Russia’s Foreign Affairs Ministry said Tuesday that a U.S. decision to effectively back Israel’s right to build Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank undermined the legal basis for a settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Monday abandoned Washington’s four-decade-old position that such settlements were “inconsistent with international law.”…
The Russian parliament’s commission on foreign interference said it has found several “camps” that allegedly receive funding from abroad to train protesters, both in-person and online, the Kommersant business daily reported Tuesday. Lawmakers formed the commission after this summer’s wave of protests in Moscow, accusing several news outlets and the U.S. Embassy in Russia of…
Russian corporate heavyweights Sberbank and Mail.Ru have finalized a new strategic partnership just one day after Sberbank confirmed it would step-back from its role in tech giant Yandex. In a series of announcements, Sberbank and Mail.Ru confirmed today the terms of a new joint venture to cover their food and taxi businesses, which the pair…
Ruble volatility has fallen to its lowest level in five years, amid a pause in sanctions pressure from the U.S. and more stable macroeconomic policies from the Russian government. The ruble’s implied volatility on the financial markets — a measure of how extreme traders expect swings in the value of the currency will be over…
As the only remaining independent, English-language news source reporting from Russia, The Moscow Times plays a critical role in connecting Russia to the world. Editorial decisions are made entirely by journalists in our newsroom, who adhere to the highest ethical standards. We fearlessly cover issues that are often considered off-limits or taboo in Russia, from…
A Russian lawyer for Paul Whelan, a former U.S. Marine held in Moscow on spying charges, urged the United States and other countries on Tuesday to push for a prisoner swap with Moscow that could get his client released. Whelan, who holds U.S., British, Canadian and Irish passports, was arrested in December and accused of espionage.…
Russian tour operators have begun selling organized tours into war-ravaged Syria despite government warnings for citizens to avoid the country, the Kommersant business daily reported Tuesday. Syria has been wracked by eight years of conflict after anti-government protests in 2011 devolved into civil war. Russia launched a military campaign in 2015 to support its ally…
When John Gartner, a former Rhodesian soldier who now heads the military security company OAM, was approached by a Mozambican official to help fight the Islamist insurgency in the country’s north, he thought he was about to win a lucrative contract. “We presented them with a first-class proposal in early August. We have so much…
Russian police detained two activists on Monday after they floated a giant inflatable killer whale on the Moscow River outside the Kremlin to call on authorities to protect the creatures, protesters said. Environmental campaign group Greenpeace said it had staged the stunt to urge authorities to ban the capture of whales for educational or cultural…
A controversial Russian lawmaker has offered admitted agent Maria Butina a parliamentary post, Russian news agencies reported Monday. State Duma deputy Leonid Slutsky met Butina the day after she returned to Russia in October, saying that Butina “has many victories ahead.” Butina served most of her 18-month sentence in a U.S. prison after pleading guilty…
Full-scale preparations for the Day of Missile Forces and Artillery have been underway over the past week in the Leningrad region town of Luga, with large-scale shooting exercises, tank battles and rocket launches lighting up the sky. During the Defense-Ministry led rehearsals, personnel carried out reconstructions of a World War II tank battle, tactical exercises…
Russians’ indifference toward U.S. President Donald Trump has reached an all-time high, according to a state-run survey published Monday. Russian lawmakers greeted Trump’s victory in 2016 with thunderous applause and a majority of Russian citizens predicted he would make a competent president when he took office. While Trump ran for office on a platform of restoring…
Russia‘s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on Monday that Moscow had successfully handed three naval ships it captured last year back to Ukraine. The handover, confirmed by the two countries’ foreign ministries, occurred in the Black Sea off the coast of Crimea, which Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014. Russia seized the ships on the same area…
Russia’s leading tech company Yandex is planning a major overhaul of its governance structure in a bid to settle ownership disputes with the Russian government. Under the plans, Yandex will create a new “Public Interest Foundation” which will have a significant say in the future of the company, controlling the Yandex’s so-called golden share, which…
An influential pro-Kremlin billionaire wants to bankroll a conservative religious troll farm, the Open Media news website has reported, citing an unnamed political scientist who works with the Kremlin. Konstantin Malofeev has long financed the Kremlin’s drive to spread so-called “family values,” including last year’s U.S.-Russian summit of right-wing Christians who oppose same-sex marriage and…
