German Chancellor Olaf Scholz plans to hold his first phone conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin in nearly two years, the German weekly Die Zeit reported Tuesday, citing anonymous government sources in Berlin. Although not yet officially requested, sources told Die Zeit that the phone call is being considered ahead of the G20 summit in…
Russia’s manufacturing sector contracted in September for the first time in two and a half years, following 28 consecutive months of growth since May 2022, according to a business survey published Tuesday. S&P Global’s Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) for Russian manufacturing fell to 49.5 in September, down from 52.1 the month before, when the sector…
Authorities in St. Petersburg forced the cancelation of an annual Holocaust commemoration event scheduled for this weekend, citing Covid-19 restrictions, the Jewish Community Center of St. Petersburg announced on social media. This marks the first official ban on the mourning ceremony in the 32 years since it has been held in the municipality of Pushkin, including during…
A Russian strike on the center of the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson killed six people on Tuesday, the regional prosecutor’s office said. Video published by the region’s governor showed debris and broken glass strewn around a market, while several bodies lay on the pavement. “Around 9:00 am… Russian forces struck the center of Kherson,…
Wildberries, Russia’s largest online retailer, has successfully merged with the outdoor advertising firm Russ Group, CEO Tatyana Kim announced Tuesday, following a bitter feud with her co-founder and ex-husband. Wildberries and Russ Group initially revealed plans to merge in June, creating a new digital trading platform called RWB. Reports at the time said Kim and…
Three journalists working for independent Russian media outlets were arrested in Moscow late Monday outside a concert celebrating the Kremlin’s claimed annexation of Ukrainian regions, the human rights watchdog OVD-Info said. The concert marked two years since President Vladimir Putin signed decrees annexing the eastern Ukrainian regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, along with the southern Zaporizhzhia…
Russia’s government plans to increase defense spending by about 30% next year as it diverts more resources to fund its war in Ukraine, according to Russia’s draft budget plans, which were published on Monday. Moscow has already ramped up its military spending to levels not seen since the Soviet era, as it pumps out missiles…
Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin landed in Tehran on Monday to meet with Iranian President Massed Pezeshkian, the Russian government announced. The visit comes ahead of a planned meeting between Pezeshkian and Russian President Vladimir Putin during the Oct. 22-24 BRICS summit in the Tatarstan capital of Kazan. Mishustin’s trip also follows Western accusations that…
Russia’s Defense Ministry plans to enlist 133,000 young men for mandatory military service this fall and winter, according to a decree signed by President Vladimir Putin on Monday. Along with the 150,000 men drafted in the spring, the Russian military will have conscripted 283,000 men by the end of 2024. In the 2023 fall call-up,…
A 72-year-old American man detained in Russia pleaded guilty to fighting as a mercenary in Ukraine, the state-run RIA Novosti news agency reported Monday. Last week, a Moscow court ordered Stephen Hubbard to be placed in pre-trial detention until March 26, 2025. Prosecutors accuse him of having signed a monthly contract with the Ukrainian military…
An official Russian investigation into the death of Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny was redacted to remove any indications of possible poisoning, The Insider reported Sunday, citing “hundreds” of documents it said it had obtained. Navalny’s widow revealed last month that she received a letter from Russian investigators claiming there were no signs of foul play…
Russia’s Defense Ministry will soon have the authority to determine whether the conditions for using nuclear weapons are met, the Kremlin said Sunday, following announced plans to revise the country’s nuclear doctrine. “This is the prerogative of our specialists, our military, who are closely monitoring the weapons used and how they are being employed,” Kremlin…
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday vowed that Moscow would achieve all the goals it has set for itself in the ongoing war against Ukraine. “The truth is on our side. All goals set will be achieved,” Putin said in a video message released to mark the second anniversary of what Russia calls “Reunification Day”…
Russia announced Sunday that Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin will meet Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian in Tehran on Monday. The announcement came as Russia has condemned Israel’s “political murder” of Iran-backed Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah in Beirut. Mishustin will hold talks with Pezeshkian and First Vice President Mohammad Reza Aref, the government statement said. “It is…
Europe’s physics lab CERN said Sunday that some 500 scientists linked to Russian institutes will be affected when it stops cooperation with Russia in late November as planned. CERN’s decision-making body agreed in June 2022 to terminate cooperation agreements with Russia and its ally Belarus over the war in Ukraine. Thus, Belarus’s five-year agreement was…
