Inflation in Russia held at elevated levels in January, data published Wednesday showed, as soaring government spending on the military offensive in Ukraine pushes prices higher. The Kremlin’s sweeping militarization of Russia’s economy has helped confound predictions that the campaign could trigger an economic collapse, but has led to rising prices across the country. Annual…
Russian biologists have discovered microplastics in the intestines of common wasps, with its concentration increasing since 2019, Tomsk State University said Wednesday. “In contrast to well-studied marine and freshwater ecosystems, the occurrence of microplastics in terrestrial ecosystems remains virtually unchecked,” said Anastasia Simakova, head of the invertebrate department at Tomsk State University’s Biological Institute. “Preliminary…
While much of the world is celebrating Valentine’s Day with cards, chocolates and flowers, some in Russia have seized on current geopolitical tensions to undermine the romantic holiday and paint it as an example of Western “excess.” Soon after being disqualified from the presidential election, Communists of Russia party chairman Sergei Malinkovich urged lawmakers to “launch a legislative…
The Kremlin on Wednesday denied a report by Reuters that President Vladimir Putin had proposed a ceasefire in Ukraine to the United States. Citing three anonymous Russian sources with knowledge of the discussions, the news agency said Putin offered to “freeze the conflict at the current lines” in 2023. The United States reportedly rejected Putin’s offer, which…
Moscow has suspended annual payments to the Arctic Council until its work resumes in full, Russia’s Foreign Ministry told state media Wednesday. The United States, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden in March 2022 suspended participation in the Arctic Council over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. “Russia’s annual contributions to the Arctic Council’s budget have been suspended…
Ukraine said Wednesday it had destroyed another Russian warship in the Black Sea, a key battleground of the nearly two-year war where Kyiv’s campaign has been building momentum. While the frontline on land has remained static for over a year, Ukraine claims to have put Russia on the defensive in the Black Sea, an area…
President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday signed a law that allows authorities to confiscate the assets of individuals convicted of “discrediting” and spreading “fake news” about the military. The wartime legislation also allows seizing money and other valuables from those found guilty of inciting “extremist” activity and calling for “anti-Russian” sanctions. The law does not appear…
A German tourist has been arrested in St. Petersburg on drug smuggling charges after he brought gummy bear edibles on a flight to Russia, the Federal Customs Service (FTS) said Tuesday. The man was detained at St. Petersburg’s Pulkovo airport after a customs inspector noticed inside of his backpack “a rigid plastic bag with the…
A court in Finland has jailed a Russian nationalist fighter Yan Petrovsky for violating EU sanctions by entering the country under an alias, the Finnish broadcaster Yle reported Tuesday. Petrovsky was detained in July on separate charges of committing terrorism in Ukraine. Yle reports that he was able to cross the border into Finland in…
Authorities in the Russian city of Vologda announced Tuesday that a local movie theater will screen U.S. conservative pundit Tucker Carlson’s interview with President Vladimir Putin. “This [interview] took place last week but it’s still being discussed all over the world,” Vologda Mayor Sergei Voropanov wrote on the messaging app Telegram. “But not every Vologda…
A Moscow court on Tuesday sentenced a 65-year-old American man to 21 years in prison for sexually abusing his sons when they lived in the United States. “The Savyolovsky court of Moscow sentenced 65-year-old U.S. citizen David Thomas Barnes to 21 years in a penal colony, finding him guilty of sexually abusing his own children,”…
Russian strikes killed five people across Ukraine on Tuesday, Ukrainian officials said. The governor of northeastern Ukraine’s Kharkiv region, Oleh Syniehubov, said three people were killed in his region, which borders Russia and has seen increased attacks in recent months. Syniehubov said a 61-year-old woman was killed when Russian forces shelled the city of Vovchansk,…
