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A court in St. Petersburg has sentenced the main organizer of the St. Petersburg metro bombing that killed 15 people in 2017 to life in prison, it announced Tuesday, bringing a more than two-year investigation and trial to a close. The court handed jail sentences between 19 and 28 years to 10 other suspects. Investigators suspect…

As the only remaining independent, English-language news source reporting from Russia, The Moscow Times plays a critical role in connecting Russia to the world. Editorial decisions are made entirely by journalists in our newsroom, who adhere to the highest ethical standards. We fearlessly cover issues that are often considered off-limits or taboo in Russia, from…

As the only remaining independent, English-language news source reporting from Russia, The Moscow Times plays a critical role in connecting Russia to the world. Editorial decisions are made entirely by journalists in our newsroom, who adhere to the highest ethical standards. We fearlessly cover issues that are often considered off-limits or taboo in Russia, from…

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy held their first face-to-face meeting Monday at a four-way summit in Paris with the French and German leaders as mediators. The last time the so-called Normandy summit met to work out a deal to end the conflict between Ukrainian forces and Russian-backed separatists in the Donbass…

Russian President Vladimir Putin said a Georgian man murdered in Berlin in August was himself a killer who took part in bloody acts on Russian soil and that Moscow’s requests for his extradition had not been heeded. Asked at a news conference in Paris if Russia would respond in kind to Germany’s expulsion of two Russian diplomats…

Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Monday that Moscow had grounds to appeal a decision by the World Anti-Doping Agency to bar Russia from major sporting events, a move he said violated the Olympic charter. Russia was banned from the world’s top sporting events for four years earlier on Monday, including the next summer and…

The leaders of Russia and Ukraine agreed on Tuesday to exchange all remaining prisoners from the conflict in east Ukraine by the end of the year, but left thorny questions about the region’s status for future talks. Russia‘s Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, in their first face-to-face meeting, took part in nine hours of talks…

Russian President Vladimir Putin met his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelenskiy for the first time on Monday at a summit in Paris aimed at advancing efforts to restore peace to eastern Ukraine. Zelenskiy and Putin are holding talks together with the leaders of France and Germany in a renewed effort to end a conflict that has…

Russia plans to establish an air defense “dome” across its polar region by arming all of its Northern Fleet’s Arctic divisions with S-400 missile batteries, a Russian naval commander said on Monday. Russia has been stepping up its military presence in the Arctic, building new infrastructure and overhauling its ports as it vies for dominance…

As the only remaining independent, English-language news source reporting from Russia, The Moscow Times plays a critical role in connecting Russia to the world. Editorial decisions are made entirely by journalists in our newsroom, who adhere to the highest ethical standards. We fearlessly cover issues that are often considered off-limits or taboo in Russia, from…

Thousands of people protested against plans to build a waste dump in northern Russia as the anti-landfill movement passed its one-year mark last week, activists said Sunday. Mass protests against plans to ship waste from Moscow to the former village of Shiyes erupted across northwestern Russia on Dec. 2, 2018. The accidental discovery of the…

The legal battle between Russia and Ukraine over an unpaid $3 billion loan reached new heights Monday, as Ukraine pushed the British Supreme Court not to force it to make a repayment. Russia is demanding Ukraine repay the loan, which matured in December 2015 and has not been repaid, with interest, while Ukraine argues that…

Thousands of Russian football fans staged a walkout at games over the weekend following a recent police crackdown on hooliganism, in what observers say was the largest coordinated fan action in Russian football history. FC Spartak Moscow’s Fratria fan group called for the walkout after police detained an estimated 90 fans in St. Petersburg before…

Russia will be banned from competing in or hosting major world sporting events for four years after the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) unanimously ruled that Moscow had tampered with doping laboratory data. The ruling is the latest blow to Russia’s already tarnished sporting reputation, which has been hit by scandals since a 2015 report commissioned…

Russian forces have entered Raqqa, the former de facto capital of the Islamic State caliphate, in one of the starkest examples yet of how Moscow has filled the vacuum created by President Donald Trump’s decision to pull U.S. forces from northern Syria. Russian troops were shown in footage on the defense ministry’s Zvezda TV channel…

