Russia, Norway and Lithuania conducted an exchange of spies on Friday, securing the return of several captured agents to their home countries, the head of Lithuanian counterintelligence said. Previous reports suggested that Moscow, Oslo and Vilnius were discussing exchanging two Russians jailed in Lithuania, two Lithuanians sentenced for spying in Russia, and a Norwegian, Frode…
ST. PETERSBURG — A controversial proposal from a Moscow architecture expert to tear down St. Petersburg’s historical center as a cost-saving measure sparked heated debate at an international cultural forum on Thursday. Architect Vladimir Shukhov first proposed the plan in September, arguing that Russia’s second-largest city could not afford to preserve its aging historical center…
A well-known zoo and safari park owner in Russian-annexed Crimea has announced he is giving away more than 30 bears from one of his parks — otherwise he’ll be forced to euthanize them. Oleg Zubkov owns the Taigan lion park 46 kilometers west of Simferopol, where bears taken from circuses and private zoos live alongside…
Russia landed attack helicopters and troops at a sprawling air base in northern Syria vacated by U.S. forces, the Russian Defense Ministry’s Zvezda TV channel said on Friday. Armed Russian military police were shown in footage aired on Zvezda flying into the Syrian air base in northern Aleppo province near the border with Turkey and…
Lithuania’s president has pardoned two Russian nationals in a move that could pave the way for a possible three-way spy exchange between Russia, Norway and Lithuania, its presidential office said Friday. Last week, Lithuanian parliament amended legislation to allow President Gitanas Nausėda to pardon people convicted of a crime in Lithuania in exchange for Lithuanian…
Fear of extinction as a result of runaway climate change has shocked the world into scrambling to reduce carbon emissions and develop green technologies before it’s too late. Russia’s most powerful business lobby, the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs (RSPP), has a different take on the crisis. “We have to maximize our sales of…
Russia’s state oil giant Rosneft could be helping Venezuela secretly export millions of barrels of oil, as the Latin American country seeks to avoid U.S. sanctions against its crude exports, Bloomberg has reported. In a bid to avoid international detection, a Rosneft-contracted oil tanker, named Dragon, turned off its GPS transmitter before sailing from Europe…
Brasilia (Brazil) – Andrey Guryev, Chairman of the Russia–Brazil Business Council, a member of the Management Board of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, and the Second Deputy Chairman for Russia to the Intergovernmental Russian–Brazilian Commission on Trade, Economic, Scientific and Technical Cooperation, met with cabinet members and leaders of non-governmental organisations in Brazil…
On November, 13, Rusatom Healthcare (ROSATOM industry integrator in the field of radiation technologies in medicine and industry) Director General Aleksandr Shibanov, president of the region Apulia (Republic of Italy) Michele Emiliano, representatives of Sechenov University (Moscow) and Bari University, as well as JSC Isotope signed a memorandum of understanding in order to develop and…
Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday he hoped his U.S. counterpart Donald Trump would come to Russia to mark Victory Day on May 9 next year and that Moscow was ready for talks with Washington. Putin said it would be the “right” thing for Trump to attend a commemorative event in Moscow to mark…
The United States has warned Egypt that it could face sanctions over a $2 billion contract to buy more than 20 Su-35 fighter jets from Russia, The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday. Russia, which has become one of Egypt’s major arms suppliers, plans to start deliveries of Su-35 Flanker-E air-superiority fighters to the country as…
Release November 14, 2019, 20:30 Gazprom has contributed to the making of the film “Russia from Above.” The film has attracted 30 million viewers in Germany alone. The St. Petersburg International Cultural Forum hosted a special screening of “Russia from Above,” a documentary made by German filmmakers with support from the Gazprom Group. The audience was offered a bird’s-eye view of many Russian regions: from the…
Russia has recognized violence-plagued Bolivia’s interim president until the South American nation’s next elections, the state-run RIA Novosti news agency quoted a senior diplomat as saying Thursday. Bolivia’s pro-Russian President Evo Morales resigned and fled the country this week to ease the violence that has been ongoing since a disputed vote last month. Senate vice-president…
The Russian Foreign Ministry said on Thursday that the authenticity of phone intercepts which Dutch investigators said show Moscow’s influence over pro-Russian rebels accused of downing Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 was not confirmed. MH17 was shot out of the sky on July 17, 2014, over territory held by pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine as it…
Russia has taken DNA samples from 49 orphans in Syria to confirm their relations to Russian citizens and clear their return home, Russia’s top children’s rights official said Thursday. Under a program spearheaded by Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, Russia has worked on returning women and children linked to Russians who fought for the Islamic State…
