Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov defended his country’s military buildup in the Arctic amid U.S. warnings of rising tensions in the remote and energy-rich region. “We don’t threaten anyone. We ensure sufficient defense capabilities given the political and military situation around our borders,” Lavrov said during a panel at the International Arctic Forum in St.…
Russia’s migrant numbers have declined by the highest amount in the post-Soviet period last year as the country grapples with its own population crisis, the Vedomosti business daily reported on Monday. For the first time in a decade, migration has been unable to cancel out Russia’s population decline. Faced with the need for up to…
Premiering at the Bolshoi on April 9, 1968, “Spartacus” has gone on to become on of the theater’s most iconic productions. The ballet tells the story of Spartacus, leader of the slave uprising against the Romans, and was originally composed by Aram Khachaturian in 1954. Khachaturian was awarded a Lenin Prize for his composition in…
Release April 9, 2019, 13:35 The Program for standardization of developing technologies and equipment in oil refining, petrochemistry, and natural gas processing and liquefaction (LNG), particularly for projects on gravity-based structures with LNG production trains and for gas carriers transporting LNG, was signed today at the Arctic: Territory of Dialogue 5th International Arctic Forum in St. Petersburg. The signing ceremony took place in the presence of Alexey…
Release April 9, 2019, 13:30 A working meeting between Alexey Miller, Chairman of the Gazprom Management Committee, and Sylvie Bermann, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of France to the Russian Federation, took place today at the Arctic: Territory of Dialogue 5th International Arctic Forum in St. Petersburg. The parties discussed issues related to cooperation in the gas sector, including gas supplies. It was noted that France ranks…
Russian political operatives disguised as “tourists” have offered money to at least six presidential candidates in Madagascar last year in exchange for Russia’s support for the eventual winner, a BBC investigation reported on Monday. Former leader Andry Rajoelina, 44, was declared the winner of a hard-fought presidential vote in December, rejecting his rival’s accusations of fraud. Yevgeny…
In 2018, Rosneft Oil Company provided an increase in reserves from exploration in the amount of 454 million tonnes of oil equivalent. The coefficient of replenishment of production with the increase in reserves according to the Russian classification was 138%. The Company has proved its leading position in exploration efficiency, providing consistently high reserve replacement…
The European Court of Human Rights ruled on Tuesday that Russia violated the rights of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny by placing him under house arrest in 2014 and imposing other restrictive measures on him. Navalny was placed under house arrest in February 2014 and held there for months while he was investigated for embezzlement…
The Indian government has agreed to buy 464 Russian battle tanks worth $1.93 billion, a defense and intelligence magazine reported Monday, citing unnamed official sources. India is the largest buyer of Russian military hardware, with the latest purchase being a quietly signed $5 billion deal for Russian S-400 surface to air missile systems last fall.…
Russia vowed to use “all available means” to try to broker peace in Libya as warlord Khalifa Haftar brushed aside U.S. warnings to press his military advance on the capital Tripoli. President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said Russia is urging all sides “to avoid any actions that could provoke bloodshed and the death of…
Russia has asked Interpol for the seventh time to arrest Bill Browder, a London-based Kremlin critic who leads a campaign to punish Russian officials for the 2009 death of his lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, according to a letter seen by Reuters. Once the biggest foreign money manager in Moscow, Browder has become one of the most vociferous Western…
April 9, 2019 PAO Severstal (“Severstal”; “the Company”), one of the world’s leading vertically integrated steel and steel-related mining companies, announces that Fitch has upgraded its rating on Severstal to BBB from BBB- on 8 April. The outlook is stable. The rating agency underlined that the upgrade reflected Severstal’s conservative financial policy during the supply-driven…
The “Humanitarian Support of Business and Public Confidence: Practices of Collaborating with Local Communities” round table will bring together Russian and international experts from the nuclear industry, telecommunications, the FMCG, and representatives of the academic community. The following participants are expected to take part in the round table: First Deputy Chair of the Federation Council…
Russia’s aircraft production has dropped by 13.5 percent in 2018 following two years of growth because of what experts say is a combined effect of U.S. sanctions and lower demand for warplanes. The decline in civil and military aircraft, helicopter, spacecraft and intercontinental ballistic missile manufacturing follows a period of annual growth between 9 and…
