President Vladimir Putin signed a decree Thursday to extend Russia’s visa-free regime for Georgian citizens, as the countries have drawn closer in recent years. In May 2023, Putin lifted a flight ban and introduced a 90-day visa-free regime for Georgian citizens. His latest edict abolishes the 90-day limit and the need to obtain a work…
The Kremlin on Thursday confirmed claims that then-U.S. President Donald Trump sent Russian President Vladimir Putin Covid tests but said it was part of an international exchange at the start of the pandemic. U.S. journalist Bob Woodward wrote in a book, “War,” published Tuesday, that Trump secretly sent Covid test kits to Putin despite a…
The Kremlin on Thursday dismissed a claim by Seoul that North Korean soldiers were likely to be fighting alongside Russian troops in Ukraine. “This seems like yet another fake news story,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov commented to journalists without elaborating. Ukraine’s Kyiv Post reported Friday that six North Korean military officers had been killed in…
President Vladimir Putin signed a decree Thursday relieving Anatoly Antonov from his post as Moscow’s ambassador to the United States amid historic lows in U.S.-Russia relations. Antonov, 69, had headed the Russian diplomatic mission in Washington since 2017 and returned to Russia over the weekend. A staunch supporter of Putin and the invasion of Ukraine, Antonov said in…
British consumer goods giant Unilever on Thursday completed the sale of Unilever Russia, finally joining other multinationals in exiting the country following its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Unilever said in a statement that it had offloaded the subsidiary to Arnest Group, a Russian manufacturer of perfume, cosmetics and household products, for an undisclosed…
Ukrainian forces will be able to hold onto territory captured during their incursion into western Russia’s Kursk region for several months or longer, Bloomberg reported Wednesday, citing a U.S. assessment shared by senior American officials. Ukraine launched its offensive into the border region on Aug. 6, claiming to control 100 settlements and almost 1,300 square…
The toll from a Russian ballistic missile strike on port infrastructure in Ukraine’s southern Odesa region rose to eight dead and nine wounded, authorities said Thursday. The attack on Wednesday struck a civilian container ship flying the flag of Panama, according to the region’s Governor Oleh Kiper. “The death toll as a result of yesterday’s…
Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov has declared a “blood feud” against three federal lawmakers from neighboring North Caucasus republics in his first comments on last month’s deadly shooting outside the Moscow headquarters of Russia’s largest online retailer Wildberries. Kadyrov has vowed to help Vladislav Bakalchuk, the estranged husband of Wildberries CEO Tatiana Kim — Russia’s wealthiest woman…
Russia’s military said on Thursday that it had shot down a barrage of 92 Ukrainian drones overnight, most of them over the country’s southwest. Russia reports shooting down Ukrainian drones over its territory on a nearly daily basis, but usually in smaller numbers. Kyiv said it was carrying out the strikes, which often target energy…
A major oil terminal in the city of Feodosia in Russian-annexed Crimea was still burning three days after Ukrainian missile strikes, media reported Wednesday. On Monday, Ukraine’s military claimed its missile forces had carried out a successful strike on the Feodosia offshore oil terminal, which it called the largest on the Crimean peninsula. Russian-installed authorities…
The Russian national men’s football team will not play any friendly matches during the October international break, the Russian Football Union (RFU) told reporters Wednesday. Russia had been in negotiations with Pakistan to play a friendly match this month, but Pakistani outlet Geo News reported that the sides could not come to an agreement. Russia reportedly…
Natalia Kondal, a Russian citizen with Ukrainian roots from the Ural Mountain city of Yekaterinburg, was forced to leave Russia shortly after the start of the war against Kyiv amid intensified repression from the Kremlin. As she looked to get back on her feet in Europe, she turned to Kovcheg, an organization that helps Russian…
The United States should “redirect” its efforts toward investigating the criminal sex ring allegations against rapper Diddy instead of seeking to punish Russia for its invasion of Ukraine, Moscow’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman said in an interview. Maria Zakharova’s remarks came in response to bombshell federal U.S. racketeering and sex trafficking charges as well as a…
A Russian military court has sentenced a volunteer at the makeshift memorial to slain opposition politician Boris Nemtsov to 12 years in prison for his involvement with the Ukrainian military, the independent news website Mediazona reported Wednesday. Yevgeny Mishchenko, who was among those who kept watch at a Moscow bridge near the Kremlin where Nemtsov…
More than half a billion euros in frozen Russian assets held by Dutch banks and other financial institutions appear to have been released, De Telegraaf reported. The newspaper cited a report sent by Dutch Foreign Minister Caspar Veldkamp to the lower house of parliament which said that 97 million euros in private frozen Russian assets were held…
