned since Moscow launched the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, according to a new report by the independent business news outlet The Bell, citing migration data from dozens of countries. Russia saw two waves of outward migration in 2022 — one initially after the start…
Last month’s deadly attacks on Orthodox churches and synagogues in Russia’s North Caucasus republic of Dagestan have renewed the debate over introducing a nationwide legal ban on the niqab, a full-face veil worn by some Muslim women. The debate was triggered by a report that one of the armed assailants had planned to escape from…
Authorities in Russia have issued an arrest warrant for exiled investigative journalist Andrei Zakharov, the independent news website Mediazona reported Wednesday, citing the Interior Ministry’s database of wanted persons. The database does not specify what criminal charges Zakharov faces, but Mediazona noted that he was previously charged with failing to comply with Russia’s “foreign agent” labeling…
Piet Ploeg lost his brother Alex, his brother’s wife Edith and their son Robert while they were traveling from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur in 2014. They were among the passengers on Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 when it was shot down over war-torn eastern Ukraine on July 17, killing all 298 people on board. The remains…
Updated with restrictions in Krasnodar. Power was restored across southern Russia early Wednesday after a malfunction at a major nuclear plant the day before led to sweeping outages and emergency restrictions across the region. A power unit at the Rostov nuclear plant automatically shut down on Tuesday afternoon due to a “false alarm” in the…