Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told China’s special envoy Li Hui on Friday that there were “serious obstacles” to resuming peace talks, blaming Ukraine and Western countries. “The Russian foreign minister reaffirmed Moscow’s commitment to a political-diplomatic resolution of the conflict, noting the serious obstacles to the resumption of peace talks created by the Ukrainian…
Amid reports this week that Russia has canceled its biggest air show, experts told The Moscow Times that there was little point in holding the International Air and Space Salon (MAKS) because the war in Ukraine and Western sanctions mean there will be so few foreign buyers present. Western countries imposed stringent sanctions on Russia’s…
French tire maker Michelin announced Friday that it had agreed to sell its Russian assets to a local distributor in the latest international business exit following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Michelin was among hundreds of mostly Western major companies to suspend Russian operations in March 2022 after President Vladimir Putin ordered troops into Ukraine. The…
Lawyers representing Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, detained in Russia on spying charges, have appealed the latest extension of his arrest, Russian news agencies reported Friday. Gershkovich, who continued reporting from Russia after the Kremlin launched its large-scale offensive in Ukraine, became the first Western journalist to be arrested and accused of spying since…
At least two civilians have been killed and 23 wounded when a Russian missile struck a veterinary clinic in the south-central Ukrainian city of Dnipro, officials said Friday following an overnight barrage. “A 69-year-old man has died. He was just passing by when the Russian terrorists’ missile struck the city,” the head of the regional…
Ukrainian civilians forcibly deported to Russian jails are regularly beaten and threatened with death, Russia’s independent news website Meduza reported Friday, citing former inmates. Prison guards routinely subject Ukrainian detainees to beatings, air gun shootings, electric shocks and threats of execution, Meduza cited several detainees as saying. “We were turned into hunted animals,” said Alexander Tarasov,…
Updates with official statement. Two drones crashed and exploded in the southern Russian city of Krasnodar early Friday morning, local authorities reported. “The crash of two drones was the cause of this morning’s incident on Morskaya St. in the regional capital. There is damage to buildings, but critical infrastructure has not been affected,” Krasnodar region…
Japan announced fresh sanctions against Russia on Friday over its invasion of Ukraine, targeting its military as well as the construction and engineering sectors. Russia was hit with a wave of sanctions after it sent forces into Ukraine in February last year, but calls have grown from Kyiv and its allies for tougher action against…
An Algerian-born French commodities trader is seeking to broker an African peace initiative between Russia and Ukraine, The Financial Times reported Friday. Jean-Yves Ollivier, 78, is known as a fixer close to the long-time president of the Republic of Congo and as someone who has also advised Russia’s state nuclear power group Rosatom. The Ollivier-founded…
Authorities in the Netherlands have seized land belonging to the Dutch former son-in-law of Russian President Vladimir Putin as part of a criminal investigation, The Guardian reported Thursday. The confiscated land southeast of Amsterdam was owned by Jorrit Faassen, who married Putin’s eldest daughter Maria Vorontsova in 2008. The couple reportedly subsequently divorced. Protesters had…
Russian forces launched overnight air attacks on Kyiv, military officials in the Ukrainian capital said Friday, adding that all the missiles were intercepted and destroyed. “Another air attack on Kyiv, 13th in a row since the beginning of May! And, as always, at nighttime,” the city’s military administration said on its Telegram account. It said…
Arch foes Armenia and Azerbaijan are advancing toward normalizing ties following mutual recognition of territorial integrity, the two countries’ leaders said Thursday as they held talks in Moscow. Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev met separately with Russian President Vladimir Putin before the three held joint negotiations late on Thursday. The…
Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko said Thursday that Russia had begun moving nuclear weapons to its western neighbour and ally, after Russian President Vladimir Putin announced plans to transfer them in March. There were no new comments from Russia on bringing the nuclear weapons to Belarus. “The transfer of nuclear munitions has begun,” Lukashenko said told…
