The Kremlin said on Wednesday that Pope Francis’s envoy would hold talks with President Vladimir Putin’s adviser in Moscow as Russia “welcomed” the Vatican’s peace efforts over Ukraine. Cardinal Matteo Maria Zuppi began a Russia visit on Tuesday in the first such trip since Putin sent troops to Ukraine in February 2022. High-ranking Catholic clerics are rarely seen in…
At least 14 Russian troops were killed during a cross-border raid by anti-Kremlin units made up of Russian nationals this month, regional authorities have revealed nearly a month after the incident. Two anti-Kremlin militias fighting on the side of Ukraine staged raids into southwestern Russia’s Belgorod region on June 1. Russia’s Defense Ministry claimed to have repelled…
Satellite images purporting to show the construction of a camp for exiled Wagner mercenaries after their failed revolt were shared online late Tuesday by independent Belarusian media. According to the Telegram channel Belarus Golovnovo Mozga, satellite images dated June 27 show what appears to be construction underway at a military compound near the town of…
Recast with Kremlin response. The Kremlin said Wednesday that Russian forces only hit military-linked targets in Ukraine, after a strike on a restaurant in the eastern city of Kramatorsk killed at least 10 people. The comments come a day after the Ria Pizza restaurant — popular with soldiers, journalists and aid workers — was destroyed…
Two Siberian opposition deputies backed by jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny have been stripped of their mandates over claims that they had failed to submit personal income statements, a move the deputies themselves called politically motivated. The Novosibirsk City Council voted by majority Wednesday to strip deputies Sergei Boyko and Helga Pirogova of their mandates,…
Updated with Peskov’s comments. Russia’s former top commander in Ukraine, General Sergei Surovikin, had advanced knowledge of Wagner leader Yevgeny Prigozhin’s plans to topple the country’s military leadership last weekend, The New York Times reported Tuesday, citing unnamed U.S. officials. “Prigozhin would not have launched his uprising unless he believed that others in positions of…
Taiwan sighted two Russian frigates sailing off its eastern coast on Tuesday and deployed surveillance ships and aircraft to monitor their movements, the island’s Ministry of National Defence said. The Russian warships were “detected sailing from south to north in the waters off our eastern coast” as of 11 pm local time (1500 GMT), it…
The United States on Tuesday imposed sanctions aimed at disrupting gold mining activities that fund the Wagner Group in Africa, vowing to hold the mercenaries accountable for abuses days after they staged a mutiny in Russia. The measures against the Wagner Group had been previously planned but were briefly put on hold as U.S. officials sought…
The United States said Tuesday it let Moscow send an airplane to Washington to pick up diplomats despite a ban on commercial flights and called for reciprocal treatment. “The U.S. government allowed the Russian government to send a charter flight to the United States to transport to Russia those Russian diplomats whose assignments have ended,” State Department…
At least three people were killed and more than 40 wounded in a Russian rocket strike that hit a restaurant in Kramatorsk, eastern Ukraine, authorities said Tuesday. Ukrainian police said Russia fired two S-300 surface-to-air missiles at the city. “The bodies of three people, including a minor born in 2008, have been recovered from the rubble. Among…
The biggest threat to Russia is the regime of President Vladimir Putin, jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny said on Tuesday, in his first comments since an aborted Wagner mutiny. “There is no bigger threat to Russia than Putin’s regime,” Navalny wrote on social media. “Putin’s regime is so dangerous to the country that even its…
Russia’s National Guard may be equipped with tanks and armored vehicles, it said Tuesday, after the army announced it was receiving military hardware from Wagner mercenaries following their failed uprising. “We have no tanks or long-range heavy weapons. We will supply our forces with those depending on funding,” guard head Viktor Zolotov was cited as…
Russia’s Wagner private military group received roughly $1 billion in funding from state coffers over the past year, President Vladimir Putin revealed Tuesday. His comments mark a departure from Moscow’s previous denials of any links between the Russian state and Wagner. Speaking after a ceremony thanking soldiers for “stopping civil war” during Wagner’s aborted weekend rebellion,…
A senior emergency official has been sentenced to 10.5 years in prison over a mall fire that killed 60 people more than five years ago, Russia’s Investigative Committee said Tuesday. The Winter Cherry mall fire in the Siberian city of Kemerovo claimed the lives of 37 children and 23 adults when it broke out due…
President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday lauded Russian servicemen and security services for “stopping civil war” during the Wagner mercenary group’s aborted insurgency this weekend. “You have de-facto stopped the civil war, you acted in a clear and well-coordinated manner in a difficult situation,” Putin said at a ceremony on the Kremlin’s Cathedral Square. Wagner leader…
