A sea in Russia’s Arctic known as the “birthplace of ice” could break ice melt records for a second consecutive year in 2021, climatologist Zachary Labe of Colorado State University tweeted Tuesday. In 2020 the Laptev Sea stayed ice-free until November for the first time in documented history. The sea, which plays a crucial role…
U.S. President Joe Biden should urge the release of U.S. citizens detained in Russia at his first summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin, former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan, who was jailed in Russia for spying, has said. “I would ask President Biden to aggressively discuss and resolve this issue with his Russian counterparts,” Whelan told…
Viasna, citing Latypov’s relatives, said Wednesday the activist was returned to prison and that family had been able to deliver him a parcel there. Latypov was detained last September and went on trial in the capital Minsk on several charges including creating protest symbols and resisting law enforcement. Viasna said he appeared in court with…
Updated at 2:15 p.m. on June 3. Turkey will send home Russian military experts helping it operate the Russian-made S-400 air defense system but will not budge on the key U.S. demand to scrap the deal altogether, Bloomberg reported this week. Russia delivered its first of four S-400 batteries to NATO member Turkey in July…
Nearly one in four Russians say they have had coronavirus though most have not been officially diagnosed, according to an independent survey published Wednesday. Only 7% of those polled told the Levada Center polling agency that they had obtained an official diagnosis after contracting the coronavirus. Another 17% said they had not been diagnosed but…
Airline companies said flights between Germany and Russia had resumed Wednesday evening, after each country blocked the other’s incoming flights as part of the fall-out from tensions over Belarus. German airline Lufthansa told AFP that the Russian authorities had finally granted it clearance for passenger flights to Russia in June. “That means Lufthansa flights to Moscow and St. Petersburg…
Sudan’s transitional government is renegotiating the previous administration’s naval base agreement with Russia, the state-run RIA Novosti news agency reported Tuesday. The Sudanese army chief of staff’s remarks follows Arab media reports in April that Sudan had suspended the naval base agreement. Russia’s Embassy in Khartoum said at the time it had not yet been…
Belarusian activist Stepan Latypov stabbed himself in the throat in a Minsk courtroom Thursday after testifying that police had tortured him in custody, the Current Time news site has reported, citing the Viasna Human Rights Center. Graphic videos posted on Twitter showed the aftermath of the incident, with the 41-year-old Latypov being carried away from…
Belarus said Tuesday it is further restricting citizens from leaving the country, including those with foreign residency permits, in a move the opposition denounced as “an absolute violation of the law.” The development comes as dozens of Belarusians, some of them illegally, have been fleeing their country in recent months amid a bloody crackdown in…
Russian lawmakers on Tuesday backed a bill that would force foreign internet companies to set up local offices or face harsh penalties, including an outright ban. The bill was passed on the first of its three required readings, parliament’s lower house said in a statement. The legislation concerns online companies whose daily users in Russia…
The Russian government plans to invest 777 billion rubles ($10.5 billion) into electric and hydrogen vehicle development by 2030, according to documents obtained by the Vedomosti news outlet. In the next nine years Russia’s electric vehicle (EV) share of the auto market could grow from 0.05% to 15%, officials at the Ministry of Economic Development…
On International Children’s Day, Rosneft sums up the results of its activities related to supporting children’s social projects.
The large families of the Krasnoyarsk Territory were given more than 7,000 laptops with the support of Rosneft.
