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…
The International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples is celebrated on 9 August.
Updated with new injury count. A powerful explosion ripped through an optical equipment factory outside Moscow, triggering a “total evacuation” from all nearby buildings, local authorities said Wednesday. At least 35 people were injured, with four in serious condition, authorities told state media. Plumes of smoke billowed high into the air from the Zagorsk Optical-Mechanical…
Updated with new injury count, death toll, missing persons. A powerful explosion ripped through an optical equipment factory outside Moscow, triggering a “total evacuation” from all nearby buildings, local authorities said Wednesday. Plumes of smoke billowed high into the air from the Zagorsk Optical-Mechanical Plant in the town of Sergiyev Posad, around 70 kilometers northeast…
Andrzej Kshetussky was one of hundreds of thousands of Belarusians who peacefully protested against the fraudulent re-election of their country’s longtime leader, Alexander Lukashenko, in 2020. Three years after those protests were brutally repressed, he is now fighting alongside the Ukrainian army against invading Russian forces. “We lost all protest infrastructure [and] oppositional organizations in…
Grozny, the capital of Russia’s majority-muslim republic of Chechnya, has established sister city ties with the occupied southern Ukrainian city of Mariupol, over a year after it was devastated by invading Russian forces. “Grozny Mayor Khas-Magomed Kadyrov and head of Mariupol’s [Russian-installed] administration Oleg Morgun signed an agreement establishing twin city relations between the cities,”…
Russia’s state-run news agency Rossiya Segodnya has applied to trademark the brand of Ekho Moskvy, the liberal radio station that was banned following the invasion of Ukraine, according to Russia’s Federal Service for Intellectual Property (Rospatent). Sputnik Radio, one of several Rossiya Segodnya products, took over Ekho Moskvy’s FM frequencies after it was taken off…
Two Ukrainian drones headed toward Moscow were shot down Wednesday, Russian authorities said, the latest in a surge of drone attacks targeting the capital. Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said on the Telegram messaging app that “both [drones] were shot down by air defense,” noting that one was downed in the Domodedovo area on the southern outskirts of…
A former Austrian foreign minister who danced with Russian President Vladimir Putin at her wedding has been residing in a Russian village this summer, local media reported Tuesday. Karin Kneissl made headlines in 2018 when Putin attended her wedding at an Austrian vineyard, where both were photographed waltzing arm-in-arm. Kneissl revealed in an interview with…
A Siberian glacier has turned crimson red from algae bloom, raising the likelihood of even faster ice melt than at the current rate triggered by climate change, Russian scientists warned Monday. Red algae covers glaciers in the Altai Mountains near Russia’s borders with Kazakhstan and Mongolia every year, Tomsk State University’s (TSU) Faculty of Geology…
Rescue workers combed through the rubble of damaged apartments in the city of Pokrovsk in eastern Ukraine on Tuesday, a day after Russian strikes killed at least seven people. The target of the missile attack was a command post of the Ukrainian armed forces, the Russian Defense Ministry indicated in a daily briefing. Pokrovsk, which…
Russia’s largest known military equipment storage facility has been stripped of nearly half of the Soviet-era tanks and armored vehicles that were stored on its grounds before Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, The Moscow Times’ Russian service reported, analyzing satellite imagery of the storage site. The Vagzhanovo military equipment depot — located outside…
Moscow on Tuesday accused Ukraine of inciting Russians to set fire to military recruitment offices, following a recent uptick in the number of arson attacks. Since President Vladimir Putin sent troops to Ukraine last year many military recruitment offices across Russia have come under attacks. The General Prosecutor’s Office linked the attacks to the “successful advance of…
Poland has resumed pumping oil through a key pipeline linking Russia to Europe that was damaged over the weekend, the Polish pipeline operator PERN said Tuesday. Though flows through the Druzhba pipeline have dropped sharply after Russia invaded Ukraine, its operation was partly halted late Saturday after Polish operators discovered a leak at one of its sections. PERN…
Russian exports to China dropped in July, the first time since steadily rising in the months following Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Reuters reported Tuesday, citing Chinese customs data. China’s July 2023 imports from Russia declined by 8% compared to July 2022, totaling $9.2 billion. China’s overall monthly imports shrank 12.4%. It was…
Poland’s government on Monday accused Belarus and Russia of orchestrating another migration influx into the European Union via the Polish border in order to destabilize the region. “We’re talking about an operation organized by the Russian and Belarusian secret services that is getting more and more intense,” Polish Deputy Interior Minister Maciej Wasik told reporters. Tomasz Praga,…
Nearly 100 wildfires are currently burning in Russia’s Far East republic of Sakha (Yakutia), the local branch of the Russian emergencies ministry said Monday. The 98 wildfires have engulfed a combined area of 125,600 hectares (310,364 acres) of land — roughly half the size of the country of Luxembourg, authorities said. Emergency officials added that…
Russia has reallocated healthcare spending from dozens of its regions to build and repair hospitals in the occupied territories of eastern Ukraine, the Vedomosti business daily reported Monday, citing a government decree. Sixty-one out of 85 Russian regions — including annexed Crimea and the federal city of Sevastopol — saw cuts of some 2.4 billion…
The appearance of several tons of dead fish in a forest in Russia’s Far East Kamchatka region has prompted local authorities to open a probe into unauthorized dumping. The inspection was initiated after photos of the incident appeared on social media, depicting a vast amount of fish strewn across the ground. Kamchatka regional authorities said…
Russia said Monday its troops had advanced three kilometers (two miles) along the Kupiansk front in northeast Ukraine over the last three days, as it seeks to regain territories it lost earlier in its offensive. The city of Kupiansk and surrounding areas of Ukraine’s Kharkiv region were liberated by Ukrainian forces last September, but Moscow…
The first moon landing mission in Russia’s post-Soviet history will be accompanied by an evacuation of a village where rocket boosters are expected to fall this week, a local official said Monday. The Luna-25 lunar lander is scheduled to launch from the Vostochny Cosmodrome in Russia’s Far East at 23:10 GMT on Friday, Aug. 11. It…
Rosneft specialists have developed the MUZA (the Injected Agent Control Module) software to control waterflooding at the fields.
