Russia’s Marine Rescue Service has begun pumping fuel from an oil tanker that last week ran aground off the southwestern coast of Sakhalin Island, the state-run TASS news agency reported Tuesday. The stranded Victoria oil tanker, which is reportedly carrying 760 tons of fuel, ran aground on Friday after experiencing an engine failure that prompted the ship’s…
Finland’s government is considering closing its border crossings with Russia amid a rising number of asylum seekers from the Middle East and Africa, the broadcaster YLE reported Tuesday, as Finnish officials suggest that Moscow is trying to destabilize the country. Interior Minister Mari Rantanen told reporters that her agency was drafting proposals that would allow…
Russia has managed to almost entirely circumvent a G7 price cap on its oil exports, with Moscow claiming average sales at more than $20 per barrel above the imposed limit, the Financial Times reported Tuesday, citing Western officials and Russian export data. According to an unnamed senior European official who spoke to FT, “almost none” of Russia’s…
Russian authorities have forcefully deported Vladislav Ivanenko, a Kazakh national who worked as a journalist in Russia, to the country of his citizenship, his employer Properm.ru reported Tuesday. Ivanenko was arrested early on Nov. 9 at his home in the Ural Mountains city of Perm and taken to a temporary detention facility for foreign nationals…
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Tuesday Russia was increasing its attacks across the front line, as Kyiv called for the West to boost its weapons supplies ahead of winter. Neither side has made any significant territorial gain for months, but both Zelensky and the Kremlin have denied the conflict has ground to a stalemate.…
Preparatory work is being intensively carried out at the construction site of the Paks-II NPP by both Russian and foreign companies. Alexey Likhachev, Director General of Rosatom, met with Péter Szijjártó, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade of Hungary, followed by a visit to the construction site of the Paks-II NPP. During the meeting it…
President Vladimir Putin has pardoned one of the convicted killers of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya after he fought for the Russian army in Ukraine, the RBC news website reported Tuesday. Sergei Khadzhikurbanov, a former police officer, was handed a 20-year prison sentence nearly a decade ago for his involvement in the 2006 killing of Politkovskaya, an investigative journalist…
President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday signed changes to Russia’s presidential election laws that allow for voting to take place in territories under martial law and introduce new restrictions on media coverage at polling places. The amendments come just weeks ahead of Putin’s anticipated announcement to run for a fifth term in office as president, though…
An Iraqi television network on Monday broadcast a video showing a captive Israeli-Russian academic, the first sign of life from her since she was abducted in Baghdad nearly nine months ago. Israeli authorities revealed in July that Elizabeth Tsurkov had been kidnapped, blaming pro-Iranian militants after she had gone missing in Iraq in late March.…
Russia foiled an attempted overnight drone attack by Ukraine in and around the Moscow region as well as near the border with Ukraine, the Defense Ministry said Tuesday. The military said its on-duty air defense forces destroyed the aircraft-type drones over the Moscow, Tambov, Bryansk and Oryol regions. Bryansk, a western Russian region on the border…
Russian attacks on Ukraine’s southern region of Kherson on Monday killed three civilians and injured 15, including a two-month-old child, officials said. Two were killed — a 62-year-old woman and a 45-year-old man — in a “massive” Russian attack of rocket and artillery fire on the city center in the early afternoon, Kherson’s Governor Oleksandr…
Brussels is aiming to present proposals on Wednesday for a new round of sanctions on Russia over the war in Ukraine, including banning Moscow’s lucrative diamond exports, the EU’s foreign policy chief said Monday. The 27-nation bloc has already imposed 11 rounds of unprecedented sanctions on Russia since the Kremlin launched its all-out invasion of…
Lithuania’s Interior Ministry has moved to strip a Russian-Lithuanian ballerina of her citizenship after she praised Russian President Vladimir Putin, the Baltic country’s media reported Monday. Ilze Liepa is a dual Russian-Lithuanian citizen who performed at the Bolshoi Theatre in the 1980s and 1990s. The 59-year-old, who received Lithuanian citizenship in 2000, said during a Russian-language YouTube interview…
President Vladimir Putin’s oldest daughter has been appointed to the board of the Moscow Society of Medical Genetics, the independent news outlet Mozhem Obyasnit reported Monday, citing her public profile on the organization’s website and a video in which she criticizes laws adopted during her father’s time in office. Maria Vorontsova is a candidate of medical…
A Moscow municipal deputy who was imprisoned under Russia’s wartime censorship laws faces additional criminal charges of justifying terrorism, his supporters said Monday. Alexei Gorinov, 62, was sentenced to seven years in prison in April 2022 for spreading “knowingly false information” about the Russian military, charges that he denies. Gorinov’s supporters say investigators launched a…
Russia said it carried out air strikes in Syria’s Idlib province that killed more than 30 members of a “terrorist group.” Moscow is Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad’s key supporter, providing him with military, political and economic support throughout the country’s decade-long civil war. “On Nov. 11, Russia’s aerospace forces carried out air strikes in Idlib…
An ally of jailed opposition activist Alexei Navalny and former municipal deputy in Siberia’s Tomsk region has been moved from house arrest and sent to a detention center, her associate wrote on social media Monday. Ksenia Fadeyeva is a former municipal deputy in the city of Tomsk and was added to Russia’s “terrorist” list in…
Rosneft’s Samara group of enterprises — Samaraneftegaz, Novokuibyshevsk Refinery, Kuibyshev Refinery, Syzran Refinery, Novokuibyshevsk Petrochemical Company, and Novokuibyshevsk Oil and Additives Plant — summed up the results of the first competition of the grant programme for a project to study the nesting sites of the white-tailed eagle in Samara Region.
