Russia will not tighten capital controls in response to a weakening ruble, the Vedomosti business daily reported Thursday, citing two anonymous sources close to the Russian government. President Vladimir Putin met with cabinet members and Central Bank governor Elvira Nabiullina on Wednesday to hear proposals on converting foreign currency earnings held by exporters into rubles.…
Around 45,000 residents of Moscow have been deployed on the frontline in Ukraine, the Russian capital’s mayor said late Wednesday. Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said some 20,000 Muscovites are serving in the war as mobilized soldiers, while another 20,000 are either contract or volunteer fighters. The remaining 5,000 are professional soldiers, he added. Sobyanin’s figures suggest that…
An earlier version of this article, citing a report by Kommersant, incorrectly stated that Melkonyants was outside of Russia on Thursday. He is currently in Russia. Russian authorities have charged the co-chair of the independent election monitor Golos for running an “undesirable” organization, state media reported Thursday, citing an anonymous source. Law enforcement carried out searches…
Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) said Wednesday it had “eliminated” a group of four Ukrainian fighters who tried to cross into Russia’s western Bryansk region from northern Ukraine, news agencies reported. The announcement came a day after Moscow said it had prevented Ukrainian militants from infiltrating the Bryansk region, which has regularly seen similar attacks.…
Military enlistment offices across Russia have begun sending out summonses, sparking fears that the Kremlin may be preparing for a new wave of mobilization, media outlets have reported. The summonses were sent to residents in central Russia’s Ulyanovsk and Perm regions, as well as in Siberia’s Krasnoyarsk, Kemerovo and Chelyabinsk, according to the independent news outlets…
Russia has expelled Politico Europe correspondent and former Moscow Times editor-in-chief Eva Hartog, Politico Europe reported Wednesday. Russia’s Foreign Ministry had reportedly informed Hartog last Monday that her visa would not be extended and gave her six days to leave Russia. Moscow provided no information as to the reason for Hartog’s expulsion, saying only that the…
Moscow’s Luna-25 lander is due to reach the Moon’s orbit Wednesday, in the first such Russian mission in almost 50 years, according to Roscosmos space agency. With the lunar launch, Moscow’s first since 1976, Russia hopes to provide renewed momentum to its space industry, which has been struggling for years and has become increasingly isolated amid…
A former official in northwestern Russia’s republic of Komi has sought asylum in the United States after fleeing Russia to avoid being drafted into the war in Ukraine, according to the Russian-language broadcaster RTVI. Denis Sharonov, 48, served as the republic of Komi’s agriculture minister between 2020 and January 2022, a month before Russia invaded…
Siberia’s boreal forests, long considered to be a carbon “sink,” may soon become a net source of carbon emissions, as wildfires causing forest loss and degradation have grown increasingly more intense over the past decade, researchers at the Russian Academy of Sciences said Thursday. Citing a recent study, the researchers said carbon emissions from high-intensity…
Russian authorities on Wednesday designated the Polish-based anti-war group For a Free Russia an “undesirable organization,” making any work for or with the collective a criminal offense. “From abroad, they involve Russians in volunteer battalions within the Ukrainian armed forces and train so-called ‘resistance groups’,” the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office said in a statement. For…
Russia’s Defense Ministry said Wednesday it shot down three Ukrainian drones in the central Kaluga region, the latest in a surge of air attacks deep inside Russia. Ukraine launched the attack at 5:00 am using “three unmanned aerial vehicles against buildings in the Kaluga region,” the ministry said on the Telegram messaging app. “All of…
Russian military and security forces prevented a Ukrainian sabotage group from infiltrating western Russia’s Bryansk region, the regional governor said Tuesday. Russia’s armed forces, together with Federal Security Service (FSB) border agents and National Guard special units, thwarted “an attempt by a Ukrainian diversionary reconnaissance group to infiltrate” the Bryansk region, Governor Alexander Bogomaz said. After initially…
A former Russian military intelligence officer known for publically endorsing Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine has been fined for “discrediting” the country’s armed forces, the independent news website Mediazona reported Tuesday. The case against ex-GRU colonel Vladimir Kvachkov, 74, stands out as a rare example of Russia’s justice system targeting pro-war figures instead of dissenters who…
Russia reserves the right to use cluster munitions in Ukraine in response to U.S. supplies of the banned weapons to Kyiv, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said Tuesday. Though Russia and Ukraine have accused each other of using cluster bombs in the 17-month conflict, Shoigu claimed Moscow has refrained from doing so out of “humanitarian”…
Authorities in the flood-stricken Primorye region of Russia’s Far East on Tuesday declared a state of emergency to expand relief efforts following an outcry by local residents in affected areas. Governor Oleg Kozhemyako promised higher payouts to families whose homes were damaged by tropical storm Khanun, which pummeled the Primorye region last week, triggering evacuations…
