Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Friday 10 civilians, including a politician and two priests, taken prisoner in Russia and Belarus had been freed in a deal mediated by the Vatican. Russia and Ukraine have exchanged hundreds of prisoners throughout their two-year conflict, typically in one-for-one swaps, but the release of civilian prisoners is rarer. “We…
A St. Petersburg court has pressed misdemeanor charges against the son of a Leningrad siege survivor who is running to unseat the pro-Kremlin incumbent governor of Russia’s second-largest city, local media reported Friday. Denis Vasilyev was accused of “discrediting” the Russian military, according to the Zaks.ru news website, which cited a local court’s press service. The charges…
Google has added 12 languages of ethnic minority groups living in Russia as part of a major new update to its translation service announced on Thursday. Among the total 110 new languages, Google Translate will now include Bashkir, Chechen, Udmurt and Yakut, among others. In addition to Tatar, which was added in 2020, the U.S. tech…
A Rosneft research expedition to study valuable bird species living in the Yenisei River estuary on the Brekhovsky Islands started from the port of Dudinka
Moscow’s Higher School of Economics (HSE), one of Russia’s premier universities that was long considered a bastion of liberal values amid growing conservatism in the country, is raising money to purchase drones for the Russian military, the university’s rector said in an interview published on Thursday. “HSE students serve in a reconnaissance battalion but they…
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) late Thursday invited 22 Russian and 17 Belarusian athletes to compete at the Paris Games as neutrals, while some of them have already said they would not participate. The fresh list of names included competitors from tennis, shooting and rowing. Another list of athletes, released earlier this month, included competitors…
Russia’s Defense Ministry said Friday that it had seen an increase in the number of U.S. drone flights over the Black Sea and vowed a response, warning they could lead to “direct confrontation” with NATO. “Such flights multiply the likelihood of airspace incidents with Russian Air and Space Force aircraft, which increases the risk of…
A Ukrainian drone set an oil depot in the central Tambov region ablaze early Friday, regional authorities said. Tambov region Governor Maxim Yegorov said the drone strike happened at 4:35 am local time. “A small fire broke out and it has been contained,” he said on Telegram, adding that no one was injured in the attack.…
A U.S. citizen jailed in Russia for kicking a police officer two years ago appeared in court on Thursday to face new charges of allegedly punching prison guards and an investigator, Russian media reported. Robert Gilman, 30, was found guilty of attacking a policeman while drunk in the western city of Voronezh in 2022 and…
Astronauts on board the International Space Station (ISS) briefly took shelter after a Russian satellite broke into pieces in Earth’s orbit, the American space agency NASA said Thursday. “NASA instructed crews aboard the space station to shelter in their respective spacecraft as a standard precautionary measure after it was informed of a satellite break-up at…
Authorities in the Ural Mountains region of Perm will give out lump sum payments for every newborn child of a soldier fighting in Moscow’s war against Ukraine, regional governor Dmitry Makhonin said Wednesday. “We’ll provide a one-time cash payment to the spouse of the special military operation participant upon the birth of a child,” Makhonin…
Russia’s state financial watchdog Rosfinmonitoring has added journalist Artyom Kriger to its list of “terrorists and extremists,” his employer SOTAvision reported on Thursday. Kriger, 23, was arrested last week on charges related to the “extremism” case against late Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny, according to SOTAvision, an independent news outlet. The journalist was accused of “participation in…
Poland and the Baltic states are urging the EU to strengthen its eastern borders, warning in a joint letter to Brussels of a “looming threat” from Russia and Belarus. The four EU member countries are trenchant critics of Moscow, which they accuse of orchestrating hybrid attacks including “intimidation, instrumentalization of migrants, sabotage, disinformation, foreign information manipulation…
Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) falsified evidence against a 15-year-old schoolboy who was jailed last week on terrorism charges, the independent news outlet Mediazona reported Thursday, citing case materials. A Moscow military court ordered Arseniy Turbin to spend five years at a juvenile correctional facility on charges of “participating in terrorist activities.” He was accused of…
Updated with historical context. Russian prosecutors announced Thursday that they have asked a court to recognize crimes committed by Nazi Germany and its then-collaborator Finland in the northwestern city of Petrozavodsk as a “genocide.” The Prosecutor General’s Office said archival documents and witness testimonies indicated that over 8,000 civilians and 18,000 Soviet prisoners of war…
