The United States charged five Russian military officers on Thursday for allegedly conducting cyberattacks on civilian infrastructure in Ukraine ahead of the Russian invasion. Assistant Attorney General Matthew Olsen said the members of Russia’s GRU military intelligence agency indicted in Maryland waged a cyber campaign against Ukraine known as WhisperGate. “The WhisperGate campaign included the…
Ukraine on Thursday canceled a train that was set to ferry people fleeing the city of Pokrovsk in eastern Donetsk amid fears of a possible Russian attack. Moscow’s forces have been advancing on the key logistics hub for months and are within 10 kilometers (six miles) of the city, where officials are urging the 27,000…
Serbian leader Aleksandar Vucic said he would not be able to accept Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invitation to attend the BRICS summit in Russia next month, media reported Thursday. “We have important guests [coming] from abroad at that time,” Vucic was quoted as saying by the Balkan service of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. The Tatarstan…
A joint Russian-Chinese coal project in Siberia is facing difficulties with financing due to Western secondary sanctions on cross-border payments to Russia, the CEO of Russian metals and renewables giant En+ said Thursday. The United States expanded its secondary sanctions against Russia in June, giving the Treasury Department the authority to penalize foreign banks that…
A former deputy minister of Russia’s Emergency Situations Ministry was charged over the alleged theft of an apartment, federal investigators said Thursday. Russia’s Investigative Committee, which probes major crimes, said Pavel Baryshev used fraudulent documents between 2017 and 2019 to acquire a three-bedroom apartment in the Moscow area valued at 20 million rubles ($223,700). Law enforcement authorities…
Dmitry Dostoevsky, the only great-grandson of the Russian novelist and short-story writer Fyodor Dostoevsky, passed away on Wednesday at the age of 79. Dmitry was the grandson of one of the famed novelist’s four children, also named Fyodor Dostoevsky. Born in April 1945, he led a varied life, working as a diamond cutter, cab driver,…
Russia’s republics of Altai, Bashkortostan and Kalmykia are set to vote for their regional heads in this weekend’s nationwide elections. Russia’s third wartime elections are expected to yield few if any surprises, with candidates backed by the ruling United Russia party and the Kremlin expected to win by a landslide. But for the heads of…
Brussels on Thursday warned Serbia that keeping strong ties with Moscow was “not compatible” with its aspiration to join the bloc after a top government official met with Russian President Vladimir Putin earlier this week. Serbia’s Deputy Prime Minister Aleksandar Vulin described his country as an “ally of Russia” when he met with Putin on…
Russian companies have been able to purchase spare parts for outdated microchip-making machines produced by Dutch tech giant ASML through Chinese intermediaries since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Dutch daily Trouw reported Wednesday, citing Russian customs data. Small Russian importers reportedly obtained these parts at least 170 times between February 2022 and December 2023. Trouw…
Russian President Vladimir Putin said Thursday he supported Kamala Harris in November’s U.S. presidential election, an apparent wry remark a day after the United States issued indictments accusing Moscow of vote interference. Putin regularly comments on political and social issues in the United States, often in a mocking way. He said last year that the…
A logistics company from Uzbekistan helped ship $36.6 million worth of artwork from Europe to Russia, bypassing EU sanctions on luxury goods, according to a new report by the investigative outlet Systema. The company, Bek Broker, which mainly transported goods from Russia to Uzbekistan before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, has reportedly moved $41.6 million in…
Popular Russian YouTubers have experienced noticeable drops in view counts over the past month, with some losing as much as 80% of their audience on the platform amid what appears to be government attempts to throttle YouTube, the Vedomosti business newspaper reported Wednesday, citing an industry analytics report. According to the report, published by the social…
Russian President Vladimir Putin said Thursday that he was ready for talks with Kyiv, after having previously rebuffed the idea of negotiations while Ukraine’s offensive into the Kursk region was ongoing. Ukraine launched a surprise incursion into the southwestern Kursk region in early August, sending thousands of troops across the border and seizing dozens of…
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday said his main aim in Ukraine after 30 months of fighting was to capture the eastern Donbas area — and claimed that Ukraine’s Kursk counter-offensive had made that easier. Putin was speaking a day after Russia attacked Ukraine’s western Lviv region with deadly strikes, and after recent advances by…
Belarus’ Defense Ministry said early Thursday that it destroyed several drones after they violated the country’s airspace overnight. “Late last night, on September 5, a violation of Belarusian airspace was detected, reportedly involving unmanned aerial vehicles,” the ministry said in a statement posted on Telegram. “A decision was made to neutralize the threat. Prompt actions…
Russia’s Foreign Ministry said Thursday that new U.S. sanctions against the state-funded RT news network were part of an “information campaign” ahead of the November presidential race, adding it was working on a response. Washington indicted on Wednesday two RT employees and sanctioned its top editors, accusing them of trying to influence the upcoming presidential…