Russia’s forest service said there were nearly 300 wildfires blazing across the vast country’s northern wilderness on Saturday, as it attempted to contain them with methods including explosives and cloud seeding. Freakishly warm weather across large swathes of Siberia since January, combined with low soil moisture, have contributed to a resurgence of wildfires that devastated…
Tens of thousands of protesters marched through the eastern Russian city of Khabarovsk on Saturday in support of a popular local governor arrested this week for allegedly ordering several murders. A court in Moscow on Friday ruled to hold 50-year-old Sergei Furgal for two months pending trial for the murders of several businessmen 15 years…
Moscow lifted restrictions including compulsory travel passes on June 8, a move welcomed by residents who rushed out to enjoy the streets and parks. Many other regions lifted lockdown restrictions ahead of a July 1 national vote despite the pandemic. Critics have cast doubt on Russia’s low official mortality rate and accused authorities of under-reporting…
Russia has confirmed 720,547 cases of coronavirus and 11,205 deaths. July 11: 3 things you need to know today Russia will begin negotiations with other countries to restart international flights from July 15, deputy prime minister Tatiana Golikova said Friday. Flights will be permitted to a specific list of countries where cases of the coronavirus do not exceed…
Russia’s state statistics agency on Friday said at least 7,444 people died in May due to the coronavirus, a figure more than double that previously reported by the country’s health officials. Russia came in for criticism in May when it was reporting very few deaths in comparison to other European countries. Officials attributed the low…
Russia will begin negotiations with other countries to restart international flights from July 15, deputy prime minister Tatiana Golikova said Friday. Flights will be permitted to countries where cases of the coronavirus do not exceed 40 per 100,000 people, where the average daily increase in new cases over the last 14 days is no higher…
Russia has confirmed 713,936 cases of coronavirus and 11,017 deaths. July 10: 3 things you need to know today Russia will begin negotiations with other countries to restart international flights from July 15, deputy prime minister Tatiana Golikova said Friday. Flights will be permitted to a specific list of countries where cases of the coronavirus do not exceed 40…
A Russian court on Friday fined a LGBT activist 75,000 rubles ($1,053) over “propaganda” drawings of gay families aimed at influencing minors. A magistrate’s court in the far eastern city of Komsomolsk-On-Amur fined activist and artist Yulia Tsvetkova over social media posts of drawings, she told AFP. One, called “A family is where love is,”…
A Moscow court on Friday ordered the governor of a Far Eastern region held for two months ahead of his trial on murder charges that sparked outrage from his party. The head of Khabarovsk, Sergei Furgal, 50, was arrested on Thursday on suspicion of ordering the murder of several businessmen 15 years ago. A judge…
The Dutch government is taking Russia to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) over the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 over eastern Ukraine in 2014. Analysts say countries very rarely bring lawsuits against other countries in the Strasbourg-based court, with only 24 so-called “inter-state applications” filed in its nearly 70-year history. “Achieving justice…
A Siberian health official has been fired after controversial photographs went viral showing alleged coronavirus victims in body bags, regional authorities said Thursday. A pro-Kremlin tabloid published photographs Monday showing a room full of black bags that it claimed proved a higher than reported Covid-19 death toll in the Tomsk region. The regional crisis center…
Russia’s second-largest city of St. Petersburg saw a 10-year spike in deaths in June, official data said Thursday as questions persist over relatively low coronavirus deaths compared to other hard-hit countries. St. Petersburg, which began gradually lifting Covid-19 restrictions in early June, officially confirmed 987 deaths from coronavirus last month. A total of 7,106 people…
Kazakhstan on Friday denied a claim by China’s embassy that a pneumonia outbreak more deadly than the novel coronavirus is rampaging through the Central Asian country. In an alert for Chinese citizens posted on the embassy’s website Thursday, Beijing warned of a disease with “a mortality rate far higher than Covid-19.” The statement said the pneumonia…
Four Jehovah’s Witnesses have been detained on charges of extremism in southern Russia, investigators said Thursday amid an ongoing crackdown against the religious organization. The unnamed worshippers aged between 38 and 47 were alleged to be the “elders” of a group that has continued to meet in the southern city of Astrakhan since Russia banned…
Moscow lifted restrictions including compulsory travel passes on June 8, a move welcomed by residents who rushed out to enjoy the streets and parks. Many other regions lifted lockdown restrictions ahead of a July 1 national vote despite the pandemic. Critics have cast doubt on Russia’s low official mortality rate and accused authorities of under-reporting…
The week since Russia adopted constitutional changes has been marked by a series of high-profile arrests and sentences for activists, journalists and government officials. Here’s a look at some of the near-daily arrests, raids and other cases since the new Russian Constitution came into force following a week-long vote that ended on July 1. Broken…
Russian health officials have recommended restarting international flights to 13 countries, including nine members of the European Union and China, the RBC news website reported Thursday. The list compiled by Russia’s consumer protection watchdog Rospotrebnadzor includes Britain and Germany and is apparently part of phase one of resuming flights during the coronavirus pandemic. The Netherlands,…
Rosneft has presented its Public Statement regarding human rights and the Declaration on Human Rights for interacting with suppliers of goods, works and services.
