Igor Ivanko / Moskva News Agency The residents of two more Siberian cities have now lost the right to elect their mayor in the latest restriction of direct elections in the country. Regional lawmakers voted in April 2018 to abolish direct mayoral elections in Russia’s fourth-largest city of Yekaterinburg, leading its popular mayor Yevgeny Roizman…
Russian race walker Anisya Kirdyapkina has been suspended for doping and is set to be stripped of two World Championship medals, the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) said on Thursday. “All results of Ms Kirdyapkina since 25 February 2011 were disqualified through to 11 October 2013, including forfeiture of any titles, awards, medals, points…
The Kremlin has denied that it is wavering in its support for Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro following media reports that Russia is beginning to doubt the leader’s ability to survive an opposition challenge. While Moscow has publicly backed Maduro as he faces calls to step down, Bloomberg on Wednesday cited unnamed sources close to the…
The United States has announced that it will close its only immigration office in Russia next month over what it called a “significant decrease in workload.” The move follows two years of mutual diplomatic staff cuts and consulate closures after the U.S. said that Russia interfered in its presidential election in 2016. Late last year, the…
Russia would be prepared to consider new proposals from the United States to replace a suspended Cold War-era nuclear pact with a broader treaty that includes more countries, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said on Thursday. Russia suspended the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty at the weekend after Washington announced it would withdraw in six months unless Russia ends…
Google has started to remove certain entries from its search results in Russia in compliance with long-standing demands from the authorities, the Vedomosti business daily reported Wednesday. Russia fined Google $7,500 in November 2018 for failing to take down certain search results. New regulations that went into effect in November 2017 require search engines to delete results to…
A conservative U.S. political activist romantically linked to admitted Russian agent Maria Butina has been indicted by a federal grand jury on wire fraud and money laundering charges, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in South Dakota said on Wednesday. Paul Erickson, 56, was indicted on 11 counts of wire fraud and money laundering on Tuesday and…
Russia has approved a 38 million euro ($43.27 million) loan for Cuba’s defense sector, a senior Russian defense official was quoted as saying on Wednesday. The deal was first announced in November after Russian President Vladimir Putin met Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel in Moscow. It has now been finalized by Russia, Dmitry Shugayev, head of…
The Taliban is seeking the pullout of all foreign troops from Afghanistan within months, a senior official said, as the fundamentalist Islamic movement reached out to opponents of U.S.-backed President Ashraf Ghani at talks in Moscow. “This is the first step,’’ Sher Mohammed Abbas Stanikzai told reporters in the Russian capital after meeting with other…
Russia’s military has announced plans to showcase the weapons and equipment it seized in Syria on a tour across the country. Moscow has fought on the side of the Syrian government in its civil war since 2015. In December, the Russian military displayed 40 pieces of what it claimed to be U.S., French, Israeli and…
A court in Moscow has ordered opposition leader Alexei Navalny to take down his second video investigation in two years. Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation alleged in August that at least $29 million had been stolen from the Russian National Guard’s food supply contracts. The video led the head of the National Guard, Viktor Zolotov, to challenge…
Nicolas Maduro (Rayner Pena / DPA / TASS) After pledging full support for the embattled regime of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Russia is starting to show signs of doubt about his ability to survive an opposition challenge. While Moscow hasn’t given up its public backing of Maduro, it increasingly recognizes that the disastrous state of…
A Russian court for the first time convicted a Jehovah’s Witness, Danish national Dennis Christensen, on extremism charges, BBC Russia reported on Wedneday. Christensen, 46, was detained by armed security forces in the midst of a Bible reading in Oryol almost 400 kilometers south of Moscow. His detention in May 2017 came a month after…
Russia will exit the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty in six months as part of a symmetrical response to the United States’ pullout, Interfax cited Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov as saying on Wednesday. Read More A Forced Decision: Why the U.S. Withdrew From the INF Treaty (Op-ed) President Vladimir Putin said at the weekend that Russia had suspended…
Freedom House has named Russia among a string of “heavyweight” countries that undermine democratic norms abroad, contributing to a 13th consecutive “decline in global freedom.” Russia has featured regularly in the U.S.-funded monitoring group’s annual “Freedom in the World” report documenting attacks on civil and democratic freedoms around the world. Read More How Russia’s Place…
