Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Wednesday he did not support banning foreign media outlets including Germany’s Deutsche Welle from working in Russia, something that had been proposed by parliament, Interfax news agency reported. Russia‘s parliament accused Deutsche Welle in September of breaking election legislation and asked the foreign ministry to consider revoking the German…
President Vladimir Putin convened a meeting of Russia’s language council Tuesday, where he warned that there is a war against the Russian language, recommended replacing Wikipedia and called for the introduction of uniform language norms. Chaired by presidential adviser Vladimir Tolstoy, the 48-member council is charged with developing state policy on protecting and promoting the…
Turkish and Russian troops on Tuesday began their second joint patrol in northern Syria near Kobani, under a deal that has forced a Kurdish militia away from Turkey’s border, while local media released footage of angry crowds pelting a convoy with stones. Nearly a month ago, Turkey and Syrian rebel allies launched a cross-border incursion…
For the first time, the experts of RN-Yuganskneftegaz have built a horizontal multilateral double-column well with many side holes using the Fishbone technology.
As darkness descended on St. Petersburg this weekend, the city’s historic buildings lit up in a spectacular way for the fourth annual Festival of Lights. With the help of 3D mapping technology, the traditional architecture of Russia’s northern capital was transformed into a menagerie of light, music and optical illusions. This year, the event’s theme…
Background Gazprom Dobycha Noyabrsk, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Gazprom, develops seven fields, including four gas fields, two gas and condensate fields, and one oil, gas and condensate field. The company’s facilities, among them three gas production sites and three gas production directorates, are located in the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous Area, Kamchatka, and Yakutia. Gazprom Dobycha Noyabrsk takes part in the state-run Eastern…
Nine of 10 malnourished and neglected tigers shipped from Italy and bound for Russia are recovering in Poland after Belarus stopped them from crossing the border for lack of proper paperwork. A Polish zoo and wildlife sanctuary took in the “exhausted, starving, covered in their own feces” tigers Wednesday, days after Belarussian officials held up…
Background Gazprom Dobycha Noyabrsk, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Gazprom, develops seven fields, including four gas fields, two gas and condensate fields, and one oil, gas and condensate field. The company’s facilities, among them three gas production sites and three gas production directorates, are located in the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous Area, Kamchatka, and Yakutia. Gazprom Dobycha Noyabrsk takes part in the state-run Eastern…
Turkish and Russian troops in armored vehicles on Tuesday began their second joint ground patrol in northern Syria near the town of Kobani, under a deal that has forced a Kurdish militia away from Turkey’s border. Nearly a month ago, Turkey and Syrian rebel allies launched a cross-border incursion against Kurdish YPG fighters, seizing control…
At first there doesn’t seem to be anything special about a children’s playground in the town of Gryazi, Lipetsk region. The only difference is that it is more colorful and inventive than most, with miniature buildings, swings, a truck, ship, and what seems to be a working fireplace. But it is unique: it was built…
Russia has imprisoned a Jehovah’s Witness from Siberia to six years in prison on charges of “extremism,” the independent Tayga.info news website reported Tuesday. Sergei Klimov was detained in the city of Tomsk in June 2018 on suspicion of being an “de facto leader” of a local branch of Jehovah’s Witnesses. Russia outlawed the Jehovah’s…
Russia continues to sit near the bottom of the global internet freedom rating index, according to a new report released Tuesday. The Freedom House democracy watchdog’s 2019 World Internet Freedom Index said online freedom worldwide has deteriorated for nine straight years. It ranked China as the world’s worst abuser of the internet freedoms for the…
The British government was accused by opponents of sitting on a parliamentary report examining alleged Russian meddling in British politics because it might contain embarrassing revelations about Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his party. The report by parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) has been cleared by the security services but it has not yet been…
The Russian Arctic archipelagos of Franz Josef Land and Severnaya Zemlya experienced the warmest October on record, with average temperatures on the islands 8 degrees Celsius higher than normal, according to Russia’s meteorological service Roshydromet. Temperature maps from meteorologists show a belt of warm air stretching across large parts of the Arctic. The biggest abnormalities…