Seven out of 10 Russians support government plans to revive the Stalin-era practice reminiscent of the gulag labor camps that would use prisoners for major construction projects, according to a state-backed survey released Tuesday. Several cabinet ministers, the state railway monopoly and the head of Russia’s penitentiary system have in recent weeks proposed dispatching around…
Russian authorities stepped up its crackdown on opposition figures Tuesday morning, raiding apartments, offices and a summer house connected to a vocal anti-Kremlin politician and his relatives. Former parliamentarian and opposition politician Dmitry Gudkov said Russian security officers raided his family dacha early Tuesday, while security services also searched the apartments of his former assistant,…
Russia has banned non-state-approved educational activities and cooperation with foreign academics, according to highly criticized changes to Russia’s education law that came into effect Tuesday. The law is based on the need cited by lawmakers for broad state power to permit or forbid activities outside formal academic settings. They said that the law was essential to counter…
Russia will resume flights with the United Kingdom along with flights to seven other countries in June but extend travel restrictions to Turkey for another three weeks, Russia’s coronavirus response center announced Monday. Moscow temporarily suspended flights between Russia and the U.K. in late December, after Britain announced it had discovered a highly transmissible strain…
The former executive director of Open Russia, an opposition movement founded by exiled Kremlin critic Mikhail Khodorkovsky, has reportedly been removed from a plane in St. Petersburg and detained. “I have just been removed from the plane from Pulkovo (airport)…The plane was about to take off.” Andrei Pivovarov wrote on his Twitter account on Monday…
The Russian government is working on amendments to legislation that could ban the production of non-recyclable plastic materials in Russia, Deputy Prime Minister Viktoria Abramchenko said at the 9th Nevsky International Ecological Congress in St. Petersburg. New measures will provide Russian businessmen with opportunities to adapt and adjust their manufacturing, the government claimed. But some lawmakers…
Steven Seagal, Hollywood actor and one of Vladimir Putin’s biggest fans, is now a member of the pro-Kremlin party called “A Just Russia – Patriots – For Truth,” the party announced Saturday. Seagal, a naturalized Russian citizen since 2016, said that he plans to focus his work in the party on environmental issues and crackdown…
RN-Purneftegaz, a production enterprise of Rosneft Oil Company, began using uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAVs) to monitor greenhouse gas levels at oil and gas treatment, refining, and transportation facilities.
Russia’s independent news website Newsru.com announced on Monday that it had shut down after 21 years on the web, citing financial difficulties caused by the political climate in the country. The news aggregator said that “major advertisers stopped cooperating with us” after Russian-Western relations deteriorated over the 2014 annexation of Crimea and that other advertisers…
Israel has prohibited its citizens and residents from travelling to Russia after placing the country on a travel blacklist, the Israeli Ministry of Health said Sunday. The ministry said Russia was one of a number of countries where the risk of coronavirus remained high and banned its citizens from travelling to Russia from Monday until…
A Russian student detained on a diverted Ryanair flight will face trial in Belarus, the country’s foreign minister told Russia’s Kommersant business daily Monday. Sofia Sapega, 23, was arrested with dissident journalist boyfriend Roman Protasevich on May 23 when Belarusian authorities scrambled a military jet to divert the passenger plane over an alleged bomb threat.…
U.S. President Joe Biden pledged Sunday to press Russian leader Vladimir Putin to uphold human rights when they meet in Geneva next month for their first summit. The face-to-face meeting with the Kremlin leader comes amid levels of tension not seen for years, with Washington now dialing back its ambitions to little more than establishing…
A military convoy struck a roadside bomb in the northwest of the conflict-wracked Central African Republic, leaving two policemen and three Russian paramilitaries dead, the government said Sunday. “Three Russian allies and two Central African police officers were killed,” government spokesman Ange Maxime Kazagui told AFP, while UN sources said the attack Thursday also wounded…
President Vladimir Putin praised Russia’s closer ties with Belarus on Friday as he hosted strongman Alexander Lukashenko amid a global outcry following the forced diversion of a European plane. Observers will watch the negotiations to see how far Russia goes to support Lukashenko’s regime after Belarus scrambled a Mig jet to divert a Ryanair jet…
The state-backed Russian group behind a massive hacking campaign revealed last year has re-emerged with a series of attacks on government agencies, think tanks, consultants and other organizations, according to officials and researchers. A security update from Microsoft late Thursday said the group known as Nobelium has stepped up attacks, notably targeting government agencies involved in foreign policy as…
The Russian economy could lose more than 5 trillion rubles ($67 billion) by 2050 due to melting permafrost damage to infrastructure, Russian environmental minister Alexander Kozlov told his audience at the 9th Nevsky International Ecological Congress in St. Petersburg on Thursday. Approximately 65% of Russian territory is covered by permafrost – the upper layer of…
