The United States has imposed travel restrictions on two Siberian investigators over the alleged torture of detained Jehovah’s Witnesses this year. Investigators in the city of Surgut were alleged to have stripped, suffocated, doused with water and applied stun guns on at least seven Jehovah’s Witnesses who were detained on extremism charges in February. Russia…
A Moscow court has returned theater director Kirill Serebrennikov’s criminal fraud case to prosecutors two years after his high-profile arrest, a move that observers say is a key step toward his case being thrown out. Serebrennikov was detained in August 2017 on charges of embezzling 68 million rubles ($1 million) in government funds as part…
Wildfires that burned across swathes of Siberia this summer have been fully extinguished in the Irkutsk region, Interfax cited regional authorities as saying Wednesday. Irkutsk is one of several regions that have been affected by the “unprecedented” wildfires throughout Siberia since June. The wildfires exceeded 3 million hectares, an area the size of Belgium, at…
A Russian soldier has been found dead in an Armenian city where Russia has a military base, Armenian investigators told the state-run TASS news agency Wednesday. The 23-year-old serviceman’s body was found with signs of violent death, TASS quoted Armenian investigators as saying. The unnamed soldier had been stationed at the Gyumri military base in…
Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller visited the Kremlin for talks with President Vladimir Putin just days after returning from high-level meetings in Beijing. Natural gas export was on the president’s agenda, including the building of infrastructure for deliveries to China. Putin told Miller that he wanted to see deliveries of natural gas from the Yamal Peninsula…
A Bulgarian investigation into alleged espionage involving Russian non-governmental organizations is not intended to influence relations with Moscow, Prime Minister Boyko Borissov said on Wednesday. Prosecutors charged the head of a Bulgarian non-governmental organization (NGO) on Tuesday with spying for Russia as part of a scheme they said aimed to draw Bulgaria away from its…
Serbia’s plan to join a Russian-led economic union is drawing fire from the European Union, which the Balkan nation says it wants to be part of. The EU’s executive commission has made clear that Serbia will have to cancel any bilateral trade agreements with other countries if and when it joins the EU, and leaders…
The GQ Russia Person of the Year awards — typically an ordinary star-studded affair — turned political Tuesday night when recipients took turns voicing their opinions on this summer’s high-profile news stories. Award winners praised the recent Russian-Ukrainian prisoner exchange and the release of Meduza investigative journalist Ivan Golunov amid near-unprecedented outcry over his arrest…
Russia warned Europe’s human rights tribunal it risks opening a “Pandora’s Box” of politically motivated cases if it accepts Ukraine’s claims that Moscow-led forces committed atrocities in the Crimea. The legal gambit by Russia’s Deputy Justice Minister Mikhail Galperin came as both sides faced off at the first public hearing at the European Court of Human…
Alexander Beglov has been confirmed the winner of Sunday’s gubernatorial vote in St. Petersburg following a controversial campaign. Russians voted in local and regional elections nationwide Sunday, including in gubernatorial elections in 16 regions. Critics said St. Petersburg’s gubernatorial race suffered from a lack of real competition against Beglov, a Kremlin ally who has been…
Rosneft Oil Company has expanded the range of petrochemical products sold at the exchange trades of the Saint Petersburg International Mercantile Exchange (SPIMEX).
