Belarusian Olympic sprinter Krystsina Tsimanouskaya landed in Poland on Wednesday, where she is to take refuge after saying she feared for her life if forced to return home. The 24-year-old sprinter has been at the center of a diplomatic drama in the middle of the Games since seeking the protection of Tokyo 2020 staff on…
The makers of the Russian Covid-19 vaccine Sputnik V on Wednesday promised to resolve delivery delays this month after several South American countries complained to Russia. The delays occured due to a “production scale up” and will be “fully resolved” in August, Russia’s Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) that financially backs Sputnik V, said in a…
International monitors said Wednesday they would not send observers to Russia for next month’s general election because of a limit on numbers imposed by Russian authorities. “We very much regret that our observation of the forthcoming elections in Russia will not be possible,” said Matteo Mecacci, director of the OSCE’s Office for Democratic Institutions and…
Russian opposition figure Lyubov Sobol doesn’t intend to quit politics despite a court-appointed curfew and a ban on running for parliament, she told The Moscow Times on Wednesday. The ally of jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny was sentenced to 1.5 years of restricted freedom Tuesday over her role in organizing Moscow’s pro-Navalny protest on Jan.…
Russia’s forest fires spread by a record margin on Monday, making the current wildfire season the country’s third-largest this century as smoke from the blazes wafts over huge expanses of Siberia, experts from Greenpeace Russia reported. The fires grew by 0.6 million hectares — 98% of which were located in the far northeastern republic of…
Belarusian Olympic athlete Krystsina Tsimanouskaya arrived in Austria on Wednesday en route to Poland, where she is expected to take refuge after saying she feared for her life if forced to return home. The 24-year-old sprinter has been at the center of a diplomatic drama in the middle of the Games since seeking protection from…
Engineers will need to determine if a Russian module briefly throwing the International Space Station out of position had long-term effects on the other systems in the ISS, the Associated Press quoted a Russian space official as saying Wednesday. The Nauka laboratory module’s thrusters fired unexpectedly a few hours after docking Thursday, causing the ISS…
Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko on Wednesday ordered an investigation into the death of an Iraqi man who was allegedly found near Belarus’s border with Lithuania as tensions flare between the two countries. The announcement of the probe came as border guards in EU member Lithuania said Tuesday they had begun to push back migrants trying…
Former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan, who is convicted of espionage in Russia, has not been in touch with his family for more than a month, one of his lawyers said Tuesday. A Moscow court last year found Whelan guilty of receiving classified information at an upscale hotel in 2018 and sentenced him to 16 years in…
Russia exported more than $300 million worth of vaccines in the first five months of the year, customs data shows — more than the entire value of vaccines sold in the previous three years combined. The increase was driven by foreign sales of Russia’s flagship Sputnik V anti-coronavirus vaccine, with millions of doses shipped overseas…
Olympic officials said Tuesday they will investigate Belarus over claims the team tried to force an athlete now sheltering in Poland’s Tokyo embassy to return home after she criticized her coaches. Krystsina Tsimanouskaya says she fears for her safety if she returns to Belarus, and she is expected to travel to Poland this week after…
A missing Belarusian dissident was on Tuesday found hanged in a park in Ukraine, with police opening a murder probe and supporters accusing the regime of Alexander Lukashenko of killing the activist who helped his compatriots flee repression. Vitaly Shishov, 26, headed the Belarusian House in Ukraine, a non-governmental organization, and was involved in everything…
Russian women will be able to get jobs servicing aircraft for the first time in decades starting next year, according to a Labor Ministry order published Tuesday. The Soviet Union first introduced the list of banned jobs in the 1970s to protect women’s safety and reproductive health. The list persisted into modern-day Russia despite technological…
A Russian same-sex family who received death threats after their appearance in an organic retailer’s since-deleted promotional material said they have fled the country. The family and Russia’s VkusVill grocery chain were last month targeted in what appeared to be a coordinated hate campaign after a nationalist and homophobic group spread the ad on social…
RASSKAZOVO, Tambov Region – In 2018, Sergei Kalinin decided to leave Moscow and go home to Rasskazovo, a hardscrabble, agricultural town of around 40,000 in central Russia’s Tambov region. He rented out a vacant basement on the town’s central square and fitted it out as a chic, European-style coffee joint, complete with exotic blends and…