Almost one-third of Russians support police raids and criminal cases against prominent Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny’s allies, according to a survey from the independent Levada Center pollster published Tuesday. Police have carried out mass nationwide raids against Navalny’s associates and frozen a number of bank accounts in recent months as part of a criminal investigation…
An official in the North Caucasus republic of Chechnya has apologized for using a taser on women detained under suspicion of fraud, Chechen media reported Monday. Video showing Islam Kadyrov, the former mayor of Chechnya’s capital Grozny, using a stun gun against detainees to obtain evidence from them aired on the Grozny television channel late…
Most Russians have a day off Monday as the country marks National Unity Day, a national holiday aimed to promote patriotism and tolerance between ethnic and religious groups in Russia. National Unity Day commemorates Russia’s defeat of Polish invaders in 1612, and is one of the country’s youngest national holidays as it was established in…
Delivery of a second batch of Russian S-400 missile defense systems to Turkey may be delayed beyond a planned 2020 timeline by talks on technology sharing and joint production, the head of Turkey’s Defence Industry Directorate said on Monday. NATO allies Turkey and the United States have been at loggerheads over the purchase of the S-400…
Russian prosecutors on Saturday opened a criminal investigation into “sexual violence” after a YouTube video series published online showed children talking with members of the LGBT community. The move comes six years after the Russian government banned “homosexual propaganda” aimed at minors. Authorities in Russia have used the law to block pride parades and rights…
More than a year after African swine fever began ravaging hogs in China, the virus may be escaping along the same route it’s believed to have entered — via Russia. While the swine contagion has been present in Russia for 12 years, it’s only been spreading actively in the country’s Far East for the past…
As a brown woman who has lived in Moscow for over three years now, I must admit that I approached “A Brown Man in Russia: Lessons Learned on the Trans-Siberian,” a book about a young American’s journey through Russia to Mongolia in the depths of winter, with some skepticism. And indeed, encounters were familiar and…
In his first interview since being released in a prisoner swap between Russia and Ukraine, key MH17 witness Vladimir Tsemakh said Dutch and Australian officials offered him Dutch citizenship and a house in the Netherlands during interrogations. Tsemakh, a Ukrainian citizen, was kidnapped in the Donbass by Ukranian security services on June 27. He had…
Four Russians have been rescued after being stranded in below-freezing temperatures in a remote Arctic region, The Siberian Times newspaper reported Friday. Three men and one woman had been traveling a 270-kilometer distance from the village of Berezovka to the town of Srednekolymsk in the republic of Sakha when their two snowmobiles broke down in…
A Russian plane was forced to make an emergency landing when its engine failed shortly after takeoff from the Siberian city of Tyumen, the state-run TASS news agency reported Friday. There were 80 passengers and six crew members on board the flight, Interfax reported. The Sukhoi Superjet 100 operated by Yamal Airlines was flying from…
Russia’s Supreme Court has disbanded veteran activist Lev Ponomaryov’s civil rights group months after authorities labeled it a “foreign agent,” Interfax reported Friday. Russia’s Justice Ministry blacklisted For Human Rights as a foreign agent alongside two of Ponomaryov’s other NGOs in February after an inspection into its political activity while receiving funding from abroad. Ponomaryov,…
A Moscow court has ordered catering magnate Yevgeny Prigozhin’s company to compensate the parents of schoolchildren who suffered food poisoning last year, Interfax reported Friday. The parents sued Prigozhin’s business alongside other companies, schools and officials this spring for the December 2018 dysentery outbreak in several state-run daycare centers and kindergartens. Officials confirmed 127 overall…
November 1, 2019, Novovoronezh, Russia – Unit No.2 at the Novovoronezh Nuclear Power Plant II, containing ROSATOM’s flagship Generation III+ VVER-1200 reactor, was put into commercial operation 30 days ahead of schedule, after the green light from Russia’s regulator Rostechnadzor. The full commissioning marks a key event for the Russian nuclear industry. “Hundreds of nuclear…
Hundreds of millions of dollars in cash has been shipped from Russia to Venezuela, providing a lifeline to the South American country as U.S. sanctions limit its access to the global financial system. A total of $315 million of U.S. dollar and euro notes were sent in six separate shipments from Moscow to Caracas from…
A fresh roster of forecasts and data on the Russian economy suggests slow growth and low inflation coupled with robust corporate performance will mark the final two months of the year. Meanwhile, economy-watchers remain fixed on a crucial Central Bank meeting in December and are divided over whether Bank of Russia governor Elvira Nabiullina will…