Russia summarily executed 77 civilians being held in arbitrary detention during its invasion of Ukraine — killings which constitute war crimes, the United Nations said Tuesday. Since the invasion, the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine has documented 864 individual cases of arbitrary detention by Russia — 763 men, 94 women and seven boys — many of…
Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said Tuesday he had issued “combat readiness” orders to his army during an uprising in neighbor and close ally Russia led by Wagner mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin. “I gave all the orders to bring the army to full combat readiness,” Lukashenko said in comments carried by the state news agency Belta. “I…
A railway in annexed Crimea has been damaged, the fourth such incident on the peninsula’s rail system over the past month and a half, the region’s Russian-installed Governor Sergei Aksyonov said Tuesday. Aksyonov did not identify the cause or nature of the damage, noting only that there were no casualties and that repair works were expected…
The criminal case against Wagner mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin for “organizing an armed mutiny” has been closed, Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) said Tuesday. The confirmation comes a day after reports said the FSB was still actively investigating the case against Prigozhin, who this weekend launched an armed rebellion against the Russian military that rattled…
Wagner leader Yevgeny Prigozhin is arriving in Belarus, three days after his failed mutiny against Russia’s military leadership, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko confirmed Tuesday. “Yes, today he’s in Belarus,” Lukashenko said in comments carried by the state news agency Belta. It was not clear if the Wagner leader had already arrived in Belarus or was still in…
Russian President Vladimir Putin told his nation that he had ordered that bloodshed be avoided during a weekend armed rebellion and offered Wagner fighters to join the army or leave the country after their mutiny. He spoke as Moscow appeared to show a business-as-usual approach in the aftermath of the dramatic rebellion staged by Wagner…
The U.S. ambassador directly contacted Russia during weekend unrest and made clear that the United States was not involved, the State Department said Monday. The State Department said that Ambassador Lynne Tracy in Moscow relayed the message to Russian officials on Saturday, as did U.S. officials in Washington who contacted the Russian embassy. The United…
MOSCOW — Muscovites on Monday responded with a mix of frustration and anxiety to a weekend mutiny organized by Wagner mercenaries, with some even saying they were “disappointed” when Wagner head Yevgeny Prigozhin called off his march. The reactions in Russia’s capital signal that the Kremlin and the Defense Ministry may not be able to…
Yevgeny Prigozhin, the leader of Russia’s Wagner mercenary group, launched a surprising attempt to stage a military rebellion on Friday evening. Prigozhin declared his armed campaign, which he dubbed a “march of justice,” with the goal of holding the country’s military leadership accountable. In a fast-moving series of events, Wagner’s forces advanced toward Moscow the…
The leader of Russia’s Wagner mercenary group said Monday that his aborted rebellion march on Moscow over the weekend had exposed “very serious security problems” in Russia, while insisting he did not want to overthrow President Vladimir Putin. Prigozhin broke his silence in a Telegram audio message two days after staging the dramatic armed rebellion that saw…
The Wagner mercenary group will continue operations in Mali and the Central African Republic despite its leader’s aborted insurrection over the weekend, Russia’s foreign minister said on Monday. Wagner members “are working there as instructors. This work, of course, will continue,” Sergei Lavrov said in an interview with the RT outlet. Lavrov said Europe and…
Ilya Yashin, a Moscow opposition politician now serving an eight-and-a-half-year prison sentence for his criticism of the invasion of Ukraine, on Monday published an appeal to Czech President Petr Pavel, who has said that Russians in the West should be monitored by their host countries. The Moscow Times has translated his message and published it below. To…
Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi gave “his full support” to Vladimir Putin during a telephone call, the Kremlin announced in a statement on Monday, two days after an aborted mutiny in Russia. “The Iranian president has expressed his full support for the Russian leadership in connection with the June 24 events,” the Kremlin said in an…
The headquarters of Russia’s Wagner mercenary group, whose leader Yevgeny Prigozhin led a mutiny over the weekend that rattled President Vladimir Putin’s rule, said Monday it was working in “normal mode.” The statement from the office came as the fate of Wagner was uncertain after the rebellion and as Russia appeared to take a business-as-usual approach. “Despite events…
A Moscow court has sentenced a Russian aerospace scientist to 12 years in prison on charges of treason linked to his participation in a multinational high-speed flight project, media reported Monday. Valery Golubkin, 71, was detained in April 2021 on suspicion of passing state secrets to a NATO country that was not identified at the time. The…
Residents of a Russian city at the heart of a brief rebellion against army top brass expressed relief on Sunday but also voiced some sympathy for the mutiny and questions about what exactly happened. Fighters from the Wagner mercenary group with silver armbands and carrying assault rifles had deployed a day earlier across Rostov-on-Don in…