Russia on Wednesday condemned as lies and slander suggestions a suspected CIA mole in President Vladimir Putin’s administration had handed over information to the United States about alleged Russian meddling in the U.S. presidential elections. Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov made the comment after U.S. media reports, confirmed to Reuters by two sources, said a CIA informant…
Russian state oil major Rosneft said Tuesday that attempts to curb its business in Venezuela would be illegal and that the United States was using the threat of sanctions as a form of unfair competition. The U.S. could impose sanctions on Rosneft “at some point,” U.S. special envoy to Venezuela Elliott Abrams said Tuesday as…
Russian President Vladimir Putin has a bee in his bonnet about debt. Having lived through the 1998 crisis when Russia’s financial system was wiped out for the want of a few billion dollars to meet the government’s obligations, there has been a strong “never again” meme that has run through the Kremlin’s financial policy. Amongst…
Russia has the world’s third-highest suicide rate, the World Health Organization said Monday in a global study published ahead of World Suicide Prevention Day. Globally, nearly 800,000 people die by suicide every year — more than are killed by malaria or breast cancer, or by war or homicide, the WHO said. The UN public health…
Ukrainian filmmaker Oleg Sentsov plans to start making films again and to champion the rights of prisoners in Russian jails, he said on Tuesday, days after being freed in a landmark prisoner exchange between Ukraine and Russia. Sentsov was the most high-profile prisoner to be swapped on Saturday among 35 Ukrainian detainees to return home…
Russia is cautiously optimistic about the exit of U.S. national security adviser John Bolton, Russian media quoted the country’s officials as saying on Wednesday. U.S. President Donald Trump abruptly fired Bolton amid disagreements with his hardline aide over how to handle foreign policy challenges such as North Korea, Iran, Afghanistan and Russia. Dmitry Novikov, the…
Bulgarian prosecutors charged the head of a non-governmental organisation (NGO) on Tuesday with spying for Russia as part of a scheme they said aimed to draw Bulgaria away from its Western allies and towards Moscow. Bulgaria, Moscow’s most loyal satellite in Soviet times, is now a member of NATO and the European Union but has close cultural…
Voter support for Russia’s ruling party has fallen significantly in the major Crimean port city of Sevastopol since 2014, the RBC news website has reported, citing official data from regional and local elections held across the country Sunday. United Russia, which supports President Vladimir Putin, saw a decline in support in nearly every region compared…
More than 20 million Russians risk losing their jobs to automation over the next decade if they don’t develop new skills, according to new research. Economists estimate that robots will take over more than 20 million manufacturing jobs worldwide by 2030. Automation is expected to lead to major job losses despite bringing in increased productivity…
An academic in central Russia died Tuesday after setting himself on fire over what has been reported as an act of protest over perceived government policy against his native language. Albert Razin, 79, was hospitalized in critical condition in the republic of Udmurtia after committing an act of self-immolation outside an administrative building in the…
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The world’s only remaining civilian nuclear-powered cargo ship, the Sevmorput, is sailing south into the Norwegian Sea en route to St. Petersburg with 204 refrigerated containers of frozen fish from the Pacific aimed for the market in European Russia. The ship will arrive in St. Petersburg by the end of this week after sailing south along…
Russia’s Health Ministry has ordered a comprehensive study on the effects of electronic cigarettes in the wake of at least five deaths related to the use of the devices in the United States. The American Medical Association on Monday urged Americans to stop using e-cigarettes of any kind until scientists have a better understanding of…
Security officials have carried out searches in five of opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s regional offices across Russia, days after local elections where he urged supporters to vote strategically against Kremlin-aligned incumbents. The raids in the cities of Ufa, Samara, Perm, Chelyabinsk and Saransk took place less than a week after Navalny’s Moscow offices were raided.…
The first concert of the unique Russian-British Britten-Shostakovich Festival Orchestra has been held in the Sirius Park of arts and sciences in Sochi.
A top U.S. spy who was reportedly evacuated from Russia could have been a senior Kremlin official’s aide who now lives in the Washington, D.C., area, the Kommersant business daily has reported. The United States had allegedly extracted one of its highest-level moles in the Russian government in 2017 over fears he could be caught,…
Hundreds of protesters gathered in Far East Russia overnight to demand a re-run of this Sunday’s local election won by a pro-Kremlin candidate and to call for the release of an anti-Putin shaman’s supporters, local media have reported. Igor Shutenkov won 52.25% of the votes in the republic of Buryatia’s administrative center of Ulan-Ude, beating…
It’s “pathetic” for adults to read comic books, Russian Culture Minister Vladimir Medinsky has said, sparking backlash among the country’s comic book fans. Mainstream comic book culture began to catch on in Russia earlier this decade after years of lingering Soviet-era stigma that placed “serious literature” on a pedestal at the expense of disdained mass…