Lyudmila Vasilyeva, at 83 years old, has a long history of activism. A Leningrad siege survivor and pensioner, Vasilyeva is now a hopeful for governor of Russia’s second-largest city, St. Petersburg. She aims to challenge the incumbent, Alexander Beglov, who is running from the ruling, pro-Kremlin United Russia party. Calling for the end of the…
Authorities in Moscow have condemned Wednesday’s attempted military coup in Bolivia and warned against “destructive foreign interference” in the South American country. Two Bolivian army leaders were arrested on Wednesday after soldiers and tanks took up position in front of government buildings, in what President Luis Arce called an attempt to overthrow his government. “We…
A senior federal law enforcement official said Thursday that Russia has sent 10,000 recently naturalized citizens to fight in Ukraine amid Moscow’s manpower shortage. Male migrants who receive Russian citizenship are required by law to register with the Russian military and can be called up to serve in the army during mobilization. “We’ve begun to…
Updated to include deaths, more injuries. Three people were killed and dozens of others were injured when a passenger train derailed in Russia’s Far North, law enforcement authorities said Thursday. Nine passenger cars out of 14 overturned late Wednesday near the town of Inta in the republic of Komi, with over 200 people said to have…
Сhechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov has called on law enforcement and security officials to kill the family members of suspected Islamic militants following deadly attacks on religious sites in the neighboring republic of Dagestan over the weekend, the Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) affiliate Kavkaz.Realii reported Wednesday. “If [the suspected shooter] is connected with Shaitans, then…
Russia’s revenue from oil and gas sales this month is expected to reach 812 billion rubles ($9.4 billion), Reuters reported Tuesday, a reflection of how Moscow has managed to weather the storm of Western sanctions imposed after its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The projection, based on Reuters’ own calculations, would mark a more than 50%…
MOSCOW — “I will get an anti-war tattoo for every year of the war. Since the war never ends, I will mark each anniversary,” said Zhenya, pointing to a tattoo reading Net Voyne (“No to war”) on an exposed part of their body. In today’s Russia, these two words can land one in prison for…
EU countries on Wednesday agreed to new sanctions against Belarus over the Kremlin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine so that they align more closely with measures targeting Russia and close holes that have allowed Moscow to circumvent restrictions, officials said. “EU Ambassadors agreed in principle on a new package of sanctions targeting Belarus,” Belgium, which holds the…
Russia’s lower-house of parliament on Wednesday passed a bill that would allow for annual increases to the amount working retirees receive from their state pensions as part of President Vladimir Putin’s promise to boost social spending during his fifth term in the Kremlin. In 2016, Putin suspended the yearly indexation of pensions for working retirees —…
The Kremlin on Wednesday dismissed arrest warrants issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for ex-Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Army Chief Valery Gerasimov, calling them “absurd” and lacking in legal force. The Hague-based court said Tuesday it had issued arrest warrants for the pair over a barrage of Russian missile strikes against Ukrainian energy…
Police in the North Caucasus republic of Dagestan have arrested a man after he made false claims on Tuesday night that a shooting in the region’s capital city was imminent, coming just days after armed attacks on local religious sites left nearly two dozen people dead. The man, whose name law enforcement authorities did not…
An Afghan journalist and feminist activist who fled to Russia more than two years ago due to fears of prosecution by the Taliban has returned to Afghanistan, her lawyer told the Fontanka news outlet on Tuesday. Kobra Hassani was among a group of 12 Afghan nationals who were detained in St. Petersburg in May 2022…
Two people have been arrested in connection with the deadly fire at a former electronics research institute outside Moscow, Russian investigators said Wednesday. At least six people were killed when the top floors of the former Platan Research Institute building — which was rented out to dozens of other companies — caught fire in the…
Dozens of Russian soldiers who were released as part of a recent prisoner exchange with Ukraine arrived in Moscow on Wednesday, Russia’s Defense Ministry said. Russian and Ukrainian officials announced late Tuesday an exchange of 90 prisoners of war each, the biggest swap between the two warring sides in almost five months. The United Arab…
Russian Defense Minister Andrei Belousov and his U.S. counterpart Lloyd Austin spoke by phone on Tuesday to discuss the war in Ukraine. Russia’s Defense Ministry said in a statement that Belousov and Austin had “exchanged views on the situation around Ukraine,” noting the conversation took place “at the initiative of the American side.” “Andrei Belousov…