Wagner mercenaries were headed back to base on Sunday after Russia’s President Vladimir Putin agreed to allow their leader to avoid treason charges and accept exile in Belarus. The agreement ended the immediate threat that Yevgeny Prigozhin’s private army could storm Moscow, but analysts said Wagner’s revolt had exposed Putin’s rule as more fragile than had…
Yevgeny Prigozhin’s rebellion against Moscow will have stoked alarm in China and could throw sand in the wheels of the “no-limits” strategic partnership between Presidents Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, experts said on Sunday. After a 24-hour armed insurrection in which Prigozhin’s Wagner mercenaries seized control of parts of the southern city of Rostov-on-Don and…
They have sun-bathed bare-chested together in remote Siberia, shared fishing holidays and played on the same ice hockey team. Russia’s long-serving Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu has long been seen not just as a political ally of President Vladimir Putin but one of the Kremlin chief’s few friends within the Russian elite. But their bromance and…
Russia’s Foreign Ministry said Sunday that Beijing had backed Moscow’s efforts to counter a short-lived armed uprising led by the head of the Wagner mercenary group Yevgeny Prigozhin. “The Chinese side expressed support for the efforts of the leadership of the Russian Federation to stabilize the situation in the country in connection with the events of June…
North Korea offered its full support for Russia in dealing with a recent mutiny, state media reported Sunday. At a meeting with the Russian ambassador to Pyongyang Alexander Matsegora, North Korea’s vice foreign minister Im Chon Il “expressed firm belief that the recent armed rebellion in Russia would be successfully put down,” the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA)…
The chief of the rebel Wagner mercenary force will leave Russia and won’t face charges after calling off his troops’ advance on Saturday, Moscow said, easing Russia’s most serious security crisis in decades. The feud between Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin and Russia’s military brass came to a violent head in the past day, with his forces capturing a key army…
Countries around the world were on Saturday closely watching events unfolding in Russia, where a mutiny by the Wagner mercenary group posed the most serious challenge yet to President Vladimir Putin’s long rule. Here is what governments and analysts are saying about the extraordinary situation taking place in nuclear-armed Russia: Ukraine Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky…
ST. PETERSBURG, Russia — Early Saturday morning, law enforcement agents in balaclavas were already guarding the entrance of the PMC Wagner Center, Yevgeny Prigozhin’s headquarters just outside St. Petersburg’s city center. Some agents were patrolling the parking lot out front while others were already inside, probably searching the building. “This was supposed to be my…
A former convict turned Kremlin caterer, Yevgeny Prigozhin and his shadowy private military group Wagner have taken a prominent role in Russia’s 16-month offensive on Ukraine. Friction between Prigozhin and the Russian Defense Ministry has risen as the war has dragged on, ultimately reaching a breaking point Friday when Prigozhin accused military leaders of striking…
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday spoke to his Belarus ally, President Alexander Lukashenko, in his first international phone call since a mutiny by Wagner mercenaries inside Russia began. “The president of Russia called the president of Belarus this morning, there was a phone conversation,” Belarusian state media reported. “Vladimir Putin informed his Belarusian colleague…
Russia’s FSB security service on Friday charged the Wagner mercenary group’s leader Yevgeny Prigozhin with calls to stage “an armed mutiny” after he pledged to resist Moscow’s military leadership. Prigozhin earlier accused Russia of killing a “huge number” of Wagner’s forces in strikes and vowed to retaliate, bringing tensions between Moscow’s conventional military and the…
The Moscow Times is collecting all the latest breaking news and developments around Yevgeny Prigozhin and the Wagner Group. While we make every effort to ensure the accuracy of our reporting, claims and counter-claims are sometimes impossible to verify. The head of Russia’s Wagner mercenary group on Friday accused the country’s military leadership of ordering…
The head of Russia’s Wagner mercenary group Yevgeny Prigozhin was charged with “inciting an armed uprising” and military vehicles were deployed to the streets of Moscow and Rostov-on-Don after he made an extraordinary threat to “stop” Russia’s top military brass. Prigozhin on Friday accused Russia’s military leadership of ordering strikes on Wagner’s camps and killing a “huge”…
Russia on Friday urged Azerbaijan to unblock access to Nagorno-Karabakh as concern grows over a deepening humanitarian crisis in the breakaway region. Residents of Karabakh reported new shortages of food and medicine after the International Committee of the Red Cross said Azerbaijan had blocked access for convoys delivering aid to the Armenian-populated region last week. “We…
