Officials in Moscow said Wednesday that they are waiting for the United States to respond to its prisoner swap proposals, days before American reporter Evan Gershkovich was set to face trial in Russia on espionage charges. President Vladimir Putin said in February that talks on a prisoner swap involving Gershkovich were underway, but the Kremlin…
A Russian court in the Far East city of Vladivostok on Wednesday sentenced an American soldier to three years and nine months in prison for making death threats and theft, state media reported. Gordon Black was arrested last month in Vladivostok, where he was visiting a Russian woman he met and dated while stationed in…
Russian President Vladimir Putin landed in North Korea early Wednesday, the Kremlin said, kicking off a visit set to boost defense ties between the two nuclear-armed countries as Moscow pursues its war in Ukraine. Just after the pre-dawn touchdown, Russian TV showed North Korean leader Kim Jong Un greeting Putin in the dark, on a…
A Moscow court on Tuesday remanded journalist Artyom Kriger until mid-August on charges related to the “extremism” case against late Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny, his employer said. Kriger, who works for the independent SOTAvision news outlet, was accused of “participation in an extremist community” after his Moscow apartment was searched by police on Tuesday morning and…
Two people were killed and a third was injured in a mine explosion in western Russia’s Bryansk region, regional authorities said Tuesday. “On the territory of the Klimovsky district, local residents entered the restricted border zone, despite signs warning about the mine danger,” Byransk region Governor Alexander Bogomaz said on Telegram. “Two residents died at…
A Russian court on Tuesday refused to release imprisoned U.S.-Russian journalist Alsu Kurmasheva, who faces up to 10 years in jail on charges of spreading “false information” about the country’s army. Tuesday marks eight months since Kurmasheva, a joint U.S. and Russian citizen, was arrested in Russia on charges of breaching its “foreign agent” law.…
Put Domoi (“Way Home”), one of the most prominent groups of women relatives of mobilized Russian soldiers, has been calling on the Kremlin to return their husbands and sons from the front lines in Ukraine for months. But when Russia designated Put Domoi a “foreign agent” in late May, the move was still fairly unexpected.…
RN-Vankor (part of Rosneft Oil Company’s oil-and-gas production complex) completed the winter-spring delivery of cargo to the production facilities of the Vostok Oil project located in the north of the Krasnoyarsk Territory
An Estonian court on Tuesday sentenced Russian university professor Vyacheslav Morozov to six years and three months in prison on charges of spying against the Baltic country on behalf of Moscow. Morozov, a political scientist and former professor at the University of Tartu, was “found guilty of activities against the Republic of Estonia in the…
The former Russian division of French DIY retailer Leroy Merlin has announced it will change its name to Lemana PRO as part of a wider rebranding effort following its sale to local management last year. “In order to adapt our mission and name to new challenges and goals, we decided to rebrand,” the company’s Deputy…
Scientists continue to study the forest reindeer population in Tyumen Region thanks to the support of RN-Uvatneftegaz (an enterprise of Rosneft’s oil production complex)
Police in Moscow have detained three people following a mass food poisoning incident that left dozens hospitalized, Russian state media reported Tuesday, citing law enforcement officials. Health officials said Monday that more than 120 people had sought medical help and at least 30 were in intensive care with suspected foodborne botulism, a life-threatening condition that attacks…
Russian President Vladimir Putin praised North Korea on Tuesday for “firmly supporting” his war in Ukraine ahead of an East Asia trip, featuring stops in Pyongyang and Vietnam. The Kremlin leader is scheduled to touch down on Tuesday night for his first visit to North Korea in 24 years, with a confrontation between North and…
Moscow will start a 10-day naval exercise on Tuesday, involving dozens of ships sailing in the Pacific Ocean and waters close to South Korea and Japan, Russia’s Defense Ministry said. “The sailors will practice anti-submarine operations, defending ship detachments at sea, joint missile strikes against groups of ships belonging to a hypothetical enemy, training to…
An overnight drone attack set several oil storage tanks ablaze near the town of Azov in southern Russia on Tuesday, sparking a large fire, local officials said. “Oil product tanks caught fire in Azov as a result of a drone attack. According to preliminary findings, there were no casualties,” the Rostov region governor Vasily Golubev…
Russian President Vladimir Putin appointed a woman the West has called his “close relative” to a top Defense Ministry post on Monday as part of an ongoing shake-up of Russia’s military leadership. The appointment comes after Putin removed his longtime defense chief Sergei Shoigu last month, replacing him with economist Andrey Belousov, and following the…
