Russian election authorities on Thursday disqualified pro-peace presidential hopeful Boris Nadezhdin from the March election over alleged errors in his endorsement signatures. The veteran politician’s campaign has presented a rare challenge to a tightly controlled election in which President Vladimir Putin is likely to win a fifth term, with thousands of Russians lining up to…
A powerful explosion rocked the suburbs of the city of Izhevsk in central Russia on Wednesday night, with state-run media reporting that the blast occurred at a machine and missile production facility. Videos shared on social media showed a large fireball lighting up the night sky over the testing grounds of the Votkinsk Machine Building…
Amid the plains of Russia’s North Caucasus republic of Dagestan lies Novaya Urada, a village of 1,000 residents. This community, some 30 kilometers northwest of the regional capital Makhachkala, has deep roots in livestock farming and each year draws tourists hoping to photograph a vibrant poppy field nearby. Yet Novaya Urada was thrown into upheaval…
A St. Petersburg military court on Wednesday sentenced a university student to nine years in prison for making public calls to join the Ukrainian army and for his native republic of Karelia to secede from Russia. Andrei Vasyurenko, 19, was detained in March on charges of “planning to commit high treason by defecting to the enemy’s side,”…
The Kremlin-appointed head of the republic of Bashkortostan slammed a proposal to honor the memory of a local man who died in police custody after being arrested last month during mass protests. Prominent Bashkir dancer Rif Gabitov asked to hold a moment of silence for the deceased Rifat Dautov at a meeting on Tuesday with Bashkortostan head Radiy…
RN-Nyaganneftegaz, an enterprise of Rosneft Oil Company’s oil and gas production complex, invested more than 585 million rubles in environment-oriented and restoration measures over 2023.
Prosecutors in Far East Russia’s Khabarovsk region are seeking to ban the so-called “Ya/My Furgal movement,” according to a statement published on the Russian Justice Ministry’s website. The phrase “Ya/My Furgal” (Russian for “I’m/We’re Furgal”) has been used by supporters of jailed ex-Khabarovsk region Governor Sergei Furgal since his detention in 2020, which sparked some of…
Russia’s human rights body has concluded that the son of Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov did not commit a crime when he was filmed assaulting a teenager who was detained for burning a Quran, online media reported Wednesday. Adam Kadyrov, 16, was filmed in September kicking and punching Nikita Zhuravel, 19, who was arrested last year in…
Swedish prosecutors said Wednesday that they will drop their investigation into the 2022 sabotage of the Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines, citing a lack of jurisdiction. Prosecutor Mats Ljungqvist said he would “hand over material that can be used as evidence in the [ongoing] German investigation” into the pipelines’ destruction. The Swedish Prosecution Authority…
A key Chinese bank used by Russian importers has stopped all settlements with Russia, setting the stage for a “logistics collapse” in the coming weeks, the business daily Vedomosti reported Wednesday, citing anonymous businesspeople and financial consultants familiar with the matter. Chouzhou Commercial Bank, which became the main transaction channel for Russian importers after the…
Russia fired dozens of missiles and drones at Ukraine on Wednesday in a “massive” early morning attack that killed at least five people and injured more than 30, officials in Kyiv said. The wave of strikes came as the EU’s top diplomat was in the Ukrainian capital and with Kyiv calling on its Western allies to…
Former Fox News star Tucker Carlson confirmed Tuesday that he has traveled to Moscow to interview President Vladimir Putin, putting an end to speculation surrounding the purpose of his visit to Russia and whether he intended to ultimately meet with the Russian leader. “We’re here to interview the president of Russia, Vladimir Putin. We’ll be…
Norway has rejected an asylum application from a man claiming to have deserted Russian mercenary group Wagner and fled to the country, his lawyer told a Norwegian newspaper on Tuesday. Andrei Medvedev, 27, alleges he fought in Ukraine as a member of Wagner for four months before deserting. He sought asylum after fleeing to Norway…
The recent arrests of two Russian volunteers helping Ukrainian refugees fleeing the war and living under occupation have thrown the future of this aid into uncertainty, activists and observers told The Moscow Times. Nadezhda Rossinskaya, also known as Nadin Geisler, was arrested on Feb. 1 upon returning to the Belgorod region and charged with “publicly…
Allies Russia and Belarus are working to create a shared database of “extremists,” the Belarusian ambassador in Moscow said Tuesday. Ambassador Dmitry Krutoy said it was “perplexing” that some websites blacklisted in Russia remained accessible in Belarus and vice versa. “Let’s say these entities or people flee to Russia and face no criminal proceedings there,” Krutoy told…
The mayor of the industrial city of Nizhny Tagil has accused Ukrainian special services of stoking social tensions by drawing attention to the recent assault of a secondary school student, local media reported Tuesday. Last month, local law enforcement officials launched a criminal case into the assault of an 11-year-old girl outside of her school, which…
Some parts of the eastern Ukrainian town of Avdiivka are in a “critical” condition as they fight off Russian shelling and incursions, a local official said on Tuesday. Russia launched a renewed push to capture Avdiivka in October, with troops on three sides of the town pounding it with relentless artillery strikes in a bid…
Russia has released $9 million in frozen North Korean assets after the isolated country provided Moscow with arms for its war against Ukraine, The New York Times reported Tuesday, citing anonymous Western intelligence officials. Pyongyang is under a range of UN and U.S. sanctions over banned nuclear weapons tests, and the arrangement appears to meet…
Rosneft’s Samara group of refineries won again the All-Russian Environmental Contest «Leader of Environmental Protection Activities in Russia».