Foreign intelligence agencies are behind the string of killings on European soil of Chechen nationals who criticized the Russian region’s ruling elite, Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov said Thursday. Kadyrov put forward the theory after the body of his reported “personal foe” Mamikhan Umarov, 43, was found in the Austrian capital Vienna on Saturday. Two ethnic…
Russia has confirmed 707,301 cases of coronavirus and 10,843 deaths. July 8: 3 things you need to know today Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin announced that wearing masks will no longer be required outdoors from July 13 as the number of new coronavirus cases has dwindled in the Russian capital in recent weeks. Russia’s Federal Air Transport Agency, Rosaviatsia, has…
Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin announced Thursday that wearing masks will no longer be required outdoors from July 13 as the number of new coronavirus cases has dwindled in the Russian capital in recent weeks. “A mandatory mask regimen on the streets will be lifted,” Sobyanin said in his blog. Masks are still required in stores,…
Police in Moscow have raided the homes of several opposition activists and city council members planning protests against Russia’s newly adopted constitution, the opposition MBKh Media news website reported early Thursday. Authorities detained Andrei Pivovarov, a high-ranking member of exiled oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s Open Russia pro-democracy movement, Interfax reported later in the day. Pivovarov’s colleague…
A Russian bid to get the United Nations to reduce cross-border humanitarian aid to war-torn Syria was voted down by the Security Council Wednesday, an official said. Authorization for the aid, which comes through two crossing points on the Turkish border — at Bab al-Salam, which leads to the Aleppo region, and Bab al-Hawa, which…
Mining giant Nornickel on Wednesday said it was contesting a fine imposed by the Russian authorities over a massive oil spill in the Arctic that sparked a state of emergency. Nornickel “disputes the amount of environmental damage caused by the diesel leak” calculated by the Russian environmental watchdog, Rosprirodnadzor, the company said in a statement. …
Moscow lifted restrictions including compulsory travel passes on June 8, a move welcomed by residents who rushed out to enjoy the streets and parks. Many other regions lifted lockdown restrictions ahead of a July 1 national vote despite the pandemic. Critics have cast doubt on Russia’s low official mortality rate and accused authorities of under-reporting…
A sitting Russian governor has been detained on suspicion of organizing murders in the early 2000s, investigators said early Thursday. Sergei Furgal, 50, is a former timber and scrap metal metal merchant and member of the far-right Liberal Democratic Party, which has the third-most seats in the Russian parliament. Furgal handed a rare defeat to…
Lithuania’s media watchdog on Wednesday banned Russian broadcaster RT, echoing a move by neighbor Latvia, after it found a key figure at the station was on an EU sanctions list. Lithuania’s LRTK media regulator said the television station previously known as Russia Today was controlled by Dmitry Kiselyov. Regarded by critics as Russia’s chief spin…
On Tuesday, the day after journalist Svetlana Prokopyeva escaped prison time for writing a column, she spent the morning walking around her home city of Pskov in northwestern Russia, enjoying her newfound freedom. When she returned to her apartment in the early afternoon, the 40-year-old sat down to read and reply to the messages of…
Moscow has told the U.S. embassy to “mind your own business” after Washington’s diplomatic mission raised concern about curbs on media freedom in Russia. Rebecca Ross, the spokeswoman for the U.S. embassy, on Tuesday expressed concern about a clampdown on journalists in Russia. “Watching arrest after arrest of Russian journalists – it’s starting to look…
Russian health officials in Siberia have begun testing rodents for bubonic plague after several cases were registered in neighboring Mongolia and China. The consumer protection watchdog Rospotrebnadzor said there’s no risk of plague outbreaks spreading to Russia because of border closures and travel restrictions imposed due to the coronavirus pandemic. The World Health Organization (WHO)…
Ukraine’s security service said it has detained an alleged Russian agent in Kiev suspected of overseeing separatist forces in eastern Ukraine. The SBU security service identified the suspect as Ukrainian citizen Andrei Nikolayevich, whose last name was only given as the initial K. He is alleged to be a “freelance representative” for the GRU Russian…
