Ukraine’s SBU security service on Thursday opened a criminal investigation into the downing of a Russian military plane that Moscow said killed 65 Ukrainian prisoners of war. Kyiv has not said whether captured Ukrainian soldiers were killed — or whether it was involved — in Wednesday’s shooting down of a military transport plane over Russia’s western Belgorod…
Two black boxes have been recovered from the crash site of a Russian Il-76 military transport plane that crashed Wednesday, state-run news agencies reported Thursday, citing anonymous sources in Russia’s emergency services. Moscow accuses Ukraine of shooting down the aircraft in the western Belgorod region, killing all 74 people on board, including 65 Ukrainian prisoners of…
Russian authorities have designated the independent youth news outlet DOXA as “undesirable,” according to a senior member of Russia’s lower house of parliament said Thursday. DOXA, which has openly criticized Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, said State Duma deputy Vasily Piskarev had asked the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office to blacklist the news outlet in November 2022. “The General…
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Wednesday that Russia was “playing with the lives of Ukrainian prisoners” after Moscow accused Kyiv of downing a military plane carrying dozens of its own captured soldiers. Moscow said 74 people died — 65 of them Ukrainian prisoners of war being flown to a scheduled exchange — when a military…
The documentary film “20 Days in Mariupol” has been nominated for an Oscar in the category of best documentary film. The film, directed by Mstyslav Chernov with photographer Evgeniy Maloletka and field producer Vasilisa Stepanenko, documented 20 days in the besieged city of Mariupol within the first few weeks of Russia’s invasion. The co-production of…
Russian forces entered the war-battered town of Avdiivka for the first time but were pushed back, its mayor told AFP Wednesday, following months of fierce fighting for the industrial hub in east Ukraine. Moscow in October launched a costly bid to wrest control of the town which has been on the front line of fighting…
VILNIUS, Lithuania — Not Only Coffee, a small coffee shop in the bohemian district of Užupis, has seen an unprecedented flow of visitors to its basement in the past two days. The basement, which is usually ignored by visitors, now acts as a collection point for signatures endorsing Russian presidential hopeful Boris Nadezhdin, whose stance…
An Il-76 aircraft crashed Wednesday morning in western Russia’s Belgorod region which borders Ukraine, killing everyone on board. Footage posted on social media showed what appears to be a large plane falling from the sky and then crashing. The plane was said to have crashed near the town of Yablonovo less than 50 kilometers from…
The head of Far East Russia’s republic of Buryatia on Wednesday submitted a bill to the region’s parliament that aims to scrap mayoral elections in the capital city of Ulan-Ude. Instead of direct elections, Buryatia’s head Alexei Tsydenov proposed that the mayor of Ulan-Ude be elected by the city council, a local legislature. Regional deputies are…
Soviet and Russian film director Yuri Salnikov, who made dozens of films about aviation history, has died at the age of 88, friends reported in Moscow today. The cause of death was a heart attack. Salnikov directed more than one hundred film and television documentaries over his career. A graduate of the Moscow Gerasimov Institute…
Japan in December imported the highest monthly volume of liquefied natural gas (LNG) from Russia in seven years, the RBC news website reported Wednesday, citing data from the Japanese Finance Ministry. Japan is among the world’s largest LNG importers, with Australia, Malaysia and Qatar supplying two-thirds of the energy source, while Russia accounts for 9%.…
The website for anti-war presidential hopeful Boris Nadezhdin experienced an outage on Wednesday that his campaign said was caused by a denial-of-service attack. “Our website has again been subjected to a DDoS attack. The malfunctions will be repaired as soon as possible,” Nadezhdin wrote on the messaging app Telegram. The Moscow Times was unable to…
Russian lawmakers on Wednesday passed in a first reading draft legislation that would allow authorities to confiscate the property of those convicted of “discrediting” and spreading “fakes” about the country’s armed forces. The bill, introduced into the lower-house State Duma on Monday, also proposes seizing money, property and other valuables from those found guilty of inciting “extremist” activity and…
A wave of arrests and detentions has swept Russia’s republic of Bashkortostan following last week’s protests in support of jailed Bashkir activist Fayil Alsynov. Thousands of people protested against Alsynov’s sentencing to four years in a penal colony on charges of “inciting interethnic hatred” in some of the largest street protests in Russia since the…
Russia on Wednesday blamed Kyiv for shooting down a military transportation aircraft said to be carrying 65 Ukrainian soldiers for a prisoner exchange The Il-76 aircraft crashed Wednesday morning in western Russia’s Belgorod region, which borders Ukraine, during a “scheduled flight,” the Russian Defense Ministry said, with authorities later stating that everyone on board the plane had perished. …
