The Kremlin said Friday that the “truth” behind last month’s explosions on the Nord Stream gas pipelines would “surprise” many Europeans if it was to be made public. Moscow has for weeks alluded that its intelligence has a different version of what caused the September explosions, while some Western countries have called it sabotage and…
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu spoke by phone to U.S. counterpart Lloyd Austin about topics including the war in Ukraine, Moscow’s Defense Ministry said on its official Telegram channel Friday. “Current international security matters were discussed, including the situation in Ukraine,” the ministry said, without providing further details. The phone call marks the first confirmed…
Russian military authorities will end their screenings of men looking to cross into Georgia or its breakaway region of South Ossetia, Interfax reported Friday, citing a South Ossetian official. Russian officials had set up a screening checkpoint for draft-eligible men at the Georgian border on Sept. 27 as tens of thousands fled to the South Caucasus country…
The Kremlin on Friday condemned the arrests of two Russians — including the son of a senior official — on a U.S. request in Europe for alleged sanctions evasion and illegal sale of U.S. technology to Russian arms companies. “We are categorically against this and we condemn the practice of these kinds of arrests of…
A Russian start-up is offering its clients the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to arrange their own fake funeral and go through the experience of being buried alive for 3.5 million rubles ($57,119). “There is a possibility that after this procedure [the client] will discover new talents, psychic abilities or see success in business,” the start-up’s founder Yekaterina…
President Volodymyr Zelensky on Thursday accused Russia of planting mines at a hydroelectric dam in the Kherson region of southern Ukraine, which is under the control of Moscow’s forces. “According to our information, the aggregate and dam of the Kakhovka hydroelectric power plant were mined by Russian terrorists,” Zelensky said in his daily address published on…
President Vladimir Putin on Thursday visited a training center for mobilized Russians for the first time since announcing a partial military call-up on Sept. 21. State television showed Putin visiting a shooting center in the Ryazan region, southeast of Moscow, dressed in black, shooting a newly developed sniper rifle and hugging military men. Wearing ear…
Jailed Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny said Thursday he was slapped with new terrorism and extremism charges that he says could put him behind bars for up to 30 years. “I received an official notification that a new criminal case has been initiated against me” for propagating extremism, calling for terrorism, financing extremist activity and…
Russia reacted to the resignation of British Prime Minister Liz Truss on Thursday by calling the short-serving British premier a “disgrace.” “Britain has never known such a disgrace of a prime minister,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova wrote on her Telegram channel. “She will be remembered for her catastrophic illiteracy,” Zakharova added. Truss was…
Martial law entered into force in the four Ukrainian regions that Russia recently claimed to have annexed early Thursday — just hours after President Vladimir Putin had declared the measure the previous day. While making his announcement, the Russian leader signed a separate decree introducing varying “response levels” across the country’s regions as well as…
A Russian delegation in Syria on Thursday took 38 children from families of suspected Islamic State (IS) group members for repatriation, a Kurdish official and AFP correspondents said. Kurdish authorities in northeast Syria handed over the children, “most of whom are orphans,” to the Russian delegation, Kurdish foreign affairs official Khaled Ibrahim told a press…
The EU imposed sanctions Thursday against three Iranian generals and an arms firm accused of supplying Iranian drones to Russia that have been used to bomb Ukraine. The names of Iranian drone maker Shahed Aviation Industries and three top Iranian military officials were published in the EU official journal, adding them to the sanctions blacklist.…
Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov said Thursday that his three underage sons have been fighting with the Russian military on the frontlines of the war in Ukraine. “Akhmat, Eli and Adam visited the contact line, where fierce battles with Ukrainian nationalists are currently taking place,” Kadyrov, a close ally of President Vladimir Putin, wrote on his…
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday signed a decree abolishing Rostourism, Russia’s federal tourism agency, and handing its remit to the Economic Development Ministry. The Economic Ministry said in a statement that the decision to dissolve Rostourism and to give its responsibilities to the ministry would help Russia meet its tourism objectives more effectively. Rostourism…
Yevgeny Prigozhin, the Kremlin-linked magnate who leads the notorious Wagner mercenary group, said Wednesday that the private military contractor was “forming a people’s militia” in Russia’s Belgorod region on the Ukrainian border. According to Prigozhin, “several сompanies” were producing “required items for fortifications,” while Wagner instructors were training “citizens who will defend the region’s borders.”…