Sergei Tyutryumov was executed by shooting on March 7, 1938. He was 33 years old. Soviet authorities accused him of “counter-revolutionary” activities and “anti-Soviet agitation aimed at undermining the authority of Soviet power.” Two years prior, Tyutryumov, a descendant of a noble family, moved to the Siberian city of Tomsk to work as a history…
More than 120 people sought medical help and at least 30 are in intensive care following a suspected outbreak of a rare and extremely dangerous food poisoning in Moscow, health officials said Monday. The patients were admitted to the hospital with suspected foodborne botulism, a life-threatening condition that attacks the nervous system and can cause…
Russian President Vladimir Putin will visit North Korea this week, the Kremlin announced Monday, confirming previously reported travel plans that come amid suspicions in the West that Pyongyang is supplying Moscow with weapons for use in Ukraine. Putin will visit North Korea on Tuesday, his second trip to the isolated country since he first came to…
Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) said Monday that it arrested a former Agriculture Ministry official accused of embezzling billions of rubles more than a decade ago. Law enforcement agents arrested Oleg Donskikh — who headed one of the Agriculture Ministry’s departments until 2012 — in the Moscow region after he had been on the run…
A rescue team has freed a humpback whale from a fishing net in the Barents Sea north of Russia’s Murmansk region, the state environmental watchdog Rosprirodnadzor said Sunday. In Russia’s first operation of its kind, which took almost two weeks to complete, rescuers managed to get close to the whale — whom they called Stanislav — on…
A U.S. soldier held in Russia denied threatening to kill his Russian girlfriend while also pleading “partially” guilty to theft charges in a court in the Far East city of Vladivostok on Monday. U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Gordon Black was arrested in early May in Vladivostok, where he was visiting a Russian woman he met…
The Kremlin said Monday that this past weekend’s international peace summit on Ukraine produced “zero” results. Officials from more than 90 countries gathered in Switzerland between Saturday and Sunday, backing Ukraine’s territorial integrity but leaving key questions about how to end the war unanswered. “If we talk about the results of this meeting, then they…
Russia’s Interior Ministry has issued an arrest warrant for the editor-in-chief of the investigative news outlet IStories, Mediazona reported Monday. Roman Anin, who used to work as a correspondent for the newspaper Novaya Gazeta, was listed in the law enforcement body’s online database of wanted persons but the listing does not indicate any charges against…
President Vladimir Putin on Sunday appointed his former “business tsar” as his special representative to international organizations, a position previously held by veteran reformer Anatoly Chubais before he left Russia two years ago in opposition to the war. Boris Titov, who served as Russia’s business ombudsman from 2012, announced his resignation in the fall of…
Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich will stand trial on espionage charges in the Urals city of Yekaterinburg on June 26, the court overseeing the process said on Monday, adding that the proceedings will take place behind closed doors. Gershkovich was arrested in March 2023 while on a reporting trip in Yekaterinburg and has been…
Dozens of countries meeting for a landmark international summit on peace in Ukraine agreed Sunday that Kyiv should enter dialogue with Moscow on ending the war, while strongly supporting Ukraine’s independence and territorial integrity. More than two years after Russia launched its full-scale invasion, leaders and top officials from more than 90 countries spent the…
A Russian journalist was killed in a drone attack in eastern Ukraine, his employer announced Sunday, coming just days after a cameraman from the pro-government NTV channel was killed near the front line. “Our correspondent Nikita Tsitsagi was killed during an attack by Ukrainian army drones,” NEWS.ru said in a statement on Telegram. The outlet…
Updated with hostage release. Russian authorities on Sunday said they brought a swift end to a siege at a detention center in the southern Rostov region, killing Islamic State hostage-takers and freeing two prison guard captives. The prison service had said earlier that two guards had been taken hostage by an unspecified number of Islamic…
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Saturday he would present Moscow a proposal for ending the war once it had been agreed by the international community. He made the commitment in Switzerland during an address to an inaugural summit on peace in his country, attended by more than 90 countries, but not Russia. Zelensky told the…
Russian consumers enjoy continued access to Western brands like Nike and Lego thanks to a Dutch businessman who imports them via grey-market methods, Reuters reported Saturday. Wijnand Herinckx, 40, has built a “thriving” business ferrying these brands’ products into Russia after they exited the country in 2022 over the war in Ukraine, Reuters said, citing customs data,…