WhatsApp and Telegram users in Siberia and Russia’s Far East reported widespread outages of the two messaging apps on Wednesday. Some media outlets speculated that the disruptions were linked to protests in the republic of Sakha (Yakutia) over the killing of a local man. But outages were reported in at least six other regions in Siberia and…
Russian strikes on Ukraine on Tuesday killed 18 people and wounded 130, President Volodymyr Zelensky said, warning that the death toll could increase as rescue efforts were ongoing. The strikes hit the capital Kyiv and the northeastern city of Kharkiv in a deadly day for Ukraine as Russia’s invasion drags on for almost two years.…
Coordinated raids in five countries have led to the arrest of three people suspected of smuggling goods to Russia that could have military uses, EU judicial agency Eurojust said on Tuesday. Authorities in Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Canada, and the Netherlands conducted a joint investigation into the export of technological and lab equipment that contravened EU-wide…
Belarus on Tuesday detained at least 24 people, including recently freed political prisoners, Minsk’s leading rights group said, warning families of regime critics to be vigilant. Ruled by President Alexander Lukashenko since 1994, Belarus has for almost four years brutally cracked down on anyone who took part in massive anti-regime protests in 2020. “There are…
MOSCOW — Will the Kremlin allow an anti-war candidate to run for the presidency? That’s the main question for the thousands of Russians who have stood in long lines to show their support for presidential hopeful Boris Nadezhdin in recent days. Despite an ongoing debate over whether or not Nadezhdin is a Kremlin-backed spoiler candidate,…
Russia on Tuesday flatly rejected allegations that it had deported Ukrainian children since its invasion, but said at the UN that more than 700,000 had moved into its territory. Ukraine has said that 20,000 children have been forced to move to Russia since the war erupted in February 2022. President Volodymyr Zelensky has called the…
A court in Germany has banned the U.S. edition of Forbes magazine from claiming that Russian-Uzbek billionaire Alisher Usmanov has close ties to President Vladimir Putin, the RBC news website reported Tuesday, citing an obtained copy of the ruling. Forbes, citing an anonymous expert, reported in early February 2022 that Usmanov “has repeatedly fronted for Putin…
Russia’s exclusion from the international scientific community since the start of the war in Ukraine hampers global researchers’ understanding of the Arctic at a time when climate change is rapidly changing the region’s ecosystems, according to a new study published in the British scientific journal Nature. The study’s authors found that removing Russian field stations…
Russian prison authorities have banned inmates from making video calls, a member of Russia’s presidential human rights council said Tuesday. More than 1,500 video call devices are installed in prisons across Russia, council member Eva Merkacheva told the tabloid Moskovsky Komsomolets. But earlier this month, Federal Penitentiary Service (FSIN) deputy chief Alexander Khabarov is said to…
As of year-end 2023, Isotope JSC (a part of the Health Technologies Division) increased the annual export supplies of isotope products by 15%. This export growth was due to the contracts concluded with customers in the countries of Europe, Asia, the Middle East and CIS, in particular, agreements with enterprises in China and India enabled…
The work of Taras Zheltyshev, aka Yoom, a multidisciplinary artist from Russia, might not be well known in his homeland, but it has captivated art lovers in Europe and now Asia. Before moving to Thailand, Zheltyshev exhibited his works at international art shows in Europe, showcasing sculptures, paintings, collectible design objects and NFTs. Zheltyshev was…
Chad’s transitional president General Mahamat Idriss Deby Itno embarked Tuesday on an official visit to Russia “at the invitation” of President Vladimir Putin, the two states announced. Deby “left [the capital of Chad] N’Djamena this morning for Moscow at the invitation of President Vladimir Putin,” the Chad presidency said on its Facebook page. The Kremlin…
The Kremlin on Tuesday mocked the CIA for using Western social media platforms to recruit Russian operatives disillusioned with the country’s political leaders. The U.S. spy agency’s ad, released Monday, depicts a fictional Russian intelligence officer who gradually comes to the realization that the country’s “true enemy is from within” and decides to contact the…
Online services at some Swedish government agencies and shops have been disrupted in a ransomware attack believed to have been carried out by a Russian hacker group, IT consultancy Tietoevry said. The Swedish-Finnish group, which provides online security systems, said the problem could take weeks to fix. It said one of its data centers in…
A ceremony dedicated to the “first concrete” pouring into the foundation slab of Power Unit 4 took place in the Arab Republic of Egypt, at El-Dabaa construction site (General Designer and General Contractor is ROSATOM Engineering Division). This historic event signifies the beginning of the main stage of the power unit construction, thus making the…