Israel has suspended the extradition to the U.S. of a Russian hacker after Russia proposed to swap him for an Israeli woman jailed in Russia over airport marijuana possession, The Jerusalem Post reported Thursday. In mid-October, Russia asked Israel to swap Alexei Burkov, who is wanted in the U.S. on charges of credit card fraud,…
Russian investigators have opened a genocide case on the murder of more than 200 disabled children in southern Russia by Nazi Germany during World War II based on newly declassified documents. German death squads on Oct. 9-10, 1942, killed 214 disabled foster children who had fled Crimea for the coastal town of Yeysk, according to…
The first business owner who returned to Russia after appearing on the so-called ‘Titov list’ has been sentenced to three years in a penal colony for fraud, Russian media reported Friday. Andrey Kokovin, who returned to Russia from the U.K. last year, was found guilty of stealing 10 million rubles from his Rostov-based company in…
A part of history just went on sale for less than $1 million in St. Petersburg, Russia’s second-biggest city and former capital. Two beautiful apartments rented by Russian literary classic Alexander Pushkin in the 19th century will only set you back 55 million rubles, or around $858,500. The celebrated poet moved there in 1834 to…
The U.S. State Department warned on Thursday that it had seen indications of Russian “influence” on recent unrest in Chile, where two weeks of protests and riots have rocked the administration of President Sebastian Pinera. A senior State Department official said there were “clear indications” people were taking advantage of the unrest in Chile —…
Turkey has handed over 18 men believed to be Syrian government soldiers who were seized in northeast Syria near the Turkish border earlier this week, the Turkish Defense Ministry said late on Thursday. The ministry did not say who they were handed over to, but said it came about “as a result of the coordination…
Q3 2019 IFRS financial results and corresponding MD&A will be available on our website on November 6, 2019 at 10:00.
When the chairman of Russia’s Committee on Informational Policy, Leonid Levin, stepped on stage in Moscow’s Lomonosov building on Oct. 28 to give a speech during the second All-Russian Digital Forum he couldn’t have chosen a better place. The venue is not just the home of Russia’s fastest supercomputer, it’s also overshadowed by the iconic…
Starting this month, a slew of new laws and rules has entered into effect in Russia that will change different aspects of life in the country, including regulations of the internet, the ability to top up e-wallets and make religious pilgrimages. Here’s a look at three major laws that came into effect Nov. 1: Sovereign…
Russia and Serbia have carried out successive joint military exercises in the past week, including Russia’s first use of its advanced S-400 missile defense system abroad. Analysts argue that Serbia pursues close ties with fellow Orthodox Christian and majority-Slavic Russia to gain leverage for maneuvering with the West. Serbia is negotiating entry into the European…
Release October 31, 2019, 18:40 Leading-edge technologies are serving to improve operational efficiency of Gazprom. Sochi hosted an expanded 5th conference on promoting the relationship in the area of gas processing held by the Coordinating Committee for Strategic Cooperation between Gazprom and BASF. The conference included a discussion of possible cooperation in technological innovation, digitalization of business processes, and localization of BASF chemical production in Russia. To that end,…
Russian activists from the Consortium of Women’s Non-Governmental Organizations launched a Halloween social media flashmob — #LawOrDeath — to push for a 2017 law that largely decriminalized domestic violence to be overturned. “This day has become an occasion for those who like to rattle other people’s nerves,” said Tatiana Belova, the originator of the idea…
Seven Russian Wagner Group mercenaries have been killed in two separate shooting incidents involving Islamic State-linked insurgents in Mozambique’s northern Cabo Delgado province this month, two Mozambique army sources told The Moscow Times. In a previously unreported attack that took place on Oct. 10 in Cabo Delgado’s Macomia district, two Russian Wagner soldiers were shot…
Estonia is more than 2,000 miles from the Levant, yet ripples from President Donald Trump’s recent actions in Syria are reaching all the way to the Baltic Sea. Trump’s Oct. 6 decision to withdraw troops from parts of Northern Syria was made in a phone call with Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan that caught other…
Russian President Vladimir Putin paid a one-day visit to Hungary, where he mourned the plight of Christians in the Middle East and analyzed his Ukrainian counterpart’s ideologies. The Moscow Times picked out three remarks Putin made alongside his right-wing conservative counterpart Viktor Orban and other officials Wednesday: On Christianity: “Although the Middle East is the…
Turkey is in talks with Russia to hand over 18 people believed to be members of the Syrian government forces, who were captured near the northern Syrian town of Ras Al Ain, Defense Minister Hulusi Akar said on Thursday. Turkey’s Defense Ministry said on Tuesday that 18 people, had been captured near Ras al Ain,…