Russia’s Defense Ministry has declassified a trove of documents relating to a Soviet-Nazi nonaggression pact signed 80 years ago which historians say paved the way for the start of World War II. Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact pact on Aug. 23, 1939. A secret protocol that accompanied the non-aggression treaty divided…
Russia and Ukraine on Saturday exchanged 35 prisoners each in a carefully negotiated swap that could signal a thaw in relations. The swap — which included high-profile figures like filmmaker Oleg Sentsov and potential MH17 witness Vladimir Tsemakh — was seen as a key step toward resolving the conflict in eastern Ukraine that has claimed more…
France’s foreign minister said on Monday Europe and Russia should try to overcome their mutual distrust and work towards improving relations but that it was still too early to lift EU sanctions against Moscow. The European Union imposed the sanctions over Moscow’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea Peninsula in 2014 and its support for pro-Russian armed…
Incumbent governors backed by President Vladimir Putin avoided runoff elections in 16 Russian regions Sunday, one year after Putin replaced at least 15 governors as a result of 2018 election setbacks. The governors’ races lacked the high stakes of Moscow’s legislative elections, where pro-Putin candidates lost one-third of the seats following a summer of the…
The Akademik Lomonosov power barge on Sept. 6 passed the Sannikov Strait south of the New Siberian Islands and made it into the East Siberian Sea. The floating installation now has only about three days left of its extensive voyage across the Northern Sea Route. According to the Northern Sea Route administration, the installation and its…
Russia’s long-running bet on gold is looking better every month. The country quadrupled gold reserves in the past decade as it diversified away from U.S. assets, a move that has paid off recently as haven demand sent prices to a six-year high. In the past year, the value of the nation’s gold jumped 42% to…
Google said on Monday that it supported responsible political advertising that complies with local legislation, after Russia accused it of circulating such advertising during local elections at the weekend. The tech giant neither affirmed nor denied in a statement that it had disseminated any such advertising. The state communications watchdog said Google and Facebook had…
Daniil Medvedev once reveled in his role as the villain of Flushing Meadows but on Sunday the Russian completed his transformation to unlikely hero after taking Rafael Nadal the distance in a pulsating U.S. Open final. Despite losing to the Spaniard in a five-set thriller, Medvedev’s performance suggests more Grand Slam finals are in his…
Russia‘s ruling United Russia party, which backs President Vladimir Putin, has lost one-third of its seats in the Moscow parliament, near-complete data cited by Russian news agencies showed on Monday, in an awkward setback for the Kremlin. However, the party still retained its majority in the Moscow assembly following Sunday’s nationwide local elections, and its candidates for regional…
Russians voted on Sunday in some of the most closely observed regional elections in years, after the exclusion of many opposition candidates triggered huge protests in the capital. The protests began in mid-July after the Central Election Commission refused to register large numbers of candidates, saying they had failed to collect enough signatures from genuine…
Russia and Ukraine on Saturday swapped 35 prisoners each, including filmmaker Oleg Sentsov, 24 Ukrainian sailors and potential MH17 witness Vladimir Tsemakh, in a key step toward bringing an end to the war in eastern Ukraine that has claimed more than 13,000 lives since 2014. Laden with wide-ranging implications, the move underlines new Ukranian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s…
Oleg Navalny, the brother of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, is now exhibiting the tattoo sketches that he made while serving a 3.5-year sentence in prison. His exhibition comes on the back of months of anti-government protests in Moscow and the arrests of activists that face up to 3 years in prison.
Russian state watchdog Roskomnadzor said on Friday it asked Facebook and Google to ban the publication of political advertising during elections on Sunday and on the preceding day, in line with Russian law. Russia will hold several regional elections on Sunday, including in Moscow. Non-compliance would be viewed as meddling in Russia’s sovereign affairs, the…
Russia’s National Guard has taken over teaching duties at a fifth-grade class in the Siberian city of Irkutsk this week. Officer Alexei Volk, wearing a military uniform, assumed homeroom teaching duties over the class of 12 girls and 20 boys on the first day of school. “Primarily, we will instill patriotic upbringing and a positive…
The city of Novosibirsk in Siberia has unveiled a memorial plaque Friday honoring Kim Jong Il, the father and predecessor of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. Kim, who led the secretive state until his death in 2011, visited the Russian city on Aug. 11, 2001, after talks with President Vladimir Putin in Moscow. A…
Potentially dangerous objects have been found in an area of northern Russia where an accident that released radiation occurred last month, Interfax news agency reported on Friday, citing regional authorities. A test at a military site on Aug. 8 caused a brief rise in radiation levels in the nearby city of Severodvinsk. Russia’s state weather…
