Finland will close its eastern border with Russia, its interior minister said Thursday, hours after reopening it following a spike in migrant crossings that Helsinki has labeled a Russian hybrid attack. Finland, which shares a 1,340-kilometer border with Russia, will close the border on Friday at 8:00 p.m. until Jan. 14, Interior Minister Mari Rantanen said…
Romania has summoned Russia’s envoy over a “new violation” of its airspace after the NATO member’s territory was hit by a crashed drone during attacks on Ukraine, authorities said Thursday. Moscow has repeatedly attacked Ukraine’s ports in the south, including areas bordering Romania, since exiting a grain deal that aimed to protect grain exports through…
Russian President Vladimir Putin said Thursday that Moscow was in “difficult” talks with Washington about a prisoner swap involving WSJ reporter Evan Gershkovich and jailed ex-Marine Paul Whelan. “There are contacts on this issue and dialogue is ongoing, but it’s not straightforward,” Putin said. “I hope that we will find a solution. But, I repeat,…
Russian President Vladimir Putin said Thursday that the country had deployed 617,000 Russian military personnel in Ukraine as the Kremlin’s war against Kyiv as the Kremlin’s war against Kyiv has been ongoing for almost two years. “The front line is over 2,000 kilometers long. There are 617,000 people in the conflict zone,” Putin said during…
Russian President Vladimir Putin said Thursday that the country had deployed 617,000 Russian military personnel in Ukraine as the Kremlin’s war against Kyiv has been ongoing for almost two years. “The front line is over 2,000 kilometers long. There are 617,000 people in the conflict zone,” Putin said during the end-of-year press conference. Putin also…
Several audience-submitted questions at President Vladimir Putin’s end-of-year press conference Thursday were unexpectedly critical of the president and the current state of affairs in Russia. The conference and public call-in, Putin’s first since the invasion of Ukraine, has been filled with questions from the public sent via text message, along with questions from journalists inside…
A former top commander of Russian-backed rebels in eastern Ukraine, Igor Girkin, went on trial in Moscow on Thursday on charges of extremism for criticizing the Kremlin’s military strategy towards Kyiv. The 52-year-old hardline nationalist — better known by his alias Igor Strelkov — was instrumental in sparking hostilities in 2014 between Kremlin proxies in…
A Moscow court on Thursday upheld a ruling to hold in detention until Jan. 30 U.S. reporter Evan Gershkovich, arrested in Russia earlier this year on espionage charges. The 32-year-old Wall Street Journal correspondent in Moscow, his employer and the U.S. government have all rejected the spying allegations. “Evan Gershkovich will remain in custody until…
Russia said Thursday that its air defense systems had downed nine Ukrainian drones headed towards the capital, hours ahead of a highly anticipated news conference from President Vladimir Putin. The reported attack came hours before Putin will hold his first end-of-year conference since launching the Ukraine offensive in February 2022, and a day after a…
Russia put the head of Ukraine’s military intelligence (GUR), Kyrylo Budanov, on its “wanted” list on Thursday, accusing the agency he heads of attacks inside its own territory. Russia added 37-year-old Budanov to the Interior Ministry list of people wanted for criminal offenses. Moscow accuses Budanov, who has led the GUR since 2020, of having…
Olympic officials have shortened the list of Russian athletes allowed to compete as neutrals at the 2024 Paris Games. Last week, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) said eight athletes from Russia and three from Belarus had qualified as neutral athletes. But by Thursday, the IOC revised that number to six neutral athletes with a Russian passport…
Bolivia, home to some of the world’s biggest lithium reserves, signed a $450 million deal Wednesday with Russian state firm Uranium One Group to produce the key battery and electric vehicle components. Under the agreement, the Russian firm’s parent company, Rosatom, will invest in Bolivia over two years to build a pilot lithium plant in…
Russia on Wednesday warned against a “chaotic” exit from fossil fuels, while welcoming the “compromise” deal reached at the COP28 summit in Dubai on transitioning away from them. “We have at every opportunity stressed the consequences of a chaotic exit without the backing of science,” Ruslan Edelgeriyev, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s special envoy for climate…
Russian left-wing activist and anarchist Lev Skoryakin was released from detention after being fined for staging a protest against Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB), the human rights watchdog OVD-Info reported Wednesday. Rights activists said Skoryakin was abducted from jail in the Central Asian republic of Kyrgyzstan in October and flown to Moscow, where he faced…
Two naturalized Russians have been stripped of their citizenship, Russia’s Interior Ministry said Wednesday, marking the first such case since new legislation legalizing denaturalization went into force. The amendments to Russia’s citizenship laws, which came into effect in late October, list more than 60 crimes as grounds for losing citizenship, including spreading “fake news” about Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.…
Around 100,000 residents of southern Russia’s Rostov region were hit by power outages in freezing weather, its governor said Wednesday. Images shared on social media showed icy roads, downed trees and power lines in the city of Rostov-on-Don 1,000 kilometers south of Moscow and 100 kilometers east of Ukraine. More than 300 residents including 71 children sought medical…
The Russian foreign minister on Wednesday called on UN chief Antonio Guterres to organize an international conference to find a lasting solution to the war between Israel and the Palestinians. Moscow has repeatedly called for the creation of a Palestinian state and has working relations with both Hamas — which it does not recognize as…
Rosneft specialists took part in the annual Congress “Innovative practice: science plus business” organized by Innopraktika in cooperation with Lomonosov Moscow State University.