Russia has confirmed 700,792 cases of coronavirus and 10,667 deaths. July 8: 3 things you need to know today Federal transport authorities have found more than 500 violations of anti-coronavirus measures at Russian airports in June, the Kommersant business daily reported. Russia’s Federal Air Transport Agency, Rosaviatsia, has extended Russia’s ban on international flights until Aug. 1 due…
Moscow lifted restrictions including compulsory travel passes on June 8, a move welcomed by residents who rushed out to enjoy the streets and parks. Many other regions lifted lockdown restrictions ahead of a July 1 national vote despite the pandemic. Critics have cast doubt on Russia’s low official mortality rate and accused authorities of under-reporting…
Russia and China on Tuesday vetoed a UN Security Council resolution that would have extended authorization for cross-border humanitarian aid in Syria for a year, though Moscow swiftly proposed a more limited extension. Germany and Belgium, two of the council’s non-permanent members, had drafted the resolution, which would have allowed aid to continue to pass through…
Russian prosecutors demanded Tuesday that a respected Gulag historian be sentenced to 15 years in prison over alleged sexual assault in a case his allies say has been trumped up to silence him. Yury Dmitriyev, 64, spent decades locating and exhuming mass graves of people killed under Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin’s rule. Rights groups and…
Siberia’s unprecedented heat wave will continue through July, experts have warned, increasing the risk of forest fires and permafrost damage and highlighting the effects of climate change. Forecasts show that five Siberian regions, including one in the Arctic, will experience temperatures of 37 degrees Celsius in early July. This follows The Siberian town of Verkhoyansk…
A high-profile Russian journalist who became an adviser to the head of the space agency was detained Tuesday on charges of treason for allegedly divulging state military secrets, the country’s security service said. Ivan Safronov, 30, worked for business outlets Kommersant and Vedomosti and was one of Russia’s most high profile and respected journalists reporting…
Moscow will apply counter-sanctions against Britain, the Kremlin said Tuesday, after London blacklisted Russian officials for their alleged involvement in the death of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky. “We can only regret such unfriendly measures,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters. “Obviously the principle of reciprocity will be applied,” he added, without elaborating. The 25 Russians included…
Allegations that former journalist Ivan Safronov passed state secrets to foreign intelligence strain credulity, his colleagues told The Moscow Times after he was detained on suspicion of state treason. Special agents detained Safronov outside his apartment earlier Tuesday, only two months after he left his decade-long journalism career to become an adviser to Russia’s space…
A prominent Russian journalist and chief editor of the independent news magazine Holod Media has been detained after authorities searched her apartment in Moscow, human rights lawyer Pavel Chikov said Tuesday. Earlier in the day, authorities in Moscow detained the adviser to Russia’s space chief and former Kommersant and Vedomosti journalist Ivan Safronov on suspicion…
Authorities in Moscow have detained the adviser to Russia’s space chief and former journalist Ivan Safronov on suspicion of state treason, Russia’s space agency Roscosmos said Tuesday. Safronov’s detention comes two months after he became Roscosmos chief Dmitry Rogozin’s adviser. Until May, Safronov had been writing for the independent Kommersant and Vedomosti business dailies for…
Around half of Russia’s doctors believe that official statistics undercount the number of coronavirus cases in the country while one in 10 say the numbers are too high, the Vedomosti business newspaper reported Tuesday. The survey’s results follow questions over Russia’s relatively low Covid-19 death toll among the hardest-hit countries as authorities doubled fatalities for…
A Siberian village has surrounded itself with trenches to prevent the spread of the coronavirus after officials said an infected shaman caused an outbreak among the local population. The village of Shuluta in the republic of Buryatia had registered 37 cases of Covid-19 among its 390 residents as of Saturday, with a quarter of the…
Russia has confirmed 694,230 cases of coronavirus and 10,494 deaths. July 7: 3 things you need to know today Federal transport authorities have found more than 500 violations of anti-coronavirus measures at Russian airports in June, the Kommersant business daily reported. Russia’s Federal Air Transport Agency, Rosaviatsia, has extended Russia’s ban on international flights until Aug. 1 due to…
Moscow lifted restrictions including compulsory travel passes on June 8, a move welcomed by residents who rushed out to enjoy the streets and parks. Many other regions lifted lockdown restrictions ahead of a July 1 national vote despite the pandemic. Critics have cast doubt on Russia’s low official mortality rate and accused authorities of under-reporting…
