Russia is preparing to deploy 10,000 North Korean soldiers in the fight against Kyiv, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Thursday, citing intelligence information. Zelensky has previously accused North Korea of sending troops to Russia’s army but this was the first time he gave an exact figure. An unspecified number of North Korean soldiers were already…
Russian law enforcement authorities placed the wife of opposition figure Leonid Gozman under house arrest on allegations of trafficking cultural goods from Russia to Italy, media reported Thursday. The independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta, citing a court indictment, reported that the “cultural goods” listed by authorities include “kitchen and household utensils” inherited by the Gozman family…
When Ukrainian soldier Ihor Shyshko described his two years of detention in Russia alongside 72-year-old U.S. citizen Stephen Hubbard, three words came to mind: torture, humiliation and hunger. After being held incommunicado for two and a half years, Hubbard suddenly appeared in a Moscow court last month where he was sentenced in a closed trial…
Russia’s Orthodox Church plans to give pregnant women in the northwestern Tver region letters urging them to give birth instead of having an abortion. The Tver diocese announced earlier this week that a letter penned by Metropolitan Ambrose of Tver and Kashinsk will be sent out to regional prenatal centers at a time when women…
Three workers were killed after part of a gold mine collapsed in Far East Russia’s Kamchatka peninsula, the head of the regional Emergency Situations Ministry said Thursday. The men were working at the Kumroch mine, located in Kamchatka’s Ust-Kamchatsky District, when one of the shafts collapsed. The site is operated by the Bystrinskaya Mining Company and…
Britain on Thursday announced its largest sanctions to date against Russia’s “shadow fleet” of tankers used to sidestep a Western embargo on oil exports after its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The government’s latest crackdown bars 18 ships from U.K. ports and British maritime services, bringing the total number of sanctioned vessels to 43. Experts say…
Serbian authorities ordered a Russian expat involved in anti-Kremlin activist work to leave the country by the end of this week over “risks” he allegedly poses to national security, local media reported Wednesday. According to Serbian broadcaster N1, a CNN affiliate, Russian citizen Anton Bobryshev has lived in the Balkans country for eight years on…
Foreign companies seeking to leave Russia will be forced to pay a heftier “exit tax” and “voluntary contribution” to the state treasury, Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said Thursday, confirming earlier reporting of the planned increase. “The discount for foreigners will increase from 50% to 60%,” Siluanov, who heads a government investment commission that approves foreign…
Russia will deport more than 2,000 undocumented migrants following a recent series of police raids, the Moscow branch of Russia’s Interior Ministry announced Thursday. The weeklong raids in the Russian capital, dubbed “Operation Nelegal 2024,” uncovered more than 13,000 violations of immigration law, according to the ministry’s statement. It said more than 10,000 foreigners were…
British counterterrorism police said Thursday they were investigating how a package burst into flames at a shipping warehouse earlier this year after a similar case in Germany was blamed on Russia. The incident occurred at a DHL warehouse near Birmingham on July 22. No one was injured in the fire, which was put out by…