The head of a prominent Russian investigative website said on Wednesday he had been attacked in Moscow by an assailant who punched him and splashed him with an antiseptic green dye, echoing past assaults on opposition politicians. Ruslan Leviev, founder of Conflict Intelligence Team, which investigates Russian military and mercenary activity, posted pictures of himself on Facebook…
The Kremlin on Wednesday paid tribute to a late Soviet intelligence officer it credits with helping foil a Nazi plot to kill Winston Churchill, Josef Stalin and Franklin Roosevelt, saying her career may have changed the course of history. Goar Vartanyan, who died on Monday at the age of 93, was an undercover field operative…
Russia has revealed a new drone prototype capable of tracking, intercepting and disarming enemy drones, the state-run TASS news agency reported Wednesday. Unlike existing Russian means of countering enemy unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), these “killer drones” will scramble their enemies’ networks to disable them, TASS quoted Viktor Kladov, director of international cooperation and regional policy…
The British military would be “outgunned” along NATO’s eastern flank in the event of a conflict with Russia, according to a think tank report cited by the BBC on Wednesday. The London-based Royal United Services Institute’s assessment comes after the head of the British army warned earlier this month that Russia could inadvertently trigger a…
A court in Kazan has rejected asylum claims from Chinese Uighur-Tatar twin brothers who fear deportation and imprisonment in China, their lawyer told The Moscow Times. Shahrizat and Shahdiyar Shavkat (23) moved to Russia in 2015 to study at Kazan’s Federal University. Chinese immigration authorities told the twins last year that they would need to…
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…
Sweden, Estonia, Lithuania and Ukraine have called on Russia to ensure that Kiev keeps its freedom of navigation in the sea bordering Russia, annexed Crimea and Ukraine. The four countries issued the joint statement in support of Ukraine’s sovereignty Tuesday a week after Russia returned three Ukrainian ships it had captured in the Kerch Strait…
Release November 27, 2019, 13:50 A working meeting between Alexey Miller, Chairman of the Gazprom Management Committee, and Vladimir Semashko, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Republic of Belarus to the Russian Federation, took place in Moscow today. The parties discussed the current lines of cooperation between Gazprom and Belarus in the gas sector. Special attention was paid to the supplies of Russian gas to Belarus and gas transportation…
Tyumenneftegaz, a part of Rosneft’s oil production complex, has started the delivery of the first oil from the unique Russkoye field to the Zapolyarye-Purpe trunk pipeline system.
The number of Russians eligible for bankruptcy has passed one million for the first time in history, research by a credit ratings agency has shown. Russians can declare bankruptcy if they have debts of at least 500,000 rubles ($7,800) and are more than 90 days behind in their repayment schedule. For comparison, the average Russian…
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…
Cyprus has stripped Kremlin-friendly Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska and two other Russian nationals of Cypriot passports after admitting flaws in its citizenship-for-investment program, Cyprus’ Politis newspaper reported Wednesday. Cyprus said this month it had started a process to strip 26 individuals of citizenship they received under a secretive passports-for-investment scheme. Sources on the Mediterranean island…
Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy are “close to 100%” likely to meet for the first time in Paris next month, the Kommersant business daily reported Wednesday. The face-to-face is expected to take place on the sidelines of their anticipated four-way summit with French and German leaders on Dec. 9. The summit…
Nikolai Kholodov has been driving his truck along the highway from St. Petersburg to Moscow for two decades. This week, he’ll finally be able to make the trip without worrying about diversions, traffic jams and animals running onto the road. After eight years of construction, a 669-kilometer toll highway as wide as 10 lanes in…
Russian and Chinese intelligence services are behind the most aggressive spying activities in the Czech Republic, the Central European nation’s counterintelligence agency said Tuesday in a report for 2018. The countries’ activities were connected to politics, diplomacy, espionage, economy and information warfare, the Czech counterintelligence agency BIS said. It said Russia’s foreign, military and domestic…
The impact of Russian trolls on U.S. voters may have been exaggerated, according to a preliminary U.S. study of Twitter interactions with troll accounts published Monday. U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that the Kremlin used social media to interfere in the 2016 presidential election through disinformation and other tactics. Calls for research to measure the…