Saturday’s IOC statement also listed taekwondo, but that section included no names. “It is absolutely true — none of our taekwondists will perform at the Olympic Games in Paris,” Vadim Ivanov, Russia’s taekwondo head coach told the state-run RIA Novosti news agency. After initially banning the two countries’ athletes from world sport following Russia’s invasion of…
Ukrainian shelling on the Russian border town of Shebekino killed five people and wounded several, Belgorod region Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said on Saturday. Since Russia launched its war on Ukraine in 2022, the Belgorod region has faced waves of attacks, which Kyiv says are retaliation for Moscow’s large-scale assault. “Four bodies were recovered from the rubble” of…
Ukrainian shelling on the Russian border town of Shebekino killed five people and wounded several, Belgorod region Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said on Saturday. Since Russia launched its war on Ukraine in 2022, the Belgorod region has faced waves of attacks, which Kyiv says are retaliation for Moscow’s large-scale assault. “Four bodies were recovered from the rubble” of…
President Volodymyr Zelensky said he hoped to find paths to a “just peace” as soon as possible, as a first international summit on pathways to end Russia’s war in Ukraine opened Saturday. More than 50 world leaders were joining Zelensky at the Burgenstock resort in Switzerland for a two-day peace summit — though with Moscow rejecting…
A Russian Su-24 bomber violated Swedish airspace near the strategic Baltic Sea island of Gotland, leaving only after Sweden scrambled two JAS-39 fighter jets, Sweden’s military said on Saturday. The incident on Friday occurred three months after the Scandinavian country became a full member of NATO, dropping two centuries of military non-alliance. “On Friday afternoon,…
Ukraine said on Friday that Russian forces were concentrating their firepower on the Pokrovsk front in the eastern Donetsk region, where overnight strikes wounded at least six civilians. The Kremlin annexed the industrial territory in late 2022, months after invading, and its forces are making incremental gains there. “The enemy is intensively attacking Ukrainian defenders…
The pace of inflation in Russia accelerated yet again in May as officials warn huge public spending to support the military offensive on Ukraine is overheating the economy. Increases in government expenditure have supported Russia’s economy in the face of a barrage of Western sanctions but also triggered surging prices and labor shortages in many…
Russian President Vladimir Putin said on television Friday that almost 700,000 Russians are fighting in Ukraine. “In the zone of our special military operation there are almost 700,000,” Putin said during a televised meeting with decorated participants from the offensive. In December at his end-of-year press conference, Putin gave the figure of 617,000 taking part…
Russian President Vladimir Putin said on television Friday that almost 700,000 Russians are fighting in Ukraine. “In the zone of our special military operation there are almost 700,000,” Putin said during a televised meeting with decorated participants from the offensive. In December at his end-of-year press conference, Putin gave the figure of 617,000 taking part…
Moldova’s authorities and an opposition politician said Friday aviation officials had denied landing permission to a flight bound for the capital Chisinau carrying pro-Russian opposition activists. According to Romanian authorities, the flight from Armenia was redirected to an airport near the capital Bucharest. Moldovan pro-Russian MP Marina Tauber announced the incident in a post on…
Relatives of mobilized Russian soldiers campaigning for their loved ones’ return from Ukraine have called on the authorities to replace mobilized men with the sons of Russian officials and media personalities. “We demand to replace our men with other quite specific men: the children and husbands of those who tell our citizens from the screens…
A dozen Ukrainian children who were being held in Russian-occupied territory have been returned to parts of the country controlled by Kyiv, a regional official said Friday. Kyiv has accused Moscow of abducting almost 20,000 children from parts of the east and south of Ukraine, while many more have found themselves living under Russian control…
Russian officials privately admit that their chances of preventing an Armenian exit from the Moscow-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) are slim, two Russian officials, one current and one retired Russian diplomat, and a former CSTO official have told The Moscow Times. Some of The Moscow Times’ sources agreed to speak on condition of anonymity…
Italy on Friday arrested a Russian national suspected of helping the son of a former regional governor in Russia escape house arrest while awaiting extradition to the United States on charges of illegally exporting military technology. The Russian national allegedly arranged for Artyom Uss — the son of ex-Krasnoyarsk region Governor Aleksandr Uss — to flee Italy in…