Russian opposition figure Lyubov Sobol has been sentenced to 1.5 years of restricted freedom over her role in this January’s mass protests that called for the release of jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny, her lawyer said. Thousands were detained at the Jan. 23 pro-Navalny protest in Moscow, with widespread reports of police aggression against peaceful…
Heavy smog from some of the worst wildfires to ever hit northern Siberia has blocked the sunlight and turned day into night, apocalyptic footage shared by The Siberian Times on Monday shows. The republic of Sakha, Russia’s largest and coldest region also known as Yakutia, has for the past five months seen wildfires sweep through…
Russia has confirmed 6,334,195 cases of coronavirus and 160,925 deaths, according to the national coronavirus information center. Russia’s total excess fatality count since the start of the coronavirus pandemic is around 483,000. August 3: What you need to know today Russia on Tuesday reported 22,010 new coronavirus cases and 788 deaths. The European Union now recognizes vaccination certificates from San Marino, where…
The United States and Russia clashed Monday over the staffing allowed at their respective embassies despite the latest talks aimed at bringing more stability to a turbulent relationship. In an interview, the Russian ambassador in Washington, Anatoly Antonov, deplored what he called “expulsions” of Moscow’s diplomats, saying the United States had become “persistent and creative…
Poland on Monday granted a humanitarian visa to Belarusian athlete Krystsina Tsimanouskaya, who claimed her team tried to forcibly send her back to her authoritarian homeland from the Olympic Games in Japan. The sprinter was in “direct contact” with Polish diplomats in Tokyo, said Deputy Foreign Minister Marcin Przydacz, adding that Warsaw would do “whatever…
New amendments to Russia’s hunting law will effectively legalize trophy hunting of endangered animals, Greenpeace activists said Monday. Russia is home to 13 endangered species: the Amur tiger, Central Asian and Far Eastern leopard, snow leopard, bison, saiga, Przewalski’s horse, Altai mountain sheep, gazelle, polar bear, Siberian crane, bowhead whale and gray whale. According to…
Kyrgyzstan’s first post-independence leader has been brought back to the country from exile to face questioning over his role in corruption, authorities said Monday. Kyrgyzstan’s national security committee said in a statement that Askar Akayev had been “delivered” to the capital Bishkek but did not state how he had been brought there after 16 years…
On May 19, a small military plane carrying 16,000 doses of AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccines took off from St. Vincent and the Grenadines, a Caribbean nation of lush tropical islands famous for the mix of super yachts and fishing boats that bob around its waters. The vaccines, donated through the World Health Organization’s Covax vaccine-sharing facility,…
President Vladimir Putin and Rosneft chief Igor Sechin took a weekend outing to a historic monastery in northwestern Russia that the state-controlled energy giant’s head restored. The Konevsky men’s monastery, located on an island in Lake Ladoga in Russia’s republic of Karelia, was founded in 1393 by Saint Arseny Konevsky, a monk who wished to…
Russia has allocated $1 million to an international program that promotes free media in developing countries over the next five years, its Foreign Ministry announced. The investment comes amid criticisms that Russia is stifling dissent at home in the lead-up to this fall’s parliamentary elections by blacklisting independent news sites and raiding and detaining journalists…
Russia has confirmed 6,312,185 cases of coronavirus and 160,137 deaths, according to the national coronavirus information center. Russia’s total excess fatality count since the start of the coronavirus pandemic is around 483,000. August 2: What you need to know today Russia on Monday reported 23,508 new coronavirus cases and 785 deaths. Russia has approved clinical trials of a combination of its Sputnik…
Belarusian athlete Kristina Timanovskaya said Sunday she was “safe” and under police protection in Japan after claiming her country had forced her to leave the Tokyo Olympics. “I am safe and they are in the process of deciding where I am going to spend the night,” Timanovskaya said in a statement on Telegram published by…
Russia has confirmed 6,288,677 cases of coronavirus and 159,352 deaths, according to the national coronavirus information center. Russia’s total excess fatality count since the start of the coronavirus pandemic is around 483,000. July 31: What you need to know today Russia on Sunday reported 22,804 new coronavirus cases and 789 deaths. Russia has approved clinical trials of a combination of its Sputnik…
A Russian district court in the southern city of Rostov-on-Don sentenced three Jehovah’s Witnesses to six years in prison on extremism charges on Thursday, the religious organization told The Moscow Times in an emailed statement. Alexander Parkov and Arsen Avanesov were sentenced to six and a half years, and Vilen Avanesov to six years in…
Russian authorities have demanded that YouTube block jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny’s popular channel that has published viral investigations into corruption and fueled anti-government protests in recent years, his senior ally said Friday. The request comes less than a week after Russia’s internet regulator Roskomnadzor blocked 49 Navalny-linked websites and sought to ban his associates’…
