The Russian government has rejected a bill that would have introduced fines for officials who exhibit disrespect toward citizens, weeks after lawmakers passed a bill that introduced fines for disrespecting the authorities. Communist lawmakers introduced the legislation in February, seeking to fine and suspend civil servants for humiliating voters. Around the same time, another bill that…
U.S. fighter jets intercepted several Russian bombers in international airspace off the coast of Alaska on Tuesday, in the fourth and fifth such incursions this year, U.S. military officials said on Wednesday. “The Russian aircraft remained in international airspace and at no time entered U.S. or Canadian sovereign airspace,” the North American Aerospace Defense Command…
Russian senators have unanimously voted to unseat their colleague who faces life in prison on aggravated murder charges months after his dramatic arrest in the Federation Council’s chambers. Rauf Arashukov, 32, was arrested during a session of the upper house of parliament after attempting to flee the chamber on Jan. 30. Arashukov, who represented the…
The United States has sanctioned two Russian arms manufacturers and a missile training center for allegedly violating international arms control restrictions on exports to Iran, North Korea and Syria. The move was a response to the Russian entities’ transfer of restricted goods, services and technologies to the countries in violation of a U.S. law, a State…
New systems for radio-electronic warfare installed along Russia’s Arctic coast are capable of jamming foreign ships and aircraft from thousands of kilometers away, Russian military officials have been cited as saying by the Izvestia tabloid. The Northern Fleet has completed its new Center for Radio-Electronic Warfare, military representatives told Izvestia. The center includes two Murmansk-BN systems, as…
Ukraine may submit any preliminary peace deal agreed with Russia to the Ukrainian people for a referendum, the new head of President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s administration told Ukrainian television Tuesday. Ukrainian troops are fighting Russian-backed separatists in the Donbass region in a conflict that has killed 13,000 people since 2014. Ukraine also wants Russia to return…
Security forces have killed two militants in western Russia suspected of planning a terrorist act, authorities said Wednesday. The suspects in Vladimir region refused to lay down arms and opened fire on FSB officers, Russia’s National Antiterrorism Committee (NAC) said in a statement. “They were neutralized by return fire in the ensuing shootout,” the statement…
Russians living with HIV will be able to legally adopt children living with them under new legislation passed on Tuesday. Russia’s Constitutional Court ruled last year that preventing HIV-positive families from adopting children who already live with them was unconstitutional. The changes were anticipated as part of Russia’s broader state strategy to combat the epidemic…
Russian suppliers will have to provide financial compensation for their mistakes over contaminated oil, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said on Tuesday. Flows through the Druzhba pipeline were suspended last month due to contamination, sending shockwaves through global oil markets. “Russian suppliers made major business and operational mistakes… Russia and Russian firms have to respond…
Russia’s transition to connected vehicles is looking increasingly homegrown after the country’s biggest car-making alliance handed control of its dashboards to local search engine Yandex. The Renault-Nissan-AvtoVAZ partnership, which has about a third of the Russian market, will use Yandex in locally made cars for services like real-time navigation, voice assistance and music. The pact…
Russian millennials are more concerned about corruption and income inequality than their global peers, the U.S auditing company Deloitte said in a survey published Monday. Millennials around the world named climate change (29 percent) and income inequality (22 percent) as their top personal concerns, the survey said. Russian millennials named political and business corruption (38…
The Kremlin said on Tuesday that U.S. sanctions on Russia’s Nord Stream 2 pipeline to Germany would be an act of unfair competition that would be seen as unacceptable in Moscow and some European capitals. U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry said earlier on Tuesday in Kiev that a sanctions bill putting onerous restrictions on companies…
The Kremlin’s property management department is financing luxury renovations for the residence of Russian Orthodox Church leader Patriarch Kirill near St. Petersburg, The Bell business outlet reported Tuesday. The former residence of Russia’s imperial family, which is being converted for use by the patriarch, occupies almost 2.5 hectares (6.1 acres) of land south of St.…
Russia’s FSB security service has asked a court to keep a former U.S. marine accused of espionage in pre-trial detention for another three months, Interfax reported on Tuesday. Paul Whelan, who holds U.S., British, Canadian and Irish passports, was detained in a Moscow hotel room on December 28 and accused of espionage, a charge he…
The firing of two veteran reporters from Russia’s Kommersant business daily is “an obvious clampdown on freedom of speech in Russia,” more than 200 employees of the company have said in an online statement. On Monday, 11 Kommersant journalists said they were resigning from the publication after two of their colleagues were reportedly fired for…
