“They brought me to a dimly lit room filled with a heavy stench,” Denis, 34, said of his arrest in southern Russia by Federal Security Service (FSB) officers. “There was a big table, eerie concrete walls, floor and ceiling, and — this was imprinted in my memory — a portrait of Putin. It looked like a…
A Russian official in the Samara region has resigned after a federal lawmaker accused him of being in a relationship with a man. State Duma deputy Alexander Khinshtein singled out Sergei Burtsev, the Samara region’s Minister of Youth Policy, accusing him of being in a long-term relationship with one of his male assistants. In a…
Russian military instructors have arrived in Niger with an air defense system and other equipment as part of the West African nation’s deepening security ties with Moscow, state television announced late Thursday. Niger’s military government agreed in January to step up military cooperation with Russia after expelling French forces that were helping to fight jihadist…
Scores of homes and properties in the southern Russian city of Orenburg were submerged underwater on Friday as authorities warned that water levels in the nearby Ural River would remain “critical” over the weekend before gradually receding early next week. The Ural River, the third-longest in Europe, reached 11.29 meters in Orenburg, or two meters above…
The mayor of the southern Russian city of Orenburg urged residents to evacuate immediately on Friday as water in the nearby Ural River reached critically dangerous levels and was not expected to recede until next week. “The sound of sirens is heard in the city. This is not a drill. A mass evacuation is underway,” Orenburg Mayor…
The Kremlin’s wartime campaign of forced nationalization has hit the Ural Mountains region of Chelyabinsk, a major industrial center, harder than most. Since the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Russian prosecutors have targeted 55 enterprises — metals, chemicals, agribusiness and even a major car dealership — for compulsory state takeover, according to figures from the…
A memoir written by the late Russian opposition activist Alexei Navalny will be published posthumously this fall, his wife and allies announced Thursday. Navalny died at an Arctic penal colony on Feb. 16 while serving a 19-year sentence on “extremism” charges widely seen as politically motivated. As one of President Vladimir Putin’s most vocal political opponents, the…
Russia has nationalized the country’s largest winemaker linked to an arrested billionaire whose business assets were confiscated earlier this year, the RBC news website reported Thursday, citing the tax service’s corporate database. Kuban Vino, which produced 95.5 million bottles of wine in 2023, was reportedly one of four nationalized wine and food companies that were…
Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) said Thursday that it thwarted an attempted landing in southern Ukraine’s partially occupied Kherson region carried out by Ukrainian special forces who received training from British commandos. A video published by the Russian Defense Ministry broadcaster Zvezda showed what was said to be the Ukrainian special forces’ landing boat being…
Moscow on Thursday called on Iran and Israel to exercise restraint amid spiraling tensions in the Middle East. Tehran has issued fresh threats against Israel over a strike earlier this month that killed two Iranian generals, triggering U.S. President Joe Biden to pledge “iron-clad” support for Israel on Wednesday. “It is very important for everybody…
Russia successfully launched its Angara A5 space rocket from the Vostochny Cosmodrome on Thursday afternoon after two aborted liftoff attempts earlier this week. The heavy-lift rocket was initially scheduled for launch on Tuesday at the Amur region spaceport in Far East Russia. Previously, all three Angara A5 launches were based out of northern Russia’s Plesetsk Cosmodrome.…
Updated with Putin’s videoconference. The southern Russian city of Orenburg is expected to face major flooding in the next 24 hours as water levels in the nearby Ural River continue to rise, local authorities said Thursday, urging residents in impacted areas to evacuate. “I think [water levels] will peak in Orenburg within a day, followed…
In the north, Kharkiv — pounded almost daily in recent days — was also attacked, a day after a strike killed three people there. Ukraine’s Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko called the attack “massive” and said it lasted “for several hours.” Ukrainian media reported that an attack “completely destroyed” the Trypilska power station in the Kyiv…
The southern Zaporizhzhia and Odesa regions and the western region of Lviv were also hit, officials said. Zelensky urged Ukraine’s Western partners not to “turn a blind eye” to what was happening and to provide Kyiv with more air defense systems. His call came as he traveled to Lithuania — one of Kyiv’s staunchest allies…
Russian law enforcement agents in the North Caucasus republic of Kabardino-Balkaria killed two armed militants during a counterterrorism operation, the National Anti-Terrorism Committee (NAC) said Thursday. A firefight erupted between “members of a gang that is part of an international terrorist organization who were planning to commit a number of acts of sabotage and terrorism”…