Release November 14, 2019, 16:00 Russian enterprises have invested RUB 17.8 billion in development and production of goods to be supplied under long-term contracts with Gazprom. Full range of key equipment has been created for operating offshore fields. Corporate process safety management system is being continuously enhanced. The Gazprom Management Committee took note of the information about the engagement of Russian industrial and machine-building enterprises in the…
Release November 14, 2019, 15:55 Gazprom is ready to operate during peak gas demand in winter. Required amounts of gas – more than 72 billion cubic meters – were injected into Russian UGS facilities. Increase in maximum daily deliverability of UGS facilities is commensurate with gas consumption in some Russian regions. The Gazprom Management Committee examined the operational readiness of the Unified Gas Supply System (UGSS) facilities for peak loads in late…
A plane crash that killed all 50 people on board at Russia’s Kazan Airport in 2013 was the result of errors made by two pilots, including one who got his license using falsified documents, Russian investigators said on Thursday. The Boeing 737-500 aircraft was operated by the now-defunct Tatarstan Airlines, which later had its license…
A team of international prosecutors has released a new batch of intercepted audio recordings of calls it says are between pro-Russian separatist fighters in eastern Ukraine and high-ranking Russian officials in the weeks leading up to the 2014 downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 over eastern Ukraine. The calls include conversations with separatist leaders including…
U.S. shale energy production is on course to overtake the output of Russia’s entire oil and gas sector by 2025, influential new forecasts have shown. In its flagship annual review of the global energy market, the International Energy Agency (IEA) was bullish on the prospects for the U.S. shale revolution, predicted falling dominance of Russia…
Top managers from Russian and foreign energy industry majors unite to help build a better understanding of corporate carbon management systems at the Carbon Management workshop organized by Rosneft last week.
Rosneft has held a seminar on “Corporate Concepts of Hydrocarbon Management”, which was attended by the Company’s senior executives and managing representatives of foreign energy majors, including BP Russia President David Campbell, Equinor Russia President Elisabeth Birkeland Kvalheim, and Vice Presidents of the relevant units of these companies.
More than 170,000 residents of separatist-controlled territories in eastern Ukraine have become Russian citizens under President Vladimir Putin’s fast-track program since it launched six months ago, authorities said. Putin simplified the path to Russian citizenship for an estimated 3.7 million residents of the pro-Russian Donetsk and Luhansk “people’s republics” in April, angering Ukraine and the…
British serial entrepreneur Richard Branson is considering buying a 25% stake in Russian low-cost airline Pobeda, according to Russian media reports. A source close to the billionaire, who owns the Virgin Group telecoms-to-travel conglomerate, told Russian news outlet Vesti the deal was being considered, but that it was too early to discuss specifics. Pobeda is…
A student at a Russian vocational college allegedly opened fire on campus Thursday, killing a fellow student and returning police fire before fatally shooting himself, law enforcement authorities in Far East Russia said. Here’s what we know about the deadly shooting in the Amur region city of Blagoveshchensk so far: What happened? — An unnamed…
ST. PETERSBURG – Just under a year ago, Dima Knyazev was sleeping rough in the Russian capital Moscow, stealing clothes from big department stores and selling them on the street to fund a drug habit he had picked up while in prison. Today, thanks to a charity in the country’s second-largest city of St. Petersburg,…
The Russian military has announced a new combat helicopter and air defense base in a formerly U.S.-controlled northern Syrian stronghold, the state-run TASS news agency reported Thursday. U.S. troops left the city of Qamishli, the administrative center of the self-proclaimed Kurdish autonomy in northern Syria, last month as Turkey launched an assault against Kurdish forces.…
On November 12, 2019 the Analytical Credit Rating Agency (ACRA) assigned ROSATON a credit rating AAA (RU) with “Stable” outlook at the maximum possible sovereign level. This is the first rating got by ROSATOM directly. Before that, all ratings from international rating agencies of “Big Three” and JSC “Expert RA” were assigned and kept at…
The 1990s were a time of huge change and upheaval for Russia — and especially for Moscow. What was life like for Muscovites that decade? What did people look like? How were they dressed? Were there long lines and dour faces? These photos of the iconic Moscow metro from The Moscow Times’ archive offer answers…
A Russian pensioner has dropped to her knees in front of Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev in an encounter that drew comparisons to his iconic 2016 quote that turned into a meme. Cameras were rolling during Medvedev’s visit to a Siberian village with his entourage when the woman kneeled on the snowy ground in front of…