Russian human rights activist Andrei Ivashev was sentenced to six years in prison on extremism charges for a series of social media comments, the independent 7×7 media outlet reported Thursday. Ivashev, 62, is well known in the northern republic of Komi for his criticism of the region’s Governor Vladimir Uyba, as well as one-man pickets…
Moscow’s prestigious Higher School of Economics (HSE) announced Thursday that it will pay for the education of those who fight in Ukraine and their family members. One of Russia’s top-ranked universities, HSE had long been seen as a bastion of liberal values. But in recent years, the university has increasingly aligned itself with the Kremlin’s positions.…
Russia on Thursday summoned the envoys of Germany, Sweden and Denmark over Moscow’s frustration with the lack of progress on probes into the sabotaged Nord Stream gas pipelines. Built to carry Russian gas to Germany, the pipelines in the Baltic Sea were ruptured by subsea explosives months after Russian President Vladimir Putin sent troops to…
Georgian Airways plans to launch transit flights connecting Russia to European countries via Tbilisi, the airline’s founder said in an interview with Russian media outlet RTVI. Russia has been largely cut off from Europe since its invasion of Ukraine prompted the European Union to ban Russian airlines from its airspace and vice versa. Russians traveling…
Kazakhstan’s president on Thursday criticized the Russia-led Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) and appeared to caution against political integration between its members. Kazakhstan, an oil-rich state and traditionally been Moscow’s closest ally in Central Asia, has been shaken by the invasion of Ukraine that sparked fears about Russia’s geopolitical ambitions. Speaking at a plenary session of…
When Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine last year, Moscow-born Ukrainian Marika Semenenko decided to flee abroad. “It was clear from the beginning that it would be impossible to speak out against the war and staying silent wasn’t an option for me,” the entrepreneur and activist who has since settled in Armenia told The…
Tajikistan has summoned Russia’s ambassador after police allegedly beat and interrogated more than 100 Tajik students at a university in Russia’s Far East, the foreign ministry said. It marked a rare instance of discord between Tajikistan, the poorest of Central Asia’s ex-Soviet republics, and Russia, on which it is still economically reliant. The incident occurred…
Russia’s Supreme Court has ordered the closure of the country’s oldest liberal opposition party, the independent news website Mediazona reported Thursday. The Party of People’s Freedom (Parnas) is the second iteration of the Republican Party of Russia, which was originally formed in 1990 and advocated for human rights and federalism before it too was dissolved. Parnas’ members have…
The defense ministers of Russia and Belarus on Thursday signed a document on the deployment of Russian tactical nuclear weapons on Belarusian territory, the state-run TASS news agency reported, citing the Defense Ministry of Belarus. Russia will retain control over its non-strategic nuclear weapons stationed in neighboring Belarus, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said at…
Russia will expel five Swedish diplomats in a tit-for-tat move, the Russian Foreign Ministry announced Thursday as tensions persisted over allegations of Russian spying and Stockholm’s bid to join NATO in response to the invasion of Ukraine. “The Swedish ambassador was informed that Russia reciprocated by declaring five Swedish diplomats ‘personae non grata’,” it said…
Russia has arrested two Ukrainians who had allegedly planned to target nuclear power plants in the country, the FSB security service said on Thursday. “A sabotage group from the Ukrainian foreign intelligence service… tried to blow up some 30 power lines of nuclear power plants in Leningrad and Kalinin” in early May with the aim…
Six drones were downed or blocked overnight in Russian-annexed Crimea, the region’s Moscow-appointed governor said on Thursday. “During the past night, six drones were shot down or blocked … in different parts of Crimea,” Sergei Aksyonov wrote on Telegram, adding “there were no victims or injured.” The incident comes after Moscow deployed jets and artillery…
Russia’s Wagner mercenary group has started withdrawing fighters from the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, its leader Yevgeny Prigozhin said Thursday. The announcement comes days after he claimed full control of the war-ravaged city, an assertion that Kyiv disputes. Prigozhin, a Putin ally who has clashed with Russia’s Defense Ministry throughout its 15-month invasion of Ukraine,…
Russia has called off a showcase biennial air show amid reports of security concerns and military equipment shortages arising from the 15-month war in Ukraine, state news agencies reported Wednesday. Russia’s International Air and Space Salon (MAKS) has been used by the authorities to display Russia’s achievements in high-end technology since it was inaugurated in…
