Updated at 6:44 p.m. on April 7 to add statement from Sputnik V’s official Twitter account. The European Union’s medicines regulator will investigate whether the developers of Russia’s Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine went against global ethical and scientific standards in clinical trials, the Financial Times reported Wednesday. The European Medicines Agency (EMA) last month launched…
Germany’s Bavaria region has signed a provisional agreement to buy doses of Russia’s Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine once it is approved by European regulators, state premier Markus Soeder said Wednesday. The southern state has “signed a memorandum of understanding today […] for the supply of Sputnik,” Soeder told reporters in Munich. If the Sputnik vaccine is…
A Russian warplane has intercepted a Norwegian electronic warfare aircraft over the Barents Sea near the Arctic, state media cited the military as saying Wednesday. Citing Russia’s National Defense Management Center, Interfax said the Russian military detected an “air target” approaching the Russian border from Norway. “The [Russian Navy’s] Northern Fleet air defense forces’ MiG-31…
Slovakia’s State Institute for Drug Control has told the country’s Health Ministry it has been unable to evaluate the risks and benefits of Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine due to a lack of data and inconsistencies in dosages, the watchdog’s spokeswoman Magdaléna Jurkemíková told The Moscow Times on Wednesday. Slovakia, one of Europe’s hardest-hit countries by…
Russia will not invite foreign dignitaries to its annual World War II victory parade on Red Square next month, the Kremlin announced Wednesday. “This year is not a [major] anniversary year, so we don’t intend to invite foreign participants,” President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters. “The rest will probably involve the usual invitations,…
Russia’s Central Bank chief has urged the government to “abandon” price caps on food products “as quickly as possible,” arguing the restrictions could do long-term damage to the Russian economy. Speaking at a Moscow Exchange forum on Tuesday, Elvira Nabiullina doubled down on her calls for the government to ditch its attempts to control surging…
In early March, with Russia’s domestic Covid-19 vaccination campaign stalling, prominent tech and publishing entrepreneur Ilya Krasilschik took to social media to urge his followers to get their coronavirus jabs. “We are living through a national catastrophe,” wrote Krasilschik in a widely publicized Facebook post. “Go and get vaccinated.” Krasilschik is one of few Russian…
Dubai announced Tuesday it will deport the Russian organizer of and 11 Ukrainian women involved in a salacious photoshoot on a high-rise balcony. The swift deportation is rare for the Muslim sheikhdom, where cases of public debauchery and producing pornography usually go to trial, according to the Associated Press. Those arrested had faced up to…
The Kremlin urged Russian companies Wednesday to develop alternatives to Zoom and a lawmaker warned it could be blocked in the country, after media said the service had restricted access to government agencies. The U.S. company has emerged as the global leader in video-conferencing applications, becoming ubiquitous as companies and schools moved online after the…
The Russian ruble has slid to its lowest level against the dollar in five months as fears of a possible escalation of conflict in eastern Ukraine grow. The ruble has lost 2% against the U.S. dollar since the start of the week and is now trading at 77.7 against the currency — its lowest level…
Russia’s Ambassador to the United States Anatoly Antonov will likely not return to Washington in the near future, the state-run RIA Novosti news agency reported Wednesday, citing a top diplomatic official. Antonov was recalled to Moscow last month following U.S. President Joe Biden’s televised remarks calling his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin a “killer” who would…
Serdar Berdymukhamedov, Turkmenistan’s president-in-waiting and son of the incumbent, on March 30 embarked on a four-day trip to Russia as part of an official government delegation. The outing looked like yet another dress rehearsal. Official readouts of meetings in Moscow allude to mostly humdrum business, although there are hints of noteworthy developments. The delegation was…
Russia has amassed the largest concentration of troops on its border with Ukraine since the eastern Ukraine conflict first erupted in 2014, The Insider investigative news website reported Wednesday, citing military analysts. Recent Russian military movements and an increase in clashes between Ukrainian forces and pro-Russian separatists have raised fears of an escalation in the long-simmering…
RN-Nyaganneftegaz, an enterprise of Rosneft oil production complex, invested more than 1.7 billion roubles in environmental protection and remediation measures in 2020.