Newly inaugurated Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has asked U.S. officials to step up sanctions against neighboring Russia in one his first foreign policy actions. Zelenskiy has said that Ukraine’s most pressing issue is conflict with its neighbor Russia, which annexed the Crimean peninsula in 2014 and backed separatists in a war in the east that…
Police in Moscow have detained a senior aide to Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny on Tuesday for mass rallies against unpopular pension reforms last fall. More than 150 protesters, including 50 Navalny supporters, were detained during nationwide protests on Sept. 9, 2018, against President Vladimir Putin’s plan to increase the pension age. Putin signed the…
As a young ballerina with the Moscow City Ballet, from 2008-2012 Varvara Bortsova lived, traveled and worked alongside dancers from across the post-Soviet sphere. Artists in the company came from nearly every corner of the former U.S.S.R., from the steppes of Central Asia to the mountains of the Caucasus to the shores of the Baltic…
A Russian military intelligence officer whose unit was accused of hacking the U.S. presidential election has been charged in Russia for running a Ponzi scheme involving Apple products, the RBC news website reported. The U.S. Justice Department indicted 12 GRU officers in mid-2018 on charges of hacking the computer networks of 2016 Democratic presidential candidate…
Russia now ranks first in the world for its amount of protected natural areas, according to World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Russia data. Official statistics state that Russia has 63.3 million hectares of specially protected natural areas, WWF had previously reported. These figures do not take into account natural territories including cultural heritage sites and territories of traditional use,…
Russian authorities have seized 12 billion rubles ($185.5 million) from former FSB official Colonel Kirill Cherkalin, making him the country’s richest ex-law enforcement official under investigation for corruption. Cherkalin, former head of the FSB economic security department’s financial counterintelligence support unit, was charged with bribery of $850,000 last week. Videos posted online show bags stuffed…
The HIV epidemic has led to the deaths of an estimated 318,000 Russians since the first case was registered in 1987, or 10,000 every year, the country’s national consumer watchdog has said. The World Health Organization warned last year that Russia risked developing an out-of-control HIV epidemic after data showed a record number of new…
The entire political department of Russia’s Kommersant business publication resigned Monday in solidarity with two veteran journalists at the newspaper who said they had been forced to step down. In April, Kommersant reported that Federation Council leader Valentina Matviyenko would be replaced “in the coming months,” citing several government sources. The Kremlin said it was…
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, asked if Vladimir Putin will congratulate incoming Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on his inauguration, says the Russian president had no such plans. He said that Putin would congratulate his newly elected counterpart if Zelenskiy makes progress in settling the conflict with pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine and mending relations with Russia.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said on Monday that it had repelled a drone and missile attack on its main air base in Syria over the weekend and accused former Nusra Front militants of being behind the assault, the state-run RIA news agency reported. RIA cited the ministry as saying it had shot down six missiles fired…
CSKA Moscow clinched their eighth Euroleague title with a 91-83 win over Anadolu Efes Istanbul after 20 points each from American forwards Will Clyburn and Cory Higgins in a rip-roaring title showdown on Sunday. Anadolu, who trailed by as many as 14 points in the first half, nosed ahead 45-44 shortly after the break but…
The head of Russia’s Orthodox Church has proposed a national ban on abortion to boost the country’s lagging population numbers. Russia legalized abortion in 1955 and has the second-highest abortion rate in the world after China. While Russia’s anti-abortion movement has largely failed to change the law, it has gained momentum in recent years, spurred…
Ukraine’s new President Volodymyr Zelenskiy was inaugurated on Monday morning, saying that his first task in office will be to achieve a ceasefire in eastern Ukraine, where a five-year-old conflict with Russian-backed separatists has killed 13,000 people. “Our first task is to end the conflict in the Donbass,” Zelenskiy said in translated comments as he took…
Residents of Nikolayevka haven’t had much to gossip about since the owner of the vodka museum over on People’s Friendship Street died, forcing the closure of the only tourist attraction in town. But now that this hardscrabble village in central Russia has emerged as the epicenter of an international oil scandal, they say they knew…
International scientists criticised on Friday a Russian plan to release 10 captive killer whales into the Sea of Japan rather than return them to their original habitat, saying it could endanger the mammals’ lives. The plight of the orcas, which are being held with 87 beluga whales in cramped conditions in a bay near the port…