Pop star Filipp Kirkorov traveled to occupied Ukraine to perform for Russian soldiers two months after his attendance at a scandalous “nearly naked” party put a dent in his career, media reported Tuesday. Independent news outlets speculated that Kirkorov made the rare trip as an act of repentance days after his name appeared on a list of…
The Kremlin confirmed Tuesday that President Vladimir Putin will not take the stage to debate his rivals in Russia’s March presidential election. “Everyone can see Putin’s statements on all aspects of Russians’ lives on a virtually daily basis,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters. He added that Putin “fundamentally differs” from all other candidates because…
Two trains collided in Russia’s Chelyabinsk region late Monday, with law enforcement officials saying one of the drivers involved in the crash was likely intoxicated. “A medical screening showed the locomotive driver had alcohol in his bloodstream,” the transportation unit of Russia’s Investigative Committee, which probes major crimes, said in a statement. The law enforcement…
Updated to include Peskov’s, Zakharova’s remarks. Russia has issued an arrest warrant for Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas, the independent news website Mediazona reported Tuesday, marking the country’s first-ever criminal case against an acting head of a foreign government. Kallas appeared on Russia’s wanted list after she spoke in favor of dismantling a Soviet-era monument in…
A Russian court of appeals has sentenced prominent anti-war sociologist and Marxist theorist Boris Kagarlitsky to five years in prison, his lawyer told reporters on Tuesday. In December, Kagarlitsky was ordered by a Moscow military court to pay 600,000 rubles ($6,600) for “justifying terrorism,” charges which he denied. Prosecutors appealed the lower court’s decision to fine…
Finland’s President-elect Alexander Stubb said Monday his country will not maintain high-level ties with Russia until the Kremlin ends its war in Ukraine. Relations between Moscow and Helsinki have sharply deteriorated since the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, prompting Finland to drop decades of military non-alignment and join NATO. “We do not have a political relationship…
Russia is gaining the advantage in the war in Ukraine, owing to its greater number of troops and arms supplied by China, North Korea and other countries, Norway’s intelligence service warned on Monday. Presenting its annual risk report along with other Norwegian security services, the head of the military intelligence unit Nils Andreas Stensones said…
Russian lawmakers on Monday introduced a bill that would expand current legislation on “undesirable” organizations to include state-sponsored entities in addition to non-governmental organizations. Since launching their “undesirable” list in 2015 to crack down on foreign-funded NGOs, Russian authorities have expanded the law to target independent news outlets, human rights groups, environmental organizations and educational institutions. Vasily Piskarev,…
Pro-peace presidential hopeful Boris Nadezhdin announced Monday that he has filed two lawsuits with Russia’s Supreme Court challenging the decision by election authorities to bar him from running in the March presidential race. Russa’s Central Election Commission (CEC) voted unanimously Thursday to disqualify Nadezhdin over alleged errors in thousands of signatures endorsing his candidacy. “Real…
Ukrainian military intelligence claims that Russian forces in occupied areas of the country are using Starlink satellite technology to communicate. The GUR said Sunday that they had intercepted radio transmissions from the Donetsk region in which Russian soldiers discussed using Starlink terminals. Activated after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Starlink satellite internet replaced conventional internet…
Russia has added 18 British military, political and academic figures to its entry ban list in response to London’s efforts “to reduce Moscow’s influence in the international arena,” Russia’s Foreign Ministry announced Monday. “Russophobic British officials don’t shy away from… discrediting our country’s constitutional order and social and political processes,” the ministry said. Minister of…
Three former employees of Russian media influencer Ksenia Sobchak were sentenced to at least seven years in prison for trying to extort money from the head of state-owned defense conglomerate Rostec. Multiple criminal cases were launched in August 2022 after Rostec CEO Sergei Chemezov and his aides accused the managers of several Telegram news channels of…