President Vladimir Putin’s administration is seeking to use former Fox News star Tucker Carlson’s visit to Moscow as a propaganda coup both in Russia and the United States, four sources close to the Kremlin have told The Moscow Times on condition of anonymity. “Tucker has been expected here for a long time. He is welcome…
Authorities do not yet have plans to block VPN services in Russia, the Kremlin said Tuesday, a day after the head of the Kremlin-aligned Safe Internet League floated the possibility of such a move. Yekaterina Mizulina claimed Monday that the Russian government will “most likely” block VPNs by March 1, though she did not say where she…
Ukraine on Tuesday said it had arrested five former and current intelligence officers it said were secretly working for Russia as part of an influential spy ring. Kyiv said the men were caught passing information to Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) about Ukrainian military sites, its defensive fortifications, personal data and strategic energy facilities. “The…
Russia’s Central Election Commission (CEC) on Tuesday agreed to give pro-peace presidential hopeful Boris Nadezhdin an extra day to resolve thousands of errors in endorsement signatures before it decides whether to officially register him as a candidate in the March presidential election. Just hours earlier, Nadezhdin said he had asked the CEC to give him…
Russia is suspending imports of bananas and flowers from Ecuador, weeks after Quito agreed to a U.S. weapons deal that will result in Ukraine receiving Soviet-era military equipment from the South American country. The Russian agriculture watchdog, Rosselkhoznadzor, said in a statement that authorizations for five Ecuadoran exporters were suspended from Tuesday due to the…
President Vladimir Putin’s annual address to the Russian parliament will coincide with the second anniversary of the invasion of Ukraine, the business daily Kommersant reported Tuesday, citing four anonymous Kremlin sources. Putin could give his State of the Nation speech to both houses of parliament sometime after Feb. 23 or before March 8, according to…
A two-month-old baby was killed and three others were injured Tuesday in a Russian strike on northeastern Ukraine’s Kharkiv region, officials said. “Around 2:30 am, a three-story hotel was destroyed in Zolochiv… following two S-300 missile strikes,” Kharkiv region Governor Oleg Sinegubov said, adding that the child’s mother was among the injured and was hospitalized. …
Bulgaria on Monday arrested an employee of the interior ministry unit for fighting organized crime on suspicion of spying for Russia, the ministry’s chief of staff said. Public media reported that the Directorate General for Combatting Organized Crime (GDBOP) officer was suspected of providing classified information to a former employee of the Russian Embassy in…
Russia’s state financial watchdog Rosfinmonitoring has added several U.S. journalists, as well as the former spokesperson for Ukraine’s Territorial Defense Forces, Sarah Ashton-Cirillo, to its list of “extremists and terrorists.” Ashton-Cirillo, a trans woman, responded to Rosfinmonitoring’s designation on X (formerly Twitter) by saying “I know the FSB and Kremlin were thinking about it.” Being…
A Russian court has fined photographer Inna Mosina for posting a rainbow flag on social media, the independent news website Mediazona reported Monday. Mosina was the first person charged with displaying “extremist” symbols after Russia banned the so-called “international LGBT public movement” in November. Mosina faced up to 15 days in prison and a fine…
Russian authorities will “most likely” start blocking major VPN services in March, the head of the Kremlin-aligned Safe Internet League said Monday. Downloads of VPNs, which help users access blocked websites, surged in Russia after authorities started blocking Western social media platforms and scores of Russian independent news outlets amid the invasion of Ukraine. “VPNs, especially…
The Ufaorgsintez petrochemical plant (part of Rosneft) started production of a high-octane component for motor gasoline as part of an operational efficiency improvement programme.