U.S. journalist Evan Gershkovich’s trial for espionage in Russia begins behind closed doors Wednesday in what his employer, The Wall Street Journal, has already slammed as a “sham” process. Gershkovich, 32, a former reporter for The Moscow Times, became the first Western journalist to be arrested in Russia on spying charges since the Cold War…
Clicker Telegram mini-games, where players generate virtual currency by tapping their phone screens, have gone viral on the Russian-speaking internet. The largest of these, Hamster Kombat, claims to have amassed 200 million users in just a few weeks and runs the world’s largest Telegram channel. Its growing popularity has sparked concerns from both Russian and…
Authorities in Moscow said Tuesday they could not confirm reports that a Russian fighter jet downed an American surveillance drone over the Black Sea after Ukraine launched a deadly strike against annexed Crimea said to have been carried out with U.S.-supplied missiles. Pro-war Russian bloggers claimed late Monday that a MiG-31 fighter jet “shot down”…
Moscow will block access to 81 European media outlets in retaliation to the EU’s ban against four Kremlin-funded news organizations, Russia’s Foreign Ministry announced Tuesday. Brussels said last month it would suspend the broadcasting activities of the state-run RIA Novosti news agency, the pro-government newspapers Izvestia and Rossiiskaya Gazeta, as well as the news website Voice of Europe…
Russia’s first openly transgender politician, who last month made the surprise announcement that she had returned to her gender assigned at birth, said in an interview published on Tuesday that she was forced to undergo a detransition following threats she would be sent to a psychiatric hospital. Yulia Alyoshina, who dropped a bid last year to…
Updated with Kremlin’s response. The International Criminal Court said Tuesday it had issued arrest warrants for Russia’s chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov, and former defence minister Sergei Shoigu. The warrants, issued Monday but announced on Tuesday, were in response to the alleged war crimes of directing attacks at civilian structures and causing excessive…
The head of the North Caucasus republic of Dagestan on Tuesday ordered all regional officials to undergo thorough vetting following attacks on religious sites in the region over the weekend, which resulted in the deaths of at least 21 people including law enforcement officers. “I’ve ordered the inspection and scrutinization of the personal records of…
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is expected to meet with President Vladimir Putin in Moscow early next month, Indian and Russian media reported Monday. The Indian English-language newspaper The Tribune, without citing sources, reported that Modi was expected to visit Moscow on July 8 to “underline the engagement” between the two countries. Likewise, Russian officials quoted by…
Updated with attack on Voronezh region munitions depot. Overnight drone attacks against southwestern Russia’s Belgorod region have left at least one person dead and scores of buildings and vehicles damaged, regional authorities said early Tuesday, while Ukraine’s military claimed responsibility for a strike on an ammunition depot. “An elderly woman died as a result of a…
Russian strikes on the eastern Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk killed five people and wounded dozens more on Monday, the governor of the Donetsk region said. Over recent weeks, Moscow has concentrated its firepower on the eastern industrial region of Donetsk, which the Kremlin claims is part of Russia. AFP journalists at the scene of the…
At least two people have died in a major fire that broke out at a building linked to a Western-sanctioned scientific research institute in the Moscow region, local authorities said Monday. Moscow region Governor Andrei Vorobyov said the fire engulfed the Platan research institute building in the town of Fryazino. Platan, a producer of defense electronics, has…
Updated with death toll. At least six people died in a major fire that broke out Monday at a Moscow region research center sanctioned by the West, regional authorities said Tuesday. Moscow region Governor Andrei Vorobyov said the fire engulfed the Platan research institute building in the town of Fryazino. Platan, a producer of defense electronics, has been…
Brussels on Monday sanctioned Russian pop singer Shaman over his role in promoting Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, applying restrictive measures against the performer that include an asset freeze and travel ban. “Since the beginning of Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, [Shaman] has repeatedly participated in Kremlin-organized concerts, including the Kremlin’s anniversary event for…
A Russian strike on the eastern Ukrainian town of Pokrovsk killed four people and wounded dozens more on Monday, the governor of the Donetsk region said. “Among the wounded are two children aged 12 and 13. They are in a moderate to serious condition,” Donetsk region Governor Vadym Filashkin said. According to Filashkin, Russian forces fired two…
The Russian division of the Bank of China has suspended operations with Russian lenders sanctioned by the United States in order to avoid being hit with secondary sanctions, the Kommersant business newspaper reported Monday, citing industry insiders. The Bank of China’s Russian division — which specializes in yuan payments between Russia and China — is…