Russia was banned from the world’s top sporting events for four years on Monday, including the next summer and winter Olympics and the 2022 soccer World Cup, for tampering with doping tests. The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) executive committee acted after concluding that Moscow had planted fake evidence and deleted files linked to positive doping tests…

A self-proclaimed shaman has restarted his cross-country trek to cast President Vladimir Putin out of power after being arrested and declared mentally ill, the RBC news website reported Sunday. Alexander Gabyshev in March embarked on an 8,000-kilometer journey on foot from his native republic of Sakha to Moscow to “expel” Putin, whom he called a…

Talks between the Russian and Belarusian Presidents in Sochi Saturday over plans for closer integration of the two countries appeared to end in a stalemate. Vladimir Putin and his Belarusian counterpart Alexander Lukashenko were locked in negotiations for more than five hours at the Black Sea resort Saturday, the Kremlin confirmed — although the pair…

The U.S. military believes that an unarmed American drone reported lost near Libya’s capital last month was in fact shot down by Russian air defenses and it is demanding the return of the aircraft’s wreckage, U.S. Africa Command says. Such a shootdown would underscore Moscow’s increasingly muscular role in the energy-rich nation, where Russian mercenaries…

The leak and distribution of classified UK-U.S. trade documents online is tied to a previous Russian disinformation campaign, social media site Reddit said on Friday, fueling fears that Moscow is seeking to interfere in Britain’s upcoming election. Britain’s opposition Labour Party seized on the leaked documents on Nov. 27, saying they showed the ruling Conservatives…

The leader of the Russian Orthodox Church and several Kremlin officials fly on a $43 million jet linked to a major state lender, The Bell business website reported Friday. The report follows prominent Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny’s claims that week that the state VTB bank CEO’s alleged partner and Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev’s wife fly…

Russian sport needs a “serious change” in its leadership starting with the firing of all its athletics coaches, the country’s top anti-doping official said Friday as it braces for a four-year Olympic ban for flouting anti-doping rules. Russian sport could enter four more years of gloom on Monday when the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA)’s executive committee…

Authorities in Singapore plan to arrest a Russian vessel under U.S. sanctions for violating economic sanctions imposed on North Korea, Interfax reported Friday. The U.S. Treasury targeted Russia’s Gudzon shipping company in 2018 with sanctions on six of its vessels, including the tanker Sevastopol. South Korea briefly held the Sevastopol last year and China later…

In December 2017, Margarita Gracheva’s husband drove her into a forest in the Moscow region and chopped off her hands with an axe. Two years later, police pulled a history professor out of a St. Petersburg canal with a backpack containing the severed arms of his girlfriend, Anastasia Yeshchenko.       These are the most shocking of…

Access to Moscow’s network of more than 170,000 surveillance cameras is being sold on the black market, investigators have found. Researchers at MBKh Media — an investigative media outlet run by Kremlin opponent and former oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky — found that live access to any one of Moscow’s public surveillance cameras, which come with…

Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev held his annual end-of-year press conference Thursday, 24 hours after prominent Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny alleged that his wife Svetlana Medvedeva owns a $50 million private jet.  Over the course of two hours, Medvedev fielded questions from 20 news, sports, comedy, music and youth television channels. Despite Navalny’s pleas to raise…

U.S. authorities took aim at a Russian cybercriminal group known as Evil Corp Thursday, indicting its Lamborghini-driving alleged leader and ordering asset freezes against 17 of his associates over a digital crime spree that has netted more than $100 million from companies across the world. The action against Evil Corp, described by officials as one…

A Moscow court gave student and political blogger Yegor Zhukov a three-year suspended sentence Friday, allowing him to avoid imprisonment after one of the most high-profile trials stemming from this summer’s wave of anti-government rallies.  Zhukov, 21, was one of about a dozen people placed in pre-trial detention as part of a criminal case opened…

An unusually large group of polar bears has converged around a village in Far East Russia, forcing residents into lockdown, the global conservation group World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Russia said Thursday. Residents of Ryrkapiy, population 600, were said to have organized patrols and canceled all public gatherings, including New Year’s celebrations, to prevent the polar…