Russia’s Central Bank is warning Russian lenders against conducting operations in euros, governor Elvira Nabiullina has said. Nabiullina said doing business in euros brings no profits to Russian banks because of the negative interest rate environment in the eurozone, and the Central Bank is pushing Russian financial institutions not to have “excessive” foreign currencies on…
Moldova’s new prime minister on Tuesday raised the possibility of a “pause” in its cooperation with the International Monetary Fund, a day after he said his ex-Soviet republic was negotiating a $500 million loan with Russia. Ion Chicu’s comments and actions, including a trip to Moscow last week, suggest a likely pivot back towards Russia…
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…
Sales of luxury Moscow apartments are set to be worth a total of 82 billion rubles ($1.3 billion) in 2019 — the highest annual level since 2014, analysts at real estate firm Knight Frank have said. The figure represents a 6% jump on last year and takes the total amount spent on luxury real estate…
The Red Bull SoundClash Nov. 24 double concert made headlines this week when both bands — Leningrad and Noize MC — were fined for swearing on stage. Red Bull SoundClash capitalizes on the recent trend of rap battles but uses a different format. Rather than two performers battling each other on one stage, SoundClash juxtaposed…
Russian sports officials on Tuesday spoke out against a World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) committee’s recommendations that the country be banned from the Olympics for four years, saying this was overly harsh and would hurt sport there. The recommendations, published on Monday, mean Russia could miss out on the next two Olympic Games and world championships…
Plastic waste makes up one-quarter of polar bears’ diet as climate change pushes them closer to human settlements, Russian scientists have said while warning that the plastic risks killing the animals. Polar bears have been forced to scavenge for food on land as climate change damages their sea-ice habitats. The animals have increasingly come into…
The number of young Russians who would like to move out of their home country has soared to a 10-year high, according to an independent Levada Center poll published Tuesday. Sociologists have warned that younger generations’ increasing willingness to move abroad risks hurting Russia’s economy, while the Kremlin dismissed it as no cause for alarm.…
Hundreds of feminist activists rallied in central Moscow on Monday night to call for Russia’s government to re-criminalize domestic violence amid intensifying calls for the legislation to be passed. President Vladimir Putin in 2017 passed a law easing punishments for most first-time offenders, which critics say has strengthened Russia’s culture of impunity toward domestic violence.…
Russia hopes to seal a deal to supply Turkey with more S-400 missile systems in the first half of next year, the head of Russian state arms exporter Rosoboronexport was cited on Tuesday as saying. Such a move could further sour ties between Turkey and the United States, which has suspended Ankara from the F-35…
The grass is greener in a virtual world. That’s what Moscow region farmers were aiming for when they fitted their dairy cows with virtual-reality headsets to test their milk production. “Experts noted reduced anxiety and improved overall emotional mood in the herd” during the VR experiment, said the regional agriculture administration. The second phase of…
Russia should be hit with a four-year Olympic ban and barred from all world championships for the manipulation of data retrieved from a tainted Moscow laboratory, the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) said on Monday. The recommendations were made by WADA’s independent Compliance Review Committee (CRC) and will be put to the executive committee at meetings in…
Russia should be hit with a four-year Olympic ban and barred from all world championships for the manipulation of data retrieved from a tainted Moscow laboratory, the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) said on Monday. The recommendations were made by WADA’s independent Compliance Review Committee (CRC) and will be put to the executive committee at meetings in…
Former Russian President Boris Yeltsin’s chief of staff Valentin Yumashev has made headlines for his candid interview about President Vladimir Putin’s career in the late 1990s. Shortly after Yumashev’s appointment as unsalaried adviser appeared on the Kremlin’s website in June 2018, the Kremlin revealed that he had actually served in that role for 18 years…
Release November 25, 2019, 17:55 First fully integrated enterprise in history of modern Russia for spacecraft assembly and testing. Facility will be able to manufacture up to 4 large or 100 small batch-produced satellites per year. Roscosmos is taking part in this project. A ceremonial event celebrating the start of construction by Gazprom of a spacecraft assembly facility (SPKA) took place today in Shchelkovo, Moscow Region. Taking part in the event were Vitaly…