A Ukrainian drone attack inside Russia on Wednesday killed three people, including two children, said the governor of the Kursk border region. The Ukrainian drone fired a rocket at a civilian car in a village in the Korenevski district, said Governor Roman Starovoit on the Telegram messaging app. “Unfortunately three people who were in the…
Russia’s Foreign Ministry on Wednesday criticized plans to hold a Ukraine peace summit in Switzerland, calling it a futile initiative of the U.S. Democratic Party ahead of this year’s presidential election in the United States. The high-level summit will be held in Switzerland on June 15-16, with Swiss media saying U.S. President Joe Biden is…
The wife of jailed Russian nationalist and ex-rebel commander Igor Girkin said Wednesday that her husband is seeking to clear his criminal record and serve at the front line in eastern Ukraine. Girkin, a convicted war criminal in the West better known by his pseudonym Igor Strelkov, was arrested in July after criticizing Russian President Vladimir…
A Russian Mi-24 attack helicopter crashed off the coast of annexed Crimea on Wednesday morning, according to a Defense Ministry statement shared with state news agencies. “At around 6:00 a.m. Moscow time, the Mi-24 helicopter crashed near the western coast of the republic of Crimea while performing a scheduled flight over the Black Sea,” the statement reads.…
Russian authorities have charged exiled feminist activist Zalina Marshenkulova with “justifying terrorism,” media reported Wednesday, citing anonymous law enforcement sources. According to the Telegram news channel Astra, Russia’s Investigative Committee, which probes major crimes, opened a criminal case over a post on Marshenkulova’s Telegram channel about the killing of pro-war blogger Vladlen Tatarsky. In the post, dated April 3, 2023,…
ORENBURG REGION, Russia – Russia’s southern Orenburg region has been grappling with its worst flooding in decades, with 55 cities and towns fully or partially flooded and thousands evacuated in an unprecedented emergency. Footage from the cities of Orsk and Orenburg showed entire neighborhoods submerged underwater, with volunteers and emergency workers on inflatable dinghies rescuing…
Russia hit two energy sites in aerial strikes on southern Ukraine overnight, officials said Wednesday, the latest in Moscow’s targeted attacks against the country’s power network. “The enemy attacked energy facilities in the south of the country,” Ukraine’s Energy Ministry said in a statement. It said a substation in the southern Mykolaiv region was targeted,…
The European Union Court of Justice ruled Wednesday to remove Russian billionaires Mikhail Fridman and Petr Aven from the EU’s sanctions list in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. “The General Court upholds the requests of Petr Aven and Mikhail Fridman and annuls both the initial acts and the acts maintaining the lists of restrictive…
The European Union Court of Justice ruled Wednesday to annul sanctions imposed on Russian billionaires Mikhail Fridman and Petr Aven between 2022 and 2023, saying the EU failed to provide enough evidence to include the pair on the bloc’s sanctions list. “The General Court upholds the requests of Petr Aven and Mikhail Fridman and annuls…
A Russian military court has sentenced two men to nine years in prison on separate charges of attempting to join a militia group fighting alongside the Ukrainian army, state media reported Wednesday. Vsevolod Kulikov, 19, from the central Lipetsk region, and Vyacheslav Kuznetsov, 36, from the republic of Tatarstan, were accused of applying to enlist…
Russia has issued an arrest warrant for exiled anti-war activist and feminist poet Daria Serenko on unknown charges, according to the independent news website Mediazona. Serenko, who fled to Georgia after Russia invaded Ukraine, is a feminist thinker and the author of two books of feminist and anti-war prose. She is among the coordinators of…
Nearly one month after Russian President Vladimir Putin was re-elected to a fifth term, the European Parliament remains unable to agree on a resolution to reject the election’s legitimacy. Putin, who has led Russia with an increasingly tight grip for over two decades and is at war with Ukraine, claimed 87% of the vote in…
A court in Russia’s republic of Bashkortostan on Tuesday sentenced a former regional coordinator of the late opposition activist Alexei Navalny to nine-and-a-half years in prison on “extremism” charges following a retrial. Lilia Chanysheva, 42, was the first of Navalny’s associates to be arrested on “extremism” charges in November 2021. Most of his other key aides have…
Russia’s top investigative body announced Tuesday that it has launched a criminal probe into senior officials in the United States and NATO member countries who are suspected of “financing terrorism.” Russia’s Investigative Committee, which probes major crimes, said it has “established” that money from commercial organizations had been used to “eliminate prominent political and public figures”…