Russian health officials have stepped up border controls and are warning residents in Western Siberia not to hunt and eat marmots after neighboring Mongolia and China reported three cases of bubonic plague, the state-run TASS news agency reported Monday. Mongolia last week quarantined its western region of Khovd near the border with Russia after identifying…
Russian authorities have demanded mining giant Nornickel make a “voluntary” $2 billion contribution to cover the environmental damage caused by the Arctic’s biggest ever oil spill. In a statement issued Monday, Russia’s environmental agency Rosprirodnadzor assessed the cost of the spillage of 21,000 tons of diesel at 148 billion rubles ($2.1 billion). The agency added…
It is unclear when EU countries will reopen their borders to Russian tourists, President Vladimir Putin said Monday during a meeting with the head of Russia’s flagship airline Aeroflot. “It is not clear what our partners will do in many countries of the world, including in Europe, they cannot understand each other yet. And it…
Britain on Monday identified 49 individuals and organizations to be sanctioned under a new regime targeting people who violate human rights, 25 of them Russian and 20 Saudis. The Russians are targeted for involvement in the death of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky and the Saudis for the death of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi, the Foreign Office…
The Zvezda Shipbuilding Complex has launched the construction of the flagship nuclear icebreaker of the Leader project.
Local residents of Nenoksa village on the coast of the White Sea in Russia’s Far North will be given the opportunity to evacuate their homes on Tuesday ahead of planned work at the military missile site where a deadly nuclear accident occured last summer. On Sunday, a message appeared on the local administration’s website posted…
Gazprom’s controversial Nord Stream 2 pipeline overcame another major obstacle to completion Monday, as Denmark granted permission for the pipeline to continue being laid with the use of less technologically advanced ships, potentially negating the impact of U.S. sanctions against the project. The decision could allow Russia to complete the final 120 kilometer stretch of…
The laying of an Aframax tanker has taken place at the Zvezda Shipbuilding Complex.
A Russian journalist avoided a prison sentence on Monday but was given a $7,000 fine for “justifying terrorism” in a controversial case that sparked an outcry at home and abroad. Svetlana Prokopyeva, who is based in the northwestern city of Pskov, was charged with publicly justifying terrorism over a column she wrote about a bombing…
Russia broke all recorded heat records in the first six months of the year, and the head of the country’s weather service has warned of “dangerous weather events” to come in July. “The first six months of 2020 were the warmest in the history of instrumental weather observations in Russia,” the RBC news website quoted…
The leader of Russia’s Orthodox Church Patriarch Kirill said on Monday he was “deeply concerned” by calls in Turkey to alter the status of the Hagia Sophia, the historic former cathedral in Istanbul. Turkey’s top court is debating whether one of the architectural wonders of the world can be redesignated as a mosque, a move…
Top infectious diseases specialist Vladislav Zhemchugov said on Monday he isn’t concerned a recent outbreak of bubonic plague in Mongolia and northern China will spread to Russia. Last week, Mongolia quarantined its western region near the border with Russia after identifying two suspected cases of the bubonic plague linked to the consumption of marmot meat.…
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s first cousin once removed was elected on Sunday to head the People Against Corruption political party, the state-run RIA Novosti news agency reported. Roman Putin, son of President Putin’s cousin Igor, said he aimed to run with the party in the upcoming regional elections in September, and then in the elections…
For weeks, Russian women have been posting non-sexualized photos of themselves in little or no clothing as well as artwork of tummy rolls, body hair, vaginas and breasts on social media. The online flashmob, a common form of protest in Russia, is taking place in support of Yulia Tsvetkova, a feminist and LGBT activist from…
Austrian police have arrested two Russians from Chechnya over the fatal shooting of a Chechen dissident, officials said on Sunday. The 43-year-old asylum seeker, a vocal critic of the Chechen Republic’s government, was found dead with gunshot wounds near the capital Vienna on Saturday. Police arrested a 47-year-old Russian from Chechnya in the city of…