Officials from Russia’s state civil aviation agency Rosaviatsia have been accused of de-registering aircraft that were later used by the Ukrainian military, the pro-Kremlin tabloid Izvestia reported Monday, citing anonymous law enforcement and Transportation Ministry sources. A Transport Ministry inspection in July revealed that 59 planes and helicopters had been illegally removed from Russia’s civil…
Russian exports to Europe dropped by more than two-thirds in 2023, as the EU drastically cut its purchases of Russian oil and gas, Russia’s customs agency said Monday. EU countries halted the vast majority of their energy purchases from Russia in a bid to exert economic pressure on Moscow over its military offensive against Ukraine.…
The governor of western Russia’s Kaliningrad region blamed the 18th-century German enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant for the outbreak of war in Ukraine. “He is directly related to the military conflict in Ukraine,” Anton Alikhanov, who governs the western exclave of Kaliningrad, said Friday at a local political science forum. According to the regional news outlet FederalPress, Alikhanov…
Russia’s nearly two-year war in Ukraine is likely to continue as a drawn-out war of attrition in 2024, with neither side expected to make major territorial gains, military analysts have told The Moscow Times. The Russian army, despite its firepower and personnel advantages, lacks the resources to achieve a decisive breakthrough in Ukrainian-held areas, resulting…
Ukraine said it destroyed most of the 45 attack drones launched by Russia overnight, with little damage reported on Sunday morning. The announcement comes a day after authorities announced seven were killed in a Russian attack that set a petrol station ablaze in Ukraine’s second-biggest city, Kharkiv. “Overnight the occupiers launched 45 attack drones… As…
A Russian drone attack on a gas station in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv on Saturday killed seven people, including three children, local authorities said. “A whole family of 5 people died in a fire at their home, a husband and wife and their three children,” Kharkiv region Governor Oleg Synegubov wrote on the Telegram…
A Russian drone attack on a gas station in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv on Saturday killed seven people, including three children, local authorities said. “A whole family of 5 people died in a fire at their home, a husband and wife and their three children,” Kharkiv region Governor Oleg Synegubov wrote on the Telegram…
“She was a regular girl, just like me or anyone else,” Elena Patyaeva said of her close friend, Seda Suleimanova. The two met in St. Petersburg, where Suleimanova, 26, had fled to after relatives in her home republic of Chechnya threatened to kill her for refusing an arranged marriage. On Wednesday, human rights group NC…
There’s nothing like a good history lesson. Unless, that is, President Vladimir Putin is the person giving the lesson, and he’s using it to justify why he launched a war against Ukraine. But Putin, eager as always to don his historian cap and Kremlinsplain away the invasion, gave U.S. conservative pundit Tucker Carlson the kind…
When Tucker Carlson announced his interview with Vladimir Putin claiming that “no Western journalist had bothered” to interview the Russian president, he was immediately corrected by not only other journalists but the Kremlin itself. And when the interview was finally released, Putin spent the first 30 minutes explaining his false assertion that Russia has a…
Yekaterina Mizulina, the leader of Russia’s crackdown on anti-war artists and content creators, has been confronted by university students in the republic of Tatarstan, media outlets reported Friday, in a rare example of public backlash to her work. Videos of heated debates between Mizulina, who heads the Kremlin-aligned Safe Internet League, and Kazan Federal University (KFU) students…
Russia’s state financial watchdog Rosfinmonitoring has added jailed leftist activist Sergei Udaltsov to its list of “extremists and terrorists.” Udaltsov was placed in pre-trial detention last month on accusations of justifying terrorism in social media posts. He faces up to seven years in prison if found guilty. Being added to Russia’s registry of “extremists and…
Moscow on Friday refused to say whether a convicted hitman who killed a former Chechen fighter in Berlin four years ago was a Russian agent after President Vladimir Putin hinted that he wanted him freed in a three-way prisoner exchange. In an interview with conservative pundit Tucker Carlson published Thursday, Putin brought up the case…