Russian journalist and writer Andrei Konstantinov has died in St. Petersburg, the news website Fontanka reported on Wednesday. Konstantinov, 60, was suffering from a severe illness, Fontanka said. Born in the Astrakhan region, Konstantinov was the founder of news websites Fontanka, 47news and the Agency for Investigative Journalism. He was the author of “Banditsky Petersburg”…
More than one-third of workers furloughed at Volkswagen’s former plant in Russia have been “squeezed out” by its new owners, a trade union representing them said late Tuesday. In May, Volkswagen sold its Kaluga plant to the Russian auto dealership Avilon, which renamed the factory to AGR Automotive and has promised to resume production in…
At least 50 residents of Ukraine’s capital Kyiv were injured Wednesday in an overnight missile strike by Russia, authorities said. The incident marked the second air attack on Kyiv in a week and resulted in one of the highest numbers of injuries in the capital in months. Here is a closer look at the consequences…
A former senior police officer in St. Petersburg has been arrested on suspicion of unlawfully granting more than 100,000 labor migrants legal status, state media reported Wednesday, citing anonymous law enforcement officials. Authorities uncovered the large-scale legalization scheme in October 2022 and detained St. Petersburg municipal deputy and regional MMA chief Viktor Danishevsky, as well as…
Enterprises of Bashneft’s refining and petrochemical complex (a member of Rosneft Oil Company) won the 26th All-Russian contest “The Top 100 Best Goods of Russia-2023”.
Authorities in Russia’s third-largest city of Novosibirsk have detained a man they accuse of plotting to blow up a military enlistment office, state media reported Wednesday. According to the TASS news agency, 27-year-old Yevgeny Ryapolov is suspected of planting an explosive device inside a slow cooker, which was discovered near the enlistment office on Dec.…
Two German men will face trial in Berlin on Wednesday for allegedly stealing intelligence secrets and passing them on to Russia’s security services. The pair, named by prosecutors as Carsten L. and Arthur E., are accused of working together with a Russian businessman to “procure sensitive information” from the portfolio of Germany’s BND foreign intelligence.…
Some 315,000 Russian troops have been killed or wounded in Ukraine since the war began in February 2022, nearly 90% of its pre-war force, a congressional source said Tuesday. The Russian military has also lost some 2,200 of the 3,500 tanks it had before the start of the conflict, the source said, citing a declassified…
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky held last-ditch talks in Washington to plead for continued U.S. aid Tuesday, as Russia claimed advances on the battlefront and scornfully dismissed the impact of Western help for Kyiv. After Zelensky met the leaders of both parties in the U.S. Senate, Democratic Majority leader Chuck Schumer warned that Ukraine needed the…
Delegates at the COP28 climate conference on Tuesday raced to hammer out a final agreement as the event barreled into overtime. A draft agreement released the day before sparked outrage among countries that insist on a rapid phase-out of coal, oil, and gas, as the text called for reduced “consumption and production of fossil fuels…
At least two elderly women were found frozen to death in unheated homes in St. Petersburg and central Russia’s Sverdlovsk region, media reported Tuesday. In the Sverdlovsk region town of Sukhoy Log, located some 1,900 kilometers east of Moscow, animal rights activists discovered the body of a resident who lived in a wooden shack. “The…
Finland’s Prime Minister Petteri Orpo said his government will reopen two of the eight shuttered border crossings with Russia, the Nordic country’s Yle broadcaster reported Tuesday. Finland closed its entire border with Russia in November after accusing Moscow of funneling asylum seekers toward the country, an EU member state that joined NATO after Russia invaded…
Jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny is believed to have been transferred from the prison in central Russia where he was being held, his allies told The Moscow Times, but his whereabouts remain unknown. “We don’t know where he could have been transferred,” Navalny’s spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh told The Moscow Times over text message Tuesday. “We currently have no…
As part of the Vostok Oil project, RN-Vankor (part of Rosneft’s oil and gas production complex) started construction of an underwater section of the trunk oil pipeline across the Yenisei River.