Russian authorities subjected a child to torture by letting her witness her father’s violent arrest a decade ago, Europe’s human rights court said Tuesday in a ruling that advocates say sets a precedent across Europe. The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ordered Russia to pay the unnamed plaintiff 25,000 euros ($27,500) in damages in…
The Russian economy expanded at an annual rate of 1.7% in the third quarter of the year, official GDP statistics released Wednesday showed. The rate of growth was up from 0.9% recorded by the Russian state statistics agency Rosstat in the second quarter, and around what was expected by economists and analysts. Both the agricultural…
On November 12, the ROSATOM’s Headquarters’ hosted an off-scheduled meeting of the Public Council of ROSATOM and all leading environmental organizations of Russia. Director General of ROSATOM Alexey Likhachev, first deputy directors general of ROSATOM Aleksandr Lokshin and Kirill Komarov also took part in the meeting of the Public Council. The meeting was initiated by…
Russian shoppers have embraced this year’s record-breaking Singles’ Day online sale — the biggest single shopping day of the year — as never before. In total, Russians spent 17.2 billion rubles ($267 million) on AliExpress, the Russian platform of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba, over the 24 hour shopping bonanza — a record high, and the…
Russia’s Armed Forces will soon welcome some new recruits when the Northern Fleet’s Arctic brigade launches a new Siberian husky squad, Interfax reported. Dogs have been used by the Russian military since as early as 1840, when records showed Russian forces employing dogs during the Caucasian War. They have been a regular presence in Russia’s…
Moscow City Court ruled to dissolve the Center for Support of Indigenous Peoples of the North/Russian Indigenous Training Center (CSIPN/RITC), provoking protests from Brussels and the Nordic Sami Parliaments. Hindering contacts with intergovernmental organizations and forums is exactly why the Justice Ministry in Moscow took the case to court, says CSIPN/RITC director Rodion Sulyandziga, who represents indigenous…
Ukraine should give up on the West and go back into Russia’s fold, influential Ukrainian billionaire Ihor Kolomoisky said in an interview with The New York Times Wednesday. Kolomoisky’s business ties to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy have been under heavy scrutiny since the start of the former comedian’s election campaign this year. Both men have…
RN-Uvatneftegaz, a subsidiary of Rosneft Oil Company, has discovered a new oil field, Sosnovoye, with total C1+C2 reserves of 4.2 million tonnes.
Russia on Wednesday accused Washington of hunting its citizens across the world and said it had made a formal diplomatic protest after Israel extradited a Russian man to the United States where he faces a slew of serious cyber crime charges. The U.S. Department of Justice said in a statement on Tuesday that Alexei Burkov,…
The Russian stock market has delivered the biggest returns to investors anywhere in the world in 2019. Since the start of the year, the MSCI Russia Index, a tracker which follows the 23 largest Russian publicly-listed companies has soared by 44%, Sberbank analyst Cole Akeson told Russian news site RBC. Over the same period, the…
Russia’s Justice Ministry has declared a Czech humanitarian relief group “undesirable” three years after the group was kicked out of a pro-Russian self-proclaimed state in eastern Ukraine. The People in Need NGO, which helps people affected by wartime crises and natural disasters, ended its eastern Ukrainian operations in 2016 after separatists in the Donetsk People’s…
Moscow drivers have the second-highest level of road rage in the world, a new survey has found. Only Mongolian capital Ulaanbaatar scored higher for road rage on the Mister Auto index, which measures the best and worst places in the world to drive. The survey ranked 100 international cities using 15 criteria covering infrastructure, safety…
A Russian businesswoman appears to be safe after Kuwait handed her a long jail term for embezzlement, the Kommersant business daily has reported. Reports said Monday that a Kuwaiti court had sentenced investment executive Marsha Lazareva to 15 years in prison for money laundering. A U.S. law firm leading the international effort to secure Lazareva’s…
A Russian court has jailed six Crimean Tatar activists to jail terms between seven and 19 years on charges of terrorism Tuesday, a move that has sparked condemnation from abroad. Some Crimean Tatars have accused Russia of locking up its ideological opponents as religious extremists in the wake of the 2014 annexation of Crimea from…
Russia has ruled that authorities can seize suspicious assets owned by relatives and acquaintances of criminals convicted of corruption unless they can prove they were lawfully obtained, the Vedomosti business daily reported Tuesday. The ruling came in response to an appeal by a convicted police anti-corruption official’s family, who argued that the authorities had illegally…