Cold War sleuths have discovered a fourth Soviet spy within the United States’ atomic bomb project whose work helped the Soviet Union end Washington’s monopoly on nuclear arms, The New York Times reported Saturday. The Soviet Union detonated its own atomic bomb just 49 months after the U.S. detonated the world’s first atomic bomb in…
Moscow’s VDNKh park has reopened the largest artificial ice rink in Europe just in time for the park’s 80th anniversary. The park’s ice rink, which was closed last winter for renovations, has been a holiday treasure in Moscow ever since the first rink was opened there in 1954. In 1960 the first Russian Winter Festival…
A Moscow deputy has called for President Vladimir Putin to block a prominent homeless NGO from opening a shelter in Russia’s capital, warning of the organization’s foreign backing and the spread of diseases. The Nochlezhka homeless charity, founded in St. Petersburg in 1990, has faced strident criticism from Muscovites opposed to its plans to open…
At least eight suspected Russian intelligence officers traveled to Bulgaria around the time a local arms dealer was poisoned in 2015, the investigative outlet Bellingcat reported on Saturday. Bulgarian arms dealer Emilian Gebrev survived the April 28, 2015, poisoning attempt in Sofia. Investigators reopened Gebrev’s case in 2018 when he linked his poisoning with that…
To foreigners, Moscow might seem like a closed fortress, always “defending and disguising itself,” as Walter Benjamin once wrote. But under the city facades there is another hidden life waiting to be discovered. Right in the city center on Kostyansky Pereulok, the past has burst into the present with the sign “Streletsky Bakery” (“Стрелецкая пекарня”)…
Officials from Russia’s North Caucasus republic of Chechnya have called on members of its diaspora to stop their countrymen from “disgracing the Chechen people,” the independent Novaya Gazeta newspaper reported Monday. This is the first time that the Chechen diasporas of the U.S. and especially Canada have been called upon to stop fellow Chechens who behave…
Unique pumping equipment for the dry dock under construction has been delivered to the Zvezda Shipyard.
Turkey will test a component of its newly acquired Russian air defense system, a step that risks escalating a dispute with the U.S. and touching off possible sanctions. The lira reversed gains. Military aircraft will be used in the capital Ankara on Monday and Tuesday during the testing of the S-400 system’s radar-detection equipment, a…
Four out of five women convicted for premeditated murder in Russia had been defending themselves from domestic violence, according to machine-learning research published by the Novaya Gazeta newspaper and the Mediazona news website Monday. Critics say Russia’s 2017 decriminalization of some forms of domestic violence has eroded protections for women, while supporters defend it for…
Moscow – PhosAgro (“the Company”) (Moscow Exchange and LSE: PHOR), one of the world’s leading vertically integrated phosphate-based fertilizer producers, today announces its interim consolidated IFRS financial results for 3Q and 9M 2019. Revenue in 3Q 2019 rose by 3% year-on-year to RUB 64.6 billion (USD 1.0 billion) mainly due to higher sales in priority…
Konstantin Malofeyev rose to fame in Russia’s corporate wars of the late 2000s. He became one of the most powerful people in telecommunications, but the devoutly Orthodox tycoon almost lost everything in a bitter dispute with state-owned bank VTB. In 2014, he was sanctioned by the West for providing support to rebels in eastern Ukraine.…
On the morning of Nov. 11, 36-year-old Lyudmila Sokolova gathered her two children into her arms and jumped out of the window of her ninth-floor apartment in northeast Moscow. Her baby girl died with her and her six-year-old son was hospitalized in serious condition. Sokolova had called an ambulance four times that morning because her…
Can billionaires be good, honest people? Alexander Lebedev, a Russian oligarch turned philanthropist and media mogul, certainly wants us to think he is. His new memoir, “Hunt the Banker,” begins with a preface that laments the burdens of immense wealth. Lebedev confesses that the millions he made during the unbridled capitalist 1990s have brought him…
Russia is again facing a possible Olympic ban after the World Anti-Doping Agency’s Compliance Review Committee (CRC) recommended on Friday that the Russian Anti-Doping Agency (RUSADA) be ruled non-compliant. The CRC put forward the recommendation after WADA’s Intelligence and Investigations Committee found evidence of manipulation of data retrieved from a tainted Moscow laboratory in January. A report…
A Russian agent briefly jailed in the United States and then deported back to Moscow has accepted a state job to defend Russians imprisoned abroad, the state-run TASS news agency reported Friday. Maria Butina, 31, pleaded guilty in a U.S. court last December to one count of conspiring to act as a foreign agent for Russia by infiltrating a…