Russia is on track to open more criminal cases for treason in 2023 than over the past 20 years combined, Russia’s independent news website Kholod reported Monday. Authorities launched 82 treason investigations between January and July — a fourfold increase from the 20 cases investigated in all of 2022 — Kholod said, citing publicly available…
Russian President Vladimir Putin can choose not to hold presidential elections next year because he will “obviously” win re-election, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said late Sunday. Putin is widely expected to declare his bid for a sixth overall presidential term. Pre-war constitutional changes allow him to remain president until 2036. “Although elections are a requirement…
European companies have suffered at least 100 billion euros ($110 billion) in direct losses from operations in Russia since Moscow launched its invasion of Ukraine, the Financial Times reported late Sunday. A survey of major European companies showed that a total of 176 companies that have posted annual reports for 2022 and financial statements this…
Russia said Monday it had shot down a Ukrainian drone southwest of Moscow, as drone attacks on the Russian capital and its surrounding regions have surged in recent weeks. Authorities said the drone was downed in the central Kaluga region, less than 200 kilometers from Moscow, adding that the incident “affected neither people nor infrastructure.” The drone…
Russia said Sunday that its forces struck military airbases in the Khmelnytskyi and Rivne regions in western Ukraine and that “all targets were hit.” “Overnight Russia’s armed forces carried out strikes… on Ukrainian armed forces airbases around the settlements of Starokostiantyniv in the Khmelnytskyi region and Dubno in the Rivne region,” the Russian Defense Ministry said. Ukraine said it…
Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said Sunday that Russian air defense had destroyed a drone nearing the capital, which had been rarely targeted throughout the conflict in Ukraine until several attacks this year. “Today at around 11 am a drone attempted to make a breakthrough toward Moscow. It was destroyed while approaching by air defense forces,”…
Moscow escalated its attacks in Ukraine on Saturday, with President Volodymyr Zelensky denouncing a deadly strike on a blood transfusion centre as a “war crime.” A separate strike struck a key factory, both attacks coming just hours after Kyiv hit a Russian tanker in the Kerch Strait. The attacks were the latest since Moscow exited…
Russia said Saturday it scrambled an Su-30 fighter jet to “prevent a violation of the Russian state border” by a U.S. Reaper MQ-9 military drone over the Black Sea. “As the Russian fighter approached, the foreign reconnaissance drone performed a U-turn away from the border,” the Russian Defense Ministry said. The ministry said the drone belonged…
Russia on Saturday said it captured a settlement in northeastern Ukraine, where Kyiv has reported increased attacks. “In the area of Kupiansk, as a result of the competent and professional actions of the military units of the Western command, the settlement of Novoselivske was liberated,” the Russian Defense Ministry said on Telegram. It added “offensive…
A Russian tanker was hit by Ukrainian drones in the Kerch Strait, briefly halting traffic on the strategic bridge linking Crimea to Russia, Russian media reported early Saturday. The tanker was damaged in the attack and two tugboats had arrived at the scene, the state-run TASS news agency said, citing the Maritime Rescue Center. No…
The speaker of Russia’s lower house of parliament said that lawmakers will ditch their foreign-made cars for domestic car brands, Interfax reported Friday. “We discussed with the heads of the State Duma factions the issue of the use of domestically assembled cars by deputies. Everyone supports this decision. We agreed that the deputies will use Moskvitch,…