Officials in Russia’s Far Eastern republic of Sakha (Yakutia) have failed to meet quotas on recruitment of military volunteers for the war in Ukraine set by the Kremlin, according to leaked recordings of closed-door government meetings published by the Free Yakutia Foundation anti-war movement. Sakha’s military recruitment head Alexander Avdonin said the republic recruited the…
Jailed Russian opposition activist Alexei Navalny on Monday accused prison officials of withholding letters from his wife over claims that they contained “signs of preparation for a crime.” Navalny, who is being held in a high-security prison colony some 250 kilometers east of Moscow, said he has received daily updates from prison administrators that they cannot…
The Kremlin has begun compiling a list of influential figures that would campaign on behalf of President Vladimir Putin as he seeks re-election next year, the Kommersant business daily reported Monday, citing several anonymous sources familiar with the matter. According to the newspaper, work on organizing a so-called “initiative group” of campaign surrogates suggests that…
Ukraine said Sunday that a blast triggered by “local resistance movements” in the Moscow-controlled Ukrainian city of Melitopol the previous day killed at least three Russian officers. Melitopol, with a pre-war population of around 150,000 people, was captured shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine in February last year and now lies behind the front line further…
After living for two weeks in a psycho-neurological internat, a facility where Russia confines those with psychiatric illnesses and no relatives willing to care for them, journalist Elena Kostyuchenko believed she had seen the “real face of my state.” Inside the institution, she speaks to women who have been forcibly sterilized, shows a doctor poetry…
Russia on Sunday accused Ukraine of carrying out a series of attacks in the border regions of Bryansk and Belgorod, damaging five train carriages and causing one injury. Moscow said it would open an investigation into a Ukrainian strike that injured a civilian in a village near the Ukrainian border but did not provide further…
Russia has begun evacuating its citizens who are trapped in the besieged Gaza Strip, according to a statement released by the Emergency Situations Ministry on Sunday. “The Emergency Situations Ministry together with Russian diplomats have organized the evacuation of civilians from the Gaza Strip,” read the statement, which was published on the messaging app Telegram.…
A senior Ukrainian military officer with intelligence ties coordinated the sabotage attack on the Nord Stream gas pipelines last year, The Washington Post and Der Spiegel reported Saturday, citing anonymous Ukrainian and European officials, as well as other people familiar with the operation. Moscow and Kyiv’s Western allies have traded blame over the subsea blasts that…
Russian authorities said Saturday they had launched a “terrorism” probe after the derailment of a goods train southwest of Moscow. An “improvised explosive device” caused the derailment of 19 of the train’s wagons in the Ryazan region on Saturday, the state investigation committee said in a social media announcement. Several sabotage attempts have been made…
Russia on Saturday denied stealing Carlsberg’s business, saying its seizure was legal, in reaction to remarks made almost two weeks ago by the head of the Danish brewery company. Carlsberg had announced in June that a buyer had been found for Baltika, which it has owned since 2000, and its 8,400 employees. But a decree…
A missile targeted Kyiv on Saturday, ending nearly two months of relative calm in the Ukrainian capital, while frontline regions fended off waves of drone attacks overnight. Ukraine is bracing for a renewed Russian aerial onslaught this winter, after systematic strikes last year targeted the country’s energy grid, leaving thousands without heating or electricity in…
A missile targeted Kyiv on Saturday without causing casualties but ending nearly two months of relative calm in the Ukrainian capital, while frontline regions fended off waves of drone attacks overnight. Ukrainian officials also hailed the anniversary of the recapture of Kherson city, the regional capital liberated a year ago in the last major frontline…
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 sparked the largest displacement of people since World War II. While most fled from Ukraine, many people fled Russia or from neighboring Belarus. Among them were hundreds of academics and researchers in science and the arts, the brightest scholars of their respective nations. Western governments helped many Ukrainian…
Pozharsky cutlets… crispy outside, succulent inside, always served straight from the stove and never reheated… These minced meat patties take themselves seriously — and diners should take them seriously, too. It’s hard to believe, but these cutlets were first invented and served by Yevdokim Pozharsky, an ordinary innkeeper in the small Russian town of Torzhok.…