Russian law enforcement authorities on Friday launched a criminal investigation into a shelling attack in eastern Ukraine that killed a cameraman and injured a war correspondent working for the pro-government NTV television channel. NTV cameraman Valery Kozhin died in the hospital on Thursday after reportedly coming under attack near the Russian-occupied city of Horlivka in…
The regional capitals of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia are still in Ukrainian hands — meaning Putin is demanding Ukraine cede swathes of territory under its control as a precondition for negotiations. “As soon as Kyiv says it is ready to do this and begins really withdrawing troops and officially renounces plans to join NATO, we will…
A Russian-Ukrainian activist imprisoned on charges of plotting treason died in custody earlier this week, the U.S.-funded regional news outlet Sibir.Realii reported Friday, citing the activist’s family. Igor Pokusin, 61, was arrested in May 2022 on suspicion of vandalizing pro-war banners in Abakan, the capital of Russia’s Siberian republic of Khakassia. Though Pokusin was soon…
Finland’s border guard service said Friday that a suspected violation of its airspace by Russia earlier this week is now believed to have involved four warplanes instead of the initially reported one. “As the investigation progresses, it has become apparent that in addition to the one Russian plane reported earlier, there is also reason to…
Russia has added the Georgian National Legion, a unit of volunteer soldiers fighting on the side of Ukraine, to its list of terrorist organizations, state media reported on Friday, citing the Federal Security Service (FSB). “Based on the evidence collected by the FSB, the Southern District Military Court recognized the paramilitary formation Georgian National Legion…
Moscow said Friday it had downed 87 Ukrainian drones overnight, among which 70 targeted the southern Rostov region where the command center for Russia’s military operation against Kyiv is based. “During the night, an attempt by the Kyiv regime to commit a terrorist attack with drones… was foiled,” Russia’s Defense Ministry said in a statement. “In…
Russians on the streets of Moscow are shrugging off a fresh round of U.S. sanctions that forced the country’s largest exchange to halt dollar and euro trade on Thursday, with some arguing that they have no need for Western currencies. “Given that we [already] have sanctions and there are basically no trips abroad, we don’t…
Major banks in the Central Asia republic of Kyrgyzstan have suspended money transfers to and from Russia amid exchange rate volatility and issues with payment systems, state-run media reported on Thursday. RSK Bank, Kyrgyzstan’s second-largest lender, said the Astrasend, Contact, Zolotaya Korona and Sberbank Online money transfer systems were temporarily down due to technical problems.…
Russian prosecutors sent U.S. journalist Evan Gershkovich’s case to court on Thursday, paving the way for him to be tried on espionage charges denied by his employer and the White House. The Wall Street Journal reporter was arrested in March 2023 while on a reporting trip to the Urals city of Yekaterinburg and has been…
The United Kingdom on Thursday revealed dozens of new sanctions aimed at impeding Russia’s ability to wage war against Ukraine, including targeting Moscow’s main stock exchange, a day after Washington announced similar measures. London said the 50 new restrictions, which are part of “coordinated action with G7 partners,” would hit the Russian financial system and…
Leading Russian universities are raising the cost of study ahead of the 2024-25 academic year, the business daily Vedomosti reported on Thursday, citing higher education ranking data. Tuition fees at the Moscow State Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT) saw the largest increase, according to data from RAEX Analytics, with the average cost of study…
The former mayor of Kupyansk, Ukraine, who surrendered his city to invading Russian forces in February 2022, died Tuesday night after being shot near his safe house in western Russia over the weekend. Gennady Matsegora is the latest of over a dozen collaborationist or Kremlin-installed officials in occupied Ukraine to have been killed or injured…
NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg said Thursday that the bloc’s member countries could impose “tighter restrictions” on Russian intelligence operatives after a recent string of sabotage attacks. Stoltenberg said NATO defense ministers meeting in Brussels would discuss plans to counter a “Russian campaign of hostile activities against NATO allies.” “We have seen several examples of sabotage,…
Russian police have arrested an alleged army deserter who fired at motorists with an assault rifle in central Russia’s Kaluga region late Wednesday. “On the Kozelsk-Optina Pustyn highway, an unidentified man in a state of aggression stopped a car and opened fire in the air and the ground,” law enforcement officials said in a statement,…
The United States on Wednesday again accused Russia of taking Ukrainian children, some of whom were put up for adoption, after fresh media accounts detailed alleged abductions. “This is despicable and appalling. These Ukrainian children belong with their families inside Ukraine,” White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said. “Russia is waging a war not…