The Moscow-installed authorities of the port city of Mariupol, which fell to Russian forces after a devastating siege earlier in the year, took down a monument to Ukrainian victims of Stalin’s famine on Wednesday. Kyiv has been calling the 1930s man-made hunger under Josef Stalin a “genocide,” while Moscow has been downplaying it as an…
Italy’s ex-premier Silvio Berlusconi was under fresh scrutiny Wednesday over his friendship with Vladimir Putin after being recorded describing a birthday present of vodka from the Russian leader and expressing concerns about arming Ukraine. His aides insisted he had been misrepresented, but the row risks embarrassing Berlusconi’s coalition allies, led by far-right leader Giorgia Meloni,…
State-run Russian television aired footage on Wednesday of long lines of people and their luggage on the banks of the Dnipro River in southern Ukraine’s Kherson region after Moscow announced it was evacuating tens of thousands of local residents. “People are getting on the ferry and going to the temporary accommodation centers,” one apparent volunteer…
A judge in Norway on Tuesday ordered the son of one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s closest allies to be placed in custody for two weeks following a request from the country’s police. “The man has Russian and British citizenship and is charged with violating the Sanction Act §4 for flying a drone in Norwegian territory at…
For the third time in a week, police in northern Norway have detained Russian citizens for taking photos in areas where photography is banned. While the police declined to give any further information, they did confirm that the arrests took place “at a location in Nordland,” a county in northern Norway that is home to…
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday declared martial law in four Ukrainian regions that Moscow claims to have annexed as the Russian military continues to be plagued by setbacks in its eight-month offensive. “I signed a decree to introduce martial law in these four subjects of the Russian Federation,” Putin said during a televised meeting of…
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced on Wednesday that he had agreed with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin to create a “gas hub” in Turkey, the state-run RIA Novosti news agency reported. During an address to the Turkish parliament, Erdogan cited Putin as saying Europe could obtain its gas supply from the hub in Turkey…
Ukraine has removed its ambassador to Kazakhstan in Central Asia, according to a decree published on the presidential website, after remarks he made about Russia spurred condemnation from Moscow. Russia’s Foreign Ministry had urged Kazakhstan to expel Petro Vrublevsky after he gave an interview in which he made comments about “killing” Russians. He later apologized…
Pro-Kremlin officials were pulling out of the key southern Ukraine city of Kherson on Wednesday, as Kyiv’s forces advanced on territory in Russian hands since the war’s earliest days. Kherson was the first major city to fall to Moscow’s troops after the February invasion and retaking it would be a major prize in Ukraine’s ongoing…
A Russian analyst who contributed explosive details to the so-called “Steele dossier” that alleged close ties between Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and Russia has been acquitted on charges of lying to the FBI about the sources of his intelligence, Reuters reported. Igor Danchenko, a Russian-born researcher, was acquitted by a U.S. jury on four charges…
Heightened Tensions 4 Russians Arrested in Norway for Breaking Photography Ban For the third time in a week, police in northern Norway have detained Russian citizens for taking photos in areas where photography is banned. While the…
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and its “partial” military mobilization are pushing the country’s population decline to a historic precipice, Bloomberg reported Tuesday. President Vladimir Putin has made reversing Russia’s demographic crisis a key goal and his government aimed to start stabilizing the country’s declining population numbers this year. Mass war casualties, Putin’s “partial” mobilization of 300,000…
Ten days after being mobilized into the Russian army, Igor Puchkov was killed fighting in southern Ukraine’s Kherson region. The 27-year-old father of two was sent into combat with no military instruction beyond what he had received during his compulsory military service as a teenager, according to relatives. “We were outraged when he was sent…
Germany’s cybersecurity chief has been sacked after a TV satire show accused him of having ties to the Russian intelligence services, an interior ministry spokesman told AFP on Tuesday. Arne Schönbohm, head of the Federal Cyber Security Authority (BSI), had been relieved of his duties “with immediate effect,” the spokesperson said. “The background to this…
Estonian lawmakers on Tuesday condemned Moscow’s annexation of Ukrainian territory and declared Russia a “terrorist regime.” The statement was adopted by 88 votes in favor in the country’s 101-seat legislature. Ten MPs were absent and three abstained. The parliament “declares Russia a terrorist regime and the Russian Federation a country that supports terrorism,” the statement…