Russia’s Defense Ministry said Wednesday it had retaken two villages in its Kursk region that were captured by Ukraine in a surprise offensive. Russia has rarely claimed any recaptured territory since Ukraine launched its offensive into the border region on Aug. 6. The ministry said in a statement that Russian troops “continued offensive operations, during…
The head of the North Caucasus republic of Chechnya Ramzan Kadyrov condemned a toughening of Russia’s migration laws in a social media post published Monday. “If migration policy is to be changed, then not in such a disgusting way, when [officials] frantically pounce on all non-locals who come to their attention,” Kadyrov wrote on Telegram. …
A Russian court has sentenced ex-U.S. Marine Trevor Reed to 14 and a half years in absentia on charges of fighting against Russia in Ukraine as a mercenary, authorities said Wednesday. Reed was previously in 2020 sentenced to nine years in Russian prison on charges of assaulting a police officer while drunk at a Moscow…
The Russian military is seeing an influx of older contract soldiers who are largely seen as detrimental to its war effort in Ukraine, the investigative news outlet Vyorstka reported Wednesday, citing anonymous military and parliamentary sources. Volunteer fighters aged 45 and over now make up half of new recruits in Moscow, a senior Mayor’s Office source…
The bodies of Wagner Group mercenaries killed in fighting in Mali this summer have been returned to Russia, the state-run TASS news agency reported Wednesday, citing a Russian officers’ organization. Russian mercenaries suffered heavy losses in two-day fighting against Tuareg rebels near Mali’s border with Algeria in July in what experts called one of the deadliest…
Russia collected 118 billion rubles ($1.2 billion) in taxes from occupied Ukrainian territories in January-September 2024, surpassing tax revenues from these regions in all of 2023, the RBC news website reported Wednesday. Russia said it annexed southern and eastern Ukraine’s Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Donetsk and Luhansk regions in September 2022 following widely disputed referendums despite not fully…
The Kremlin on Wednesday denied a claim in a new book that Republican candidate Donald Trump may have spoken to President Vladimir Putin seven times since he left the White House. “No, that is not the case,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov was quoted by Russian media outlet RBC as saying when asked about the specific…
Russia’s telecoms watchdog on Tuesday announced that it was banning the social media platform Discord for violating the country’s laws, signaling the latest move by authorities to tighten control over the internet. Access to Discord was being “restricted due to the violation of requirements of Russian legislation” pertaining to “preventing the use of messaging for…
Kyiv said Wednesday it had struck a Russian arms depot in the border region of Bryansk that was storing hardware and ammo including munitions supplied to Moscow by North Korea. Ukrainian forces have in recent months occupied swathes of Russia’s border Kursk region and have stepped up attacks inside Russia, mainly targeting energy facilities. The…
Ex-U.S. President Donald Trump secretly sent Covid-19 tests to Russian President Vladimir Putin amid a domestic shortage at the height of the pandemic in 2020, The Washington Post reported Tuesday, citing its associate editor Bob Woodward’s upcoming book. Putin, a known germophobe who was widely said to have taken extra precautionary measures including extended self-isolation…
The U.K. government on Tuesday sanctioned the chemical and biological arm of Russia’s Armed Forces and its commander Igor Kirillov over the alleged use of chemical weapons in Ukraine. Britain and the United States have accused Russia of using the toxic agent chloropicrin against Ukrainian troops in violation of the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC). The…
The European Union approved a new sanctions framework on Tuesday to target individuals responsible for actions the body sees as “destabilizing,” the EU said in a press release. The statement says that the new framework will allow the EU to “target individuals and entities engaged in actions and policies by the government of the Russian…
Luxury housing sales in the Russian capital reached a record-setting 174 billion rubles ($1.8 billion) in January-September 2024, the Vedomosti business daily reported Tuesday, citing research by real estate company NF Group. The 1,270 luxury apartments sold in Moscow so far this year were up from 860 sales worth 110 billion rubles ($1.14 billion) in…
A 16-year-old Russian schoolboy considered the country’s youngest political prisoner said he has been subjected to beatings by his cellmates in the Moscow detention center where he’s currently being held, the independent Mediazona news website reported Tuesday. Arseniy Turbin, who is serving five years in a juvenile colony for allegedly attempting to join the Freedom of…
A Russian opposition activist slit her wrists in an act of courtroom protest in the Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk on Tuesday, a women’s rights group said. The activist, Olga Suvorova, “cut her veins in protest in the courtroom” and was taken to hospital, the Soft Power women’s rights movement wrote on Telegram. The group posted…