More than 1,000 people flocked to the Yandex tech company’s flagship store in Moscow on Wednesday with hopes of becoming one of the first to get their hands on the new mini version of its “smart” speaker. The Russian tech company had announced that anyone could exchange their old audio equipment for the new Yandex.Station…
A Russian conscript killed eight fellow soldiers in the country’s Far East last Friday in a mass shooting the Defense Ministry quickly attributed to the shooter’s nervous breakdown. The conscript has been detained at military unit 54160 in Russia’s Zabaikalsky region, where he and the victims served, and charged with murder. The Defense Ministry did…
CHERNOBYL, Ukraine — On a gray, overcast fall morning, a hound mix with copper-and-white fur sidles up to a group of foreign tourists taking photographs in front of the old Soviet sign welcoming visitors to Chernobyl. “Dude, don’t touch it, you’ll start throwing up,” a brash college-age American says to his friend, laughing. “We just…
Russia’s mammoth infrastructure spending spree over the next few years will do little to boost the slow pace of growth in the Russian economy, economists have warned. A new study from consultants at Oxford Economics has found that the country’s $400 billion six-year National Projects program will result in an increase in annual GDP growth…
Russian schoolchildren are largely unwilling to participate in political protests but are concerned about the environment and tolerant of LGBT people, according to a newly published sociological study on the views of youngsters in the country. The report follows the involvement of thousands of young activists in anti-government protests that gripped Moscow this summer. Russian…
President Vladimir Putin’s KGB profile is now being showcased at an exhibit of declassified documents at St. Petersburg’s central state archive. Putin, who served in the Soviet spy agency between 1975 and 1991, had credited his KGB past for preparing him for the presidency. He assumed the presidency in 2000 after a stint at the…
Release October 30, 2019, 21:35 Demand is already 22 per cent more than 2018 total supplies. Activities to develop Hungary’s gas transmission system are underway. A working meeting between Alexey Miller, Chairman of the Gazprom Management Committee, and Peter Szijjarto, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade of Hungary, took place today in Budapest, Hungary. The parties discussed the current status and the prospects of their…
Facebook said on Wednesday it had suspended three networks of Russian accounts that attempted to interfere in the domestic politics of eight African countries, and were tied to a Russian businessman accused of meddling in past U.S. elections. The campaigns targeted people in Madagascar, Central African Republic, Mozambique, Democratic Republic of Congo, Cote d’Ivoire, Cameroon, Sudan and…
Russians fear arbitrary exercises of power more than death, according to an independent Levada Center poll that the Kremlin dismissed as superficial. Fear of arbitrary authorities and lawlessness placed third in the pollster’s hierarchy of fears for the second year in a row in 2019. The return of mass repressions and a tighter political regime…
Designed by Lev Kravetsky, the building was constructed in 1909. It has everything: griffins, dragons, firebirds, crowned swans, fire-breathing dogs, two-head birds, and a lion in its splendid solitude, with a human face and a luxurious mustache. mos.ru
Denmark has granted permission for Gazprom’s Nord Stream 2 pipeline to be built through Danish waters. After months of delays, the Danish Energy Agency today announced it is finally giving its approval for the natural gas pipeline project that will transport Russian gas directly to Germany. Denmark was the final country on the planned route…
At least eight Russian nuclear-powered submarines sailed out from their homeports on the Kola Peninsula last week, Norwegian military intelligence told the country’s National Public Broadcasting Organization (NRK). The aim of the massive operation is to get as far out to the North Atlantic as possible without being discovered by NATO, the intelligence service said. Such…
Emails claiming to show how to improve Russia’s bid to host the FIFA World Cup by bribing world football’s decision-makers have leaked, the investigative news website The Insider has reported. Russia won hosting rights for the 2018 FIFA World Cup in a 2010 vote, beating out fellow contenders England, Spain-Portugal and Belgium-Netherlands. Former FIFA boss…
The Ural Industrial Biennale of Contemporary Art is less than a decade old, but today it’s considered one of the largest international exhibition projects in Russian contemporary art. Every two years it transforms factories and non-typical cultural spaces of Yekaterinburg and the cities of the Sverdlovsk region into vibrant museums of cutting-edge art. For the…
On Oct. 30, 1974 a group of dissidents imprisoned in Soviet labor camps in Mordovia and Perm declared the date the Day of the Political Prisoners in the U.S.S.R. Led by Kronid Lyubarsky, the prisoners put forward a list of demands, which included recognition of political prisoner status; separation of political prisoners from criminal convicts…