Siberia and other Northern Russian regions are becoming increasingly vulnerable to the impact of the climate crisis, which is accelerating exceptionally fast in the Arctic regions, the international Climate Crisis Advisory Group (CCAG) said in a new report on Thursday. The Arctic is warming roughly three times faster than the planet as a whole, scientists…
American Ryan Murphy accused Evgeny Rylov of doping after he was beaten by the Russian in the Olympic 200m backstroke on Friday, sparking an angry denial from Moscow. Murphy raised doubts about the result when he claimed he was “swimming in a race that’s probably not clean.” Rylov said he was “surprised” by Murphy’s “strange”…
Nastasia Dvoyankina, a 31-year-old art teacher from Yekaterinburg, was just managing to make ends meet. But when found out in December 2020 that she was pregnant, she realized her monthly salary of 30,000 rubles ($410) would not be enough for two. “I started looking around, trying to figure out how I could increase my income,”…
Chief editor of the independent investigative outlet Proekt, Roman Badanin, will not return to Russia amid what critics call a Kremlin crackdown on non-state news outlets, Reuters reported Thursday. Russia’s Justice Ministry added Badanin and three other Proekt journalists to its list of “foreign agents,” while the Prosecutor General’s Office outlawed the outlet itself as…
A British judge on Thursday said she expected to rule later this year on a libel case brought against a journalist over claims made in her book about Vladimir Putin’s inner circle. Judge Amanda Tipples told the High Court in London after two days of preliminary legal arguments that she planned to issue a judgment…
Brazil plans to cancel its orders for Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine, Reuters reported Thursday, as Moscow seeks to shore up domestic supplies in the face of a coronavirus surge fueled by the Delta variant. Brazil would be the second Latin American country to cancel its Sputnik V order after Guatemala did so this week. Two…
Jailed Kremlin’s critic Alexei Navalny’s outlawed Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK), on Thursday published an investigation on YouTube claiming that Russian state TV hosts Yevegny Popov and his wife Olga Skabeeva own Moscow real estate worth more than 300 million rubles ($4 million). Popov, a host on Rossiya 1, is also running for a seat in Russia’s…
Russia’s troubled laboratory module Nauka on Thursday successfully docked with the International Space Station, said the Russian space agency Roscosmos, after more than a decade of delays. “There is contact!!!” Roscosmos chief Dmitry Rogozin said on Twitter. Images released by Roscosmos showed the new addition to the Russian segment of the ISS docking with the…
Russia has fined Google over $40,000 for failing to store the data of Russian users on local servers, a court spokeswoman said Thursday, the first time the U.S.-based tech giant has been fined for the offense. The Russian government has been seeking to tighten control over the Russian segment of the web and develop a…
Russian athletes have won a total of 25 medals in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics under the neutral Russian Olympic Committee (ROC) flag. Here’s our guide to team ROC: Why can’t Russian athletes compete under the Russian flag? In 2015, the Russian government was accused of doping — administering performance-enhancing drugs to athletes to help them…
Russia reported 799 coronavirus deaths Thursday, tying the national record of pandemic-related fatalities for the third time in less than a month. Russia’s Covid-19 task force previously reported 799 deaths on July 16 and July 24. The country’s total death toll of 156,977 is the sixth-highest in the world, but experts say the true figure…
As thick clouds of smoke billow across the vast Siberian region of Yakutia, Yegor Zakharov and his team are racing to stop its smoldering forests from burning even more. Members of Russia’s Aerial Forest Protection Service, his team spent a recent July evening patrolling a five-kilometer (three-mile) trench they had dug at the edge of…
Oleg Baklanov, the last member of a failed coup against then U.S.S.R. leader Mikhail Gorbachev in 1991, has died aged 89, the head of the Russian space agency said on Wednesday. “Oleg Dmitriyevich Baklanov, who led our rocket and space industry and headed the ministry of general machine-building of the U.S.S.R., has passed away,” the head of…
A court in southern Russia has sentenced 10 anti-lockdown protesters to up to six and a half years in jail, the Kommersant business daily has reported. Over 2,000 protesters gathered in Vladikavkaz, the capital of the North Caucasus republic of North Ossetia, on April 20, 2020, to demand an end to the regional self-isolation orders as…
The Russian internet watchdog said Wednesday social media accounts linked to jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny should be blocked, as Moscow turns up the heat on the opposition ahead of parliamentary polls. Earlier this week Roskomnadzor blocked 49 websites linked to President Vladimir Putin’s most vocal domestic critic including his main website navalny.com as well as…