Five Russian mountaineers were killed while climbing in Nepal, a tourism official said Tuesday, two days after the team lost contact while on the world’s seventh-highest mountain, Dhaulagiri. Rakesh Gurung, from Nepal’s tourism department, said the team went missing late on the evening of Oct. 6 during an attempt to summit the 8,167-meter (26,795 feet)…
North Korean soldiers are likely fighting in Ukraine alongside Russian troops, with some believed already killed and more expected to be deployed, Seoul’s defense minister said Tuesday. Ukrainian media have reported that six North Korean military officers were killed in a Ukrainian missile attack on Russian-occupied territory near Donetsk on Oct. 3. Seoul’s defense minister,…
Russian and Chinese navy ships have carried out a joint patrol in the northeast of the Pacific Ocean, the Russian military said on Tuesday. The vessels “proceeded with maneuvers” to practice anti-submarine tactics, it said. The patrol came after the two countries held joint military drills, as the allies deepen ties that have seen NATO…
More than 1,000 people were evacuated in the annexed Crimean city of Feodosia after Ukrainian strikes sparked a large fire at a major oil terminal there the day before, Russian-installed authorities said Tuesday. On Monday, Ukraine’s military claimed its missile forces had carried out a successful strike on the Feodosia offshore oil terminal, which it called the…
As Israel marks the first anniversary of the deadly Oct. 7 Hamas attack amid fears of a wider war erupting in the Middle East, Russians who fled to Israel following the invasion of Ukraine told The Moscow Times they have little interest in returning to their homeland. The anniversary of Oct. 7 comes as Israel…
news Court Freezes Shares of Raiffeisen’s Russian Division, Delaying Sale Read more This deal was linked to RBI’s efforts to exit Russia, as the acquisition would be paid for out of some 1.6 billion euros worth of trapped RBI profits in the country. If the deal had gone through, it would have meant that even if RBI…
A Russian court has sentenced a 26-year-old Ukrainian woman to eight years in prison for allegedly plotting an explosion on the day that Russia claimed to have annexed four Ukrainian regions, the independent news website Mediazona reported Monday, citing her lawyer. Irina Navalnaya was detained by occupying authorities in Mariupol in September 2022 on suspicion of attempted terrorism…
Children in schools and kindergartens across Russia appear to have been forced to wish President Vladimir Putin a happy 72nd birthday Monday in closely matching videos, media outlets reported. The opposition Telegram channel Mozhem Obyasnit said it found similar flash mobs on social media posts in at least 11 Russian regions. The independent news website Vyorstka…
President Vladimir Putin has stopped visiting his residence in Russia’s Black Sea resort of Sochi due to fears of a fatal drone attack, the independent investigative outlet Proekt reported Monday. Putin has been spending at least 30 days per year at the Bocharov Ruchey residence since it was renovated for the 2014 Sochi Olympics and likely…
A Russian court sentenced a 72-year-old U.S. citizen accused of fighting as a mercenary for Ukraine to nearly seven years in prison on Monday. Stephen Hubbard was sentenced to six years and 10 months by the Moscow City Court. The bearded defendant stood uneasily as the sentence was read out. He was convicted of serving…
Southwestern Russia’s Belgorod region is offering a nationwide record of 3 million rubles ($31,200) in one-time payments for signing military contracts to fight in Ukraine, authorities said Monday. “The payment will amount to 3 million rubles from all sources: the federal, regional, municipal budgets and extra-budgetary funds,” Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said at a regional administration…
Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout, nicknamed the “Merchant of Death,” has made a comeback to the arms trading business and is seeking to broker sales of small arms to Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi militants, The Wall Street Journal reported Monday. Bout, 57, was freed in a December 2022 prisoner swap with U.S. basketball star Brittney Griner.…
Hackers targeted Russian state media giant VGTRK on Monday, disrupting its online broadcasting, the state-run Gazeta.ru news outlet reported. VGTRK operates several national television channels, including Rossia 1 and Rossia 24, in addition to more than 80 regional television and radio stations. “Online broadcasting and internal services are down, even the internet and telephones are…
Ukraine insists the strikes are fair retaliation for Russian attacks on its own energy infrastructure that have plunged millions into darkness. Russia’s Defense Ministry meanwhile claimed the capture of a village in eastern Ukraine close to the strategically important city of Pokrovsk. Missiles target Kyiv The Defense Ministry in a briefing said it captured the…
A Russian court on Friday placed a Dutch national under arrest for “violence towards police personnel,” a charge that carries up to 10 years in prison. Moscow has arrested several Westerners since it began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. “A Moscow court has issued a preventative measure for a citizen of the Kingdom of the…