Russia’s annual inflation rate accelerated to 6.7% in October, the country’s federal statistics agency said Friday, as a weak currency and surging military spending push prices higher across the economy. Rising prices have caused concern for the Kremlin and Russia’s Central Bank, which has raised interest rates to 15% in a bid to battle inflation.…
LONDON — Five Bulgarian nationals accused of working as part of a Russian spy ring in the U.K. will go on trial next year, a judge at the Old Bailey court ruled Friday. Vanya Gaberova, 29, Orlin Roussev, 45, Bizer Dzhambazov, 41, Katrin Ivanova, 32, and Ivan Stoyanov, 31, are charged with conspiracy to collect…
Russian prisoners sent to fight in Ukraine are atoning for their crimes “with blood,” the Kremlin’s spokesman said Friday, answering questions about the controversial pardon of a man who brutally murdered his ex-girlfriend. Tens of thousands of Russians convicted of violent crimes including murder and rape have been recruited to fight in Ukraine, being offered…
The world’s largest crypto exchange Binance said Friday that it will stop providing Russian ruble deposits starting next week as it prepares to leave the Russian market. “From Nov. 15, 2023, we will stop offering fiat deposits in Russian rubles,” Binance said in a statement. Ruble withdrawals will continue to be available until Jan. 31,…
Russia has accused Kyiv of committing environmental crimes in the Ukrainian territories that its troops currently occupy, including soil contamination caused by exploding artillery shells, the state-run TASS news agency reported. Moscow said it will begin collecting evidence of Ukraine’s “ecocidal violations” in the Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions, which it claims to have…
A Ukrainian teenager who was taken to Moscow from occupied Mariupol and then summoned to a military enlistment office will return to his home country, Ukraine’s human rights ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets said Friday. Bohdan Ermokhin, 17, was one of a group of several dozen children moved from the Donetsk region by the Russian military and…
Street artist Philippenzo, or Philipp Kozlov, has used his political graffiti to oppose the war in Ukraine. He was arrested at a Moscow airport this summer, and in October, he was added to the wanted list on criminal charges. His example shows how Russian authorities are closely monitoring contemporary artists, leaving them with two main…
ТАСС уполномочен заявить: TASS has been authorized to announce… At some time in the future when I have about three years with nothing to do, I will research when and how politicians in various countries around the world began to use weasel words as a matter of course. You know what I mean: “We are…
A Russian judge on Thursday lost his re-election bid for the UN’s top court, marking the first time in the legal body’s 78-year history that a justice from Russia has not served on the bench. The International Court of Justice (ICJ), also known as the World Court, was created after the end of World War II…
Women in Russia’s North Caucasus republic of Dagestan have been warned against sending nude photos to their partners as police have apparently seen an uptick in complaints from women whose partners had taken advantage of them. “No matter how in love you are, no matter how infatuated you are with this prince, don’t lose your mind! Don’t…
The simulator is designed to analyze all scenarios of operation of the first nuclear power plant in Turkey and to train the NPP operational personnel. The opening ceremony of the full-scale simulator (FSS) was held in a new building of the training center at the construction site of the first nuclear power plant in Turkey.…
Nearly all private clinics in southwestern Russia’s Kursk region have stopped providing abortion services in a Kremlin-ordered effort to reverse the country’s demographic crisis, a senior official said Thursday. Kursk region Deputy Governor Andrei Belostotsky said authorities in Moscow had instructed regional governments to come up with their own policy solutions for boosting birth rates, according to…
A court in the Siberian republic of Buryatia on Friday sentenced the head of the anti-war advocacy group Free Buryatia Foundation to seven years of prison in absentia for spreading “war fakes.” Russian authorities accused activist Alexandra Garmazhapova of spreading “knowingly false information” about the Russian Armed Forces in a video about Russian servicemen who…
A Russian court sentenced a 20-year-old woman to six years in prison for trying to set fire to a military aid collection point, state media reported Friday. Authorities have slapped long jail terms on Russians accused of attacking enlistment offices or trying to disrupt military operations in Ukraine. The woman, identified only as Zotova, had…