Authorities in Moscow on Monday warned Washington that it would face “consequences” following a deadly Ukrainian strike on annexed Crimea that was said to have been carried out with U.S.-supplied long-range missiles. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov called Sunday’s strike on the city of Sevastopol “barbaric” and accused the United States of “killing Russian children.” Among…
Prominent indigenous rights activist Fayil Alsynov, whose jailing earlier this year sparked mass protests in Russia’s republic of Bashkortostan, was beaten while serving a prison sentence in the Perm region, his lawyer said Monday. Alsynov was sentenced in January to four years in prison for “inciting ethnic hatred.” Some observers believe he was targeted for…
At least 15 police officers and five civilians including a priest have been killed in coordinated attacks on two Orthodox churches and two synagogues in Russia’s North Caucasus republic of Dagestan on Sunday evening. Russian law enforcement has deemed the attacks, which saw both police and National Guard officers deployed, as “acts of terror.” The attacks are…
Law enforcement authorities in the breakaway Georgian territory of Abkhazia have launched a search for gunmen behind a deadly shootout on the region’s border with Russia, state media reported late Sunday. At least one person was killed and three others were wounded in the shooting near the Russian-Abkhaz border on Sunday afternoon, around the same…
Unknown assailants have attacked an Orthodox church and synagogue in the majority Muslim republic of Dagestan, state media reported Sunday, killing at least two police officers, one priest and one security guard. Attackers opened fire at the synagogue and church in the city of Derbent with automatic rifles at around 6:00 p.m. local time before…
Armed assailants on Sunday evening attacked Orthodox churches and synagogues in Russia’s majority Muslim republic of Dagestan, killing at least 15 law enforcement officials and five civilians including a priest, regional authorities said. The unidentified gunmen launched simultaneous attacks in Dagestan’s largest city of Makhachkala and in the coastal city of Derbent. Dagestan leader, Sergei…
The president has ordered sweeping changes to the country’s military establishment in recent weeks — ironically, one of Prigozhin’s pre-mutiny demands. Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu was removed and several senior military figures have been arrested on corruption charges. Putin installed technocratic economist Andrei Belousov as his new defense chief, rather than a military strongman —…
Russia on Sunday said the United States had responsibility for a Ukrainian missile attack on Russian-annexed Crimea, which it said killed five people, including three children, and wounded over 100. A missile exploded above a beach area of the city of Sevastopol, firing shrapnel at people relaxing there, Russian-appointed officials said. Russia’s Defense Ministry said…
A Russian strike on a residential building in Ukraine’s second-largest city of Kharkiv killed two people and injured more than 50, rescuers said on Sunday, revising down a previous death toll. Russia has stepped up attacks in the northeastern Kharkiv region after launching a new offensive there last month, seeking to break a largely static…
Russia bombed a residential building in Ukraine’s northeastern city of Kharkiv on Saturday, killing three people and wounding almost 30, as it stepped up its renewed hostilities. Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky posted footage of the torn-off facade of an apartment block and a crater outside. “Russian terrorists have again hit Kharkiv with guided bombs,” he…
President Vladimir Putin signed a military partnership deal with North Korea and visited U.S. business partner Vietnam this week in an effort to intimidate Ukraine’s Western allies and show that he is not as isolated on the world stage as they would like. Putin, who is on the International Criminal Court’s wanted list, has repeatedly…
A Russian military court on Friday sentenced a Ukrainian woman to 12 years in prison for releasing blue-white-blue balloons — the colors of opposition to the Ukraine offensive — over Moscow last year. Ukrainian citizen Kristina Lyubashenko, 35, was found guilty of taking part in a “terrorist” group and spreading “fake information” about the Russian…
German prosecutors announced Friday that they had arrested three men suspected of spying for a foreign intelligence service. The three men were arrested in the western city of Frankfurt on Wednesday after allegedly trying “to gather information about a Ukrainian national,” federal prosecutors said in a statement. The men were only identified as Robert A. from…
A military court in St. Petersburg court on Friday sentenced a Russian woman to 10 years in prison for throwing a molotov cocktail at a military recruitment office last September. The 1st Western District Military Court found Elena Komaricheva, 59, guilty of “terrorism” charges after she agreed “to set fire to the… Military Commissariat of…
Volunteers from the Kuibyshev refinery, one of Rosneft’s largest enterprises in the Samara region, released more than 27,000 fry of the valuable red-listed sterlet into the waters of the Saratov reservoir