Almost 1,500 miles from Moscow, the tiny port of Sabetta nestles in a desolate Russian Arctic peninsula. A former outpost for Soviet geologists, it’s now the site of Russia’s most ambitious liquefied natural gas project, operated by a company that only entered the market just over a year ago. Several times a week, a giant…
Three Russian ships docked in Manila, the Philippines for a five-day port call on Monday aimed at improving navy-to-navy relations amid heightened tensions in the South China Sea. The arrival of two anti-submarine ships Admiral Tributs and Admiral Vinogradov and a tanker ship is the sixth visit by the Russian navy under Philippine President Rodrigo…
A roundtable discussion entiteld “Responsible Approach to the Environment and Natural Resources” will be held as part of the ATOMEXPO 2019 International Forum in Sochi on April 15. Participants in the roundtable will discuss the environmental criteria that affect the choice of power generation type, the environmental aspects of transitioning to a closed nuclear fuel…
Participants in the plenary session of the 11th ATOMEXPO International Forum will talk about the role that nuclear technologies play in achieving the sustainable development goals set by the United Nations. Among the participants in the meeting will be: Director-General of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development Nuclear Energy Agency William Magwood IV; Minister…
Rosenergoatom (part of the Electric Power Division of ROSATOM) will present an electronic sales support system for Automated Technical Documentation Control Systems (ATDCS) or the so-called ‘technical documentation e-shop’ at the 11th ATOMEXPO 2019 International Forum, which will be held in Sochi on April 15–16. This is the first large-scale project of its kind and…
Rusatom Service JSC (the sectoral coordinating centre for ROSATOM’s nuclear infrastructure activities, which is part of Rosenergoatom, the Electric Power Division of ROSATOM) will hold a round table on the theme: ‘Building Nuclear Infrastructure as a Key Component for the Sustainability of Nuclear Projects’ at the 11th ATOMEXPO 2019 International Forum on April 15, 2019.…
Rusatom Service JSC (the sectoral coordinating centre for ROSATOM’s nuclear infrastructure activities, which is part of Rosenergoatom, the Electric Power Division of ROSATOM) will hold a roundtable on the theme: ‘Building Nuclear Infrastructure as a Key Component for the Sustainability of Nuclear Projects’ at the 11th ATOMEXPO 2019 International Forum on April 15, 2019. During…
The “The Sustainable Development of Cities: The Nuclear Industry’s Contribution” roundtable discussion will be held as part of the ATOMEXPO 2019 International Forum in Sochi. The discussion will feature an international panel of experts with extensive managerial experience at the global, national and local levels representing international organizations, government agencies and the corporate sector. It…
A Moscow court has released theater director Kirill Serebrennikov on bail after a year and a half spent under house arrest on criminal fraud charges, Russian news agencies reported Monday. Serebrennikov was detained on Aug. 22, 2017, on charges of embezzling 68 million rubles ($1 million) in government funds as part of a theater project,…
Russian prisoners will continue doing yoga despite religious scholars’ claims that the practice could turn inmates gay, Russian prison authorities said on Sunday. Yoga classes were suspended last month after a conservative lawmaker forwarded to prosecutors a theologian’s complaint that yoga could cause prisoners to become gay and start prison riots as a result, according…
Thousands of demonstrators in northern Russia continued months of protests against Moscow’s plans to ship its garbage outside its city limits and demanded their governor to resign. Russians across 26 regions, including Arkhangelsk, have staged protests against Moscow’s plan to solve a trash crisis by sending waste to surrounding regions. Anti-trash reform sentiment has been…
Russia on Monday signed an agreement with a group of international scientists to free nearly 100 whales that have been held for months in cramped pens in Russia’s Far East, a scandal that has triggered a wave of criticism. Images of the 10 orcas and 87 beluga whales, kept in enclosures in a bay near…
Moscow police have detained two British citizens in central Moscow on suspicion of drug possession, the RBC news outlet reported. English teachers Domian Osborne and Ian Evans were arrested after attempting to discard two bags of unidentified powder upon spotting a police patrol near the Chistiye Prudy metro station Saturday evening, RBC quoted a Moscow…
A British man whose partner died after being exposed to nerve agent Novichok was told by Russia‘s ambassador that Moscow could not have been behind the attacks because they would have “killed everyone,” he told the Sunday Mirror newspaper. Charlie Rowley, who was also exposed to Novichok after coming across a perfume bottle contaminated with the…
Humans are embodied like all other animals, but according to Plato we are distinguished from the beasts through our possession of a sacred attribute: reason. This attribute is manifest in our ability to contemplate the nature of reality and reflect on how we ought to act. Thinkers from Plato to Steven Pinker have placed great…
In March, “Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud, and the School of London” opened at the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts. Organized in cooperation with the Tate (London), the exhibition includes 80 artworks. The Moscow Times talked to Marina Loshak, director of the Pushkin Museum, about the exhibition and cooperation with Tate. When did you start…