– ‘Shameful abuse’ of courts – Abramovich, in a statement released by his lawyers in March, said the book was having “a damaging effect, not only on my personal reputation but also in respect of the activities of Chelsea Football Club”. But representing Belton and HarperCollins, lawyer Andrew Caldecott said the libel claim “starts on…
US Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman and Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov touched elbows and wore face masks as they opened the talks, according to photos by the US mission in Geneva. “The discussions in Geneva were professional and substantive,” State Department spokesman Ned Price said. “We remain committed, even in times of…
Russia will bolster Central Asian ally Tajikistan’s military with weapons, equipment and training amid a “deteriorating” situation in neighboring Afghanistan, Moscow’s defense minister said Wednesday on a visit to the country. Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan will hold joint military drills next week near Tajikistan’s border with Afghanistan, where the Taliban has made huge military gains…
Russian authorities have blocked jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny’s mirror website using the tools that help telecom providers “isolate” Russia’s section of the internet, the privacy NGO Roskomsvoboda said Tuesday. Navalny rolled out the website navalny.app after authorities blocked his main website navalny.com alongside nearly 50 sites linked to him Monday because of “banned extremist…
U.S. President Joe Biden on Tuesday accused his Russian counterpart of seeking to disrupt the 2022 congressional elections by spreading “misinformation.” “Look at what Russia is doing already about the 2022 elections and misinformation,” Biden said during a trip to the office of the director of national intelligence near Washington, referring to information he receives…
Russian law enforcement officers on Wednesday searched the home of Roman Dobrokhotov, the chief editor of the investigative news website The Insider, less than a week after it was labeled a “foreign agent.” “Apparently there’s a search at mine. The police are knocking,” Dobrokhotov tweeted early Tuesday. Following several hours of searches, during which authorities seized…
President Alejandro Giammattei announced Tuesday that Guatemala has cancelled its order of a second batch of eight million Russian-made Covid-19 vaccines due to a delivery delay of a previous order. The president told reporters that his administration had renegotiated its contract with Moscow and would no longer buy the additional eight million Sputnik V doses…
Russia’s women gymnastics team capitalized on the dramatic departure of Simone Biles from the U.S. team to win the Olympic title on Tuesday. The U.S. team withdrew Biles from the final after a disappointing opening vault and Russia went on to beat the champions from the last two Games by more than three points. Britain…
Jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny Tuesday called on supporters to mobilize ahead of key parliamentary polls after authorities blocked dozens of websites linked to his opposition movement. On Monday, Russia’s media regulator barred 49 websites linked to Navalny including his main website navalny.com as pressure mounts on opponents of President Vladimir Putin ahead of September…
Russian athletes are competing in the Tokyo Olympics under a neutral Russian Olympic Committee (ROC) flag due to a ban stemming from state-sponsored doping violations. Here’s a running list of medals they’ve won so far: July 27 Swimming — Gold men’s 100 meters backstroke for Evgeny Rylov, 24. — Silver men’s 100m backstroke for Kliment…
The St. Petersburg election commission has banned the former head of jailed Kremlin’s critic Alexei Navalny’s headquarters, Irina Fatyanova, from running in elections to the city’s legislative assembly, she said on Twitter Tuesday. According to Fatyanova, the election commission accused her of leading an extremist organization, citing a Moscow court decision to outlaw all the…
Russia on Tuesday said high-level talks with the United States this week will show how “serious” Washington is in seeking genuine dialogue with Moscow. The two countries will hold the talks on Wednesday in Geneva — where presidents Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin met last month — in a new bid to encourage stability in…
A court in southern Russia has sentenced five anti-lockdown protesters to at least five years in jail, the Kommersant business daily reported Monday. Over 2,000 protesters gathered in Vladikavkaz, the capital of the North Caucasus republic of North Ossetia, on April 20, 2020, to demand an end to the regional self-isolation orders as well as…
Russia has approved clinical trials of a combination of its Sputnik V and the Anglo-Swedish drugmaker AstraZeneca’s coronavirus vaccine that will run through next spring. Five Russian clinics will hold AstraZeneca and Sputnik V trials involving 150 people, with testing wrapping up in early March 2022, according to the entry in Russia’s state drug register…
Russia has begun building an upgraded version of its top-secret aerial command center nicknamed the “Doomsday” plane, the state-run RIA Novosti news agency reported Monday. The country’s existing “Doomsday” planes, the Ilyushin Il-80s, were developed in the 1980s and are designed to evacuate the Russian president and other top officials in the event of a…