In the hours after Belarus shocked the world by forcing a Ryanair plane flying from Athens to Vilnius to land in Minsk and arresting prominent opposition figure Roman Protasevich, officials in Russia — Minsk’s ally and patron — maintained conspicuous radio silence on the events. Though a string of junior officials praised the action, with…
The Kostomarov Forum began its work this morning in a former Moscow city manor house that was filled with lilacs and some of the finest speakers and writers of Russian in the capital. The Forum is a five-day online event dedicated to the Russian language, this year focusing on the language and how it functions…
Russian officials have defended Belarus’ use of a military jet to divert a passenger plane carrying a dissident, an act Western leaders have called “state terrorism” and that may spark tougher sanctions against Minsk. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told journalists that Belarus had treated the incident with an “absolutely reasonable approach.” “A representative of…
Russia’s internet regulator has threatened to slow down Google services in Russia if it does not comply with requests to delete content within 24 hours, Russia’s state-run TASS news agency has reported. The federal communications watchdog Roskomnadzor said Monday that Google had failed to remove 20-30% of links to content which it says are prohibited…
Belarusian journalist Roman Protasevich, who was detained in Belarus after the Ryanair flight he was on was diverted and forced to land on Sunday, began his digital activism in his teens. A student at the time, he was arrested in 2012 aged just 17 for running two groups on the Russian-based social networking site Vkontakte…
A recent oil spill in the Russian Arctic may cost as much as 1 billion rubles ($13 million) in damage, experts told the Izvestia newspaper. Authorities in the republic of Komi declared an emergency on May 14 after the spill at the Oshskoye field, operated by a subsidiary of oil giant Lukoil, in the neighboring…
At the end of May each year high school seniors across Russia end the last day of classes with the ringing of the “Last Bell.” The soon-to-be graduates dance in traditional school uniforms, exchange flowers and presents and hug their classmates goodbye. Here’s a look at this year’s celebrations:
TVEL Fuel Company of Rosatom has completed development of the new modification of VVER-440 fuel for Loviisa NPP in Finland. The new modification of VVER-440 fuel bundle with higher uranium load would enhance the efficiency of fuel usage and power plant’s operation in general. In particular, increasing the mass of uranium in one fuel rod…
Belarus forced an Athens-to-Vilnius Ryanair flight carrying a wanted opposition activist to divert and land in Belarus on Sunday, provoking a furious outcry from European leaders. Belarusian state television reported that Roman Protasevich, a 26-year-old opposition blogger exiled in Poland, had been detained in Minsk after flight FR4978 was diverted from EU airspace — ostensibly over a security…
Police on Saturday broke up a meeting of independent, elected Russian opposition figures, saying they had failed to observe coronavirus health restrictions, participants said. The May 22-23 forum brought together representatives from 30 regions to coordinate their campaign for the September legislative elections. Ahead of the vote, the authorities have cranked up pressure on the…
Authorities in St. Petersburg said Saturday they have taken the necessary health and safety measures ahead of co-hosting Euro 2020 matches as virus cases in the city continue to climb. Russia’s second city is set to host seven matches, including a quarter-final, in June and July after the tournament was postponed for a year due…
When the culinary blahs plague me (an occasional hazard in my line of work) one fail-safe method of banishing them is a visit to the smoked/cured fish section of the market or grocery store. In Russia, this is both expansive and extensive, with its own distinctly potent smells. It took me several years to work…
Andrei Sakharov was born on May 21, 1921. After a career developing Soviet atomic and hydrogen bombs, he began to speak out for nuclear proliferation as early as the 1950s. In 1968 he published in samizdat his ground-breaking essay “Reflections on Progress, Peaceful Coexistence, and Intellectual Freedom.” After publication he was banned from military research…
On 22 May, the international community celebrates International Day for Biological Diversity established by the UN General Assembly in 2000 to draw attention to preserving the numbers and viability of populations of rare species.