Updated at 11:00 a.m. on April 8 to add Zoom statement. Video conferencing platform Zoom has banned its distributors from selling services to government agencies and partly state-owned companies in Russia and neighboring countries, the Kommersant business daily reported Wednesday. Zoom has emerged as a leading virtual meeting platform since millions were forced into self-isolation…
Acclaimed Russian director Andrei Konchalovsky has pulled his latest film from the country’s prestigious White Elephants Awards in protest at plans to honor opposition leader Alexei Navalny at the event. In a message on Facebook, the 83-year-old said he had asked that “Dear Comrades!” — nominated for best film and also shortlisted for the 93rd…
Russia said talks aimed at salvaging an international agreement on Iran’s nuclear programme got off to a “successful” start on Tuesday, with the U.S. expected to join indirectly for the first time since President Joe Biden’s arrival in the White House. Biden has said he is ready to reverse the 2018 decision of his predecessor…
Moscow investigators have launched an inspection into “Russian Woman,” the country’s entry to this year’s Eurovision song contest, after a veteran’s newspaper accused it of inciting hatred, the state-run TASS news agency reported Tuesday. Written and performed by Tajik-born artist Manizha, “Russian Woman” has sparked controversy among conservative groups for its lyrics promoting female empowerment…
Russia’s Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine appears significantly less effective in combating the South African variant of the virus, a new laboratory study of 12 cases has shown. Scientists in the U.S. used blood samples from Argentinians who had been vaccinated with Sputnik V to investigate whether the antibodies they had produced would effectively fight various mutations…
A number of supporters of Alexei Navalny were detained Tuesday outside his penal colony east of Moscow after they were denied access to the jailed Kremlin critic, who is on hunger strike demanding proper medical treatment. Among those detained was Anastasia Vasilyeva, Navalny’s personal doctor and head of the Alliance of Doctors medical trade union…
A Russian court has fined TikTok 2.5 million rubles ($32,700) for failing to delete calls to attend protests in support of jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny, the state-run TASS news agency reported Tuesday. Russia has likened the non-deletions to attempted foreign interference, threatening steep fines against platforms in a move that critics call an escalation…
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Tuesday urged NATO to speed up his country’s membership in the alliance, saying it was the only way to end fighting with pro-Russia separatists. Zelenskiy spoke with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg after an increase in clashes and Russian military movements on the border raised fears of an escalation of…
Foreign investors’ holdings of Russian government debt fell below 20% for the first time in six years at the end of March, official data from Russia’s National Settlement Depository shows. International investors have been selling their holdings in Russia’s state debt since the start of the year, fearful of being caught up in a possible…
The Russian Navy has for the first time fired long-range Kalibr cruise missiles on a ground target in the Sea of Japan, the Russian military announced Tuesday. The Pacific Fleet’s statement follows concerns voiced by U.S. defense officials that the Kalibr, which will for the first time allow Russian warships to conduct long-range strikes against…
A Russian company that planned to send tourists to space through the country’s first private cosmodrome has scrapped the project and will permanently close, the state-run RIA Novosti news agency reported Tuesday. Kosmokurs’ operations will cease due to “insurmountable difficulties” in coordinating with local authorities on the cosmodrome project as well as the company’s “inability…
Jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny has been transferred with a high fever to a medical unit for observation, the pro-Kremlin Izvestia daily reported Monday, citing prison authorities. The report, citing the regional branch of Russia’s Federal Prison Service that oversees Navalny’s prison colony, came hours after he said in an Instagram post that he has…
Russia said on Tuesday it opposed sanctions against the junta in Myanmar, warning that punitive measures could spark a large-scale civil war in the country. “A course towards threats and pressure including the use of sanctions against the current Myanmar authorities has no future and is extremely dangerous,” news agency Interfax quoted a Russian Foreign…
“I am quoting the official data from today’s temperature measurement: ‘Navalny A.A., strong cough, temperature 38.1’,” he wrote, referring to degrees Celsius, or 100.6 degrees Fahrenheit. “P.S. I am continuing my hunger strike, of course,” Navalny said. The opposition politician is serving a two-and-a-half year sentence on old fraud charges in a penal colony some…
Elon Musk has advised Russia to work toward “full reusability” in its Amur rockets similar to that of his SpaceX corporation’s rockets. Russia’s state space corporation Roscosmos last year announced the development of the Amur carrier rocket as a successor to its Soyuz rocket. According to Roscosmos, the first stage of the Amur launch vehicle…