A Russia-based company has become the legal owner of tech giant Yandex as it prepares to separate from its Dutch parent company, the state-run Interfax news agency reported Tuesday. MKAO Yandex was registered last month in the Kaliningrad region’s Oktyabrsky Island, an offshore zone known as a “special administrative region.” In addition to offering low taxes,…
Moscow plans this year to cut financing for the four Ukrainian regions it partially occupies, the Russian edition of Forbes reported Tuesday, citing budget figures. The Kremlin claims to have annexed parts of Ukraine’s Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions, a move widely condemned by the international community. Last year, the four regions received some 513…
At the end of January Andris Nelsons, music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO), is conducting a concert version of Dmitry Shostakovich’s 1932 opera “Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District.” The opera is one of the composer’s most innovative and celebrated works — and one that so offended Josef Stalin that he banned further…
ST. PETERSBURG, Russia — “I feel pain and shame that my naivety and gullibility led to such catastrophic consequences.” As Daria Trepova gives her final word in court, two policemen stand in front of the glass cage for defendants, obscuring her from view. “I still don’t plead guilty but I acknowledge my moral responsibility,” the…
Multinational tech giant Apple has paid the Russian government 1.2 billion rubles ($13.2 million) in fines, Russia’s Federal Anti-Monopoly Service (FAS) announced Monday. The Russian agency said it found Apple in violation of its anti-monopoly legislation in July 2022 for banning app developers from informing customers about purchase options outside the App Store. Western sanctions…
Kazakhstan’s Foreign Ministry said it will ban entry to Russian media executive Tina Kandelaki over her remarks about the country’s language policies, local media reported Monday. Kandelaki, deputy CEO of the state-holding Gazprom-Media and head of the entertainment broadcaster TNT, criticized Kazakh authorities earlier this month for renaming some railway stations in the Central Asian country…
MOSCOW – Thousands of Russians have been lining up in the capital and across the country to leave signatures in support of presidential hopeful Boris Nadezhdin, who is campaigning for peace with Ukraine. Nadezhdin, 60, who is running from the Civic Initiative party, must gather the signatures of 100,000 supporters by the end of January…
Snow in the Siberian city of Achinsk has turned into a muddy gray that many suspect was caused by pollution from a nearby aluminum oxide factory, local media reported Monday. Photos and videos shared online show snowdrifts throughout the city, with a population of 100,000 people, covered in a thick layer of gray dust. “Some…
Cats are the most popular pet in Russia, with about half of Russians reporting one in their household. Over the past weekend, social media has been in an uproar after a pet cat named Twix was thrown from a train and died in freezing conditions. What happened? Twix, a ginger and white cat, was traveling…
Updated with Russian officials’ remarks. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Monday signed a decree calling for the preservation of Ukrainian national identity in Russia. The decree, announced to coincide with Ukraine’s Day of Unity on Jan. 22, states that “Russia has systematically destroyed national identity and oppressed Ukrainians in the lands historically inhabited by them,” namely the…
Russian pro-war singer Shaman’s latest single about a “hero who came home alive” has sparked an online debate over its potentially hidden references to jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny. Shaman, whose real name is Yaroslav Dronov, came out of relative obscurity and has become one of the most recognizable faces of Russia’s propaganda machine after…
Authorities in northwestern Russia’s Leningrad region warned residents late Sunday that the territory, with a population of over 2 million, could come under attack from drones following a recent spate of strikes on local energy infrastructure. “A high-alert regime has been declared at critical infrastructure facilities in all districts,” the Leningrad region’s press service announced on…
The Kremlin on Monday blamed Ukraine for an attack on a gas terminal at the Baltic port of Ust-Luga over the weekend. The facility belonging to Novatek, Russia’s largest exporter of liquefied natural gas, was set ablaze on Sunday in the western port town, close to the border with Estonia. “The Kyiv regime continues to…
A Russian plane believed to be carrying six people has crashed in mountainous northeastern Afghanistan, the air transport agency Rosaviatsia announced Sunday. The Falcon 10 “disappeared from the radar” and communication was lost on Saturday evening, the federal agency said. “According to preliminary information, six people were aboard the aircraft: four crew and two passengers.”…
A blaze at a natural gas terminal in the Baltic Sea port of Ust-Luga on Sunday was caused by an “external factor,” said Novatek, Russia’s biggest exporter of liquified natural gas. The operator said there were no victims and the fire was “currently localized,” at the site 110 kilometers (70 miles) west of St Petersburg near…
