Abnormally high November temperatures in Russia’s Far East are preventing local bears from hibernating, with some animals wandering around their winter dens in a “half-asleep state,” the Amur region’s Wildlife Conservation Authority said Tuesday. While many bears have already accumulated the fat needed for their long seasonal sleep, the “improperly” high air temperature hinders them…
In the past week, at least 150 migrants with expired Russian visas have been detained in the republic of Karelia while heading to the Finnish border, according to the RBC news website. The governor of Karelia’s press secretary, Marina Kabatyuk, told RBC most of the migrants had been detained after Nov. 18. The migrants are…
A Moscow court has ordered the arrest of leading Pussy Riot member Nadya Tolokonnikova in absentia, the state-run RIA Novosti news agency reported on Tuesday. Tolokonnikova, 34, the feminist protest and performance art group’s co-founder, was charged with insulting the religious feelings of believers, RIA Novosti said, without providing further details. The activist, who currently…
Russia said Tuesday it was holding joint naval exercises with India in the Bay of Bengal, as the two countries bolster security ties despite Moscow’s offensive in Ukraine. The United States has in the past voiced concern about India holding joint drills with Russia, which has been trying to expand its influence in the region.…
Russia said on Tuesday it fended off Ukraine’s attempts to get to the occupied eastern bank of the southern Kherson region, and claimed Kyiv’s army had suffered “colossal losses.” The Ukrainian army said last week it had pushed Russian forces back three to eight kilometers from the banks of the Dnipro River, which would have…
A video of an evangelical church service in St. Petersburg featuring songs about ballistic missiles and the chorus “Russia for Christ” went viral over the weekend, prompting Pastor Olga Golikova of the Light of Christ Mission Church to respond this Sunday. The video, published in March, featured Golikova speaking over background singers and music while…
European Union countries are in talks to limit the movements of Russian diplomats within the EU’s border-free zone after the Czech Republic raised concerns about potential spies evading monitoring, the Financial Times reported Tuesday. Last week, Prague shared a document outlining ideas to prevent spying activities for the EU’s 12th package of sanctions against Moscow, which…
Russian special forces are planning to remove Ukraine’s leadership from power by the end of 2023, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said. In an interview with the British tabloid The Sun published late Monday, Zelensky claimed Russia would use “any means available to them,” including assassination, in the operation supposedly dubbed “Maidan 3.” “The goal…
Wives and mothers of Russian soldiers who have been mobilized for the war in Ukraine are facing restrictions and intimidation as they demand to bring their loved ones back from the front. On Sunday, a group of women held an anti-mobilization protest in the Siberian city of Novosibirsk, the independent news outlet Vyorstka reported. Similar…
Russian President Vladimir Putin will take part in a virtual summit of the BRICS group of nations on Tuesday to discuss the Israel-Hamas war, the Kremlin said. The meeting will be chaired by South African President Cyril Ramaphosa in the hope of drawing up a common response to the more than six-week conflict. “On Nov.…
Russian airlines have been invited to launch regular flights to North Korea, the Kommersant business daily reported Monday. Russia’s state civil aviation agency Rosaviatsia sent offers to airlines Aeroflot and Aurora to assess their readiness to launch flights to Pyongyang, Kommersant said, citing unspecified sources. A Rosaviatsia delegation visited counterparts in North Korea last week…
The scale of Russian grain theft in occupied Ukraine likely constitutes the war crimes of starvation and pillage, a new report by the Global Rights Compliance legal practice has said. Russia’s billion-dollar operation — which involved seizing Ukrainian grain storage facilities, building new railways, and transferring huge cargo ships to Black Sea ports both before…
The sentencing of artist and musician Alexandra Skochilenko is “horrific” and “mortally dangerous,” a member of Russia’s presidential human rights council has said. “It was known from the very beginning that Alexandra has an intolerance to certain foods and a number of other illnesses,” the state-run RIA Novosti news agency quoted Eva Merkacheva as saying…
The Finnish Defense Forces are helping the country’s Border Guard construct temporary fences on the Russian border after the Finnish government closed four border crossing points in response to an increased flow of third-country asylum seekers coming from Russia. Since September, over 300 undocumented asylum seekers, mostly young men from the Middle East, have arrived…
A Ukrainian orphan taken from Mariupol after Russian forces captured the Ukrainian city in the first weeks of its invasion has returned home, Kyiv said Sunday. The case of Bohdan Yermokhin, who turned 18 on Sunday, made international headlines after Russia issued him a draft summons to report for mandatory military conscription ahead of his…