The threat of flooding in Russia’s Ural Mountains has shifted from the town of Orsk to neighboring cities and regions, authorities said Tuesday. Thousands have been forced to evacuate Orsk this week as the Ural River swelled. The floodwaters are now reaching dangerous levels in the main city of Orenburg, with the peak of the…
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky inspected defensive fortifications in the northeastern Kharkiv region on Tuesday and issued his latest call for military aid as Russia intensified its aerial attacks on the area. In a sign of the pressure Moscow is exerting on the region, Russia fired a guided bomb at the city of Kharkiv just as…
Two people were killed in a Ukrainian artillery strike on a Russian village in the Bryansk border region on Tuesday, the local governor said. Kyiv’s forces have intensified their cross-border attacks in recent months, with a spate of drone and aerial bombardments on places close to the two countries’ shared border. “Ukrainian terrorists have fired…
China and Russia said Tuesday they would strengthen strategic cooperation as Moscow’s top diplomat met President Xi Jinping in Beijing, further deepening ties as the war in Ukraine grinds on. The two countries have in recent years ramped up contacts, and their strategic partnership has only grown closer since Moscow’s invasion of neighboring Ukraine. On…
Police in Lithuania have detained a person suspected of carrying out two arson attacks on Russia’s Embassy in Vilnius over the weekend, media in the Baltic country reported Tuesday. Law enforcement authorities launched a criminal investigation after Molotov cocktails were thrown at the embassy early on Sunday and Monday. Neither the embassy nor Russia’s Foreign…
Updated with second launch abort, Borisov’s remarks. Russia’s space agency Roscosmos on Wednesday called off the test launch of its Angara A5 space rocket for a second day in a row, though the exact cause of the aborted flight was not immediately known. “The command ‘abort launch’ has been issued,” a flight controller said in…
Russia has issued an arrest warrant for a former Norwegian politician who currently serves as a medic in the Ukrainian military, the state-run news agency TASS reported Tuesday, citing law enforcement agencies. “Sandra Andersen Eira, a Norwegian woman from the International Legion of Ukraine, has been placed on an international wanted list as part of…
Authorities in western Russia’s Voronezh region said Tuesday that air defense systems had downed two drones overnight, with unconfirmed reports saying that a flight training school was damaged in the incident. Voronezh region Governor Alexander Gusev said air defense and electronic warfare systems had downed one drone over his region, adding that no one was…
China’s top diplomat said Tuesday that Beijing would strengthen strategic cooperation with Moscow and that the two countries must stand on the side of “fairness and justice” as he met with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov. Lavrov arrived in China for a two-day official visit on Monday, with the pair of countries looking to deepen…
Ukraine has escalated its drone attacks on Russian oil refineries since the beginning of the year in an effort to cripple Russia’s economy and constrain fuel supplies to its military. Despite the increased intensity of these strikes, experts who spoke to The Moscow Times agree that their impact on the Russian economy has so far…
PETROZAVODSK, Russia – On a cold April morning, a closed coffin was laid to rest with military honors in the local cemetery of Petrozavodsk, a city of 235,000 people in the republic of Karelia. Inside the coffin lay the body of 19-year-old Russian soldier Kirill Chistyakov, one of the first to be sent by the…
Residents of Orsk, the Ural Mountains city most impacted by some of Russia’s worst flooding in decades, staged protests against local authorities’ perceived inaction on Monday. Much of Orsk was submerged underwater after the Ural River swelled and burst through a dam embankment on Friday, forcing thousands to evacuate. Russia declared a regionwide state of emergency…
Russia has hit up to 80% of Ukraine’s conventional power plants and half its hydroelectric plants in recent weeks in the heaviest attacks since the war began, Ukrainian Energy Minister German Galushchenko said Monday. Moscow has launched almost daily strikes on Ukraine’s power grid since late March, causing major blackouts in the northeastern city of…
A Russian activist and volunteer who had helped Ukrainian refugees return home during the invasion has died in police custody in the southwestern Russian city of Belgorod, the Vot Tak news outlet reported Monday, citing two anonymous sources in his inner circle. Alexander Demidenko, 61, was reportedly abducted and tortured in October 2023. After serving 10 days in…
Russia on Monday accused Ukraine of attacking the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station with a drone for the second day running, after Kyiv had earlier pointed the finger at Moscow. The plant in southern Ukraine, Europe’s largest nuclear facility, has been under the control of Russian forces since the first days of the military offensive in…
The indigenous people of Tyumen Oblast celebrated the national holiday of the arrival of spring – Crow’s Day – with the support of RN-Uvatneftegaz (part of Rosneft’s oil production complex)