Internet freedom continued to decline over the past year in Russia, with bans and limits on information skyrocketing, according to a new report released by the Agora human rights group. More than 115,500 cases of censorship were recorded in 2017, Agora, which tracks internet and media freedom in Russia, said last year. Since then, Russia enacted…
Moscow’s ex-mayor has revealed his administration’s contacts with current U.S. President Donald Trump over a sprawling underground mall near the State Duma in the late 1990s. A U.S. special counsel is investigating Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and possible links between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin. Both Trump and Moscow deny any…
The natural movement of the magnetic North Pole has accelerated in recent years toward Siberia, threatening to throw the world’s smartphones and Global Positioning System (GPS) off-kilter. The magnetic North Pole’s unprecedented movement began in the mid-1990s and it is now headed from the Canadian Arctic toward Siberia at roughly 55 kilometers per year, the…
syria.mil.ru The last contact Grigoriy Gancherov and his wife had with their son, a Russian private military contractor fighting in Syria, was on Feb. 4 last year. The father subsequently learned from a friend and fellow fighter of Sergei’s that the 25-year-old had died several days later in a major battle against U.S.-led forces in…
Average monthly salaries in Russia’s capital jumped by 11.7 percent to nearly 81,000 rubles ($1,234) last year, according to official figures from the federal statistics service. Early last month, Russia’s chief auditor Alexei Kudrin said that citizens’ real incomes virtually saw no change in 2018 as prices outpaced growth estimates. Meanwhile, inflation is expected to grow…
One in four Russian schoolchildren are victims of bullying, according to a new report by Moscow’s Higher School of Economics (HSE). School bullying has come under the spotlight after a wave of armed attacks rocked Russia over the past year, while an online game was blamed for more than 130 teen suicides in 2016. Read…
Russia must develop a new land-based cruise missile and a new land-based hypersonic missile before 2021 to respond to Washington’s planned exit from a nuclear arms control pact, the state-run RIA Novosti news agency cited the defense minister as saying on Tuesday. President Vladimir Putin said on Saturday that Russia had suspended the Cold War-era Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces…
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Tuesday that the crisis in Venezuela could only be solved by getting the authorities and the opposition to talk to each other, the RIA news agency reported. Major European nations on Monday joined the United States in recognizing opposition leader Juan Guaido as interim president of Moscow ally…
As freezing weather enveloped parts of the nation, one Russian fitness blogger took matters into his own hands and turned the winter into his friend. The blogger, Yegor Lesnoy, channeled his inner Iceman as he filmed himself diving under the frozen ice of Lake Baikal in Siberia, where temperatures dipped to minus 30 degrees Celsius.…
Former Manchester United manager Jose Mourinho took a nasty tumble at an ice hockey game outside Moscow on Monday, drawing gasps and laughs after performing a ceremonial puck drop. Mourinho, who was sacked by United in December, made the first puck drop of the Kontinental Hockey League (KHL) game between Avangard Omsk and SKA Petersburg,…
Apple Inc. detailed the user data it’s storing in Russia to comply with a local law that took effect in 2015, according to a recent filing with the Russian government. Apple users in the region have data including their name, delivery address, email address and phone number stored on servers in Russia. The company said…
Russia’s economy grew at the fastest pace in six years in 2018, outstripping economist estimates, as construction got a boost from the World Cup and the start of natural gas project in Siberia. Growth accelerated to 2.3 percent, the most since 2012, after construction surged, the Federal Statistics Service reported in its first estimate Monday.…
The Russian government on Monday approved an additional $4.7 billion in investments on infrastructure and tourism in the annexed Crimean peninsula over the next three years. Crimea has received large cash injections from Moscow since 2014, when Russia annexed the Black Sea region from Ukraine. In total, an estimated 878 billion rubles ($13.3 billion) is expected…
Sergei Karpukhin / Reuters Senior Afghan officials warned on Monday that talks this week between Taliban militants and opposition politicians, including former President Hamid Karzai, betrayed the principles of democracy and Afghanistan’s best interests. The talks, starting on Tuesday in Moscow, come 10 days after peace negotiations between the United States and the Taliban in…
Russia has the second-lowest gasoline price in Europe, according to a study published by state media on Monday. Last year, Russian gas prices were the world’s 10th cheapest at an average 43.44 rubles per liter ($0.70), Bloomberg said in a ranking of 60 countries. Anger over rising prices forced the government to intervene to slow…