EU chief Ursula von der Leyen on Friday warned Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko “it is time to change course” as her executive held out the promise of a three-billion-euro support package if he leaves power. The European Commission president said the EU’s message was twofold: one of support to the Belarusian people — and a…
The arrest of prominent investigative reporter Ivan Golunov in June 2019 on trumped-up drug charges that could have landed him in prison for up to 20 years sparked an outcry with activists and Kremlin critics demanding for his release. Golunov, 38, was released days later and the charges were dropped after an unprecedented campaign in…
The cancellation of several European flights to Moscow after air carriers said they would not fly over Belarus was due to purely technical reasons, the Kremlin said Friday. “Aviation authorities will give the necessary explanations, but these are technical reasons,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters, adding that the measures were taken to ensure aviation…
Air France cancelled another flight from Paris to Moscow on Friday after Russia rejected a flight plan that would have skipped Belarusian airspace, the airline said. A flight was scrapped on Wednesday for similar reasons as the EU has urged airlines to avoid Belarusian airspace after the regime there diverted a Ryanair plane and arrested an opposition…
Russia on Friday welcomed Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s “decisive” victory after he claimed re-election with a landslide win in a vote criticized by the opposition and Western nations. “A decisive victory was won by the incumbent head of state,” the foreign ministry said in a statement. “We view the elections as a sovereign affair of the…
Russia said Friday that Western countries were being irresponsible and endangering passengers by banning flights over Belarus in response to President Alexander Lukashenko’s forced grounding of a Ryanair flight. “What the West has done by introducing a ban on flights through Belarusian airspace for political reasons is completely irresponsible and endangers the safety of passengers,”…
Russia on Friday threw its weight behind Belarus’s increasingly isolated regime, slamming a European overflight ban as President Vladimir Putin prepared to host strongman Alexander Lukashenko. The meeting is an important show of support for the authoritarian Belarusian leader who is facing a global outcry after he forced a Ryanair jet to land in Minsk last…
The United States has informed Russia that it will not return to the Open Skies Treaty, a key international arms control pact, the Associated Press reported Thursday. The decision came weeks after the U.S. said it was reviewing the previous administration’s withdrawal in November as the decision for Russia’s own exit from the Open Skies…
A Ukrainian soldier was killed by a separatist sniper in the country’s war-ravaged east, the military said Thursday, following an escalation of tensions between Kiev and Moscow. He was shot and fatally wounded near the village of Novotoshkivske in the separatist-controlled Lugansk region that borders Russia, the military said in a statement. Kiev has been battling…
Six Armenian soldiers were captured by Azerbaijan Thursday, the latest in a series of escalating border incidents after last year’s war over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region. The capture of Armenia’s soldiers comes at a delicate time for Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan ahead of snap elections next month. Pashinyan described the situation as “tense and explosive”…
Austria on Thursday slammed Russia after it refused to allow an Austrian Airlines flight to be rerouted to avoid Belarusian airspace, resulting in the Vienna-Moscow service being cancelled. Austria’s Foreign Ministry said Russia’s refusal to allow the route change was “absolutely incomprehensible,” urging it “not to artificially impede free air traffic between Russia and Europe.”…
Russian gas giant Gazprom has presented an architectural concept to build the world’s second-tallest skyscraper in St. Petersburg. The Lakhta Center 2 is planned to stand 703 meters tall — a reference to 1703, the year when St. Petersburg was officially founded, Gazprom said in a statement announcing plans for the new mega-skyscraper. Construction of…
The number of Russians who approve of how President Vladimir Putin and Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin govern Russia has increased over the past two months, according to an independent poll published Thursday. The Levada Center polling agency said that Putin’s approval ratings grew from 63% in March to 67% in May, while 59% of citizens…
A group of Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) have called on the governments of France, Germany, and Italy to stop funding the Arctic LNG II liquified natural gas project, describing investments in the Russian natural gas industry as unsafe and contradictory to EU climate policy. Around 20% of the world’s natural gas comes from…
Bashneft, a subsidiary of Rosneft Oil Company, participated in the all-country environment project Green Spring and planted 17,000 seedlings at the square of 60 hectares in Bashkortostan, the main region of the company’s operation.
Angarsk Petrochemical Company, an enterprise of Rosneft Oil Company’s refining complex, launched the production of a new product – industrial liquid oxygen.