Russian President Vladimir Putin will take part in a virtual G20 leaders’ summit on Wednesday, after skipping the flagship in-person meeting in New Delhi in September. “Vladimir Putin will take part in the virtual G20 summit,” Russia’s Vesti TV show said in a social media post Sunday, citing Putin’s schedule for the upcoming week. Putin…
Both Kyiv and Moscow were targeted overnight by opposing drone attacks, which were largely intercepted by anti-aircraft defenses and did not result in casualties, authorities said on Sunday. “An attempt by the Kyiv regime to carry out a terrorist attack using a drone against facilities of the Russian Federation was thwarted,” the Russian Defense Ministry…
More than 100 Russian doctors have signed an open letter to President Vladimir Putin calling for the release a woman jailed for making a supermarket protest over Russia’s offensive against Ukraine. A St. Petersburg court last week sentenced Alexandra Skochilenko, 33, to seven years in prison for spreading “false information.” She had swapped supermarket price…
Ukraine said two first responders were killed and at least seven people injured in Russian rocket strikes on the southeastern region of Zaporizhzhia on Saturday. The attacks came as Kyiv’s air force said Russia fired 38 drones at its territory overnight — the highest reported number in more than six weeks. Ukrainian police said Russia…
Russia has added The Moscow Times to its list of “foreign agents” alongside several other journalists and activists, the Justice Ministry announced Friday. Russia’s “foreign agents” registry, launched in 2012 in response to similar legislation in the United States, has been disproportionately used to target independent journalists, activists and NGOs in recent years. The “foreign agents”…
Ukraine said Friday it had carried out successful attacks on the Russian-occupied eastern bank of the Dnipro River, days after Moscow admitted Kyiv’s forces had gained a foothold there. A sustained Ukrainian breakthrough across the frontline waterway would mark a significant success for Kyiv, whose wider counteroffensive has so far failed to turn the tide…
The European Union on Friday accused Russia of making a “shameful” use of migrants to put pressure on other countries, saying it had noted an increased number of undocumented asylum seekers crossing Russia’s border to Finland. Helsinki announced Thursday that it will close four of its eight border crossings with Russia from this weekend because…
Russia’s Justice Ministry said Friday it has filed a motion for the Supreme Court to ban what it called an “international LGBT public movement” as extremist, a move activists warned would effectively put all LGBT Russians at risk of criminal prosecution. The LGBT “movement’s” activities within Russia were found to “incite social and religious discord”…
Russia has sent the first of its promised shipments of free grain to Africa, the country’s agriculture minister said Friday. “The first two ships have already left Russian ports for Somalia and Burkina Faso. We expect them to arrive in late November to early December,” Agriculture Minister Dmitry Patrushev said in a statement. State news…
A court in Kazakhstan’s largest city Almaty has ordered Yakutian anti-war activist and musician Aykhal Ammosov to one year of extradition arrest, his lawyer said on social media. “I’m not surprised [by this decision],” Ammosov’s lawyer Murat Adam wrote on Instagram on Thursday. Ammosov, a Russian national hailing from the republic of Sakha (Yakutia), was…
President Vladimir Putin’s successor will be nearly identical to his predecessor, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Friday as the country gears up for an election in which Putin is expected to win a fifth term. Putin, 71, who has been in power since 1999, is widely anticipated to announce his 2024 re-election bid next month,…
Dozens of Russian business leaders expressed alarm to President Vladimir Putin about the “frightening” number of nationalizations that have taken place since the invasion of Ukraine, the Vedomosti business daily reported Friday, citing four anonymous sources familiar with their late-night meeting this week. One of the sources told the publication that while “everyone understands the…
Russian authorities have started collecting the personal data of academics who are in contact with foreigners, the independent investigative outlet Mozhem Obyasnit reported Thursday. The practice was compared to that of the Soviet era, when contacts between Russians and foreigners were strictly monitored. It also comes amid what the UN has called an alarming rise in Russia’s…
Alexei Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK) has been accused of creating a network of bot farms in Lithuania and Georgia for spreading “anti-government messages,” including information about the Kremlin invasion of Ukraine and its consequences for Russian citizens. The SVTV media outlet, created by libertarian politician Mikhail Svetov, published an investigation that claims that FBK created a…
The number of real estate deals made by Russians in Spain has reached its highest level since the 2014 annexation of Crimea, the RBC news website reported Thursday, citing Spanish notary public data. The 2,137 transactions on the purchase and sale of housing made by Russian nationals in January-June 2023 mark a 50% increase from the…
Russia on Thursday arrested a former regional official on allegations of financing the Ukrainian armed forces, state media reported. Moscow has made a string of arrests of people it says have sponsored the Ukrainian army since Russia launched its full-scale military campaign against its neighbor in February last year. The FSB security agency said Thursday…
