Russian Missile Attack on Kyiv Wounds 9

Nine people including a teenage girl were wounded on Monday after Ukrainian air defense systems downed two Russian missiles over Kyiv, sending metal debris crashing to the ground. Emergency workers in hardhats could be seen clearing concrete and bent metal from one building ripped apart during the attack, the third aerial bombardment of the capital…

Binance Crypto Firm’s Successor in Russia Announces Closure

A recently established crypto exchange that took over the Russian operations of Binance, the world’s largest exchange, announced Monday it will begin shutting down over the next month and a half. “CommEX platform has decided to begin suspending some services starting from March 25, 2024, and will completely shut down the official website on May 10,”…

Four Moscow Attack Suspects Remanded Pending Trial

Four men accused of carrying out the Moscow concert hall attack that killed at least 137 people were ordered in court Sunday to be remanded in custody pending trial. All four have been accused of “terrorism” and risk a life sentence in prison, said a statement from Moscow’s Basmanny District Court. They were ordered to…

Kyiv Says 2 Russian Ships Hit in Crimea Strikes

Ukraine claimed Sunday to have hit two Russian military ships stationed at the annexed peninsula of Crimea in overnight strikes, as it suffered another night of “massive” Russian aerial attacks. Ukraine’s ally and neighbor Poland said a Russian cruise missile headed for western Ukraine breached its airspace overnight, after it had put its armed forces…

Putin Allies Demand Return of Death Penalty After Moscow Attack

Senior members of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s regime have called for the country to bring back the death penalty following Friday’s attack on a Moscow concert hall. Critics have sounded the alarm over the demand, including due to Russia’s broad use of counter-terrorism and anti-extremist laws to target Kremlin opponents and supporters of Ukraine. Russia…

AUTO-GRAPH: Boris Akunin Asks Political Prisoners 13 Questions

FROM THE COMPILER* There are many political prisoners in Russia, and their number is only increasing. It’s axiomatic: the less freedom there is in a country, the more people are imprisoned for their beliefs. Before February 24, 2022, the authorities usually sentenced political prisoners on far-fetched criminal charges. Now political repression has become blatant. People…

Russia Says It Shot Down Ukraine Missiles Fired at Crimea

Russia said Saturday evening it had repulsed a barrage of Ukrainian missiles fired at the city of Sevastopol in Crimea, the city’s governor saying two people had been injured. “According to initial information, more than 10 missiles have been shot down,” Sevastopol’s Governor Mikhail Razvozhayev said on Telegram. He added that a child and a…

Putin Wants To Blame Ukraine for Moscow Attack – Zelensky

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Saturday accused Russia’s Vladimir Putin of seeking to “shift the blame” onto Kyiv for the Moscow concert hall attack that killed 133 people. “What happened yesterday in Moscow is obvious: Putin and the other scum are just trying to blame it on someone else,” Zelensky announced, after Putin said the…

Spacecraft Carrying First Belarus Woman Cosmonaut Lifts Off

Maryna Vasileuskaya, Belarus’ first woman cosmonaut, was aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft that blasted off successfully on Saturday headed for the International Space Station, Moscow’s Roscosmos space agency said. “The Soyuz took off from Baikonur” in Kazakhstan at 12:36 GMT, a Roscosmos statement said, adding that the spacecraft went into orbit “as planned.” Initially programmed…

Moscow Concert Attack: What We Know

An attack by gunmen on a Moscow suburban concert hall Friday left at least 133 dead, according to Russian authorities. Here is what we know about the attack on the Crocus City Hall in Krasnogorsk ahead of a concert by the Piknik rock band: Attackers in ‘tactical uniforms’  The attack began around 8:15 pm before…

Russian Army Claims Seized Ukrainian Village Near Bakhmut

Russia on Saturday claimed a new territorial victory over Ukrainian forces struggling to find weapons and troops while the two sides staged deadly new aerial attacks on each other. As a militant attack on a Moscow concert hall became a new flashpoint dispute between the arch-rivals, Russia’s armed forces said they had seized the Ukrainian…