At least 10 people have died from methane poisoning while carrying out work at a water treatment plant in southern Russia, the state-run TASS news agency reported Friday. TASS quoted an emergency services source in the city of Taganrog 1,000 kilometers south of Moscow as saying they were still searching for workers who may be trapped…
Like many Russians, Darya Apakhonchich is an enthusiastic Facebook user. Her wall is filled with posts about her young children, her work as a language teacher and topics she worries about. But everything Apakhonchich posts includes a prominent disclaimer in Russian: “THIS MESSAGE (MATERIAL) WAS CREATED AND (OR) DISTRIBUTED BY FOREIGN MASS MEDIA PERFORMING THE…
Jailed Russian gulag historian Yuri Dmitriyev, who is serving 13 years in prison, has won the Sakharov Freedom Award on the 100th anniversary of the birth of Nobel laureate and human rights activist Andrei Sakharov.. Dmitriyev was recognized for his work in identifying victims of Soviet repressions in Karelia by reassembling the bones from mass…
A walk in a lilac park This weekend is the first peak of lilac season in Moscow’s most famous park for lovers of these sweet-smelling and beautiful bushes. Founded in 1954 by Leonid Kolesnikov, the country’s most accomplished lilac breeder, the Lilac Garden began with 2,000 bushes of 32 sorts of lilacs. Today you can…
A new film depicting a group of Russian military advisors in the Central African Republic (CAR) as heroes was funded by Yevgeny Prigozhin, the catering magnate and Kremlin ally known as “Putin’s Chef,” according to an investigation by The Moscow Times. “The Tourist” tells the story of a group of young Russian military advisors sent…
Syzran Refinery, a subsidiary of Rosneft, planted 7,000 pine seedlings during the national environmental campaign Green Spring 2021.
Russia has raised 1.5 billion euros ($1.8 billion) in its first international debt placement since the U.S. banned American banks from buying Russian government debt in its latest escalation of sanctions against Moscow. Foreigners accounted for some 47% of the so-called Eurobonds — government debt coupons denominated in euros — which were sold by the…
Russian lawmakers on Friday submitted a bill that would force foreign technology companies to set up local offices or face punitive measures up to an outright ban. Russia has in recent months stepped up efforts to impose more control on online platforms including Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, with President Vladimir Putin saying large tech companies have…
The share of Moscow residents who have been vaccinated against coronavirus is lower than that of any other European city, the Russian capital’s Mayor Sergei Sobyanin has said. Only 1.3 million Muscovites out of 12 million (10.83%) have been vaccinated from Covid-19, Sobyanin said. He called this percentage “a decent figure on the one hand,”…
Tech billionaire Elon Musk on Friday promised that production of his Tesla electric cars would come to Russia sometime in the future. “I think we’re close to establishing a Tesla presence in Russia [and] more broadly in Kazakhstan and neighboring regions,” Musk told a Russian innovation forum via videolink. “Over time, we will look to have factories…
Dozens of new pits have been discovered in a notorious Stalin-era execution site outside Moscow where more than 10,000 political dissidents are believed to be buried, the Kommersant business daily reported Thursday. The existence of the mass grave in southwestern Moscow’s district of Kommunarka became known when the KGB opened its archives, before abruptly closing…
Russia’s mission in the United Nations has called for talks among the four international mediators known as the Middle East Quartet for urgent talks after Israel and Palestinian militants announced a truce Thursday. Deputy UN Ambassador Dmitry Polyansky spoke at the UN General Assembly meeting on Israel-Gaza hours after Israeli announced that its security cabinet…
Jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny said Thursday he successfully eased out of his hunger strike and has discovered the recipe for being “happy” in prison. Navalny, President Vladimir Putin’s best known domestic critic, is serving two-and-a-half years in a penal colony outside Moscow on old fraud charges he says are politically motivated. Russia’s top opposition politician…
Football fans attending this summer’s UEFA Euro 2020 championship will be able to enter Russia without a visa, according to amendments signed by Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin on Thursday. Russia’s borders have remained closed to citizens of most countries due to coronavirus restrictions imposed last spring. Entry to Russia will be granted to all foreign…
A Moscow court sentenced a Russian businessman to four years in jail Thursday for attacking a riot police officer during a rally in support of jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny this winter. Yevgeny Yesenov was among the 10,000 people detained across 100 Russian cities in January and February when they took to the streets demanding…
Arctic countries on Thursday pledged to fight global warming, which is happening three times faster in the Far North, and to preserve peace in the region as its geopolitical importance rises. Accelerated global warming, untapped resources, new maritime routes opened up by retreating sea ice, and the future of local populations all topped the agenda…
Parts of Russia’s Arctic are currently experiencing warmer temperatures than the Mediterranean Sea as the region faces a ferocious heatwave. Temperatures in the Arctic Circle village of Nizhnaya Pesha hit 30 degrees Celsius (86.5 degrees Fahrenheit) Wednesday, a measurement Scottish meteorologist Scott Duncan called “truly exceptional for any time of the year but mind-boggling for…
Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a voluntary evacuation Thursday of Russian and ex-Soviet republic citizens from the Gaza Strip amid deadly violence between its Islamist rulers Hamas and Israel. Putin’s decree published on the government’s legal portal comes 10 days after Hamas militants fired more than 4,000 rockets toward Israel and Israeli air strikes killed…
Rosneft enterprises in the Volga Federal District took part in an environmental campaign to clean up coastal areas within Volga Day.