The Kremlin said on Friday (April 5) it was not helping Libyan military forces loyal to eastern commander Khalifa Haftar push westward and that it supported a negotiated political settlement to Libya’s problems that ruled out any new bloodshed. The Kremlin was commenting after U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said he was flying to eastern Libya…
Russian supermarket chain and market leader Magnit has made a $1.78 billion bid to buy 100 percent of smaller rival Lenta, Russia Business Today reported on Friday. Lenta has been the focus of attention in recent weeks since the investment holding Severgroup of steel tycoon Alexei Mordashov paid $729 million to buy a 42 percent stake in the retailer,…
Workers at the Ford Sollers automobile plant outside St. Petersburg will begin a partial shutdown of production next week, a local Ford labor union leader said Friday, to protest hundreds of impending layoffs at the plant as it moves to shut down production. Ford Sollers, the American automotive giant’s joint venture in Russia, announced late…
A Russian court fined Twitter 3,000 rubles ($46) on Friday for failing to supply information to Russia’s authorities on where it stores its Russian users’ personal data, the state-run TASS news agency reported. Russian legislation requires social media companies to store user data on servers located in Russia. At the moment, the only tools Russia…
The Russian military released footage on Friday showing its naval forces shooting and launching missiles in the Black Sea. Earlier this week, NATO announced plans to expand its surveillance in the Black Sea in support of Ukraine. Two of the Black Sea Fleet’s guided missile corvettes launched “Moskit” (“Mosquito”) supersonic missiles at targets simulating enemy…
Russian officials took to social media with posts mocking a Ukrainian minister’s pledge to storm Moscow with tanks. Ukrainian Infrastructure Minister Volodymyr Omelyan wrote on Facebook Thursday that Ukrainian tanks will “eventually” arrive in the Russian capital alongside its allies. His post was made in response to an invitation from Moscow to discuss Ukraine’s membership…
Russian regulators have blocked more than 1,000 online news stories ruled by a court as defamatory toward the head of a major bank, leading lawyers to decry the mass censorship as “legal nihilism.” The state-owned VTB Bank went to court last year seeking to stop the circulation of stories harmful to its business reputation, the…
Hundreds of labor migrants have been detained in the Siberian region of Irkutsk, rights activists told the sibreal.org news website on Friday. Authorities in Irkutsk, some 5,000 kilometers east of Moscow, carry out regular raids against undocumented migrants. Around 280 migrants were rounded up and “pushed en masse into police vans” by masked men and…
The passion to run has hit Russians hard. RunRepeat, a group that tracks marathon participation and times all around the world, reports that more Russians are running and more of them are running faster. In six years from 2009 to 2014, the number of Russian marathoners increased 300 percent. From 2008 to 2018, the average…
The family of an American killed when a Malaysian Airlines plane was shot down over Ukraine in 2014 filed a lawsuit on Thursday against U.S.-based money transfer companies and two Russian banks they accuse of providing services to the group they blame for striking Flight MH17. MH17 was brought down over territory held by pro-Russian…
Release April 4, 2019, 19:10 Famil Sadygov has been appointed Deputy Chairman of the Gazprom Management Committee. He will oversee financial and economic activities. Famil Sadygov was born in 1968 in Nakhichevan. He graduated from the Sergo Ordzhonikidze State Academy of Management in Moscow. He has a PhD in Economics. 1999–2004: Deputy Minister of Taxation of the Russian Federation. 2005–2009: Deputy Head of the Federal Treasury. 2009–2019: Deputy…
The World Association of Nuclear Operators (WANO) and Rosenergoatom JSC (a part of the Electric Power Division of ROSATOM) will hold a roundtable discussion on “Creating a Safe Future Together” at ATOPMEXPO 2019. The main topics for discussion at the roundtable will be the safe and reliable operation of nuclear power plants, professional leadership and…
The first round of Ukraine’s presidential elections last Sunday was met with widespread interest in Russia, thanks in part to extensive coverage on Russian state television. According to the official results published on Wednesday, actor and comedian Volodymyr Zelensky secured first place with 30.3 percent of the votes. Current Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko trailed in…
The film director Georgy Daneliya died in a Moscow hospital on Thursday. The cause of death was a heart attack, but he had been hospitalized since February with an acute respiratory ailment. He was 88 years old. Daneliya was one of the Soviet Union’s most popular screenwriters and directors, whose gently satirical films managed to…
Russia has wielded gifts and political office to maintain control of the World Chess Federation (FIDE) last year, according to a Financial Times investigation. FIDE elected former deputy prime minister Arkady Dvorkovich in October 2018 on his pledge to draw a line under years of scandal and internal feuding. Russia secured Dvorkovich’s victory “with promises…