President Vladimir Putin’s favorability has dropped by 10 percentage points since 2017 even though he still enjoys high job approval numbers among Russians, according to an independent Levada Center pollster survey published Monday. Putin’s approval rating reached an all-time high of 87% in 2014, after Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine. It began falling throughout 2018…
Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko maintained his hold on power after results published early on Monday showed not a single opposition candidate had won a seat in parliamentary elections over the weekend. Lukashenko has governed the former Soviet country with an iron fist for a quarter of a century and plans to extend his rule beyond…
Russia will return three captured naval ships to Ukraine on Monday and is moving them to a handover location agreed with Kiev, Crimea’s border guard service was cited as saying by Russian news agencies on Sunday. A Reuters reporter in Crimea, which Russian annexed from Ukraine in 2014, earlier on Sunday saw coastguard boats pulling…
During the visit of the President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin to the BRICS summit in Brazil, the Chief Executive Officer of PJSC Rosneft Oil Company Igor Sechin as part of the Russian delegation took part in a number of bilateral meetings with the leaders of the countries in which the Company’s projects are…
A court in St. Petersburg has ordered the release of a Church of Scientology leader from pretrial custody two years after he was arrested, the Russian city’s court system announced Friday. Ivan Matsitsky was among five people taken into custody on extremism, illegal entrepreneurship and incitement charges during a 2017 raid on the church’s St.…
Russia’s intelligence agency the Federal Security Service (FSB) could be behind the disappearance of $450 million worth of cryptocurrency from an online exchange platform, the BBC has reported. The BBC investigation into how Wex, an online exchange for Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, went out of business in 2018 has revealed fresh links between the platform’s…
Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko has criticized Russia for making it pay for combat aircraft deliveries and threatened to revise a key border control pact in the latest public rift between the close allies. Belarus on Wednesday received two of the 12 Russian Su-30SM fighter jets it ordered in 2017, with two more expected next week.…
An estimated 8% of Russians have disabilities, but they are rarely seen on Moscow’s streets. Activists say it’s because the city lacks accessibility for people in wheelchairs. We spent a day with Diana, a young joyful woman who is disabled, to see what it’s like to travel by metro in Moscow.
Russia, Norway and Lithuania conducted an exchange of spies on Friday, securing the return of several captured agents to their home countries, the head of Lithuanian counterintelligence said. Previous reports suggested that Moscow, Oslo and Vilnius were discussing exchanging two Russians jailed in Lithuania, two Lithuanians sentenced for spying in Russia, and a Norwegian, Frode…
A well-known zoo and safari park owner in Russian-annexed Crimea has announced he is giving away more than 30 bears from one of his parks — otherwise he’ll be forced to euthanize them. Oleg Zubkov owns the Taigan lion park 46 kilometers west of Simferopol, where bears taken from circuses and private zoos live alongside…
Russia landed attack helicopters and troops at a sprawling air base in northern Syria vacated by U.S. forces, the Russian Defense Ministry’s Zvezda TV channel said on Friday. Armed Russian military police were shown in footage aired on Zvezda flying into the Syrian air base in northern Aleppo province near the border with Turkey and…
Lithuania’s president has pardoned two Russian nationals in a move that could pave the way for a possible three-way spy exchange between Russia, Norway and Lithuania, its presidential office said Friday. Last week, Lithuanian parliament amended legislation to allow President Gitanas Nausėda to pardon people convicted of a crime in Lithuania in exchange for Lithuanian…
Fear of extinction as a result of runaway climate change has shocked the world into scrambling to reduce carbon emissions and develop green technologies before it’s too late. Russia’s most powerful business lobby, the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs (RSPP), has a different take on the crisis. “We have to maximize our sales of…
Russia’s state oil giant Rosneft could be helping Venezuela secretly export millions of barrels of oil, as the Latin American country seeks to avoid U.S. sanctions against its crude exports, Bloomberg has reported. In a bid to avoid international detection, a Rosneft-contracted oil tanker, named Dragon, turned off its GPS transmitter before sailing from Europe…
Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday he hoped his U.S. counterpart Donald Trump would come to Russia to mark Victory Day on May 9 next year and that Moscow was ready for talks with Washington. Putin said it would be the “right” thing for Trump to attend a commemorative event in Moscow to mark…