Russia Arrests Concert Hall Gunmen as Death Toll Rises

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday vowed to punish those behind a “barbaric terrorist attack” on a Moscow concert hall that killed at least 133, saying Russia had arrested four gunmen who were trying to flee to Ukraine. Kyiv has strongly denied any connection, and Putin made no reference to claims of responsibility by the…

Cracking the Myth of the Russian Monastery Kitchen

In Russia today there is a belief that the food served in Russian Orthodox monasteries is the apotheosis of Russian cooking. Some people insist that the monasteries preserved the very best that had survived from ancient Russian cuisine — beautifully prepared, delicious, healthy food. But isn’t there a contradiction here? On the one hand, Christianity…

World Leaders Condemn Russian Concert Hall Attack

World leaders denounced a deadly attack by gunmen on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed more than 60 people and wounded over 100. Attackers dressed in camouflage uniforms entered the Crocus City venue ahead of the start of a rock concert, opened fire and threw a grenade or incendiary bomb, according to a…

Islamic State Group Claims Russia Gun Attack

The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for a gun attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday, which Russian authorities said killed at least 40 people. IS fighters “attacked a large gathering… on the outskirts of the Russian capital Moscow,” the group said in a statement on the Telegram messaging app. The IS statement said…

Timeline of Attacks in Moscow Since 1999

Russia is reeling from a mass shooting and blaze at a Moscow rock concert, which the government has labeled a “terrorist attack.” Here is a look back at previous attacks on the city in the past 25 years. Apartment building bombed, 118 dead (1999) A bomb blast in the early hours of Sept. 13, 1999,…

Russia Jails Man 23 Years Over ‘Railway Explosion’ Plot

A court in southwestern Russia’s Voronezh region has sentenced a man to 23 years in maximum-security prison on accusations that he sought to blow up a railway station, independent media reported Friday. Alexander Dimitrenko was detained in Voronezh in May 2022, two months after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Dimitrenko had accused agents…

Fake News and Other Fallacies

Фейк: fake I have been remiss. Although I have mentioned the “Russian” word фейк in many columns, I’ve never really focused on it. I suppose it’s because, well, what’s there to say? Фейк is the standard Russian insult for anything purported to be false, particularly factual information from non-Russian sources. There are plenty of official…

Russia Adds ‘LGBT Movement’ to ‘Terrorists and Extremists’ List

Russia’s state financial watchdog Rosfinmonitoring has added the so-called “international LGBT public movement” to its list of terrorists and extremists. Being added to the registry allows the authorities to freeze designees’ bank accounts without a court order. It was not immediately clear how Rosfinmonitoring planned to enforce its rules against the vaguely defined “LGBT movement,”…

Kremlin Planning New Mobilization for Kharkiv Offensive – Vyorstka

Updated with comments from source close to Russia’s Defense Ministry. Russia is planning to recruit 300,000 soldiers for a renewed offensive to seize the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, the investigative news outlet Vyorstka reported Friday, citing sources in the Kremlin, Defense Ministry and regional governments. “We’re 300,000 snouts short, that’s why everything’s ready for ‘mobilization…

Russia’s FSB Says Detained 7 Pro-Ukraine Partisans in Moscow

Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) has arrested seven Moscow residents said to be linked to a pro-Kyiv militia accused of attacking Russia’s border regions, state news agencies reported on Friday. The arrests come days after Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the FSB to wage an unrelenting crackdown on volunteer units fighting on the side of…

Kremlin Says Russia in a ‘State of War’

Updated with Peskov’s remarks during Friday’s press briefing. Russia has found itself in a “state of war” with Ukraine, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in an interview with the pro-government newspaper Argumenty i Fakty published on Friday.  Moscow officially refers to its full-scale invasion of Ukraine as a “special military operation,” seeking to downplay the impact of the two-year…