The United States shares counterterrorism, North Korean denuclearization and Afghan reconciliation interests with Russia, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said after his visit to Russia. Pompeo’s trip marked the first high-profile U.S. visit to Russia since allegations of Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and an investigation rankled bilateral relations. Though the…
Greenpeace will receive 2.7 million euros ($3 million) from Russia under a settlement reached between the Dutch state and Moscow, the environmental group said on Friday. The agreement should end years of legal battles following the seizure by Russian authorities of a Dutch-flagged Greenpeace vessel, the Arctic Sunrise, in 2013 and the arrest of 30…
YEKATERINBURG — Thousands of residents of Yekaterinburg in the Ural Mountains who have been protesting the construction of a new church in the city’s central park have vowed to keep up their vigil until they hear an official announcement the project has been canceled. The Mayor of Yekaterinburg, Alexander Vysokinsky and local governor Yevgeny Kuivashev…
Ukrainian ports have lost $400 million in potential revenue from Russia’s seizure of Crimea and its chokehold on a key shipping passage with a bridge that connects the peninsula to mainland Russia, The Financial Times reported. President Vladimir Putin inaugurated the $4 billion bridge on May 15, 2018, with a ceremonial truck ride across its…
Foreign ministers from the Council of Europe, the continent’s chief human rights watchdog, reached an agreement on Friday that opens the way for Russia to return to the organization, resolving a dispute that began after Moscow’s seizure of Crimea. The agreement follows efforts by France and Germany to find a compromise among the 47-nation group…
The Kremlin said on Friday it would respond in kind to a new round of U.S. sanctions on Russian nationals, saying its retaliation would be consistent with Russia’s national interest. The United States on Thursday imposed sanctions on a Chechen group and five people, including at least three Russians, over allegations of human rights abuses,…
Russia’s state-run television has canceled the results of a popular children’s singing competition after cyber experts uncovered online vote-rigging that favored the 11-year-old daughter of a celebrity and a banker. Channel One hired the Group-IB international cybersecurity firm to investigate claims that “The Voice Kids”’ vote-by-phone system was tampered with in April. Group-IB’s initial investigation…
Billions of rubles have been funneled out of Russia’s federal Roscosmos space agency over the past five years in corruption schemes, the country’s top investigator has revealed this week. Prosecutors uncovered 1.6 billion rubles ($24.6 million) worth of fraud in the Roscosmos and the Rostec state-run defense corporation last year. Overall, fraud involving Russian state-run…
Venezuela would like Moscow to help it restructure its external debt to other countries, Russia’s RIA news agency cited Venezuela’s ambassador in Geneva as saying on Friday. Asked whether sanctions-hit Venezuela would like to receive debt-restructuring assistance from Russia, the ambassador was quoted as saying: “Yes.”
The head of a highly secretive branch of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) has been charged for $850,000 bribery three weeks after his detention, the RBC news website reported Thursday. Colonel Kirill Cherkalin headed the FSB economic security department’s financial counterintelligence support unit. The department played key roles in investigations surrounding former economy minister Alexei…
The United States on Thursday imposed sanctions on a Chechen group and five individuals, including at least three Russians, for alleged human rights abuses under the Global Magnitsky Act, including extrajudicial killings and the torture of LGBT individuals. The sanctions against the Terek Special Rapid Response Team in the republic of Chechnya and the five individuals…
The mayor of Russia’s fourth-largest city of Yekaterinburg has suspended construction of an Orthodox cathedral on park grounds as mass protests against the project continued for a fourth day. Thousands of residents have taken to the streets against the city authorities’ plans to replace a central park with a replica of a cathedral demolished in…
Russia is to keep its membership in Europe’s top human rights body after Germany and France engineered a last-minute deal to avoid a Russian expulsion, a step that threatened to further incite tensions between the Kremlin and the West. Foreign ministers from the Council of Europe will endorse the agreement at a meeting Friday in…
Russia plans to launch a public database of news it flags as “fake,” the head of Russia’s powerful media regulator announced two months after President Vladimir Putin signed a law criminalizing the spread of “fake news.” Alexander Zharov’s regulatory agency, known by the acronym Roskomnadzor, has successfully blocked LinkedIn in Russia and is currently engaged…
Thousands of Russians in the country’s fourth-largest city of Yekaterinburg have taken to the streets in recent days in growing protests against a controversial plan to build a new cathedral in a popular riverside park. Tensions came to a head on Monday when opponents of the new church toppled a fence surrounding the proposed construction…