Updated at 5:03 p.m. on April 5 to clarify that the women weren’t arrested. Eight Russian women were among dozens of people involved a widely shared nude photoshoot on a balcony in broad daylight, the Russian state-run RIA Novosti news agency reported Monday. Dubai police announced arrests on public debauchery charges after video and photos of…
Ukraine on Monday denied reports that its forces had killed a five-year-old child in an attack on pro-Moscow eastern separatists, after Russia said it would launch an investigation. “This is a gross, cynical, nasty and godless manipulation,” Ukraine’s defence ministry told AFP in a written comment on the claim, denouncing it as “fake news”. Moscow said Monday…
Nearly half of Russians say that Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny was rightly imprisoned for violating parole while recovering abroad from a poisoning attack, according to an independent survey published Monday. The Levada Center polling agency said 48% of Russian respondents consider Navalny’s sentence of two and a half years in one of the country’s most…
Russia said Monday it was extending a deadline for Twitter to remove illegal content by a month to mid-May, after the social media giant started cooperating when Russia slowed down its operations. State telecommunications watchdog Roskomnadzor imposed slowdowns on Twitter’s services in mid-March, accusing it of failing to remove content related to child pornography, drug use and calls…
Russian-speaking social media users have posted 10% more profanity-laced content in the two months since a law requiring platforms to delete them came into force than before, the RBC news website reported Sunday. The Medialogia media monitor tallied 20.2 million posts containing swear words on Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram and Twitter, as well as three…
Russia recorded almost 30,000 excess deaths during February, the country’s statistics agency announced Friday — a figure which takes Russia’s total excess fatality count since the start of the coronavirus pandemic above 422,000. Excess deaths are calculated by comparing fatalities during the pandemic with mortality rates in the same months of previous years. It is…
Western countries have grown increasingly nervous in recent days over signs of a Russian military buildup close to the conflict in eastern Ukraine and on the annexed Crimean peninsula. The conflict in eastern Ukraine — which broke out in 2014 following Ukraine’s pro-Europe Maidan revolution and Russia’s annexation of Crimea — has seen repeated flare-ups…
A Russian court on Friday fined Twitter nearly $117,000 for failing to remove calls to opposition protests, as Moscow ramps up pressure against the U.S. tech giant. Authorities in January accused foreign social media platforms of interfering in Russia’s domestic affairs by not deleting calls to rallies in support of jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny…
Russia’s state-run Sputnik news organization will shut down its British operations five years after opening a bureau in Scotland, the news agency described as a Kremlin propaganda tool announced Friday. Sputnik began broadcasting from its Edinburgh studio in August 2016, the same year that U.S. intelligence agencies accused it and the RT news channel of…
Rights groups in Moscow urged Russians to take responsibility for abuses in Syria as they released a damning report Friday on the country’s role in the decade-old conflict. Published to coincide with the 10-year anniversary of the Syrian war, the report is the first into the conflict by Russian campaigners and seeks to shed light…
Surgeons in Russia’s Far East successfully performed an open-heart surgery despite the outbreak of a major fire in their hospital Friday. A wiring malfunction is believed to have caused the fire at the cardiac surgery center in the city of Blagoveschensk, regional prosecutors told state media. Around 120 personnel and patients were evacuated as the…
Armenia’s prime minister has gone into self-isolation as a preventative measure against coronavirus ahead of a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow, officials said on Friday. It is common for anybody meeting in person with 68-year-old Putin to isolate beforehand to protect him from the contagion. Nikol Pashinyan, who faces backlash at home…
The developers of Russia’s Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine said Friday that they have come up with technology that “updates” the jab to protect against new, more-contagious strains of the virus. Studies suggest that vaccines currently in use provide less protection against the new Covid-19 variants that have emerged in Britain, South Africa and Brazil. Scientists…
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Thursday accused Moscow of building up troops on his country’s border as the United States warned Russia against “intimidating” Ukraine. Kiev has been locked in a conflict with Russian-backed separatists since 2014, and this week Ukrainian officials reported Russian troop movement in annexed Crimea and on the border, near territories…
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Thursday warned that anti-white racism might be building in the United States and said that political correctness “taken to the extreme” would have lamentable consequences. In an interview with political scientists broadcast on national television, Moscow’s top diplomat said Russia had long supported a worldwide trend that “everyone wants to get…