The United States has warned Egypt that it could face sanctions over a $2 billion contract to buy more than 20 Su-35 fighter jets from Russia, The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday. Russia, which has become one of Egypt’s major arms suppliers, plans to start deliveries of Su-35 Flanker-E air-superiority fighters to the country as…
Russia has recognized violence-plagued Bolivia’s interim president until the South American nation’s next elections, the state-run RIA Novosti news agency quoted a senior diplomat as saying Thursday. Bolivia’s pro-Russian President Evo Morales resigned and fled the country this week to ease the violence that has been ongoing since a disputed vote last month. Senate vice-president…
The Russian Foreign Ministry said on Thursday that the authenticity of phone intercepts which Dutch investigators said show Moscow’s influence over pro-Russian rebels accused of downing Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 was not confirmed. MH17 was shot out of the sky on July 17, 2014, over territory held by pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine as it…
Russia has taken DNA samples from 49 orphans in Syria to confirm their relations to Russian citizens and clear their return home, Russia’s top children’s rights official said Thursday. Under a program spearheaded by Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, Russia has worked on returning women and children linked to Russians who fought for the Islamic State…
A plane crash that killed all 50 people on board at Russia’s Kazan Airport in 2013 was the result of errors made by two pilots, including one who got his license using falsified documents, Russian investigators said on Thursday. The Boeing 737-500 aircraft was operated by the now-defunct Tatarstan Airlines, which later had its license…
A team of international prosecutors has released a new batch of intercepted audio recordings of calls it says are between pro-Russian separatist fighters in eastern Ukraine and high-ranking Russian officials in the weeks leading up to the 2014 downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 over eastern Ukraine. The calls include conversations with separatist leaders including…
U.S. shale energy production is on course to overtake the output of Russia’s entire oil and gas sector by 2025, influential new forecasts have shown. In its flagship annual review of the global energy market, the International Energy Agency (IEA) was bullish on the prospects for the U.S. shale revolution, predicted falling dominance of Russia…
Rosneft has held a seminar on “Corporate Concepts of Hydrocarbon Management”, which was attended by the Company’s senior executives and managing representatives of foreign energy majors, including BP Russia President David Campbell, Equinor Russia President Elisabeth Birkeland Kvalheim, and Vice Presidents of the relevant units of these companies.
Top managers from Russian and foreign energy industry majors unite to help build a better understanding of corporate carbon management systems at the Carbon Management workshop organized by Rosneft last week.
More than 170,000 residents of separatist-controlled territories in eastern Ukraine have become Russian citizens under President Vladimir Putin’s fast-track program since it launched six months ago, authorities said. Putin simplified the path to Russian citizenship for an estimated 3.7 million residents of the pro-Russian Donetsk and Luhansk “people’s republics” in April, angering Ukraine and the…
British serial entrepreneur Richard Branson is considering buying a 25% stake in Russian low-cost airline Pobeda, according to Russian media reports. A source close to the billionaire, who owns the Virgin Group telecoms-to-travel conglomerate, told Russian news outlet Vesti the deal was being considered, but that it was too early to discuss specifics. Pobeda is…
A student at a Russian vocational college allegedly opened fire on campus Thursday, killing a fellow student and returning police fire before fatally shooting himself, law enforcement authorities in Far East Russia said. Here’s what we know about the deadly shooting in the Amur region city of Blagoveshchensk so far: What happened? — An unnamed…
ST. PETERSBURG – Just under a year ago, Dima Knyazev was sleeping rough in the Russian capital Moscow, stealing clothes from big department stores and selling them on the street to fund a drug habit he had picked up while in prison. Today, thanks to a charity in the country’s second-largest city of St. Petersburg,…
The Russian military has announced a new combat helicopter and air defense base in a formerly U.S.-controlled northern Syrian stronghold, the state-run TASS news agency reported Thursday. U.S. troops left the city of Qamishli, the administrative center of the self-proclaimed Kurdish autonomy in northern Syria, last month as Turkey launched an assault against Kurdish forces.…
A Russian pensioner has dropped to her knees in front of Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev in an encounter that drew comparisons to his iconic 2016 quote that turned into a meme. Cameras were rolling during Medvedev’s visit to a Siberian village with his entourage when the woman kneeled on the snowy ground in front of…