The Russian army said Sunday it had captured a small village in the Kharkiv region of eastern Ukraine. “The village of Krakhmalnoye in the Kharkiv region was liberated,” the Russian defence ministry said in its daily bulletin on operations in Ukraine, citing “successful active operations.” Some 45 people lived in the village before Moscow’s invasion…
A strike on a crowded market in the Russian-occupied city of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine left at least 25 people dead and 20 wounded on Sunday, Moscow-backed officials said. Both Moscow and Kyiv have accused each other of a sharp escalation in attacks on civilian areas in the past two months. Shattered storefronts and broken…
Russia will consider a bill next week that would confiscate the money, property and valuables of anyone convicted of spreading “fakes” about its army, the country’s top lawmaker said Saturday. Moscow made criticism of the military illegal shortly after launching its assault on Ukraine in February 2022, and has detained thousands of the conflict’s opponents…
“People who get drunk on ordinary days do it out of love for the art of drinking. But on Tatyana’s Day they get drunk out out of a sense of duty — to prove their solidarity with the drinking intelligentsia. Even if life has taken us in different directions, the ties that bind us in…
Russia on Friday summoned France’s ambassador in Moscow and issued a formal complaint over his country’s alleged “growing involvement” in the war in Ukraine. The move comes just days after Moscow claimed, without providing evidence, that it had killed a group of French mercenaries in a strike on the northeastern city of Kharkiv. “On 19…
Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania have agreed to build a series of bunkers on their borders with Russia and Belarus to defend against their militaries in the event of an attack, Estonia’s Defense Ministry announced Friday. The three NATO and EU members signed an agreement on the construction of “anti-mobility defensive installations” in the coming years.…
LONDON — Ilya Ponomaryov is in a good mood. Speaking to The Moscow Times in London, the former Russian lawmaker turned controversial opposition figure orders tea, joking that his tastes were unchanged by the fatal poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko, who he says was a personal friend. Ponomaryov has been in exile since 2016, when he…
Russia has placed the head of an Uzbek diaspora association in pre-trial detention for “inciting hatred” with a meme that spoofed the country’s economic inflation and mobilization for the war in Ukraine, authorities said Friday. Usman Baratov was accused of “mocking” Russian soldiers on social media. Russian Investigative Committee chief Alexander Bastrykin said he ordered a criminal…
Vanya is Alive The play ‘Vanya is Alive,’ written by Natalia Lizorkina and translated and directed by Ivanka Polchenko, is back in London this and next weekend after a very successful run in Edinburgh at the Fringe Festival last summer and again in October. Written immediately after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, the play follows…
Authorities in the Siberian city of Novosibirsk on Friday declared a state of emergency amid a series of heating pipe bursts that have left residents without central heating in freezing temperatures. “Unfortunately, in the area of the heating system failure… things are getting worse,” Novosibirsk region Governor Andrei Travnikov wrote on the messaging app Telegram. Utility…
Ukraine on Friday urged the West to “get serious” about curbing Russia’s arms production by shutting loopholes that allow it to keep sourcing critical components for weapons. Western countries have sanctioned swathes of Russia’s arms industry and banned the export of military goods and parts. But Kyiv says Russia is still getting hold of key components…
Russian prosecutors have requested a 28-year prison sentence on terrorism charges for a woman accused of killing military blogger Vladlen Tatarsky, St. Petersburg’s court system said Friday. Tatarsky, a former bank robber and pro-war Ukrainian rebel, was assassinated while speaking at an April 2023 event at a St. Petersburg cafe frequented by pro-war activists and…
This week all theaters in Russia that are funded by the federal government received a letter from the Culture Ministry informing them of planned changes in the state mission tasks. The main task is no longer filling theaters. It’s the “creation of works reflecting the traditional Russian spiritual-moral values.” Theaters have been asked to review…
A Siberian court has sentenced a disabled and retired airline pilot to more than eight years in prison on charges of trying to join the Ukrainian army, the human rights project Perviy Otdel reported Friday. Igor Pokusin, 61, was born in southwestern Ukraine’s port city of Odesa but today lives in Russia’s republic of Khakassia,…
Russians are celebrating the Orthodox Epiphany, the holiday that honors the baptism of Jesus in the River Jordan, by immersion into frigid rivers, ponds and lakes across the country. The Russian Orthodox Church celebrates the Epiphany on Jan. 19, but the festivities traditionally begin on the day before. According to tradition, people immerse themselves completely…