A group of Russian tourists arrived in Pyongyang on Friday, AFP photos and video showed, the first known foreign tour group to visit nuclear-armed North Korea since before pandemic-linked border closures. Their arrival comes as Moscow and Pyongyang bolster ties, with North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un making a rare overseas trip to meet President…
Russian investigators said Friday they have detained a blogger on charges of “rehabilitating Nazism” after she posted an Instagram video in which she pretends to tickle a World War II monument. Investigators initially opened a criminal case against 23-year-old Alyona Agafonova in July, accusing her of “cynical and immoral acts” toward the Motherland Calls monument…
The Kremlin said Friday that Ukraine’s appointment of a new Commander-in-Chief would not lead to any changes in the nearly two-year war between Moscow and Kyiv. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Thursday relieved his top commander Valerii Zaluzhnyi, marking the biggest shake-up of the country’s military leadership since the start of the conflict. “We don’t…
Ukrainian prisoners of war were not on board the Russian Il-76 transport plane that crashed near the border with Ukraine last month, a senior Ukrainian national security official said Friday. Moscow claims 65 Ukrainian servicemen en route for a scheduled prisoner exchange were killed in the air disaster in southwestern Russia’s Belgorod region on Jan.…
Russia shot down 19 Ukrainian drones over four different regions and the Black Sea overnight, the Russian Defense Ministry said Friday. “An attempt by the Kyiv regime to commit a terrorist attack with 19 aerial drones against sites on Russian territory has been thwarted,” the ministry said in a statement. It said air defense systems…
President Vladimir Putin said in an interview released Thursday with controversial right-wing U.S. journalist Tucker Carlson that the West should understand it is “impossible” to defeat Russia in Ukraine. In a two-hour interview with the former Fox News host — coming just ahead of the two-year anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — Putin also…
Ukraine and Russia on Thursday said they swapped 100 prisoners of war each, the latest exchange between the warring sides since Moscow accused Kyiv of downing a plane carrying captured Ukrainian soldiers. Moscow and Kyiv have both vowed to keep exchanging prisoners as Russia’s war against Ukraine drags quickly approaches its second anniversary. “Another 100…
Ukraine’s top commander Valery Zaluzhny was on Thursday removed from his post, in the biggest shake-up of Kyiv’s military leadership since Russia’s invasion began almost two years ago. The popular general had led the Ukrainian army since the start of the war, pushing back a vastly more powerful invading force in the first months of…
At least six civilians in southwestern Russia’s Belgorod region have been wounded in Ukrainian shelling, Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said Thursday. A man received shrapnel wounds when a “kamikaze” drone attacked a bus in the village of Novaya Tavolzhanka, less than 5 kilometers from Ukraine’s Kharkiv region, Gladkov wrote on the messaging app Telegram. He later…
Chinese President Xi Jinping and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin accused the United States of “interfering” in their countries’ domestic affairs during a telephone call on Thursday, the Kremlin said. Xi and Putin denounced the “U.S. policy of interfering in the internal affairs of other states” during an hour-long call. “The leaders of the two…
Finland has extended the closure of its border with Russia until April 14, as a recent surge of asylum seekers it accuses Moscow of orchestrating shows no sign of abating, the Nordic country’s Interior Ministry announced Thursday. Finland has not reopened its eastern border with Russia since closing it in December over what it called…
Kazakh-born businessman Vasily Anisimov is at least the seventh billionaire to renounce his Russian citizenship after the invasion of Ukraine, Forbes Russia reported Thursday, citing documents provided by the exiled oligarch. Anisimov, the former owner of the license for the “Putinka” vodka brand and the real estate holding Coalco, is reportedly listed as a citizen…
Large numbers of Russian troops are pushing to capture the frontline town of Avdiivka, its Ukrainian mayor said Thursday, escalating a months-long effort to capture the industrial hub. Late last year, Moscow launched a costly bid to seize the town, which has been caught up in fighting since 2014 when it briefly fell to Moscow-backed…
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…