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has reportedly sent Russian President Vladimir Putin a telegram congratulating him with the Lunar New Year. The North Korean New Year falls on Tuesday, Feb. 5 in 2019 and will be marked as “Juche 108,” celebrating the founding of the country’s isolationist state ideology in 1912. Read More On…
The Kremlin is still capable of delivering positive changes despite a struggling economy. Torzhok / Flickr (CC BY 2.0) On a Sunday morning in December, the future arrived in Torzhok, a sleepy town about 155 miles (250 kilometers) northwest of Moscow. It came in the form of an electric locomotive resembling a bright red caterpillar, chugging…
Update: Two more bodies were found in the building since the fire was put out, raising the death toll to eight people, including two children, an Investigative Committee spokesperson was cited as saying by Interfax. Eight people have died in an apartment fire on Nikitsky Bulvar in central Moscow, authorities said on Monday. Videos published online…
The percentage of Russians who say they are not willing to leave the country on a permanent basis has hit a 7-year record, according to a new survey published by the independent Levada Center. According to official data, 377,000 Russians left the country in 2017, the latest period for which figures are available and a…
The United States’ full withdrawal from the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty would not herald the start of a new Cold War, the RIA news agency quoted Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov as saying on Monday. “I don’t think we’re talking about the development of a Cold War,” Lavrov said. “A new era has begun.”…
Thousands of people across Russia on Sunday took to the streets to call for trash reform, in what has become a political flashpoint for the country. Organizers said some 26 regions took part in a nationwide demonstration titled “Russia is not a dump,” in protest of Moscow’s plan to solve a trash crisis by sending…
Russia has suspended the Cold War-era Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty after a similar move by the United States, President Vladimir Putin said on Saturday. “The American partners have declared that they suspend their participation in the deal, we suspend it as well,” Putin said during a televised meeting with foreign and defense ministers. The United…
Russian officials have pledged to revive missile production and said Moscow was ready to “respond militarily” to the United States suspending its compliance with the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced Friday that Washington was suspending its compliance with the INF Treaty on Saturday and will withdraw from the…
In a YouTube video, opposition politician Alexei Navalny claims state workers’ salaries have remained stagnant despite assurances by the Kremlin. Alexei Navalny / Youtube Alexei Navalny’s last stint in prison gave him plenty of time to think. After serving a 30-day sentence in September for organizing protests, the opposition leader was immediately tossed behind bars…
The Soviet dream has finally died, at least for one Siberian retiree who swapped her red ID from the communist era for a maroon Russian passport. The unnamed Omsk woman lived with outdated documents for 28 years since the Soviet collapse, the regional Interior Ministry branch spokesman told state media on Friday. The 63-year-old was…
The United States said it will suspend compliance with the 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty with Russia on Saturday and formally withdraw in six months if Moscow does not end its alleged violation of the pact, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Friday. The United States would reconsider its withdrawal if Russia, which denies violating the arms…
Life in Russian prison can bring out the artist within you. So says the prison service in Smolensk region 400 kilometers west of Moscow, which announced the results of a snow figure competition Thursday. The winning prize went to a sculpture inspired by the “The Motherland Calls” statue in Volgograd and was commended for its…
Andres Martinez Casares / Reuters The sighting of two Russian planes in Venezuela this week sparked rumors that Moscow was helping the Nicolas Maduro government ship gold reserves out of the country in an attempt to quickly raise cash. Other commentators speculated – without solid evidence –that the planes may have brought Russian mercenaries to…
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday Moscow had not yet received a message from Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido, who said he had sent a communication to Russia. “We have not received any messages yet. If or when we receive it, we will review it,” Peskov told reporters. He said Russia did not recognize Guaido as Venezuelan…
As the weather in European Russia fluctuates around the zero mark, snow accumulated over the past few weeks has melted (before freezing again), lining city roofs with menacing icicles. Since Wednesday, at least three people, including a 9-year-old boy, were hospitalized with injuries from falling icicles in the city of St. Petersburg alone, local media…