Britain has scrambled Typhoon fighters twice in two days in the Baltic to intercept Russian aircraft, the defense ministry said. British Typhoons were launched on Wednesday to intercept two SU-27 fighters and an IL-22 and escorted the formation toward Russia. On Tuesday, British Typhoon fighters scrambled out of Ämari Air Base in Estonia in response to two Russian…
Two-thirds of Russian families have no financial savings to speak of, according to a new survey published by the independent Levada Center polling agency. The findings back up official data showing five consecutive years of declining real incomes as Western sanctions and dropping oil prices hit Russian consumers. Sixty-five percent of Russian households reported a…
Russian lawmakers are seeking to criminalize the publication of materials that leads to sanctions imposed against the country or individuals, the latest in a host of legislation to tighten control over the flow of information. Mikhail Emelyanov, a lawmaker for the pro-Kremlin Just Russia party, is proposing amendments to the criminal code to impose a…
The mayor of the Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk has canceled plans to build a pre-revolutionary cathedral in place of a public park as protests against similar plans rocked Russia’s fourth-largest city of Yekaterinburg. Clashes erupted in Yekaterinburg this week as residents tore down fencing enclosing its riverside park ahead of church construction. Dozens of arrests…
Authorities in Russia’s fourth-largest city of Yekaterinburg have detained dozens of people as thousands of residents continued to defend a riverside park from plans to build a church on its grounds. Protests against placing the church in the city’s central park entered their third day Wednesday following clashes with defenders of the construction site, which…
Moscow will suspend construction of a controversial $162 million landfill in northern Russia after months of protests against plans to ship waste in from the capital, the Vedomosti business daily reported Wednesday. Residents of Arkhangelsk region actively oppose construction of the landfill in the former village of Shiyes designed to take in up to 500…
Russia’s efforts to resolve an unprecedented oil-contamination crisis suffered a setback as the nation loaded another tainted cargo from a port in the Baltic Sea, days after the government had said the port was clear. Traders receiving Urals crude at the Ust-Luga terminal said some oil continues to exceed acceptable levels of organic chloride, the…
Advanced new drones equipped with a stun gun and blinding laser have been developed for the Russian military, Interfax reported Wednesday citing an arms industry official. Russian security forces have been increasingly turning to laser technologies over the past year. In November 2018, Russia’s National Guard bought two laser-equipped vans designed to disperse protesters. The…
A Russian national has been sentenced to 25 years in prison for allegedly plotting a terror attack in the country’s east, state media reported Wednesday. A total of 20 terror attacks were prevented by security forces in 2018, the first deputy chief of Russia’s Anti-Terrorism Committee told reporters earlier this year. According to the committee’s…
Hundreds of thousands of Russians, including former government officials, have had their passport data posted online in the country’s latest massive data leak, the RBC news website cited new research as saying Wednesday. The breach of at least eight government websites, analyzed by privacy expert Ivan Begtin, exposed the passport data of 360,000 people. Last…
Russia has eased its weapons resale rules to alleviate secondary buyers’ fears of U.S. sanctions, according to an unpublished government decree cited by the Vedomosti business daily Wednesday. Reports found that Russia sold the second-most weapons in 2018 despite five years of declining sales. Countries trading with Russia’s defense and intelligence sectors currently face secondary…
The Kremlin protested on Wednesday over the extradition from ex-Soviet Georgia to the United States of a Russian man accused of smuggling F-16 fighter jet manuals into Russia in breach of U.S. arms export law. Oleg Tishchenko, a software developer, was earlier this year extradited to the United States from Georgia, where he was reported to have been…
NARYAN-MAR — Russia’s oil and gas giants are establishing a new model in the country’s Arctic based on sustainable development and cooperation with the region’s native reindeer herders. A decade ago, locals were struggling to sustain their traditional way of life due to the energy firms’ growing encroachment on their pasturelands. And as recently as…
Clashes erupted in Russia’s fourth-largest city of Yekaterinburg between protesters and church supporters in riot police gear over the construction of a church in a popular city park. Some of the demonstrators tore down the fencing surrounding the construction site guarded by police and national guardsmen. Witnesses and reporters said that violence and tear gas…
A group of Republican and Democratic U.S. senators introduced legislation on Tuesday seeking sanctions targeting the Nord Stream 2, a planned gas pipeline from Russia to Germany under fire from the United States and some European Union countries. The bill introduced by Republican Senators Ted Cruz, John Barrasso and Tom Cotton and Democrat Jeanne Shaheen,…