Founder of the Rolf car dealership and former Russian lawmaker Sergei Petrov is confident he won’t be extradited from Austria, despite an international warrant for his arrest issued by Russia on Friday. Russia’s Investigative Committee accuses Petrov and managers of his company of smuggling 4 billion rubles ($60.5 million) out of the country to a…
Russian natural gas company Novatek and maritime shipping company Sovcomflot have signed a deal that formally establishes a new joint venture during this week’s Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok. The vessels will conform to Arc7 ice standards and will be built at the new Zvezda shipyard. They are to be delivered in the period 2023-2026. Sovcomflot said it…
Two whale pens along Russia’s Barents Sea coast have been securely tied up months after a runaway beluga whale nicknamed ‘Whaledimir’ was first spotted by local fishermen in Norway, satellite imagery shows. In May, a series of Google Earth satellite images showed two locations on the Kola Peninsula within closed Russian naval territories where beluga whales…
Russia’s Knyaz Vladimir (K-549) submarine is expected to be delivered to the Northern Fleet this year, the pro-Kremlin Izvestia newspaper has reported, citing sources close to the Navy’s commander-in-chief. Knyaz Vladimir is the first of a series of upgraded submarines as part of the Navy’s Project 955A and will be based in the town of Gadzhiyevo on the Kola Peninsula. Originally, it was…
Authorities in Moscow have ordered 260 million rubles ($4 million) of facial-recognition technology for surveillance cameras to monitor protests and other mass gatherings, the Vedomosti business daily reported Friday. Moscow claims one of the world’s largest network of 160,000 surveillance cameras, some equipped with facial-recognition technology, with plans to boost the number to 200,000 this…
A masked robber has allegedly tried to tase the head of Russia’s Central Election Commission, Ella Pamfilova, during a burglary, police said Friday. The attack came two days before Russians vote in regional elections, including in Moscow. The vote in the Russian capital has triggered weeks of protests after Pamfilova and her colleagues refused to register a…
A Russian court on Friday ordered the release on parole of two famous Russian football players jailed for their involvement in a pair of violent attacks last year, Russian news agencies reported on Friday. Alexander Kokorin and Pavel Mamayev, who both played in Russia’s top league and used to play for their country, apologized after…
Russia’s military is incorporating mercenaries hired by a wealthy ally of President Vladimir Putin into its planned offensive to help Syria’s army retake the last major stronghold held by jihadist rebels, according to people with direct knowledge of the matter. Hundreds of freelance fighters who answer to Yevgeny Prigozhin, the businessman known as “Putin’s chef”…
Authorities have raided three of opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s offices in Moscow on the eve of a local election where he is advocating voters to unseat Kremlin-backed candidates. The raids took place ahead of the Sept. 8 city legislature vote that galvanized this summer’s mass protests in Moscow when election officials disqualified opposition candidates, including…
Russian activist Konstantin Kotov has been sentenced to 4 years after a court convicted him of “multiple breaches” of Russian protest law, making him the second person ever to be prosecuted under the controversial legislation. The clause in the Russian Criminal Code punishing repeat violations of public demonstration rules became known as Ildar “Dadin’s article”…
At least three Russian soldiers have been killed in a firefight in Syria’s de-escalation zone this week, the Vedomosti business daily has reported Thursday, citing an unnamed military source. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces, backed by Russian airpower, have been waging an offensive in the Idlib region, the last remaining rebel-held territory in Syria. Much…
An executive with Russia’s state engine maker has been arrested in Italy at the request of the U.S., which suspects him of economic espionage, the Fontanka.ru news website reported Thursday. Alexander Korshunov, 57, the head of business development at the state conglomerate Rostec’s subsidiary United Engine Corporation, was reportedly detained Tuesday as he arrived in…
The Kremlin has agreed to probe a senior member of Moscow’s city legislature over two investigations into his dealings by opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s anti-corruption team, the Vedomosti business daily reported. Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK) has claimed that municipal lawmaker Andrei Metelsky’s family owns a motorcycle dealership in Moscow and a hotel franchise in Austria…
President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that Russia would produce missiles that were banned under a landmark Cold-War era nuclear pact that ended last month, but that Moscow would not deploy them unless the United States did so first. Speaking at an economic forum in Russia’s Far East, Putin said Moscow had urged the United…
“India is tuned toward interaction with Russia in the Arctic,” says a joint declaration signed this week by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Russian President Vladimir Putin during the Russia-India Summit in Vladivostok. “India is following the development of the Arctic region and is ready to play an important role in the Arctic Council,” the declaration…