Russia on Friday sentenced a Crimean man to 14 years in a penal colony on treason charges after it accused him of aiding the Ukrainian military. Moscow regularly sentences people it accuses of working for Ukraine or of criticizing Russia’s military offensive there, now in its third year, and has orchestrated a massive crackdown. Russian…
President Vladimir Putin has all but abandoned the idea of peace talks with Kyiv following Ukraine’s Kursk region incursion, which dealt a “humiliating” blow to the Russian leader, the independent Poyasnitelnaya Zapiska (Explanatory Note) news outlet reported, citing sources close to the Kremlin. “The Kremlin has come to a corresponding conclusion that they will destroy Ukrainian statehood. The…
Russian investigators seized 75 items, including snow and underwear, from the scene of Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny’s death, the investigative news outlet Dossier Center reported Friday, citing documents it said it had obtained. Navalny died in an Arctic penal colony on Feb. 16 under murky circumstances, leading his allies to assert that he was murdered. His…
Wearable electronics like those that Israel used to blow up Hezbollah members’ pagers in Lebanon and Syria pose a threat to the security of Russia and other former Soviet states, the head of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) said Friday. Speaking at a meeting of Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) special services chiefs, Alexander Bortnikov…
Last month, Fortanga, an independent news outlet from the republic of Ingushetia in Russia’s North Caucasus, broke the news that the neighboring republic of North Ossetia-Alania was plotting to redraw the two regions’ shared border. Documents obtained by Fortanga revealed that North Ossetian officials were hoping to incorporate into their territory parts of Ingushetia’s Dzheyrakhsky…
A beluga whale found dead in Norway in August, who some suspected of being a Russian spy, most likely died of an infection, not gunshot wounds, Norwegian police said Friday. Nicknamed “Hvaldimir,” a pun on the Norwegian word for whale (hval) and the whale’s purported ties to Moscow, the white beluga first appeared off the…
Russian rescue teams succeeded on Friday in saving a family of orcas who had become beached in shallow water in the Far East of the country. The cetaceans — two adults and two young — had been stranded since Wednesday on the shore of the Kamchatka peninsula, around 6,500 kilometers (4,000 miles) east of Moscow.…
Authorities in Russia’s Irkutsk region in southeastern Siberia introduced a state of “high alert” due to electricity shortages, according to a government decree published Friday. The decree signed by Governor Igor Kobzev instructs local emergency services to develop additional plans for mitigating the consequences of widespread power cuts and check the preparedness of local emergency…
The head of security at the Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine has been killed in a car bombing, authorities in Kyiv and Moscow said Friday. Ukraine’s HUR military intelligence agency said Andriy Korotkiy was inside his vehicle when it was hit by an explosion at around 7:00 a.m. local time in the Russian-occupied…
Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov called on the West to lift sanctions on Taliban-led Afghanistan and take “responsibility” for reconstruction efforts in the country, on Friday. However, Lavrov did not say whether Moscow would lift its own designation of the group as a “terrorist organization.” “We urge Western countries to recognize their responsibility for the…
Ukraine’s military said its forces struck an oil base in western Russia’s Voronezh region overnight Friday as Russian authorities dismissed the attack as insignificant. The Annanefteprodukt fuel storage base in the Voronezh region’s Anninsky district was hit by Ukraine’s SBU security service and other military branches, according to the Ukrainian General Staff. “At least one…
Russia has evacuated 60 diplomats’ family members from Lebanon as Israel escalates its offensive against Hezbollah, the state-run TASS news agency reported Thursday. The Emergency Services Ministry’s press service told TASS that the evacuation was being carried out on President Vladimir Putin’s orders. The families left on an IL-76 aircraft, which is designed to carry…
Moldovan police carried out dozens of raids Thursday after discovering that at least $15 million was transferred from Russia to Moldovan citizens in an “unprecedented” effort to tamper with presidential elections this month. Moldova’s pro-European President Maia Sandu, who is seeking a second term, has repeatedly accused Russia of political interference in the country, which…
Ukrainian drones struck the Borisoglebsk aviation center in western Russia’s Voronezh region overnight, Ukrainian media reported Thursday, citing anonymous security service sources. The targeted base stored guided aerial bombs, Su-35 and Su-34 fighter jets as well as aviation fuel, according to the UNIAN news agency and the news website liga.net. “That’s where the enemy bombs Ukrainian territories…
After almost two years of fighting, Ukrainian forces have withdrawn from Vuhledar, a key defensive outpost in the frontline Donetsk region. The military command said the decision was taken to preserve the lives of Ukrainian soldiers and their precious equipment. The town, which military analyst Ivan Stupak told The Moscow Times was the “entryway to…