The world’s largest wild reindeer population could disappear in the next few years if the Russian government does not crack down on overhunting, according to a new study published by a group of researchers at the Russian Academy of Sciences. Over the past 20 years, the size of Siberia’s Taymyr reindeer population has seen a fourfold decrease,…
Georgian security officials said Monday that they intercepted several explosives claimed to be from Ukraine and intended to be transported to the southwestern Russian city of Voronezh. Georgia’s State Security Service (SSG) said the explosive devices, which were allegedly sent from the Ukrainian port city of Odesa, arrived by minivan at the Georgian-Turkish border crossing on Jan. 19…
Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson has been filmed visiting Moscow in recent days as rumors swirl over whether he plans to interview President Vladimir Putin. Photographs of the conservative media personality in the Russian capital first emerged over the weekend when he was seen attending a concert at the Bolshoi Theater. A reporter from…
A Ukrainian strike on a bakery in the occupied eastern Ukrainian city of Lysychansk over the weekend killed three officials, Russian-installed representatives said Monday. The Kremlin has blasted the attack that killed at least 28 people as a “monstrous terrorist act.” On Monday, authorities in the Russian-controlled Luhansk region said a local government minister and…
Russia’s Central Election Commission (CEC) has found flaws in more than 15% of the signatures of endorsement collected by pro-peace presidential hopeful Boris Nadezhdin, his campaign team said Monday. Nadezhdin, who has emerged as the leading pro-peace voice ahead of the March presidential election, submitted some 105,000 signatures to CEC for review last week. But…
Tech giant Yandex announced Monday it has agreed to sell its Russian assets to a consortium of Russian investors for 475 billion rubles ($5.2 billion). The deal marks an end to more than two decades of Western investment in Yandex, which for years was seen as the crown jewel of Russia’s fast-growing tech industry and…
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Sunday said he visited troops at the southern frontline village Robotyne, which Kyiv retook from Russian forces last summer but is again under heavy attack. Kyiv recaptured the small village in the southern Zaporizhzhia region in August last year in what it hailed as a major success in the counteroffensive…
Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Andrei Rudenko visited South Korea to discuss the Ukrainian war and bilateral ties, Seoul’s foreign ministry said Sunday, as the two countries trade increasingly heated rhetoric over the nuclear-armed North. Rudenko, Russia’s deputy foreign minister handling Asia-Pacific affairs, met his South Korean counterpart Chung Byung-won on Friday, Seoul’s foreign ministry said…
Russia said Sunday the death toll from a Ukrainian strike on a bakery in the occupied eastern city of Lysychansk climbed to 28 people, including a child. The strike hit almost two years into Russia’s grinding offensive in Ukraine, where the front has barely moved in months but attacks have intensified this winter. Moscow’s occupation…
Ukrainian shelling on the eastern occupied city of Lysychansk killed at least 20 people, Russia said Saturday, with at least 10 others wounded and rescue operations ongoing. Moscow’s occupation forces said Kyiv had targeted a bakery that is popular on weekends. The attack hit almost two years into Russia’s Ukraine offensive. Lysychansk, a city in…
Russian police on Saturday detained a group of around 20 journalists, including an AFP reporter, covering a central Moscow protest by the wives of men mobilized to fight in Ukraine. A detained AFP video journalist said the Russian and foreign reporters were being transported in a van to a police station. The group of all…
Ukraine’s air force on Saturday said it downed nine out of 14 drones launched by Russia over southern and central regions overnight. Kyiv said most of the drones were directed at energy facilities in the central Dnipropetrovsk region, where thousands have been without power since Russian strikes on Friday. The outages have mainly affected the…
A fire broke out overnight at a major Russian oil refinery in the southwestern Volgograd region, authorities said Saturday, after a drone strike claimed by Ukraine. A Ukrainian defense source told AFP that Kyiv’s SBU security service had “organized” the attack, which came after months of Ukrainian drone attacks against Russia. “Last night, the air…
Russia on Friday named veteran human rights campaigner Oleg Orlov, head of the Nobel Prize-winning Memorial group, a “foreign agent.” Moscow has labeled hundreds of activists and independent journalists “foreign agents” in recent years as part of a sweeping crackdown on dissent. Russia’s Justice Ministry said Orlov “opposed the special military operation in Ukraine, disseminated…
The share of Russians who view the invasion of Ukraine as a mistake has reached a new high, according to survey results from the Russian Field polling agency published Thursday. For the first time since the start of the war, 37% of respondents say they would reverse Moscow’s decision to launch its so-called “special military operation”…
