President Volodymyr Zelensky once had an optimistic vision for the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. Weeks after his 2019 election, he signed a decree to turn Ukraine’s portion of the 2,600-square-kilometer region along the border with Belarus into an engine of economic growth, welcoming a soaring stream of tourists inspired by HBO’s dramatization of the 1986 disaster.…
Russia on Friday sentenced a Crimean man to 14 years in a penal colony on treason charges after it accused him of aiding the Ukrainian military. Moscow regularly sentences people it accuses of working for Ukraine or of criticizing Russia’s military offensive there, now in its third year, and has orchestrated a massive crackdown. Russian…
President Vladimir Putin has all but abandoned the idea of peace talks with Kyiv following Ukraine’s Kursk region incursion, which dealt a “humiliating” blow to the Russian leader, the independent Poyasnitelnaya Zapiska (Explanatory Note) news outlet reported, citing sources close to the Kremlin. “The Kremlin has come to a corresponding conclusion that they will destroy Ukrainian statehood. The…
Russian investigators seized 75 items, including snow and underwear, from the scene of Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny’s death, the investigative news outlet Dossier Center reported Friday, citing documents it said it had obtained. Navalny died in an Arctic penal colony on Feb. 16 under murky circumstances, leading his allies to assert that he was murdered. His…
Wearable electronics like those that Israel used to blow up Hezbollah members’ pagers in Lebanon and Syria pose a threat to the security of Russia and other former Soviet states, the head of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) said Friday. Speaking at a meeting of Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) special services chiefs, Alexander Bortnikov…
Last month, Fortanga, an independent news outlet from the republic of Ingushetia in Russia’s North Caucasus, broke the news that the neighboring republic of North Ossetia-Alania was plotting to redraw the two regions’ shared border. Documents obtained by Fortanga revealed that North Ossetian officials were hoping to incorporate into their territory parts of Ingushetia’s Dzheyrakhsky…
A beluga whale found dead in Norway in August, who some suspected of being a Russian spy, most likely died of an infection, not gunshot wounds, Norwegian police said Friday. Nicknamed “Hvaldimir,” a pun on the Norwegian word for whale (hval) and the whale’s purported ties to Moscow, the white beluga first appeared off the…
Russian rescue teams succeeded on Friday in saving a family of orcas who had become beached in shallow water in the Far East of the country. The cetaceans — two adults and two young — had been stranded since Wednesday on the shore of the Kamchatka peninsula, around 6,500 kilometers (4,000 miles) east of Moscow.…
Authorities in Russia’s Irkutsk region in southeastern Siberia introduced a state of “high alert” due to electricity shortages, according to a government decree published Friday. The decree signed by Governor Igor Kobzev instructs local emergency services to develop additional plans for mitigating the consequences of widespread power cuts and check the preparedness of local emergency…
The head of security at the Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine has been killed in a car bombing, authorities in Kyiv and Moscow said Friday. Ukraine’s HUR military intelligence agency said Andriy Korotkiy was inside his vehicle when it was hit by an explosion at around 7:00 a.m. local time in the Russian-occupied…
Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov called on the West to lift sanctions on Taliban-led Afghanistan and take “responsibility” for reconstruction efforts in the country, on Friday. However, Lavrov did not say whether Moscow would lift its own designation of the group as a “terrorist organization.” “We urge Western countries to recognize their responsibility for the…
Ukraine’s military said its forces struck an oil base in western Russia’s Voronezh region overnight Friday as Russian authorities dismissed the attack as insignificant. The Annanefteprodukt fuel storage base in the Voronezh region’s Anninsky district was hit by Ukraine’s SBU security service and other military branches, according to the Ukrainian General Staff. “At least one…