Russia has handed down one of its first criminal cases on secretly working with a foreign government to undermine national security to a Moscow resident, Interfax reported Tuesday. Lawmakers criminalized “confidential” cooperation with foreign individuals, states or organizations in June, as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine plunged the country into isolation and catalyzed a historic crackdown…
The Kremlin said Tuesday that the investigation into the explosions that tore through the Nord Stream gas pipelines was being “tailored” to place the blame on Russia. Explosions in early September sent natural gas bubbling up from the pipelines on the floor of the Baltic Sea to the surface in a major environmental disaster that…
Officials in two Russian regions bordering Ukraine blamed Kyiv for new strikes on their territory Tuesday. Train traffic in the Belgorod region was temporarily brought to a halt after shelling struck a railway station and damaged the railroad tracks, the region’s Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov wrote on his official Telegram channel. One man was wounded by…
American oil giant ExxonMobil has completed its exit from the Russian market after President Vladimir Putin ordered the expropriation of its assets, the company said. ExxonMobil had been in negotiations with the Russian authorities to sell its more than $4 billion in assets — including its largest Russian investment, a 30% stake in the Sakhalin-1…
Updates with new casualty figures. A military aircraft crashed Monday into a residential building in the southern port town of Yeysk in Russia’s Krasnodar region, Interfax news agency reported, citing local officials. Russia’s Defense Ministry said a Su-34 fighter jet crashed after taking off from a local airfield for a training flight, the state-run RIA…
Updates with initial casualty figures. A military aircraft crashed Monday into a residential building in the southern port town of Yeysk in Russia’s Krasnodar region, Interfax news agency reported citing local officials. Russia’s Defense Ministry said a Su-34 fighter jet crashed after taking off from a local airfield for a training flight, the state-run RIA…
Former Russian state television journalist Marina Ovsyannikova, 44, has escaped house arrest and left Russia, her lawyer Dmitry Zakhvatov told Russian media outlet Avtozaklive on Monday. “Marina Ovsyannikova was forced to leave Russia and is now safe, under the protection of a European country,” Zakhvatov said. The former editor on Russian state TV’s flagship news…
Iran is planning to aid Moscow’s war in Ukraine by sending more weapons to Moscow, according to anonymous U.S. and Western security officials, the Washington Post reported. The planned weapons delivery from Tehran could include two types of surface-to-surface missiles, officials said, adding to the Iranian attack drones reportedly supplied to Moscow back in August. …
For several weeks following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Alina used a needle every other hour to prick her two-year-old diabetic son’s finger and measure his glucose levels. “Pricking the fingers of a two-year-old baby so many times a day is just torture,” she told The Moscow Times. “[But] we had no choice.” Prior to the…
Army draft offices will close in Moscow from Monday as the Kremlin’s quotas for recruiting reservists to fight in Ukraine have been met in the capital, city mayor Sergei Sobyanin announced. “Assembly points for mobilized people will close on October 17, 2022, at 2:00 pm,” Sobyanin said on his website. He said “the task of partial…
Updates with Zelensky comments and Defense Ministry statement. Russian-launched “kamikaze drones” attacked Kyiv early Monday, the Ukrainian presidency said, describing the strikes as an act of desperation nearly eight months into a war that has claimed thousands of lives. Air raid sirens sounded in Kyiv shortly before the first explosion at around 6:35 a.m., followed…
The Russian Belgorod region bordering Ukraine was hit by strikes on Sunday, leaving at least four people injured in the latest attacks in the area, Russian officials said. “As a result of shelling in Belgorod, three people from the same family were injured,” regional governor Vyacheslav Gladkov posted on Telegram on Sunday after visiting the…
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Saturday the situation was “the most difficult” near the eastern town of Bakhmut, a few days after pro-Russian forces announced they were moving closer to the city. “A very severe situation persists in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions” in the Donbas, Zelensky said in his daily address, “the most difficult…
Norway said Saturday it arrested a Russian national carrying a drone and camera equipment after he was seen taking photos of an airport in the far north, the second such arrest in a week. Norway is on high alert following reports of mysterious drone sightings close to offshore oil and gas drilling platforms run by…
Russia said two gunmen from an ex-Soviet state on Saturday attacked a military training ground killing 11 people who had volunteered to fight in Ukraine and wounding 15 others. Russia’s defense ministry said the attack in the Belgorod region, which borders Ukraine, happened during a firearms training session. Russia launched what it calls a special…