Open Russia, an opposition movement established by exiled Kremlin critic Mikhail Khodorkovsky, announced its closure Thursday to avoid jail for supporters ahead of parliamentary elections. Executive director Andrei Pivovarov linked the decision to bills advancing through Russian parliament tightening criminal punishment for Russians who support and work for “undesirable” organizations. Open Russia was labeled “undesirable”…
Facebook said Russia and Iran are the internet’s leading spreaders of disinformation aimed at manipulating public opinion in a report published Thursday. Facebook researchers linked most of Russian operations to the Internet Research Agency, a St. Petersburg-based troll factory that was also blamed by the U.S. intelligence community for 2016 election interference. “Facebook’s broader security…
The UN civil aviation agency will hold an urgent meeting Thursday to discuss Belarus after Western powers on the UN Security Council called for the body to investigate Minsk’s diversion of a European flight and arrest of a dissident. The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) Council will meet as the consequences of the incident play…
Russian President Vladimir Putin said Wednesday that mandating coronavirus vaccinations would be “impractical and impossible” amid an ongoing debate on how to ramp up the country’s slow Covid-19 vaccine take-up. Ex-Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev kicked off the debate last week by publicly supporting compulsory vaccinations, only to reiterate their voluntary nature later. At least one…
Governments were quick to denounce the diversion of a Ryanair plane by Belarus as an act of “terrorism” and “state-sponsored piracy” — but will the country face legal consequences? It’s not a simple question. “Civil aviation rules were not written with the expectation that a state would behave like a terrorist,” said Nathalie Younan, an…
Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a law on Wednesday easing restrictions on tourists coming to Russia by allowing them to stay in the country for up to 6 months if they have hotel bookings. “The law allows the issuance of ordinary tourist visas for up to six months for citizens of all countries, regardless of…
Rosneft and its subsidiaries took part in the National environmental campaign Green Spring 2021.
Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny appeared in court via video link Wednesday for the start of hearings into complaints against conditions at his penal colony. Navalny, 44, was jailed in February and is serving two-and-a-half years at a facility outside Moscow on old fraud charges he says are politically motivated. His detention, which came months…
Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said Wednesday that he had acted “legally” in diverting a Ryanair flight with a dissident on board and slammed the West for “crossing red lines.” The Athens-to-Vilnius flight carrying a wanted opposition activist Roman Protasevich was forced to make a landing in Minsk on Sunday over a supposed bomb scare, prompting…
VELIKY NOVGOROD — Yulia Galyamina knew she might be arrested on Saturday for organizing a meeting of independent municipal deputies in Veliky Novgorod, Russia’s ancient seat of self-government. She just didn’t expect it to happen so fast. Within 30 minutes of the start of the two-day Zemsky Syezd, or Congress, a name chosen in a…
A defiant President Lukashenko will address Belarus’ parliament Wednesday as international pressure over the country’s diversion of an airliner in order to arrest a dissident grows, with the UN Security Council set to meet behind closed doors later. The speech to parliament will be the first time the Belarusian leader has spoken in public since…
Belarus’ interception of a commercial flight Sunday in order to arrest Roman Protasevich, a 26-year-old Lithuania-based dissident blogger has triggered global outrage and condemnation. Protasevich faces charges of inciting mass rallies in Belarus following last summer’s disputed presidential election which triggered an unprecedented wave of protest across the country. The EU has already hit Belarus…
Several Russian regions will experience “extreme hot weather” over the next few days, chief scientist at the Hydrometeorological Centre of Russia Roman Vilfand told the state-run RIA Novosti news agency. The freak weather conditions are expected to be most severe in the Volga River region and the Ural Mountains. Temperatures in these areas could rise…
The Russian girlfriend of a Belarusian dissident arrested with him when their plane was diverted to Minsk is being held on suspicion of crimes at the time of protests last year, Moscow said Tuesday. Sofiya Sapega, a 23-year-old law student at the European Humanities University (EHU) in Lithuania, was detained along with opposition journalist Roman…
A court fined Google for failing to remove content banned by the Russian authorities as Moscow’s 24-hour ultimatum to comply or have its services slowed down passed on Tuesday. Russia’s internet regulator Roskomnadzor threatened to slow down Google services if the internet giant did not comply with requests to delete an estimated 5,000 links. Roskomnadzor…