Finland’s government announced Thursday it will shut down around half of its border crossings with Russia to address an increase in asylum seekers entering the country. Four checkpoints on Finland’s southeastern border with Russia will close at midnight Saturday local time, according to a cabinet statement cited by the Finnish broadcaster Yle. They will remain shuttered…
When Alexandra Skochilenko swapped price tags at a St. Petersburg supermarket with statements criticizing Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine and highlighting civilian deaths in the conflict, she didn’t expect that it could lead to her imprisonment. “Back then, it seemed safe,” Skochilenko’s girlfriend Sofia Subbotina told The Moscow Times in a phone interview. “But these past…
Three lawyers representing jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny have been added to state financial watchdog Rosfinmonitoring’s list of “extremists and terrorists,” the independent Mediazona news website reported Thursday. Vadim Kobzev, Alexei Liptser and Igor Sergunin were arrested on Oct. 13 in Moscow on accusations of participating in “extremist” activities for passing on letters written by Navalny…
A Russian court has sentenced Vladimir Milov, an exiled ally of jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny, to eight years in prison in absentia for speaking out against Moscow’s war on Ukraine, media reported Thursday. Moscow’s Basmanny District Court found Milov guilty of spreading “false information” about the Russian military in a March 2022 YouTube stream…
Russia has stepped up attacks on Ukraine’s shattered eastern frontline town of Avdiivka, its mayor said Thursday. The industrial town near the Russian-held regional stronghold of Donetsk has been under fierce attack for more than a month. “It is very hot. Indeed, in the last few days, the enemy has become more active,” Avdiivka’s Mayor…
Two executives of the major Russian brewery Baltika have been arrested on suspicion of attempts to sell the rights to its brands to Danish brewer Carlsberg, media reported Thursday, citing anonymous sources. Police and Federal Security Service (FSB) agents carried out more than a dozen searches at offices affiliated with Baltika in St. Petersburg, the…
Russia’s economy grew for a second consecutive quarter despite high inflation and Western sanctions that have weakened the ruble, official data showed Wednesday. The economy expanded by 5.5% year-on-year in the third quarter after contracting in the same period last year, according to the federal statistics agency. The Russian economy shrank in 2022 but it…
“I have seen the dead forest with my own eyes, it’s a very eerie sensation,” Andrei Ozharovsky, a nuclear physicist and antinuclear campaigner, told The Moscow Times. “The explosion happened in the 1970s — but in one direction, for about two or three kilometers, there are still dead trees standing. Coniferous trees, the taiga, are…
Cyprus has long drawn criticism for providing offshore financial services for people associated with corrupt regimes and businesses. A new series of investigations by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, along with 68 media partners, has exposed the industry’s links to President Vladimir Putin’s regime. Among the revelations is the discovery that Chelsea Football Club…
A young Komi-Karelian activist announced this month that he was able to escape Russia despite being featured as a key witness in a high-profile investigation handled by the Federal Security Service (FSB). Nikita Goldin, 18, was detained by Russian security services in the northern port city of Arkhangelsk in September and taken in for an…
Updated with reports from Fontanka, Mash and lawyer’s remarks. A Russian woman accused of killing military blogger Vladlen Tatarsky pleaded partially guilty during a court hearing on Wednesday. Investigators say Darya Trepova, 26, assassinated Tatarsky on orders from Ukraine and working with the help of anti-Kremlin activists, while Kyiv has pointed to domestic Russian infighting.…
Moscow has recruited its annual target number of contract soldiers into the military ahead of schedule, Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said Wednesday. More than 22,000 people signed contracts with Russia’s military, according to Sobyanin, as the country continues to wage its war against neighboring Ukraine. “Thus, we’ve fulfilled the Defense Ministry’s task ahead of schedule for…
Northern Russia’s Leningrad region has sent half a million pine seedlings to the occupied Ukrainian region of Donetsk, Russian authorities announced Tuesday. The so-called “green humanitarian aid” is just the latest in a series of seedling shipments from the Leningrad region to occupied Donetsk, with authorities having already sent around 100,000 pine and spruce seedlings…
When the Russian military retreated from the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson in November last year, they stole a number of prized items: paintings from local museums, World War II memorabilia, monuments to 18th-century military commanders — and 2,000 Ukrainian prisoners. Almost a year on, more than 1,500 Kherson prisoners still remain in prisons in…