The first Russian soldiers to take part in a new joint force with Belarusian troops have arrived in Belarus, Minsk’s defense ministry said on Saturday. “The first convoys of Russian servicemen from the regional force group have arrived in Belarus,” the ministry said, adding that their mission was “exclusively to strengthen the protection and defence…
Iran has once again rejected allegations that it has supplied Russia with weapons “to be used in the war in Ukraine,” its Foreign Ministry said Saturday. Kyiv and many of its Western allies have accused Moscow of using Iranian-made drones in attacks on Ukraine in recent weeks. The topic is expected to be discussed by…
St. Petersburg lawyer Andrei Nikiforov was drafted into the Russian army four days after Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a “partial” mobilization in a bid to solve the military’s manpower problems in the ongoing Ukraine war. Less than two weeks later, Nikiforov became one of the first mobilized men to be killed as Ukraine pushed…
Russian President Vladimir Putin shed some light on his current state of mind regarding the war in Ukraine at a press conference in the Kazakh capital Astana on Friday. Among the takeaways from the president’s rare Q&A session was the announcement that Russia’s “partial” mobilization campaign would be coming to an end in a matter…
Russian military recruiters appear to be employing new and increasingly desperate methods to round up men for the Kremlin’s “partial” mobilization drive. Military and law enforcement officials in Moscow and St. Petersburg on Friday were seen inspecting the identity papers of passers-by around the entrance to metro stations and handing out draft notices to eligible…
Rapes and sexual assaults attributed to Moscow’s forces in Ukraine are part of a Russian “military strategy” and a “deliberate tactic to dehumanize the victims,” UN envoy Pramila Patten told AFP in an interview on Thursday. “All the indications are there,” the UN special representative on sexual violence told AFP, when asked if rape was…
At a bookshop in Kyiv, 33-year-old Yulia Sydorenko was dumping an entire collection of old books – some gifts from childhood friends – that have recently lost their appeal. Why? They were written in Russian. “Since February 24, Russian books have no place in my house,” Sydorenko said, referring to the day Russian President Vladimir…
French food giant Danone announced plans on Friday to transfer the control of its essential dairy and plant-based business in Russia, retaining only its infant nutrition branch. One of the few multinationals to have remained in Russia since the Ukraine war, Danone said the move to “transfer the effective control” of the dairy business could…
The United States is pressing allies to hastily build Ukraine a patchwork air defense network using NATO-compatible equipment – some ultra-modern, others older – to protect strategic targets from Russian strikes. The effort was given added urgency after Moscow pummeled Ukraine with missiles this week, damaging energy facilities nationwide and leaving at least 20 people…
The Kremlin-installed governor of Ukraine’s Kherson region, which the Kremlin says it has annexed, appealed to Moscow to help evacuate civilians from the area on Thursday, in yet another sign that the Ukrainian military’s southern counteroffensive is continuing to gain ground. “Сities in the Kherson region are coming under daily rocket attacks,” Vladimir Saldo said…
The Israeli government has said it intends to open temporary camps in Azerbaijan for Russian Jews seeking to move to Israel in the wake of the war in Ukraine. On Oct. 2, the government of Israel approved a proposal to facilitate the immigration of Russian Jews to Israel, amid the largest wave of Russian emigration…
Russian lawmakers have proposed a bill that would allow the granting of amnesties to prisoners enlisting to fight in Ukraine, according to Senator Olga Kovitidi on Thursday. “If a convict shows courage and heroism while performing military duty … the court may release him from serving his sentence … or commute the remainder of the…
Swedish furniture giant IKEA announced that it would be making around 10,000 of its remaining Russian staff redundant on Thursday, despite posting a 6% rise in full-year sales in what it described as a “challenging” year due to inflation and scaling back in Russia. The 2022 fiscal year “was a challenging year for the world,…
Russia’s foreign ministry said Thursday it had summoned envoys of Germany, Denmark and Sweden to express “bewilderment” over Moscow’s exclusion from an investigation into leaks on the Nord Stream pipelines. Multiple leaks were discovered on the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines connecting Russia to Germany, further raising political tensions already sky-high since the Kremlin…
The Russian authorities have resorted to raiding hostels and hotels in search of men who may be eligible for military service as part of the country’s “partial” mobilization, according to multiple media reports. Two Moscow locations of the Travel Inn hostel chain were visited by the police last week, according to a report by broadcaster…