Ukraine pointed the finger at Russia’s secret service over a massive hacker attack on Tuesday that disrupted services for the country’s main phone operator. Ukraine’s SBU security service said it had opened a criminal investigation and sent agents to the company’s offices. “The special services of the Russian Federation may be behind this hacker attack,”…
The former chief doctor of Moscow’s notorious Matrosskaya Tishina prison was sentenced to seven years in jail for selling fraudulent medical releases that allowed inmates to continue treatment in civil hospitals, media reported Tuesday. Alexander Kravchenko was accused of allowing the medical release of four prisoners “to reduce the number of prisoners,” according to the…
Russian authorities have opened a new criminal case against detained U.S.-Russian journalist Alsu Kurmasheva, the state-affiliated news agency Tatar.Inform reported Tuesday. Kurmasheva, a journalist for the U.S.-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), was arrested in October in Kazan, the capital of Russia’s republic of Tatarstan, for failing to register as a “foreign agent.” The new…
Anti-war sociologist and Marxist theorist Boris Kagarlitsky has been fined 600,000 rubles ($6,600) for “justifying terrorism” in comments he made about Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, independent media reported Tuesday. Kagarlitsky, founder and chief editor of the left-wing news organization Rabkor, was detained in July in connection with a since-deleted YouTube video about the 2022 Crimea…
A court in Russia’s republic of Chechnya on Tuesday denied a parole request for the mother of a prominent critic of Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov. Zarema Musaeva, mother of activist Abubakar Yangulbaev and wife of the retired federal judge Saydi Yangulbaev, was handed a five-and-a-half-year prison sentence in July on charges of assaulting police officers and fraud. …
Russian forces in southern Ukraine have “advanced significantly” around the village of Novopokrovka in the Zaporizhzhia region, Kremlin-installed officials said Tuesday. “I’m in constant contact with our units… The situation is always tense, but not only do our guys continue to hold the line of defense, but they’re also gradually moving forward,” the Moscow-backed head of…
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday promised to reinforce Russia’s “military-naval might” as he attended the inauguration of two nuclear submarines in the country’s Far North. The Russian leader took part in a flag-hoisting ceremony in Severodvinsk on the White Sea where the Krasnoyarsk and Emperor Alexander III were built over the past six years.…
Russians have voiced concern about the growing cost of a basic food staple — eggs — pointing to the fragile state of the sanctions-hit economy, as President Vladimir Putin seeks a fifth term in office. Putin has said he would run for re-election in March in a vote that falls over two years after he…
“Lukashenko’s regime is very vulnerable,” says Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, “and because of that, its cruelty is becoming more and more extreme.” It has been three years since Tsikhanouskaya ran in the 2020 Belarusian presidential elections and mounted a historic challenge to longtime ruler Alexander Lukashenko that brought tens of thousands of citizens to the streets to call…
Towns and villages across Siberia have been hit by a succession of power outages as freezing temperatures grip much of the region, Russian media outlets reported Monday. Temperatures over the weekend fell to as low as minus 40 degrees Celsius in the Irkutsk, Krasnoyarsk, and Tyumen regions, as well as the republics of Buryatia and Khakasia —…
It was snowing heavily when Yulia* walked across the only open border between Ukraine and Russia last month, carrying her two cats and dragging a large suitcase behind her. She had left her village on the edge of Russian-occupied Melitopol, a city in Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region, more than 24 hours earlier, paying a Russian “carrier”…
Specialists of RN-Yuganskneftegaz, Rosneft’s largest oil production asset, drilled more than 5.1 million meters of rock in the first nine months of 2023, which is 17% higher than in the same period of 2022.