Russia’s Central Bank hiked interest rates from 8.5% to 12% on Tuesday in an emergency meeting after the ruble slid past 100 against the U.S. dollar the day before. “The decision is aimed at limiting price stability risks,” the Bank said in a statement. The ruble gained strongly ahead of the decision, rising by more…
Updated with new death toll. At least 35 people were killed and dozens injured in an explosion and fire at a petrol station in Russia’s Caucasus republic of Dagestan, the Emergency Situations Ministry said Tuesday. A total of 102 people were injured and killed as a result of the incident, the ministry said on the Telegram…
Russia said Monday that it had dispatched a MiG-29 fighter jet to “prevent a violation” of its border by a Norwegian military patrol aircraft over the Barents Sea. “As the Russian fighter approached, the foreign military plane made a U-turn away from the borders of the Russian Federation,” the Russian Defense Ministry said. “There was…
The Russian ruble’s slide past 100 against the dollar has exposed a multi-billion dollar dilemma at the heart of the Russian economy: how can the Kremlin carry on funding its war against Ukraine without triggering a surge in inflation and fresh fears of an economic crisis at home? The ruble dipped below the crucial level…
At least 400 Russian tourists have been stranded in Turkey for two consecutive days after a series of plane breakdowns, Russia’s Red Wings Airlines said Monday. “Two Boeing 777 aircraft out of the three available in the airline’s fleet were simultaneously out of service due to technical reasons,” Red Wings said in a statement. The…
Residents of southern Russia’s republic of Dagestan blocked traffic on a federal highway in protest of water outages that are said to have lasted most of the summer, Russian authorities and media reported late Sunday. Traffic was brought to a standstill in the village of Karaman 2, which lies along the highway that connects the…
The Russian ruble slid past 100 against the dollar Monday, its lowest level since late March 2022, just weeks after Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The ruble has shed around 30% of its value against the dollar since the beginning of the year, as Russia imports more and exports less. Data from the…
A former candidate for governor who nearly unseated a Kremlin-backed incumbent in Russia’s Far East has been sentenced to six years in jail, Russian media reported Monday. Andrei Ishchenko ran in 2018 as a Communist Party challenger for the governor’s post in the Primorye region, where election authorities annulled results after reports of vote-rigging, a rare…
Poland has detained two Russian citizens for “distributing propaganda materials of the Wagner Group” in the cities of Warsaw and Krakow, the Polish interior minister said Monday. “Both were charged with… espionage and arrested,” Mariusz Kaminski said on social media without providing further details about the detained men. Poland has recently warned of possible provocations…
An ally of jailed Russian opposition activist Alexei Navalny went on trial in Siberia Monday on charges of creating an “extremist organization,” a court spokesperson told AFP, as authorities continue to crack down on dissent. Ksenia Fadeyeva, 31, is a former municipal deputy in the Siberian city of Tomsk and was added to Russia’s “terrorist”…
More than 2,500 people have been evacuated due to flooding in parts of the Primorye region in Russia’s Far East, emergency officials said Monday. At least three people are believed to have drowned after heavy rains brought by tropical storm Khanun pummeled Russia’s Primorye region late last week. More than 4,600 homes were flooded and 28 towns…
Ukraine downed three waves of Russian missiles and drones targeting Odesa, its army said early on Monday, the latest in a string of attacks in the southern region on the Black Sea coast. “The enemy attacked the Odesa region three times during the night, using two waves of attack drones, a total of 15, and…
Moscow said Sunday that warning shots were fired from a Russian warship at a cargo vessel heading towards the Ukrainian port of Izmail. The Russian Defense Ministry said the Vasily Bykov patrol ship spotted a cargo vessel sailing under the flag of Palau “en route to the Ukrainian port of Izmail.” The captain of the…
Six people, including a baby girl and her parents, were killed on Sunday by Russian shelling in southern Ukraine, officials said. “Russia killed six people in the region of Kherson,” Interior Minister Igor Klymenko said on messaging app Telegram, releasing pictures showing the aftermath of the attack. One photo showed a column of black smoke…
Russia has evacuated more than 2,000 people from flooded areas in its Far East, emergency officials said Sunday, after Tropical Storm Khanun brought heavy rains to the region. “More than 2,000 people, including 405 children, have been evacuated in Primorye,” the Russian Emergency Situations Ministry said on Telegram. The ministry said nearly 5,000 buildings had…
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu has inspected troops deployed in the Arctic as well as preparations “to defend specially important installations” in this strategic zone, his ministry said Saturday. Shoigu was accompanied by Alexey Likhachev, head of the state nuclear company Rosatom, and visited Novaya Zemlya, in Russia’s extreme north, a statement said. They also…
Russia air defense forces shot down two Ukrainian missiles over a bridge connecting Moscow-annexed Crimea to the Russian mainland, an official said on Saturday. “Air defence forces shot down two enemy missiles over the Kerch Strait. The Crimean bridge was not damaged,” Sergei Aksyonov, the Russian-installed governor of the Crimean peninsula, said on social media.…