Russia’s Embassy in Lithuania was attacked with Molotov cocktails twice over the weekend, media in the Baltic country reported Monday. The embassy wall in Vilnius was damaged after unidentified individuals threw bottles with incendiary liquids after 2:00 a.m. local time on Sunday and Monday, according to the broadcaster LRT. The suspects have not yet been identified.…
A jailed ex-minister in annexed Crimea has asked to join the Russian military and be deployed to Ukraine, a Russian prison watchdog member told state media Monday. Moscow’s Zamoskvoretsky District Court last July sentenced Vera Novoselskaya, Crimea’s former Russian-installed culture minister, to 10 years in prison for accepting 25 million rubles ($270,000) in bribes. Russia’s Public Monitoring…
Russia said Monday that more than 10,000 residential buildings were flooded across the Urals, Volga region and western Siberia as emergency services evacuated cities threatened by rising rivers. On Sunday, Russia declared a federal emergency in the Orenburg region, where the Ural River flooded much of the city of Orsk and is now reaching dangerous…
Russian strikes on Ukraine’s southern Zaporizhzhia region killed three people on Monday, in the second day of deadly attacks on the area, its governor said. The strike on the rural area came a day after three people were killed in a Russian attack on the town of Huliaipole. “Three people were killed and three people…
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov arrived in China for an official visit on Monday, his ministry said, as the two countries look to strengthen diplomatic ties as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine grinds on. The Foreign Ministry announced Lavrov had touched down in Beijing in a post on X Monday morning. He will spend two days…
A major flood in the Russian city of Orsk forced thousands of people to evacuate, with Moscow reporting a “critical” situation Sunday and warning of dangerous water levels in Siberia. Russia has introduced a “federal emergency” situation in the southern Orenburg region, where the Ural River has flooded Orsk and now threatens the main city…
The situation around eastern Ukraine’s frontline city of Chasiv Yar is “difficult and tense,” the army said on Sunday, adding that the Russian invaders were now “in retreat.” Russian forces have unleashed “constant fire” in the area in recent days seeking to seize the city’s dominant heights. Chasiv Yar lies less than 30 kilometers southeast…
The mayor of the city of half a million people, Sergei Salmin, said authorities would forcibly evacuate people from flooded zones if necessary. He said the water level of the Ural River had risen to dangerous levels and would rise further. “The situation leaves you no choice. At night, the river can reach a critical…
A NASA astronaut, a Russian cosmonaut and Belarus’s first ever space traveler on Saturday returned to Earth safely after a fortnight aboard the International Space Station, Russia’s Roscosmos agency reported. “Today, at 10:17 am Moscow time (0717 GMT), the descent vehicle of Sozuz MS-24 manned spacecraft landed near the Kazakh city of Jezkazgan,” Roscosmos reported.…
An overnight Russian drone attack on Ukraine’s second-largest city Kharkiv killed six people and wounded 10 others, national emergency services and the city’s mayor said Saturday. The State Emergency Service of Ukraine said in a Telegram post that “six people were killed and at least 10 injured as a result of an enemy strike.” Kharkiv…
A series of Russian attacks on Ukraine’s second city of Kharkiv killed seven people and wounded a dozen more, Kyiv said on Saturday. The northeastern city, 30 kilometers (18 miles) from the Russian border, has seen increased deadly attacks in recent months, more than two years into Moscow’s invasion. An overnight attack killed six people,…
Massive rainfall has ruptured a dike in the Russian city of Orsk, authorities said Friday, prompting hasty evacuations in the surrounding area. According to the city authorities, more than 4,000 houses and some 10,000 people are in the affected area near the border with Kazakhstan, and at risk of being flooded. Local authorities had earlier…
The mayor of the city of half a million people, Sergei Salmin, said authorities would forcibly evacuate people from flooded zones if they refused orders to leave. He said the water level of the Ural river had risen to 855 centimeters and “will rise” further. He named several districts of the city and nearby villages…
Kyiv warned Friday that a key frontline town has come under “constant fire” from advancing Russian forces as Moscow announced that it had captured another village in eastern Ukraine. Buoyed by their advantage in manpower and arms, Russian forces are on the offensive, and the Ukrainian town of Chasiv Yar in the Donetsk region appears…
Russian IT specialists based abroad are increasingly eyeing jobs at Western IT companies amid growing worries that their days of being permitted to work remotely for Russian firms are numbered. Western tech startups and firms, meanwhile, appear to be interested in capitalizing on this highly skilled and less costly workforce, actively recruiting Russian tech workers…