A television crew from the Kremlin-backed broadcaster RT has filmed a segment at Alexei Navalny’s prison colony, the jailed Kremlin critic’s Telegram channel said Thursday. The crew arrived at the prison colony, known as one of Russia’s harshest, a day after Navalny announced the start of his hunger strike to demand proper medical care for…
Jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny announced Wednesday that he is going on hunger strike to demand medical treatment and an end to “torturous” sleep deprivation in one of Russia’s most notorious prison colonies. Hunger strikes as a tool of protest date back to the Soviet era, when solo dissidents or even entire groups of prisoners…
Russian doctors are more likely to trust the homegrown Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine than they were last year and trust their country’s jab significantly more than they do foreign vaccines, according to an independent survey published Thursday. Out of the nearly 2,000 Russian doctors surveyed by Levada and the professional community of medics Vrachi.rf, 69%…
Smartphones, tablets and computers sold in Russia must now come with pre-installed domestic software and apps from Thursday in a new law seen by critics as another attempt to curb online freedom. The initiative was introduced in an effort to promote the country’s tech companies but critics say it is another bid to tighten state control of Russia’s…
Allies of jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny expressed concern for his health Thursday, after his announcement in an Instagram post that he is going on hunger strike until prison authorities allow his doctor to treat severe back and leg pain. For the 44-year old anti-corruption activist — who fell ill last summer after an…
Every year on April 1, International Bird Day is celebrated to coincide with the start of the birds’ return from their wintering grounds
Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny on Wednesday announced he is launching a hunger strike from the prison colony where he is serving a 2.5-year sentence to demand proper medical treatment. The Kremlin critic was sent to one of Russia’s most notorious penal colonies on returning to Russia from Germany, where he spent months recovering from…
In 2012, Lyudmila, a Ukrainian teacher living in Kiev, was overjoyed when she inherited her grandmother’s small house set on half an acre of land overlooking Kerch, a picturesque city on the Black Sea in Crimea. Last week, she received a letter saying she will have to sell her land to the Crimean authorities, which…
U.S. visas and services for American citizens will only be available in Moscow after the U.S. slashed operations at its remaining Russian consulates, U.S. Ambassador to Russia John Sullivan announced Thursday. High tensions and Russia’s 2017 personnel cap on the U.S. diplomatic mission previously prompted the State Department to consider closing the two remaining U.S.…
Russian diplomats in North Korea are growing increasingly frustrated with the “severe conditions” in which they have found themselves as anti-coronavirus measures cut off the secretive country from the rest of the world. In a Thursday statement, Russia’s Embassy in Pyongyang said diplomats in the country are facing an acute shortage of essential goods sparked…
Protests broke out in Georgia’s capital of Tbilisi over Russian journalist Vladimir Pozner’s visit to celebrate his birthday, Georgian media reported late Wednesday. Footage showed crowds chanting outside a central Tbilisi hotel where the media personality and state-run television talk show host was said to have been gathering with dozens of guests on the eve…
The top Pentagon general called counterparts in Russia and Ukraine Wednesday as the U.S. Defense Department expressed concerns about a reported buildup of Russian troops along Ukraine’s border and in Crimea. U.S. troops in Europe were on an elevated “watch condition” as Joint Chiefs Chairman General Mark Milley spoke to General Valery Gerasimov, the Russian…
A court in St. Petersburg on Wednesday jailed a man for a year for having attacked a riot police officer during a rally in support of imprisoned Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny. Yevgeny Tugankov became the third Russian to receive a prison sentence over the nationwide protests that took place in late January and early February…
Jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny announced Wednesday that he has gone on hunger strike in protest of conditions that he says are causing his health to deteriorate. Navalny’s lawyers warned last week that his life may be in danger after he reported suffering from weeks of severe back pain and a loss of sensation in…
Italy expelled two Russian officials on Wednesday after an Italian navy captain was caught red-handed by police selling secret documents to the Russians. The Italian frigate captain was arrested on spying charges after officers tailing him saw him late Tuesday in Rome in a “clandestine meeting” with a Russian military officer, according to a police…
UN experts expressed concern on Wednesday over reports of “grave human rights abuses” by Russian mercenaries in the Central African Republic, where they have supported the embattled government’s military. “The experts have received, and continue to receive, reports of grave human rights abuses and violations of international humanitarian law, attributable to the private military personnel…