Russia downed 125 Ukrainian drones over its territory overnight, the defense ministry said Sunday, with regional governors reporting some damage but no casualties from the attack. “125 Ukrainian fixed-wing UAVs were destroyed and intercepted by air defense systems on duty,” the ministry said on Telegram. Sixty-seven were destroyed over the Volgograd region in southern Russia,…
Ukraine on Sunday claimed to have sent more than 100 drones deep inside Russia to hit a major weapons depot, as Kyiv ups its attacks further inside Russian territory. “Defense forces struck the Kotluban military depot” in the Volgograd region, hundreds of kilometers from the Ukrainian border, a day after a shipment of Iranian weapons…
Russia condemned Israel on Saturday for killing Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah, urging an immediate ceasefire in Lebanon as Moscow’s foreign minister suggested an effort was underway to drag Washington into a regional war. Nasrallah, who headed Iranian-backed Hezbollah for more than three decades, died in a bombardment targeting the group’s headquarters in the southern suburbs…
Authorities in Russia said Saturday the death toll from a blast at a service station in the North Caucasus republic of Dagestan a day earlier had risen to 13. The Emergency Situations Ministry said on Telegram that rescuers had pulled three bodies from the rubble Saturday morning after finding 10 bodies Friday, including those of…
Women’s rights activists across the globe on Saturday marked International Safe Abortion Day. But for many in Russia, the occasion was a bitter reminder of how far the country’s government has backtracked on its once-liberal abortion policies, leaving thousands of women with increasingly limited access to safe, affordable and timely abortion care. This week, the…
Two Russian strikes on a hospital in the Ukrainian border city of Sumy killed seven people Saturday, regional authorities said. Sumy lies across the border from Russia’s Kursk region, where Kyiv launched a surprise offensive early last month. The first strike killed 1 person and damaged several floors of a hospital, and after that, patients…
Updates with new death toll Russian strikes on a hospital in the Ukrainian border city of Sumy killed 10 people Saturday as Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky condemned Moscow for “waging war on hospitals.” Ukrainian Interior Minister Igor Klymenko wrote on Telegram that the first strike “killed one person” and damaged several floors of the hospital.…
Russian forces pressed further toward encircling the Ukrainian stronghold of Vuhledar in recent days, sparking worries that a key defensive outpost for Kyiv could soon fall into Russian hands. On Wednesday, British intelligence reported that Russian troops had closed in on Vuhledar from three directions, threatening to cut off the last remaining roadway out of…
The co-chair of an independent Russian election monitoring watchdog, Grigory Melkonyants, went on trial Friday accused of cooperation with an “undesirable” organization. The trial of the co-leader of Golos, one of Russia’s most prominent rights movements, comes as Moscow has intensified its crackdown on critical voices since launching its offensive in Ukraine. Melkonyants, who denies…
An explosion tore through a service station in Russia’s Caucasus republic of Dagestan on Friday, killing at least nine people and injuring 10 others, the emergency situations ministry said. Two children were among the dead, the ministry added on social media network Telegram. A previous ministry statement put the toll at five dead and three…
Gazprom, once Russia’s most profitable company, has dropped out of Forbes Russia’s 2024 top 100 list, the business magazine wrote Friday. “Last year’s leader Gazprom fell off the list with a record loss of 583 billion rubles [$6.3 billion] in 2023,” Forbes Russia wrote. However, it noted that the record loss was “more on paper,”…
The Russian judge who convicted Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich said the trial was short because the court did not examine any “material evidence” and the verdict did not take long because he could “type quickly.” “The case itself was small. I don’t remember how many folders there were, three or five,” Judge Andrei…
Finland will place a key NATO base less than 200 kilometers (125 miles) from its eastern border with Russia, a move that Helsinki says will “send a message” to Moscow, the Finnish Defense Ministry said Friday. Finland, which shares a 1,340-kilometer (830-mile) border with Russia, became a NATO member last year, dropping decades of military…
A bill submitted to the Russian parliament has raised fears that the thousands of Russian dissidents seeking political refuge in post-Soviet and other non-Western states could soon be at risk of arrest and extradition back to Russia. The bill, recently introduced to the lower-house State Duma by the ruling United Russia party, would allow prosecutors…
High school students in Russia’s Far East were shown a graphic video of a medical abortion video during an unannounced lecture, the Telegram news channel Ostorozhno Novosti reported Friday. “Many felt sick while watching,” the outlet wrote, citing students from school No. 7 in the Sakhalin region town of Okha, around 6,000 kilometers (3,700 miles)…