ST. PETERSBURG – For years Oleg Sokolov was a well-known eccentric among the academic elite of Russia’s cultural capital St. Petersburg. As one of the founders of the city’s historical reenactment society, at weekends he liked to dress up as Napoleon Bonaparte, ride a white stallion and bark orders at pretend soldiers. His obsession with…
Russian investigative journalist Ivan Golunov was arrested in June on fabricated drug charges and released days later following an unprecedented public outcry. The court dropped all charges against him. Five months after he was released, the criminal case into drug trafficking is still ongoing. Authorities have said they would investigate those who fabricated the charges…
One evening in August 2018, 21-year-old Mikhail Aksel stepped into the imposing marble of Moscow Metro’s Sportivnaya station. Aksel, a senior activist in The Other Russia, a small but flamboyant opposition party associated with the former punk and far-right nationalist writer Eduard Limonov, was no stranger to run-ins with the police. Even so, Aksel was surprised…
Israel has extradited suspected Russian hacker Alexei Burkov to the United States despite Moscow’s proposal to swap him for an Israeli woman jailed in Russia over marijuana possession, The Times of Israel reported Monday. Burkov, who was detained during a visit to Israel in 2015, is wanted in the U.S. on charges of credit card…
Kremlin-linked business owner Yevgeny Prigozhin — dubbed “Putin’s Chef” — has carved up his catering company, handing half to a 27-year-old lawyer who previously founded a dog shelter in Siberia, the Current Time news site reported. The Concord Food Plant, Prigozhin’s main business asset, was divided on October 30, according to data from the Contour Focus…
Vladimir Putin never misses a chance to pounce on perceived geopolitical weakness, even when doing so might contribute to the downfall — and potential incarceration — of an old acquaintance like Benjamin Netanyahu. The Russian leader has snubbed repeated requests from his embattled Israeli counterpart to free Naama Issachar, a 26-year-old army veteran sentenced to 7…
Russia’s republic of Chechnya has the highest trust ratings toward its leaders and President Vladimir Putin among all regions, Russian media reported Monday. The Kremlin closely monitors Putin’s trust ratings, which dipped to historic lows then quickly bounced back after the Kremlin challenged state pollsters’ methodologies. Its domestic policy curator Sergei Kiriyenko earlier this year…
Kazakhstan’s former president Nursultan Nazarbayev is trying to arrange a meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskiy, whose countries are at odds over the war between Kiev and pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine. “Zelenskiy has already agreed to a tete-a-tete, and (I have) informed the president of Russia about that. We shall see now (if…
Nine Russian businesspeople have donated to Britain’s Conservative Party, according to a secret parliamentary report on Russian interference in British elections, The Sunday Times newspaper reported Sunday. Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s opponents accuse him of blocking the report ahead of the Dec. 12 parliamentary election, an assertion that his Conservative-led government dismissed. Johnson’s office has…
On November 10, St. Andrew’s Anglican Church held a service commemorating the end of WWI and in remembrance of those who died in wars. Ambassadors and military representatives of countries that fought in the war placed flowers on the altar, starting with the ambassadors of the United Kingdom and Germany. Russian veterans also attended the…
An international summit on solving the Ukrainian crisis is likely to take place this year, Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov told reporters in Moscow on Monday. A breakthrough at talks between Moscow and Kiev on Oct. 1 appeared to open the way for the leaders of Ukraine, Russia, Germany and France to hold the first four-way…
The Russian government could undershoot its annual spending plans by more than one trillion rubles ($15.6 billion), a state watchdog warned Monday. In the first 10 months of 2019, government departments and agencies have spent less than two-thirds of the year’s planned expenditure, and will struggle to make-up the difference before the end of the…
Russia is using private military contractors to escalate the conflict in Libya and boost its influence there, the security chief of Libya’s UN-backed government has said. Libyan interior minister Fathi Bashagha’s accusations follow reports of at least two deployments of Kremlin-linked Wagner mercenaries in recent months as forces based in eastern Libya attempt to take…
The largest retrospective works by Vasily Polenov, a prominent Russian painter of the second half of the 19th – early 20th century, opened at the New Tretyakov Gallery. The retrospective is dedicated to the 175th anniversary of the painter’s birth. Polenov, a member of the “Wanderers” (Peredvizhniki) group of realist painters, is primarily known for…
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s extended family and associates own $40 million worth of luxury apartments in Moscow’s skyscraper district, according to the anti-corruption campaign group Global Witness. Russia has been a staunch ally of the Assad family over its nearly 50-year rule. The Kremlin threw its military support behind Assad in 2015, helping Damascus retake…