Russian authorities subjected a child to torture by letting her witness her father’s violent arrest a decade ago, Europe’s human rights court said Tuesday in a ruling that advocates say sets a precedent across Europe. The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ordered Russia to pay the unnamed plaintiff 25,000 euros ($27,500) in damages in…
The Russian economy expanded at an annual rate of 1.7% in the third quarter of the year, official GDP statistics released Wednesday showed. The rate of growth was up from 0.9% recorded by the Russian state statistics agency Rosstat in the second quarter, and around what was expected by economists and analysts. Both the agricultural…
Russian shoppers have embraced this year’s record-breaking Singles’ Day online sale — the biggest single shopping day of the year — as never before. In total, Russians spent 17.2 billion rubles ($267 million) on AliExpress, the Russian platform of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba, over the 24 hour shopping bonanza — a record high, and the…
Russia’s Armed Forces will soon welcome some new recruits when the Northern Fleet’s Arctic brigade launches a new Siberian husky squad, Interfax reported. Dogs have been used by the Russian military since as early as 1840, when records showed Russian forces employing dogs during the Caucasian War. They have been a regular presence in Russia’s…
Moscow City Court ruled to dissolve the Center for Support of Indigenous Peoples of the North/Russian Indigenous Training Center (CSIPN/RITC), provoking protests from Brussels and the Nordic Sami Parliaments. Hindering contacts with intergovernmental organizations and forums is exactly why the Justice Ministry in Moscow took the case to court, says CSIPN/RITC director Rodion Sulyandziga, who represents indigenous…
Ukraine should give up on the West and go back into Russia’s fold, influential Ukrainian billionaire Ihor Kolomoisky said in an interview with The New York Times Wednesday. Kolomoisky’s business ties to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy have been under heavy scrutiny since the start of the former comedian’s election campaign this year. Both men have…
RN-Uvatneftegaz, a subsidiary of Rosneft Oil Company, has discovered a new oil field, Sosnovoye, with total C1+C2 reserves of 4.2 million tonnes.
Russia on Wednesday accused Washington of hunting its citizens across the world and said it had made a formal diplomatic protest after Israel extradited a Russian man to the United States where he faces a slew of serious cyber crime charges. The U.S. Department of Justice said in a statement on Tuesday that Alexei Burkov,…
The Russian stock market has delivered the biggest returns to investors anywhere in the world in 2019. Since the start of the year, the MSCI Russia Index, a tracker which follows the 23 largest Russian publicly-listed companies has soared by 44%, Sberbank analyst Cole Akeson told Russian news site RBC. Over the same period, the…
Russia’s Justice Ministry has declared a Czech humanitarian relief group “undesirable” three years after the group was kicked out of a pro-Russian self-proclaimed state in eastern Ukraine. The People in Need NGO, which helps people affected by wartime crises and natural disasters, ended its eastern Ukrainian operations in 2016 after separatists in the Donetsk People’s…
Moscow drivers have the second-highest level of road rage in the world, a new survey has found. Only Mongolian capital Ulaanbaatar scored higher for road rage on the Mister Auto index, which measures the best and worst places in the world to drive. The survey ranked 100 international cities using 15 criteria covering infrastructure, safety…
A Russian businesswoman appears to be safe after Kuwait handed her a long jail term for embezzlement, the Kommersant business daily has reported. Reports said Monday that a Kuwaiti court had sentenced investment executive Marsha Lazareva to 15 years in prison for money laundering. A U.S. law firm leading the international effort to secure Lazareva’s…
A Russian court has jailed six Crimean Tatar activists to jail terms between seven and 19 years on charges of terrorism Tuesday, a move that has sparked condemnation from abroad. Some Crimean Tatars have accused Russia of locking up its ideological opponents as religious extremists in the wake of the 2014 annexation of Crimea from…
Russia has ruled that authorities can seize suspicious assets owned by relatives and acquaintances of criminals convicted of corruption unless they can prove they were lawfully obtained, the Vedomosti business daily reported Tuesday. The ruling came in response to an appeal by a convicted police anti-corruption official’s family, who argued that the authorities had illegally…
ST. PETERSBURG – For years Oleg Sokolov was a well-known eccentric among the academic elite of Russia’s cultural capital St. Petersburg. As one of the founders of the city’s historical reenactment society, at weekends he liked to dress up as Napoleon Bonaparte, ride a white stallion and bark orders at pretend soldiers. His obsession with…