The share of Russians who think their country is going in the wrong direction has grown to a high of 45 percent of the population, according to a new poll published by the independent Levada Center pollster. Recent polls suggest that Putin’s approval rating has dropped to five-year lows, while a majority of Russians have…
Murtaja Lateef / EPA / TASS Zalina Gabibulayeva has had five children, four husbands and two jail sentences. All her spouses were Islamist militants who are either dead or in prison, the last two in Syria, where she was among hundreds of women stranded by the war before officials brought her back to Russia. “I…
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday accused the government in Kiev of flagrantly meddling in the life of Orthodoxy in Ukraine where a new national church has broken away from Moscow’s orbit. Speaking at a Russian Orthodox Church event attended by Patriarch Kirill in Moscow, Putin said that Russia reserved the right to defend people’s rights to…
The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled Thursday that Russia must compensate Georgian nationals who were rounded up and deported more than a decade ago. Russia ordered the expulsion of 4,634 Georgians between September 2006 and January 2007. Georgia said the expulsions were a deliberate policy to exact revenge for the arrests of four…
Rich Russians no longer welcome in London flock back to Moscow. vespermoscow.com Moscow real estate executives Boris Azarenko and Denis Kitaev should write the U.K. Home Office a thank-you note. Their company, luxury apartment developer Vesper, is seeing a pickup in demand from wealthy Russians, as Britain’s anti-money laundering measures block many from London, once…
The infamous troll farm at the center of a major U.S. election interference scandal has been reportedly evicted from its St. Petersburg headquarters after other tenants complained about repeated bomb threats to the building. The so-called Internet Research Agency was charged in February with running a propaganda campaign to interfere in the 2016 U.S. election.…
Russia will host the Taliban and Afghan politicians opposed to President Ashraf Ghani on Tuesday, Russian and Taliban sources said, promoting its role of power broker in what a U.S. official called an attempt to “muddle” the U.S.-backed peace process. Moscow snubbed the Afghan government, sources said, to ensure the participation of the Taliban who…
The daughter of the first activist prosecuted under Russia’s law against “undesirable organizations” has reportedly died in intensive care. Anastasia Shevchenko, a coordinator for the Open Russia pro-democracy NGO, was placed under house arrest last week over violations of the 2015 law against “undesirable organizations.” Human Rights Watch called Shevchenko the first activist to be…
Russia’s state communications regulator said on Thursday that the BBC World News channel had committed “certain violations” while operating in Russia, Russian news agencies reported. Russia said last month it was launching an investigation into the BBC in response to pressure it said London was applying on a Kremlin-funded broadcaster’s operations in Britain. The regulator,…
Rauf Arashukov (Andrei Nikerichev / Moskva News Agency) The dramatic detention of Russian senator Rauf Arashukov, 32, on murder charges Wednesday has sent shockwaves throughout the country. The senator, who is the son of a high-ranking gas official, was detained by security forces during a live parliamentary session and has been charged with several crimes,…
A budding Russian blogger has been fined by police for riding a traditional carpet through the snowy streets of Nizhny Novgorod, 400 kilometers east of Moscow. Videos posted by local news outlets showed two lightly dressed young men riding the carpet attached to a car, in what appears to be an affordable local alternative to…
Russia and the United States failed to bridge their differences over a landmark Cold War-era arms treaty at last-ditch talks in Beijing, Russia’s deputy foreign minister was quoted as saying by Russian news agencies on Thursday. The impasse sets the stage for the United States to begin pulling out of the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces treaty,…
Scientists using sophisticated techniques to determine the age of bone fragments, teeth and artifacts unearthed in a Siberian cave have provided new insight into a mysterious extinct human species that may have been more advanced than previously known. Research published on Wednesday shed light on the species called Denisovans, known only from scrappy remains from…
Robert Mueller (Zhang Jun / Zuma / TASS) U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s office said on Wednesday that self-proclaimed hackers in Russia stole evidence in an attempt to tarnish its investigation of a firm charged with funding a Russian propaganda campaign to interfere in the 2016 U.S. election. Prosecutors said in a court filing in…
Six Russian sailors held hostage by pirates have been freed in Nigeria a month after they were captured in neighboring Benin. Authorities had said pirates kidnapped six Russian sailors of the Panama-flagged container ship MSC Mandy near Benin in West Africa on the night of Jan. 1. The armed pirates reportedly plundered 24 crew members…