Daria Immerman was taking the bus home after teaching a yoga class outside Tel Aviv last week when the shelling started. As passengers scrambled to get off the bus, she followed the driver to take shelter in a nearby building. They heard the deafening rumble of another rocket behind them. The force of the blast…
Accreditation of journalists for the Press Conferences in the lead-up to the Shareholders Meeting For Gazprom’s Press Conferences audio broadcast please dial: +7 495 719-35-77 (Russian) +7 495 719-30-00 (English) Materials May 20, 02:00 pm (Moscow time) Participant:
After living through an unusually cold winter, Moscow’s millions of residents were in for another unexpected weather surprise this week: record-breaking warm temperatures. The mercury in the Russian capital rose to 29.2 degrees Celsius on Tuesday, beating the previous record set in 1897 and forcing Muscovites to flock to the city’s parks and fountains to…
Verkhnechonskneftegaz, an upstream asset of Rosneft Oil Company, implemented a water chemical analysis laboratory at the Verkhnechonskoye oil and gas condensate field.
This month Sinara Art Gallery, founded by Dmitry Pumpyansky’s Sinara Group in 2004, changed the art scene in Yekaterinburg. The show marked the emergence of the largest Russian collection of fine contemporary art outside of Moscow. “This Is All You” displays 112 works of art, including works by Ilya and Emilia Kabakov, Timur Novikov, Oleg…
Russia’s security chief is set to meet his U.S. counterpart in Europe in the coming weeks to prepare for an anticipated summit between Presidents Vladimir Putin and Joe Biden, the Kommersant business daily reported Wednesday. The Putin-Biden summit will be a key item on the agenda at the talks between Russian Security Council chief Nikolai…
Jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny has recovered after he ended a 24-day hunger strike last month demanding adequate medical treatment, a top aide and the head of Russia’s prison service said Thursday. Navalny, President Vladimir Putin’s best known domestic critic, is serving two-and-a-half years in a penal colony outside Moscow on old fraud charges he…
The Vedomosti business daily announced Wednesday that its editor-in-chief Andrei Shmarov will step down one year after his controversial appointment sparked a mass exodus of senior editors and journalists. The decision came a week after VTimes, The Moscow Times’ Russian-language partner founded by the editors and journalists who had left Vedomosti, was declared a “foreign agent” in…
Early in the morning of May 11, CCTV cameras in a quiet suburban district of the Russian city of Kazan picked up a skinny young man, dressed all in black, walking purposefully down a leafy street, shotgun in hand. Unchallenged by passers-by, the gunman approached Gymnasium No. 175, a large public school of over a…
The U.S. and Russian foreign ministers have sought to ease tensions in their first meeting since President Joe Biden took office, saying they were ready to cooperate but acknowledging the wide gulf separating them. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov described the talks in Reykjavik on Wednesday — aimed in part at confirming a potential summit between…
U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration on Wednesday waived sanctions against Nord Stream 2, the Russian-controlled builder of a Russia-Germany gas pipeline, which Washington has called a geopolitical security risk. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a letter to Congress that waiving the original sanctions mandated by Congress for Swiss-based Nord Stream 2 AG, and…
– Nord Stream 2 – The potentially tense sit-down is scheduled for 9:15 pm (2115 GMT) after an opening dinner of the Arctic Council — which brings together the eight countries bordering the region. Since taking over the White House in January, Biden has taken a strong line against Russia, going as far as describing Putin…
A military delegation led by Commander-in-Chief of the Myanmar Air Force Maung Maung Kyaw will visit Moscow on Thursday, a representative of the Myanmar Embassy told The Moscow Times. The representative said that as part of the visit the delegation planned to attend the HeliRussia exhibition, Russia’s largest helicopter exhibition that will run in Moscow…
A Moscow court has handed prominent political scientist and academic Nikolai Platoshkin a five-year suspended sentence on charges of “inciting unrest,” the state-run RIA Novosti news agency reported Wednesday. Platoshkin, a former diplomat at the Russian Embassy in Germany who heads the For New Socialism movement, is also a popular YouTube blogger who has openly…
Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping on Wednesday hailed close ties between their countries as they launched via videoconference work on Russian-built nuclear power plants in China. The heads of state initiated work on pouring concrete into new units of the Tianwan and Xudabao nuclear power plants. Built jointly with Russia, the…
Russia’s former Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev has expressed support for compulsory vaccinations Wednesday as the country grapples with slower-than-hoped-for coronavirus vaccine uptake. Medvedev, who was demoted to deputy chief of Russia’s Security Council in a major cabinet reshuffle last year, described mandating vaccinations as a tradeoff between individual choice and protecting the population from disease.…
Russia has sent an expedition to survey radioactivity levels at the wreckage of a Soviet nuclear submarine which sank in the Norwegian Sea three decades ago, the country’s meteorological service said Wednesday. Equipped with a nuclear reactor and two nuclear warheads, the Komsomolets submersible caught fire in April 1989 as a result of a short…
An exiled top associate of jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny has accused Russian authorities of trying to imprison his elderly father for the rest of his life on corruption charges he says are politically motivated. Yuri Zhdanov, 67, was arrested in March on accusations of abusing his work obligations for personal gain by recommending social…
Russia is among the “worst” countries for living and working abroad, according to the 2021 survey published by the expat community organization InterNations on Tuesday. Russia ranked 56th out of 59 countries on the list, outperforming only South Africa, Italy and Kuwait across a range of categories that evaluated expats’ general satisfaction with life in…
China, 19 May 2021 – A ceremony was held in China to mark the start of construction of power units 7 and 8 of Tianwan NPP and power units 3 and 4 of Xudapu NPP. Russia’s President Vladimir Putin and China’s President Xi Jinping took part in the event by teleconference. ROSATOM Director General Alexey…
Russia is one step closer to bringing home its second ever Eurovision song contest trophy after Tajik-born singer-songwriter Manizha Sangin qualified for the finals late Tuesday. Manizha’s feminist anthem “Russian Woman” was among the 10 semi-final qualifiers, which also included Ukrainian folk-dance act Go_A, who have secured their place in this weekend’s final. Ten more…
“The enemy shall not pass,” exclaims commander Ivan Glushchenko, standing in the glistening white snow that surrounds an ultra-modern Russian military base in the heart of the Arctic, the site of Moscow’s stand-off with NATO. The growing accessibility of natural resources and navigation routes in this rapidly thawing region has attracted global competition, and Moscow’s…
A conscript has been crushed to death by a military truck at a training ground outside Moscow, state media reported Tuesday. Security camera footage shared by the REN-TV broadcaster shows the young soldier being struck by the truck as he opened the gates to let it pass. A fellow soldier is then seen dragging the…
Russia’s geography will dramatically change by the end of the century if climate change continues at its current pace, scientists at Aalmo University in Finland have predicted in a new study. If the global climate warms by 3.7 degrees Celsius, radical climate zone changes will touch most of the planet’s regions, threatening around one-third of the…
Ukraine on Tuesday denounced what it described as Russia’s ongoing repression of the Tatar minority on the Crimean peninsula, annexed by Moscow in 2014. Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba made the comments on the 77th anniversary of the deportation of the Muslim minority group under Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. “Unfortunately, Russia continues to systemically suppress the…
Moscow has beaten temperature records over 100 years old for the second day in a row Tuesday. “It hasn’t been as warm as today on this date in the entire history of weather observations,” said the Fobos weather center. The mercury in the Russian capital rose to 29.2 degrees Celsius, beating the previous record set…
Russia’s lower house of parliament on Tuesday approved draft legislation that would ban members of “extremist” organizations from being elected as lawmakers. The changes to Russia’s election law would shut out jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny’s supporters from critical lower-house polls in September. The move also comes ahead of a court ruling to add Navalny’s…