Russia Sentences ‘Volga Maniac’ Serial Killer to Life in Prison

The Supreme Court of Russia’s republic of Tatarstan on Thursday sentenced infamous serial killer Radik Tagirov, widely known as the “Volga Maniac,” to life in prison.   Tagirov, a native of Tatarstan’s capital Kazan, was found guilty of murdering 31 elderly women and committing assault against another 33 between March 2011 and October 2012, according to Russia’s Investigative…

Russia Aborts Spacecraft Launch Seconds Before Liftoff

Updated with Boris’ statement. The launch of a Russian Soyuz MS-25 spacecraft to the International Space Station (ISS) was aborted just seconds before liftoff on Thursday, with officials blaming a loss of pressure at a power source. “There was an automatic launch cancellation,” a flight controller said in a live stream broadcast by Russia’s space…

Moscow Expels Spanish Journalist, Employer Says

Russia has expelled a journalist from the Spanish El Mundo daily after refusing to renew his work visa, the newspaper reported Thursday, calling it an attack on press freedom. Xavier Colas, who had been reporting from Moscow for 12 years, was on Wednesday given 24 hours to leave Russia since he was unable to obtain…

Russia Accuses Lithuania of ‘Blocking’ Commercial Traffic

Russia’s Federal Customs Service (FTS) on Thursday accused Lithuanian authorities of blocking freight trucks from entering Lithuania from the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad. “Since 23:00 on March 20, without explanation, Lithuania has not accepted a single truck from Russia,” the FTS said in a statement, saying the blockage created a line of 140 trucks on the…

Kremlin Slams Western ‘Pressure’ on Chinese Banks Over Russian Payments

The Kremlin on Thursday slammed the West for putting “unprecedented pressure” on Chinese banks accepting payments from Russia, admitting there were some “problems” with cross-border transactions. Citing Russian financial sources, the pro-Kremlin Izvestia newspaper reported earlier on Thursday that some Chinese lenders had stopped accepting payments in Chinese yuan from Russian companies. “The unprecedented U.S.…

Russia’s FSB Says Arrested Man Planning Attacks on Soldiers

Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) said Thursday that it arrested a man in the western Belgorod region on suspicion of planning attacks in coordination with pro-Ukrainian paramilitary groups. “A supporter of Ukrainian nationalist ideology was preparing acts of sabotage and terrorism against the Russian military on the instructions of the terrorist organization Russian Volunteer Corps,” the FSB said…

Artdocfest and the Power of Documentary Film

Documentary filmmaking has a long and illustrious history in Russia, with waves of popularity that have tended to correlate with changes in the political climate. Soon after Vladimir Putin became president in 2000 and his government began chipping away at media freedom, interest in documentary film began to rise. As television network news became more…

The Sad Beauty of Russia’s Abandoned Villages

Russia’s big cities may appear to be flourishing, filled with shops, restaurants, recently built apartment buildings, malls and entertainment venues. But many if not most of Russia’s villages are not enjoying the same economic boom. Infrastructure is in poor shape, job opportunities are scant, schools are closed as families move to larger towns and cities,…

‘We’ll Keep Fighting’: Attack on Navalny Aide Volkov Startles, But Doesn’t Deter Russian Exiles in Lithuania

VILNIUS, Lithuania — Thousands of Russian opposition activists fled to Lithuania’s capital following the Kremlin’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, seeking safety from the political crackdown quickly sweeping their home country. That sense of safety was blighted when Leonid Volkov, a close aide of late opposition leader Alexei Navalny, was attacked near his home with a…

Three-Layer Pancakes From the Mari People

When people think of the Orthodox Christian Maslenitsa (Shrovetide), they almost all think of one food: pancakes (blinis). But pancakes are not a purely Russian culinary achievement, and it’s silly to associate them solely with Orthodox traditions. Pancakes have been around for much longer.  The Mari people (in Russia once called Cheremis) live mainly between…