Amid snow-covered trees in eastern Moscow, a group of clergymen leads a prayer service to honor an upcoming church dedicated to those who died in military conflicts. A young man, identified as a participant in what the Kremlin calls the “special military operation” in Ukraine, blesses the church, stressing the importance of prayers “for those…
The United Nations’ top court said Friday it has jurisdiction over Ukraine’s lawsuit against Russia on allegations of falsely using the Genocide Convention to justify its invasion. Kyiv has accused President Vladimir Putin of misapplying the United Nations’ 1948 Genocide Convention to launch the “special military operation” in Ukraine in February 2022. Putin said part of…
Russia has created more than half a million new jobs in its defense sector to meet soaring demand on the battlefield, President Vladimir Putin said on Friday. The Kremlin has thrown massive resources at its full-scale assault on Ukraine, with the defense sector accounting for much of the sanctions-hit economy’s growth. “In the last year…
Updated to add Fedulov’s addition to the wanted list. Russian authorities are seeking the arrest of two more lawyers of jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny, months after three other former and current Navalny lawyers were detained. The Interior Ministry added Olga Mikhailova to its wanted list without specifying the crime that she is accused of…
BELGRADE, Serbia — Russian nationals registered some 9,000 new businesses in Serbia by the end of 2023, a number that is set to grow in 2024, according to the Serbian Business Register Agency (APR). The data reflects the Russian community’s interest in laying down long-term roots nearly two years after the invasion of Ukraine sparked the…
A Russian model and photographer who helps Ukrainian refugees flee the war has been arrested on criminal charges of undermining state security, the independent news website Mediazona reported Friday. Nadezhda Rossinskaya, who goes by the name Nadine Geisler, is accused of posting information about collecting humanitarian aid for the Ukrainian military’s Azov Regiment on Instagram last August. …
French President Emmanuel Macron confirmed on Friday that two French aid workers had been killed in a Russian strike in Ukraine and condemned the attack as “outrageous.” Ukrainian officials said the two men died in a recent drone attack in southern Ukraine. “Two French aid workers have been killed in Ukraine by a Russian strike.…
Russian election authorities said Friday that signatures of endorsement for anti-war presidential hopeful Boris Nadezhdin included “dead souls,” thus appearing to set the stage for his disqualification from the race. Nadezhdin, who has emerged as the presidential election’s leading pro-peace voice, said Wednesday he had submitted 105,000 signatures to the Central Election Commission (CEC) for review.…
A Russian journalist was kidnapped and threatened over his reporting on combat drone production in the central city of Izhevsk, a local Telegram news channel where the journalist works said Thursday. Izhevsky Venik wrote that its reporter Alexander Skvortsov left his home around midnight on Sunday to pick up “exclusive materials from an informant.” Three…
Ukraine said Friday that tens of thousands of people were without power after a barrage of two dozen Russian drones damaged energy infrastructure in the central part of the country. The overnight attack echoed the systematic bombardments by Russian forces last winter that left millions in Ukraine without power, heating or water for extended periods.…
The Kremlin on Friday denied claims by Kyiv that it had ignored requests to return the remains of Ukrainian prisoners of war who allegedly died in a military plane crash last week. “The administration did not [receive Kyiv’s request],” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told the state-run news agency RIA Novosti. Ukraine’s GUR military intelligence service…
Jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny and his allies have called on supporters to protest against President Vladimir Putin and the invasion of Ukraine by turning up to vote “at noon” in the March presidential election. “Go vote against Putin and the war, and urge everyone to do the same,” Navalny said Thursday on X (formerly Twitter). Navalny,…
Moscow has instructed its diplomats to “pursue” exiled Russian celebrities who speak out against their country’s war in Ukraine, Bloomberg reported Thursday, citing two anonymous sources familiar with the matter. The Foreign Ministry’s instructions were reportedly issued to Russian diplomats posted in so-called “friendly” countries — those that have avoided taking sides over Russia’s invasion.…
Moscow said Thursday that it hopes Armenia joining the International Criminal Court (ICC) would not affect relations between the two countries. Armenia, which formally joined the Hague-based court on Thursday, has gradually distanced itself from Russia in recent months. Yerevan is now required to arrest President Vladimir Putin if he sets foot on Armenian territory,…