Russian law enforcement authorities arrested the manager of a Russian defense contractor, accusing him of defrauding the military by supplying substandard equipment, Russia’s Investigative Committee said Friday. Vladislav Pylsky, who manages a subsidiary of the Siberian Navigation Company, allegedly provided the military with goods that “did not meet technical requirements,” costing the armed forces 164 million rubles ($1.76…
Russian prosecutors are seeking a life sentence for Alexander Permyakov, who is accused of trying to assassinate pro-war nationalist writer Zakhar Prilepin, the independent news website Mediazona reported Friday. Permyakov was arrested last May after a car bomb wounded Prilepin and killed his security guard in the Nizhny Novgorod region. According to his lawyer, Permyakov…
U.S. intelligence officials believe Russia could retaliate with lethal force if the Biden administration allows Ukraine to use Western weapons to strike deep within Russian territory, The New York Times reported Thursday, citing anonymous sources familiar with the matter. The warning comes as President Vladimir Putin this week announced plans to revise Russia’s nuclear weapons…
A Moscow court has begun hearings into a 72-year-old American man accused of fighting as a mercenary in Ukraine, state media reported Friday. The state news agency RIA Novosti identified the man as Stefan Hubbard, though another possible spelling of his name could be Stephen Hubbard. In May, a Facebook user named Trisha Hubbard Fox…
Russian authorities may soon block the popular messaging platform Discord, the Kommersant business daily reported Friday, citing sources familiar with the matter. Discord, which allows users to communicate in virtual communities known as “servers,” is widely used by gamers, students and cryptocurrency traders. It reportedly has between 29 and 40 million active users in Russia.…
Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) pressed criminal charges against two Australian journalists and one Romanian journalist for illegally crossing the border into the southwestern Kursk region while on reporting assignments, state media reported Friday. Authorities in Russia have so far charged 12 foreign journalists over their work in the Kursk region following a surprise incursion…
Alexei Soldatov, a pioneering figure of the Russian internet and former deputy minister, is “dying in prison” while serving a two-year sentence for “abuse of power,” his son, investigative journalist Andrei Soldatov, said in a social media post on Thursday. Known as the father of the Russian internet, Alexei Soldatov led the Relcom computer network…
An American rejected his U.S. citizenship in a Moscow court on Thursday, saying he was the victim of political persecution in the United States, Russian state news agencies reported. Joseph Tater was in court after being accused of assaulting a police officer after abusing staff at a hotel in the Russian capital last month. In…
Google has restricted the creation of new accounts inside Russia, state media reported Thursday, citing Russia’s Digital Communications Ministry. Authorities said that Telecom operators reported a “significant decrease in the number of SMS messages sent by” Google to users in Russia, referring to messages the tech company uses to verify new account creation. While two-factor authentication…
The Kremlin said Thursday that an updated nuclear doctrine allowing Moscow to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states should be seen as a warning to the West. Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday announced plans to broaden Russia’s rules on the use of its nuclear stockpiles, allowing it to unleash a nuclear response in the…
Russia’s army said Thursday it had captured the Ukrainian town of Ukrainsk in the eastern Donetsk region, the latest in a series of territorial gains for Moscow’s advancing forces. In a daily briefing posted on Telegram, the Russian Defense Ministry said its troops “liberated” Ukrainsk, a town that once had more than 10,000 residents before…
School buses in southwestern Russia’s Belgorod region will soon be outfitted with “electronic warfare systems” designed to counter drone attacks, the region’s governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said Thursday. These electronic warfare systems work by disrupting radio frequencies, effectively jamming communication, targeting systems and radars used by drones. The Belgorod region received 55 of the systems, according…
Beer sales in Russia have seen significant growth since the start of the year, outpacing other fast-moving consumer goods, the Kommersant business daily reported Thursday, citing market data. According to NielsenIQ, a global marketing research firm, beer sales in Russia rose 8.7% year-on-year between January and July, a stark contrast to the modest 1.6% growth…
Authorities in Moscow returned nine Ukrainian children with the help of Qatari mediators, Russia’s presidential commissioner for children’s rights, Maria Lvova-Belova, announced Thursday. Lvova-Belova posted photos on Telegram showing her alongside Qatari Ambassador Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani, speaking to the children at the Qatari Embassy in Moscow. “There are eight boys, ages 12 to…
Russia has convicted 785 foreign nationals for fighting on the side of Ukraine since hostilities between the two countries first broke out in 2014, Russia’s Investigative Committee said Thursday. Investigators disclosed the figure while announcing criminal charges against Georgian citizen Giorgi Goglidze, accusing him of fighting for Kyiv “for monetary compensation.” In November 2023, Russia’s…