Russia’s federal budget revenue from convict labor has more than doubled from 2016-2022, The Moscow Times’ Russian service reported Friday, citing Finance Ministry data. In 2022, the federal budget received 19.1 billion rubles ($192.4 million) from forced labor performed by convicts for state and private companies, compared to 8.8 billion rubles ($89.4 million) in 2016, according…
Over 30,000 Russian soldiers have been killed in Ukraine since the start of the Kremlin’s invasion a year and a half ago, according to an independent tally conducted by the independent Mediazona news website and the BBC’s Russian service. The two outlets have been verifying the number of Russian troops killed in Ukraine using publicly…
A mass die-off of northern fur seals and Steller sea lions was discovered by a group of conservations in Russia’s Far East, local media reported Thursday. Photos published online showed the animals’ carcasses scattered across the shore of Tyuleniy Island, located around 17 kilometers off the coast of Sakhalin. Conservationists from the Friends of the…
Three employees at a waterpark in annexed Crimea were forced to sing a song in support of Russian President Vladimir Putin after being filmed dancing to a Ukrainian pop song, authorities said Friday. A Russian pro-war Telegram channel that describes itself as a “register of Russophobes, Ukrainian Nazis and traitors” shared video of the waterpark…
TBILISI, Georgia — Nino Takaishvili, an ethnic Georgian from Moscow, clearly remembers Aug. 8, 2008, the day that the Russian army invaded her ancestral homeland while she was on her first trip abroad in Paris. She also remembers the surprise she felt when her Russian-speaking guide began the tour with words that seemed to have…
Russia on Friday claimed to have improved its fighting positions around the northeast Ukraine town of Kupiansk, as Kyiv’s troops struggle ahead with their counteroffensive in other areas. Moscow also launched a volley of hypersonic missiles at western Ukraine in an attack that killed an eight-year-old boy in a part of the country that has…
Google has started blocking its popular workplace apps for Russian companies under U.S. sanctions, the Kommersant business daily reported Friday, citing anonymous sources at two major IT companies. Around 30% of Russian companies’ corporate information is stored on Google Workspace services, which include Gmail, Docs, Sheets, Drive and other cloud-based tools, according to one of the…
“They took my relatives to the war in Ukraine.” In an emotional Instagram post, exiled Chechen human rights lawyer Abubakar Yangulbaev said authorities in his home region had forcefully taken four of his closest male relatives to the frontlines in Ukraine’s Russian-occupied Donetsk region. It was far from the first time Yangulbaev’s family has been…
Russian air defense systems shot down a drone flying over Moscow, Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said Friday morning, as Vnukovo international airport temporarily halted flights. “One drone attempted to fly over the city. It was eliminated as a result of air defense work,” Sobyanin wrote on the Telegram messaging app. He said there were no injuries…
Heavy rains brought by tropical storm Khanun have led to flooding in parts of the Primorye region in Russia’s Far East, media outlets reported Friday. Emergency officials warned that the situation was worsening in several flood-hit districts due to continuing rainfall. No casualties or evacuation orders were reported. Video shared by the independent news outlet Govorit NeMoskva…
Russia on Friday launched its first probe to the Moon in almost 50 years, a mission designed to provide renewed momentum to the country’s space industry, which has been struggling for years and has become increasingly isolated amid the war in Ukraine. The launch of the Luna-25 lander is Moscow’s first lunar mission since 1976,…
Two people were killed on Thursday after Ukraine shelled a small village in the Russian border region of Bryansk, the region’s governor said. Bryansk governor Alexander Bogomaz said earlier that one man had died but later announced another person was killed. “At present, two civilians have been killed by the Ukrainian armed forces,” he said on…
As many as 5,000 law enforcement employees left their jobs at Russia’s Interior Ministry in July, the police body’s head announced Thursday. “The personnel shortage is very large. I would even call it critical,” Interior Minister Vladimir Kolokoltsev was cited as saying at an internal ministry meeting by Interfax. The Interior Ministry encompasses an array of agencies…
Activists from several Russian regions have called on the government to explain its move to raise limits for the concentrations of harmful pollutants in the air. A number of Russian cities have long been plagued with air pollution problems, particularly industrial cities such as Chelyabinsk, Magnitogorsk, Norilsk and Krasnoyarsk. They are among the 12 cities…
Russian authorities will seek a new trial for a man who criticized a child for wearing a pro-war hat following an outcry from Russia’s community of staunch war supporters, prosecutors said Thursday. A court in the Ural Mountains city of Yekaterinburg in June fined Alexander Neustroyev 7,000 rubles ($70) on charges of “hooliganism” as part…
Ukraine urged civilians near the northeastern front line to evacuate on Thursday as Russia ramped up an assault to capture the territory already once seized during the conflict. Kupiansk and the surrounding areas of Ukraine’s Kharkiv region were liberated by Kyiv’s forces last September, but Moscow has since pushed back on the region. “Given the…
Rosneft, the Government of the Sverdlovsk region and the Nizhny Tagil Administration signed a 10-year concession agreement for the development of a heat supply complex in Nizhny Tagil.