The U.S. Treasury Department said it would sanction a Russian group known as “Evil Corp” and its leaders for cyber-thefts at hundreds of financial institutions around the world that total more than $100 million. The targets include the group’s leader, identified as Maksim Yakubets. The U.S. said he also worked for the Russian Federal Security…

As the only remaining independent, English-language news source reporting from Russia, The Moscow Times plays a critical role in connecting Russia to the world. Editorial decisions are made entirely by journalists in our newsroom, who adhere to the highest ethical standards. We fearlessly cover issues that are often considered off-limits or taboo in Russia, from…

Two Russian diplomats that Germany expelled over the assassination of a Chechen rebel in Berlin worked for the GRU military intelligence agency, Germany’s Süddeutsche Zeitung daily reported Wednesday. Germany sent the two unnamed Russian Embassy employees home because it said Moscow did not sufficiently cooperate with Berlin in its investigation into the August murder of…

The veteran leader of Belarus on Thursday dismissed opposition fears that a possible integration pact with Russia could end with his country losing its independence to Moscow, saying the two countries were not discussing deeper political ties. Alexander Lukashenko, in power since 1994, is due to hold talks on Saturday with Russian President Vladimir Putin…

Popular YouTube blogger and political science student Yegor Zhukov faces up to five years in prison on charges of calling for extremism online, a case that critics say is politically motivated. Authorities initially charged Zhukov, 21, with mass unrest in connection with anti-government protests that swept Moscow this summer. After fellow students and activists campaigned…

It has been more than three years since the leaders of Russia and Ukraine sat down with their counterparts in France and Germany to thrash out a deal aimed at finally bringing an end to the conflict between pro-Russian separatists and Kiev’s forces in eastern Ukraine. On Monday, after repeated fits and starts, Russian President…

As the only remaining independent, English-language news source reporting from Russia, The Moscow Times plays a critical role in connecting Russia to the world. Editorial decisions are made entirely by journalists in our newsroom, who adhere to the highest ethical standards. We fearlessly cover issues that are often considered off-limits or taboo in Russia, from…

The Russian government has expelled a Bulgarian diplomat in a tit-for-tat move after Sofia asked Moscow to recall a diplomat on suspicion of espionage, Bulgaria’s foreign ministry said on Thursday. Bulgaria’s ambassador in Moscow, Atanas Krastin, has been informed that the diplomat must leave Russia within the next 24 hours in line with diplomatic protocol, the ministry said…

Senator Konstantin Kosachev, chairman of the Federation Council’s foreign affairs committee, and Rune Resaland, the Norwegian Ambassador to Russia, had a tense meeting Wednesday as they discussed the countries’ relations and the 2018 arrest of a Russian parliamentary aide.  Kosachev told the Norwegian ambassador that there could be no normal cooperation between the two countries’…

Economic growth in Russia will be higher than expected in 2019 and is likely to pick up in the next few years thanks partly to higher state spending and looser monetary policy, the World Bank said on Wednesday. Russia’s economic growth has waned this year as investment activity evaporates and consumer demand flatlines, but it…

Russian judges are considering punishing journalists and media outlets for “biased coverage” of the national court system, the Vedomosti business daily reported Thursday, a move that observers say would harm free speech in the country. The Russian judicial system’s 2020-2030 draft information policy obtained by Vedomosti aims to penalize the publication of “negative materials” about…

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan allegedly authorized the downing of a Russian warplane in an incident that briefly soured their relationship four years ago, the Turkey-focused Nordic Monitor website reported, citing a report to NATO it says it obtained. A Turkish F-16 interceptor shot down a Russian fighter-bomber near the Syrian border with an air-to-air…

Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev’s wife jetsets on the government’s dime, prominent Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny has said in a new video published ahead of Medvedev’s annual end-of-year press conference with reporters from 20 television channels. Medvedev, the subject of Navalny’s viral 2017 investigation into corruption that has been viewed 32.7 million times, is scheduled…