A Russian-held bridge that connects southern Ukraine to the annexed Crimean peninsula has been badly damaged and is “unusable” at present, a Moscow-installed official said on Friday. “It is unusable for movement,” said Vladimir Saldo, the Moscow-installed governor of the southern Ukrainian region of Kherson, adding that the Chongar bridge would be closed to traffic…
Russian companies have been systematically looting industrial goods from factories in the occupied Ukrainian city of Mariupol since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion, according to a report by the independent news outlet Mozhem Obyasnit’. Citing customs records, journalists estimated that Russia had plundered more than 1 billion rubles ($15 million) worth of goods — including…
Russia said Friday it was barring entry to more European officials in response to the EU’s decision to slap new sanctions on Moscow over the conflict in Ukraine. “In response to these unfriendly actions, the Russian side has significantly expanded the list of representatives of European institutions and EU member states who… are prohibited from entering…
Russia did not face an imminent security threat to justify its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder of Russia’s Wagner mercenary outfit, said in a bombshell video posted on social media Friday. “The Armed Forces of Ukraine were not going to attack Russia with the NATO bloc,” Prigozhin explained in the half-hour tirade…
The Russian Navy has bolstered security at its Black Sea Fleet base in annexed Crimea with the use of trained dolphins, Britain’s defense ministry said Friday. Citing satellite imagery, the British military said the number of floating mammal pens in the harbor of Crimea’s port city of Sevastopol has nearly doubled from April to June. The…
Russia’s domestic intelligence agency has detained five people suspected of trying to smuggle a dangerous radioactive isotope out of Russia, claiming the group planned to incriminate Moscow in a false-flag attack on Ukraine, state media reported Friday. The Federal Security Service (FSB) said the five unnamed individuals — “acting in coordination with a Ukrainian citizen” —…
A mystery Russian diplomat with a penchant for loungewear and cigarettes sparked a national security standoff between Canberra and the Kremlin Friday, defying Australian efforts to seize a messy construction site in the heart of the capital. Australia has blocked Russia from building a new embassy on the parcel of land — a stone’s throw from Parliament…
Billionaire investor Alexander Mamut fled Russia shortly after Moscow launched its invasion of Ukraine last year and now plans to launch a “liberal” media outlet abroad. Mamut, 63, currently divides his time between the United Kingdom and France, according to one of his acquaintances who spoke to the independent news website Meduza. Meduza’s report did not…
The United Nations has put Russian military forces and proxy armed groups on its “list of shame” over the killing and maiming of hundreds of children in its war against Ukraine, according to a document seen by AFP Thursday. In an annual report on the treatment of children in conflict zones, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres…
Russian Nobel Peace Prize laureate Dmitry Muratov said Thursday that “the world must hear this sound” of the Kremlin’s war on Kyiv following an incident where Ukrainian journalists played the sound of an air-raid warning during his speech earlier this week. Muratov, the chief editor of the independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta, was speaking earlier this…
Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Russia will share their citizen’s personal data with each other for law enforcement purposes, the press service of Kyrgyzstan’s presidential office announced Wednesday. Under the agreement, each country will share information on the residence status, citizenship, migration registration, visas, property, criminal records and identity documents of individuals living within their borders. “Today we received…
Russia’s Wagner mercenary group has started recruiting military police in occupied Ukraine, according to online job advertisements posted by the private army and reports by independent media outlets. In a post shared on the Russian social media website VKontakte, the private military company said it was looking to hire former law enforcement and special forces…
Russian government officials have been banned from using their iPhones during cabinet meetings and for work purposes amid claims that the U.S.-made smartphones are equipped with spying technology, independent journalist Farida Rustamova reported Thursday, citing sources. The ban on Apple devices, which applies to deputy prime ministers, ministers and other staff, came after a warning from…
Russia said Thursday that Ukrainian forces in eastern and southern Ukraine were temporarily limiting their efforts to reclaim Moscow-held territory, after Kyiv launched its highly anticipated counteroffensive. “After conducting active hostilities over the past 16 days and having suffered significant losses, the enemy has reduced its activity and is currently regrouping,” Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu…
Russia’s Academy of Sciences (RAS) has opened a research center specializing in the study of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s communist teachings, the first ever established outside China, Russian and Chinese media reported Thursday. Kirill Babayev, head of the RAS Institute of China and Contemporary Asia, linked the opening of the Xi Jinping Thought Research Laboratory…