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday announced plans to broaden Russia’s rules on the use of its nuclear weaponry, allowing it to unleash a nuclear response in the event of a “massive” air attack. Under the proposed rules, Russia would also consider any attack by a non-nuclear country supported by a nuclear power as a…
Russia’s parliament Wednesday voted to back a bill banning the adoption of Russian children in countries that allow gender reassignment, the latest in a series of ultra-conservative social measures. Moscow has long portrayed itself as a bulwark against liberal values, but that trend has hugely accelerated since the Kremlin launched its war in Ukraine, further…
Russian President Vladimir Putin said Wednesday he expected his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan to attend a BRICS summit in Russia next month, after Turkey requested to join the group of emerging economies. Putin said he was due to meet Erdogan on Oct. 23, a day after the start of the summit in the Russian…
President Volodymyr Zelensky accused Russia on Wednesday of plotting potentially catastrophic attacks on Ukrainian nuclear plants, in a defiant UN address in which he denounced bids to impose peace from the outside. Zelensky sought to rally support among world leaders at their annual gathering in New York as his concerns grow, weeks before a U.S.…
A Russian non-profit organization focused on church restoration is set to launch a faith-based messaging app dubbed “Orthodox WhatsApp” this November, state media reported Tuesday. The app, officially called “Zosima,” will allow users to communicate directly with their local churches and clergy, as well as to make donations, according to a statement by the Innotekh…
Vladislav Bakalchuk, the estranged husband of Wildberries CEO Tatyana Kim, credited Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov with helping him stay alive and out of jail amid a family dispute over a controversial business merger that escalated into a shootout at the company’s headquarters last week. Bakalchuk made those comments in an interview just days before he led…
Russia’s armed forces said Wednesday it captured two more villages in eastern Ukraine, the latest gains as Moscow’s troops inch closer to the strategically important city of Pokrovsk. The Russian military has claimed a series of territorial gains in the area since the start of the year, pressing on even as Kyiv mounts its own…
The imprisoned mother of a prominent critic of Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov has seen a dramatic deterioration of her health in recent weeks, her lawyer said Wednesday. Zarema Musaeva, the mother of activist Abubakar Yangulbaev and the wife of a retired federal judge, was initially sentenced last summer to five and a half years in…
The Kremlin said Wednesday that “forcing” Russia into peace would be a “fatal mistake,” rejecting remarks made by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the United Nations. Zelensky said Tuesday that Russia could only be forced into peace, and vowed not to negotiate on Moscow’s terms to end the conflict. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters…
Moscow has been secretly negotiating the delivery of anti-ship cruise missiles to Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi militias, Reuters reported Tuesday, citing anonymous Western and regional sources. “Russia is negotiating with the Houthis for the transfer of [P-800] Yakhont supersonic anti-ship missiles,” a Western intelligence told Reuters. The talks are reportedly brokered by Iran, though Tehran seeks to…
Valentina Matviyenko was re-elected Wednesday for her fourth term as speaker of Russia’s upper house of parliament, the Federation Council. Matviyenko, 75, is third in line for the presidency, following the prime minister, in the event of Vladimir Putin’s death. “We all work on the president’s team,” Matviyenko said during the opening of the 178-member…
Lawmakers in Russia’s Far East Primorye region on Wednesday passed a law outlawing the act of “coercing” women into having an abortion, a move that comes as federal lawmakers debate a bill to ban the so-called “childfree movement.” The new law defines “coercion” into abortion as actions such as persuasion, bribery, deceit, blackmail or workplace pressure…
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Tuesday that Russia can only be forced into peace, as he denounced Iran and North Korea as “accomplices” in the war. Addressing a special UN Security Council session attended by a representative of Russia, Zelensky described Moscow as insincere in its calls for dialogue. “We know some in the world…
The Kremlin is attempting to create the illusion that Russian men who fight in Ukraine will enjoy greater career prospects — including the possibility of future government roles — as it grapples with a shortage of military volunteers and seeks to quell criticism from Ukraine war veterans. Russian media reported Monday that several veterans of…
Russian strikes on a residential quarter of Ukraine’s northeastern city of Kharkiv killed three civilians and wounded more than 30 on Tuesday afternoon, Ukrainian officials said. Kharkiv lies around 30 kilometers (18 miles) from the Russian border and has been pounded by Russian aerial attacks throughout the two-and-a-half-year war. “The targets of the Russian bombs…