Moscow – The Board of Directors of PhosAgro (Moscow Exchange, LSE: PHOR), one of the world’s leading vertically integrated phosphate-based fertilizer producers, at today’s meeting approved the company’s priority areas for 2020 and has recommended that the Extraordinary General Meeting of Shareholders (“EGM”) approve a dividend payment of RUB 6.216 billion, or RUB 48 per…
Russian lawmakers have an image problem and they know it. One think tank may have the solution ahead of a crucial parliament vote: be kinder and temper your repressive urges. The pro-Kremlin United Russia party’s brand became so toxic amid anti-government protests this summer that many of its members ran for Moscow’s city council as…
Background OMV AG is Gazprom’s main partner in Austria. The companies cooperate in gas production, transportation and supplies. In 2018, Gazprom supplied to Austria 12.3 billion cubic meters of gas, an increase of 34.8 per cent (3.2 billion cubic meters) from 2017 (9.1 billion cubic meters). In June 2018, an Agreement was signed to extend until 2040 the existing contract between Gazprom Export and OMV Gas Marketing & Trading GmbH for Russian gas supplies…
Russian television presenter and onetime presidential candidate Ksenia Sobchak is the country’s highest-earning Instagrammer, Forbes Russia has said in its list of the top 15 earners on the social media app in 2019. The magazine ranked each user by the income they earn from advertising and sponsored posts on their Instagram pages. All 15 names…
Release November 22, 2019, 16:05 Gazprom Gazoraspredeleniye, a company controlled by Gazprom, successfully completed the sale of 850,590,751 ordinary shares of Gazprom (3.59 per cent of the share capital). The placement was carried out using the trading platform of the Moscow Exchange. Gazprombank (Joint Stock Company) acted as the arranger and broker of the offering. As the shares were sold in their totality, Gazprom Gazoraspredeleniye reduced…
Orthodox Christianity and Islam are based on the same fundamental values, President Vladimir Putin said in an address to a religious conference in Kyrgyzstan. The conference, titled “Orthodoxy and Islam — Religions of Peace,” aimed to promote interethnic and interreligious dialogue between Russia and Kyrgyzstan. “Islam and Orthodox Christianity, just like other world religions, are…
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 gas goliath Gazprom raked in $3 billion Friday selling shares to an unknown mystery buyer in an unconventional share deal. Gazprom sold 3.6% of its own shares in a 188 billion ruble ($3 billion) deal, almost completing a share-offloading program announced in the summer by CEO Alexey Miller, the firm confirmed in submissions to…
Alina Afasyeva wears black leather gloves as she delicately picks through mountains of trash bags in Moscow’s elegant central Tverskaya neighborhood. This is the fourth or fifth dumpster she’s visited tonight, but none of them have yielded results so far. Despite the early winter chill in the air, the smell is pungent — equal parts…
Spain has opened an investigation into the role of a secret Russian military unit in Catalonia’s 2017 independence referendum, the country’s El Pais newspaper reported Thursday. The Spanish government tried to prevent Catalonia’s independence referendum that it declared illegal, leading to hundreds of injuries. Spanish ministers said in 2017 that Russia-based groups promoted the referendum…
On Nov. 19, a small sculpture was unveiled on a tiny patch of courtyard on one of Moscow’s narrow little side streets before a handful of people — a deceptively modest ceremony to mark a momentous event. The sculpture was created by Vadim Kosmatschof and placed in front of the Austrian Embassy. It was the…
Baring Vostok — the Russian investment house at the centre of the high-profile fraud case involving its founder U.S. citizen Michael Calvey — has cancelled plans to launch a new investment fund, bne IntelliNews has reported. The company suspended plans to launch a sixth fund, citing investor fears over “contradictions in Russian and international arbitration…
The president of Russia’s athletics federation and several other federation officials were suspended on Thursday by the Athletics Integrity Unit (AIU) for serious breaches of anti-doping rules, adding to the federation’s woes ahead of next year’s Olympics. The AIU, which oversees integrity issues in global athletics including doping, said the provisional suspensions were linked to…
Serbian intelligence agencies have uncovered a wide-ranging intelligence operation involving Russian spies and members of the Serbian military, President Aleksandar Vucic said on Thursday. Vucic’s remarks came after a meeting of the National Security Council which he convened after a video showing a Russian intelligence officer handing money to a Serbian man in Belgrade was…