The world’s largest crypto exchange Binance said Monday that it will no longer support person-to-person trading with the Russian ruble starting in January, as the company continues to gradually withdraw from Russia. Binance said users can choose to withdraw their rubles via its fiat partners, convert them into cryptocurrency or trade them on the Binance…
Russia’s Central Election Commission has given the green light on holding next year’s presidential election in partially occupied Ukrainian regions, Interfax reported Monday. Russia’s Armed Forces and the Federal Security Service (FSB) had previously said that they “deem it possible” for the vote to go ahead in areas where fighting continues, nearly two years into Russia’s war…
Jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny’s whereabouts and condition have been unknown for nearly a week after he reportedly suffered a serious health incident, his team said on Monday. “It has already been the sixth day since we haven’t known where Alexei is or what’s happening to him,” Navalny’s spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh wrote on X (formerly…
A once-powerful Siberian businessman and former regional lawmaker has been sentenced to 12 years in prison on his third murder charge dating back to the 1990s, Interfax reported Monday. Anatoly Bykov chaired the Rusal aluminum giant’s Krasnoyarsk Aluminum Plant until his firing in 2000 and served as a lawmaker in the Krasnoyarsk regional legislature from 1997-2016. Prosecutors…
Human rights activists have raised alarm over the detention of a mobilized Russian soldier on charges of desertion in Armenia, saying the move amounts to a violation of the ex-Soviet republic’s sovereignty. Russian military police in Armenia detained Dmitry Setrakov, who fled the country to avoid serving in the Russian military, the Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly-Vanadzor…
Russian authorities have placed a man with dual U.S.-Russian citizenship in pre-trial custody for “rehabilitating Nazism,” the St. Petersburg court said Saturday. “[Yury] Malev was detained on Dec. 8… and charged the same day. He admitted partial guilt,” the court said on Telegram. Malev was charged with rehabilitation of Nazism, which carries up to five…
In a choreographed and widely predicted move, President Vladimir Putin announced Friday that he will run for a fifth term in the 2024 presidential election next March. The 71-year-old, who has been in power since 2000, is expected to run virtually unopposed apart from a few handpicked challengers following the adoption of wartime censorship and…
The White House mocked Russian President Vladimir Putin’s announcement on Friday that he would run for re-election in 2024, suggesting that the result was highly unlikely to be in doubt. “Well, that’s going to be one humdinger of a horse race, isn’t it?” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters aboard Air Force One…
Lawmakers in western Russia’s Kursk region passed a law Friday banning the act of “coercing women” into undergoing an abortion amid increasing concerns about a looming nationwide ban. “Let today’s bill be the first step [toward a comprehensive solution to Russia’s demographic problem],” the Kursk region’s parliament wrote on the messaging app Telegram. The new…
Olympic officials on Friday announced that Russian and Belarusian athletes will be able to compete at next year’s Paris Games as neutrals and outside of team events, but only if they have not actively supported Moscow’s war against Ukraine. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) said only eight athletes from Russia and three from Belarus currently…
Russian authorities on Friday issued an arrest warrant for Russian-American journalist and writer Masha, who earlier this year was charged with spreading “fakes” about Moscow’s war in Ukraine. Russia’s Interior Ministry lists the 56-year-old by the full name Maria Alexandrovna Gessen, as well as her date of birth, gender and nationality. The ministry does not provide…
“Three guys from the staff attacked me and started pulling off my clothes. Just like that. They told me to step on the scales — I said I refused medical intervention. And they started tearing my clothes off, injuring me, hitting me several times, threatening that they would put me in a straitjacket and inject…
Authorities in Moscow have banned billboards containing QR codes after allies of jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny used the matrix barcodes to conceal their newly launched anti-Putin campaign ahead of the 2024 presidential election. Navalny on Thursday urged supporters to vote for any candidate besides Vladimir Putin during the race, which is scheduled to take…
Russia opened an investigation Friday after a passenger aircraft was forced to land due to a technical malfunction, the latest incident to highlight safety concerns in Moscow’s aviation industry. Sanctions over the conflict in Ukraine have effectively cut Russia off from Western plane manufacturers Airbus and Boeing, making it difficult for Russian airlines to import…
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday announced that he will run for re-election in 2024, state media reported. The announcement follows months of speculation over whether the 71-year-old, who has been in power since 2000, plans to seek six more years in office after constitutional amendments in 2020 reset his term count. Putin told Lieutenant…
Russian election officials announced Friday that the 2024 presidential race will be held over three days, the first time that multi-day voting has been used for a presidential election. “Three-day voting is already becoming a tradition in our electoral system,” said Russia’s Central Election Commission (CEC) chairwoman Ella Pamfilova. “It was first used during the [Covid-19]…