Ukraine’s military attacked several Russian Navy landing craft in annexed Crimea during a night-time operation, Ukraine’s GUR military intelligence agency said Friday. Video footage shared by Kyiv showed what appeared to be seaborne drones striking the Russian warships, which were said to be carrying armored vehicles and anti-air missile systems at the time of the…
Russia said on Friday it had sent 25 tons of humanitarian aid to Egypt to be delivered to the Gaza Strip, which has been under near-total siege and relentless bombardment. Since Oct. 9, when Israel placed the Palestinian territory under a “total siege,” only very limited quantities of basic human necessities like water, food and…
Updated with Peskov’s remarks. Dozens of Russian citizens are preparing to flee the besieged Gaza Strip into Egypt through the Rafah border crossing, Russia’s state-run news agency RIA Novosti reported Friday. No Russians have yet been publicly confirmed as having left Gaza since the Rafah checkpoint was reopened on Nov. 1 to allow the evacuation…
A Latvian court on Thursday jailed former interior minister Janis Adamsons and a Russian accomplice for spying for Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB). The court in Riga sentenced Adamasons to eight-and-a-half years in prison and Russian citizen Gennady Silonov to seven years in prison. “Adamsons collected secret and unclassified information for the Russian secret services, in…
President Vladimir Putin paid a surprise overnight visit to the military headquarters overseeing Moscow’s war against Ukraine, the Kremlin said on Friday. It is his second visit to military headquarters, which is located in southern Russia’s Rostov-on-Don, in the past month. Putin “visited the headquarters of the Russian Armed Forces in Rostov-on-Don, after completing his…
Russia dismissed the possibility of Ukraine joining the European Union as “hardly real” on Thursday, a day after the bloc’s executive recommended opening formal membership talks with Kyiv. Moscow’s offensive on Ukraine has breathed fresh life into the EU’s stalled push to take on new members, as Brussels looks to keep Russian and Chinese influence…
SIEVIERODONETSK, Ukraine — Destroyed houses, scorched earth and trees shredded by shrapnel form the landscape on the road leading to Sievierodonetsk over a year after the city was captured by the Russian army. Oleg, 59, sits alone in the courtyard of a residential building on the town’s outskirts destroyed by shelling. His apartment on the…
EU lawmakers on Thursday urged the bloc to ban imports of Russian liquefied natural gas (LNG) and to close loopholes present in existing sanctions against Moscow. The EU has imposed 11 rounds of sanctions on Russia since the Kremlin launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Brussels is currently working on proposals for…
Russian President Vladimir Putin will hold his end-of-year press conference and televised call-in show in a “combined format” this year, the Kremlin announced Thursday. Set-piece political events involving Putin have been delayed or scrapped altogether in the tumultuous months following Moscow’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine. The Russian leader did not hold his Direct Line…
Russia on Thursday dismissed accusations that Moscow was behind the daubing of dozens of Stars of David on buildings in Paris and its suburbs as “stupid.” Investigators said some of the mass graffiti — widely condemned as antisemitic — may have been carried out at the “express demand” of an individual residing abroad, implying a…
Russian law enforcement officials on Thursday detained a Kazakh national who works as a journalist in the Ural Mountains city of Perm, his employer Properm.ru said. Journalist Vladislav Ivanenko was arrested early Thursday at his home in Perm and taken first to a local police station and then to a temporary detention facility for foreign…
Private clinics in annexed Crimean have “voluntarily” stopped providing abortion services to patients, Kremlin-installed health officials on the peninsula said Thursday, amid growing concerns about a possible nationwide abortion ban. Crimea’s Health Ministry was informed about the decision by the region’s private clinics to stop providing abortion services following a meeting with state officials and…
Russia said Thursday it was “shocked” by the Israeli ambassador saying it could take up to two weeks to evacuate Russian citizens from the Gaza Strip. Israel’s envoy to Moscow told Russian state media this week that with 500-600 people leaving each day, and 7,000 waiting to be evacuated, it could take two weeks to…
Ukraine on Thursday criticized calls for Kyiv to hold negotiations with Russia, following media reports that its Western allies were pushing for peace talks in the wake of an underwhelming Ukrainian counteroffensive. Nearly two years into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the sprawling front line remains largely static as both Ukrainian and Russian forces struggle to…