Behind the perimeter of a Defense Ministry base in southern Russia stand three barrack buildings where two witnesses say they have seen private fighters being billeted before they are dispatched to fight in Syria for President Bashar Assad. Yet on paper, the barracks have nothing to do with the Russian defense ministry: court documents list…
Seriously, though, how do the Georgians do it? The simplest dish on their stoves becomes a culinary tour de force. Take, for example, chikhirtma, Georgia’s spicy, tangy, velvety version of Greek avgolemono or egg and lemon soup. Like most Georgian recipes, the seemingly simple list of ingredients belies the complexity of the finished product. The secret…
A record one-fifth of Russians would like to leave the country if they could, a threefold increase from five years ago, the Gallup pollster said Thursday. Public polling inside Russia has indicated in recent years that between 17 and 20 percent of Russians were willing to migrate. Official data, which has been criticized for downplaying…
An official survey on the extent of economic hardship that Russians currently face — including their inability to afford new shoes — has left the Kremlin scratching its head. An extensive State Statistics Service, or Rosstat, survey said that four-fifths of Russian families had a hard time making ends meet — and one-third of households…
Venezuela’s deputy foreign minister Ivan Gil said on Thursday he does not rule out that more Russian military personnel may arrive in Venezuela under agreements already concluded with Russia, Interfax news agency reported. The deputy minister also said Russian forces will stay in Venezuela as long as needed, and that there is no set period…
On this day in 1932, Andrei Tarkovsky was born in a village northeast of Moscow. His father was the poet and translator Arseny Tarkovsky, and his mother was a literary editor. He spent much of his childhood in the village before moving to Moscow after the war. At university Tarkovsky studied Arabic and then tried…
President Vladimir Putin told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday that Russian special forces troops in Syria had found the remains of a U.S.-born Israeli soldier missing since 1982, allowing him to be finally buried. The disappearance of Zachary Baumel, who was 21 when he fought in Israel’s invasion of Lebanon and was declared missing…
Russia has extensively deployed electronic warfare capabilities to hide President Vladimir Putin’s location, a U.S.-based research group said in a recent report. The report suggests that GPS spoofing extends far beyond previously recorded instances in Moscow and St. Petersburg, where drivers passing by the Kremlin or Putin’s known whereabouts have seen their navigation software “teleport”…
The head of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization warned the U.S. Congress on Wednesday of the threat posed by “a more assertive Russia,” including a massive military buildup, threats to sovereign states, the use of nerve agents and cyberattacks. “We must overcome our differences now because we will need our alliance even more in the…
The Japanese government has voiced protest against planned Russian military shooting drills on a chain of disputed Pacific islands, its foreign ministry told Russian media Thursday. Both countries claim sovereignty over the island chain known in Russia as the Kuril Islands and in Japan as the Northern Territories, preventing the sides from signing a treaty…
Russian lawmakers have accused Ukraine of bringing 1.5 trillion rubles ($23 billion) in losses to the Crimean economy in the 23 years that the peninsula was part of independent Ukraine. The assessment comes from the State Duma’s newly established task force to measure damages under what it labels Ukraine’s “annexation” of Crimea between 1991 — the fall…
Message to the Media April 3, 2019, 19:30 A working meeting took place today between Dmitry Medvedev, Prime Minister of the Russian Federation, and Alexey Miller, Chairman of the Gazprom Management Committee. Alexey Miller briefed Dmitry Medvedev on the Company’s efforts in the field of import substitution and the implementation of digital technologies. Gazprom website Editorial Board Shorthand record Dmitry Medvedev: Mr. Miller,…
The Russian military tested the telepathic effects of parapsychology in its wars in Chechnya in the 1990s and the early 2000s, a news magazine run by the Defense Ministry has claimed. The techniques reportedly allowed soldiers to wiretap conversations, disrupt software, identify potential terrorists and read foreign-language documents locked in a safe — all using…
Britain said on Wednesday it had scrambled Typhoon jets to monitor two Russian “Blackjack” bombers which approached the United Kingdom’s airspace. The two Russian Tupolev Tu-160 long-range bombers flew in international airspace off Britain’s northeastern coast. “We can confirm that RAF quick reaction alert Typhoon aircraft from RAF Lossiemouth scrambled to monitor two Blackjack bombers while they…
A mock gravestone for President Vladimir Putin appeared in St. Petersburg on Wednesday, in at least the third such display in the past two months. The headstone popped up near the iconic St. Isaac’s Cathedral shortly after an activist was sentenced to 15 days behind bars for placing a mock Putin tombstone in Kurgan region…