Russia’s security service (FSB) accused a resident of Tyumen in Siberia of handing military information to Ukraine and detained him, state-run news agencies reported Wednesday. This is the latest in a string of treason or espionage cases linked to Ukraine, with trials often held behind closed doors and few details seeping through. The FSB said…
Russia said Wednesday for the first time that some Ukrainian troops had established positions on the Moscow-held side of the Dnipro River, the vast waterway that splits the frontline in southern Ukraine. A sustained Ukrainian breakthrough across the river would mark a significant tactical success for Kyiv, whose wider counteroffensive has so far failed to…
Cyprus has long drawn criticism for providing offshore financial services for people associated with corrupt regimes and businesses. A new series of investigations by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, along with 68 media partners, has exposed the financial services industry’s links to President Vladimir Putin’s regime. Among the revelations is the discovery that German…
Police in Armenia have detained a young Russian woman fleeing domestic violence after her family filed complaints to local authorities, Russian media reported Wednesday, citing the human rights group Marem. According to the independent news website Holod, Fatima Zurabova, 21, fled her home earlier this month in the republic of Ingushetia, a Muslim-majority region in Russia’s…
Russia said Wednesday that it “deeply regretted” Finland’s move to consider closing its border crossings with Russia amid an uptick in asylum seekers from the Middle East and Africa entering the country. Helsinki on Tuesday accused Moscow of deliberately allowing migrants to enter Finland without having proper travel documents, suggesting it was a tactic to destabilize the…
Russian authorities have launched a criminal investigation into terrorism over a blast at an explosives factory in central Russia’s Tambov region, the Kommersant business daily reported Wednesday, citing unnamed sources. Police investigators have reportedly found fragments of a drone that attacked the Tambov gunpowder factory late Saturday, which caused a fire at the plant, though…
A Russian delegation led by Natural Resources Minister Alexander Kozlov is visiting Pyongyang, North Korea’s state media said Wednesday, with the two countries’ growing cooperation triggering concern in Washington and Seoul. The visit comes less than a week after U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned that ties between Pyongyang and Moscow were “growing and…
Cyprus vowed Tuesday to investigate new allegations by a group of international journalists that it was a hub for Russian money-laundering enabling oligarchs to bypass sanctions. According to an investigation by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and 67 media partners, the east Mediterranean island “plays an even bigger role than was commonly known…
Russia on Tuesday sentenced a man to six years in prison for vandalizing posters of Russian soldiers decorated as “heroes” for fighting in Ukraine. Moscow has banned criticism of the Ukraine offensive and punished thousands of citizens for denouncing the dragging military campaign. Russia’s Investigative Committee said the man’s sentence had come into force after…
Moscow’s Sheremetyevo International Airport has installed an AI-powered radar system to detect and deter drones, Russian state media reported Tuesday. Sheremetyevo, along with the Russian capital’s three other airports, repeatedly shut down due to drone attacks this summer as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine dragged on for a second year. The new anti-drone defense system, dubbed “Yenot-SD,” is operated by…
Russia’s Marine Rescue Service has begun pumping fuel from an oil tanker that last week ran aground off the southwestern coast of Sakhalin Island, the state-run TASS news agency reported Tuesday. The stranded Victoria oil tanker, which is reportedly carrying 760 tons of fuel, ran aground on Friday after experiencing an engine failure that prompted the ship’s…
Finland’s government is considering closing its border crossings with Russia amid a rising number of asylum seekers from the Middle East and Africa, the broadcaster YLE reported Tuesday, as Finnish officials suggest that Moscow is trying to destabilize the country. Interior Minister Mari Rantanen told reporters that her agency was drafting proposals that would allow…
Russia has managed to almost entirely circumvent a G7 price cap on its oil exports, with Moscow claiming average sales at more than $20 per barrel above the imposed limit, the Financial Times reported Tuesday, citing Western officials and Russian export data. According to an unnamed senior European official who spoke to FT, “almost none” of Russia’s…
Russian authorities have forcefully deported Vladislav Ivanenko, a Kazakh national who worked as a journalist in Russia, to the country of his citizenship, his employer Properm.ru reported Tuesday. Ivanenko was arrested early on Nov. 9 at his home in the Ural Mountains city of Perm and taken to a temporary detention facility for foreign nationals…
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Tuesday Russia was increasing its attacks across the front line, as Kyiv called for the West to boost its weapons supplies ahead of winter. Neither side has made any significant territorial gain for months, but both Zelensky and the Kremlin have denied the conflict has ground to a stalemate.…