The chief technical officer of a Russian fireworks company with storage facilities at an optical plant outside Moscow was detained in connection with a criminal probe into a deadly explosion on its territory, authorities said Thursday. A woman died from severe burns, 60 others were wounded and 12 remain missing after a powerful explosion Wednesday…
Arkady Volozh, the co-founder of Russia’s Yandex tech giant, condemned the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine on Thursday following backlash for his apparent attempt to distance himself from Russia on his personal website. “I am categorically against Russia’s barbaric invasion of Ukraine,” Volozh said in a statement shared with The Bell news website, adding that he…
Residents of Makhachkala in southern Russia’s republic of Dagestan late Wednesday barricaded the city center following three days of blackouts. Locals blocked traffic with wooden pallets, which police officers were seen taking away later in the evening, as shown in footage shared by the state broadcaster “Dagestan.” “Three days without electricity! We’re choking!” shouted one…
As the head of the Kot i Pyos (“Cat and Dog”) charity in the Far East republic of Buryatia, Natalya Filippova takes care of about 500 animals. “We recently had a puppy fall sick; his kidneys were failing. Our director, along with our colleagues, drove him to Novosibirsk in a car, so that he could…
Russian authorities on Thursday designated the independent investigative organization Conflict Intelligence Team (CIT), which conducts open-source investigations of the Russian military, an “undesirable organization.” The Russian Prosecutor General’s Office accused CIT of publishing the personal details of Russian soldiers “which were later used to discredit” the Russian military. Discrediting the Russian Armed Forces’ actions abroad has…
Russia last year experienced a record number of explosions, leading to dozens of deaths and thousands of injuries, the independent news website Vyortska reported, citing a report by the Emergency Situations Ministry. Overall, 83 blasts ripped through residential buildings, warehouses, cars and mines in 2022, according to the cited ministry report on 2013-22 emergency response…
Russia’s Defense Ministry said early on Thursday it had downed 11 Ukrainian drones near Crimea overnight, as well as two drones flying toward the capital Moscow. “Two unmanned aerial vehicles flying in the direction of Moscow were destroyed,” the ministry said in a statement on the Telegram messaging app. It also said two Ukrainian drones…
Russia’s absence from the Saudi-hosted summit to find a peace framework for the war in Ukraine exposed the Kremlin’s vulnerabilities despite the fact that no final joint statement or document was signed, four current and former Russian officials familiar with Russia’s diplomacy admitted to The Moscow Times. The weekend summit in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia was…
Ukrainian shelling on Wednesday killed one and injured four people in Russia’s border region of Belgorod, the governor said, targeting a region that has been hit by repeated Ukrainian strikes. “The village of Gorkovsky in the Graivoron district came under fire from the Armed Forces of Ukraine,” Vyacheslav Gladkov announced on social media. “One person died — a…
Moscow on Wednesday accused Poland and Finland of threatening its border security and vowed to respond to “multiplying” risks from NATO member countries along Russia’s western frontier. In recent weeks, Poland has beefed up its border security with neighboring Belarus following reports that fighters from the Wagner mercenary outfit have established a new base in…
An elite Chechen military unit has been deployed as a police force in the occupied Ukrainian nuclear city of Enerhodar, Al Jazeera reported Wednesday, citing interviews with engineers who fled the town and its remaining residents. Russian forces captured Enerhodar, which hosts the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, in the early days of its February 2022…