Russian nationals fighting on Ukraine’s side on Wednesday hailed as a “success” a brazen mission to send groups of volunteers across the border into southern Russia and back. Russia on Tuesday said it deployed jets and artillery to fight off armed attackers who crossed into the southern region of Belgorod from Ukraine, exposing weaknesses on…
Russia said Wednesday it had fended off a Ukrainian attack on one of its warships in Turkish waters with unmanned vessels, the latest attempted sabotage attack Moscow has blamed on Kyiv. “Today at 5:30 am [0230 GMT] the armed forces of Ukraine made an unsuccessful attempt to attack the Ivan Khurs ship of the Black…
Record numbers of Russians, by far the highest in three decades, moved to neighboring Finland in 2022, official statistics published Wednesday showed. A total of 6,003 people moved from Russia to Finland last year, according to Statistics Finland, making it the top country of origin for immigration. Immigration to Finland was up overall, with almost…
An attack by an armed group on a Russian region bordering Ukraine earlier this week has been met with a mixture of shock, anger and indifference, according to six interviews with locals conducted by The Moscow Times. The Belgorod region, which lies across the border from Ukraine’s second-largest city Kharkiv, has reported regular shelling and…
President Vladimir Putin donned his historian cap on Tuesday when Constitutional Court chairman Valery Zorkin brought a 17th-century French map to his office and presented the artifact as evidence that Ukraine did not exist as a state before the Soviet period, a view the Russian leader himself has expressed repeatedly both before and during Moscow’s…
Russia announced Wednesday that a court in the southern city of Rostov-on-Don will try five foreign men, including three British nationals, accused of fighting alongside Ukrainian forces against Moscow. The trial will begin on May 31 on terror-linked and other charges. The men are believed to face trial in absentia. Russian state news agency RIA…
Thousands of people in Russia’s majority-Muslim republic of Chechnya took to the streets of the regional capital on Tuesday to rally against a recent burning of the Quran. Police in the southwestern Russian city of Volgograd detained Nikita Zhuravel, 19, after he allegedly set fire to a copy of the Quran in front of the…
The head of Russia’s Central Bank visited Iran for the first time Wednesday for talks on expanding economic ties between the two countries, Iran’s state-run Mehr News Agency reported. Elvira Nabiullina met with her Iranian counterpart Mohammad Reza Farzin as Moscow, which has been heavily sanctioned over the invasion of Ukraine, seeks new allies. The…
Russia’s Wagner mercenary group lost 20,000 fighters while fighting for the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, half of which were convicts recruited from prisons, the group’s leader Yevgeny Prigozhin said in an interview published late Tuesday. Prigozhin, a Kremlin-linked catering magnate, has relied heavily on convicts from Russian prisons to fuel Wagner’s offensive in eastern Ukraine,…
The governor of a southern Russian region bordering Ukraine said Wednesday that the territory was targeted overnight by numerous drones following an armed incursion from Ukraine. “The night was not entirely calm. There were a large number of drone attacks. Air defense systems handled most of them,” the governor of the Belgorod region, Vyacheslav Gladkov,…
Georgia’s prime minister told an international forum Wednesday that his government cannot afford to impose sanctions on Russia over the Ukraine war as they would “devastate” the economy. Facing international criticism, Irakli Garbashvili strongly defended his country’s reluctance to take action against its giant neighbor which occupied about 20% of Georgian territory in a 2008…
Russian authorities have confiscated Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s $800,000 apartment in annexed Crimea, the peninsula’s Kremlin-installed governor said Wednesday. Crimean Governor Sergei Aksyonov listed the property, which Zelensky’s wife Olena Zelenska purchased near the resort city of Yalta in 2013, alongside several Ukrainian-owned assets subject to seizure. These include “large wineries, banking structures, Zelensky’s apartment and…
Chinese President Xi Jinping offered Beijing’s support on Moscow’s “core interests” at a meeting with Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin on Wednesday. China and Russia have in recent years ramped up economic and diplomatic cooperation, growing even closer since Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine despite Beijing’s insistence that it is neutral in that conflict. Mishustin’s trip…
A migrants’ rights activist who worked with Russia’s oldest human rights group was sentenced to 14 years in prison late Tuesday on charges of terrorism for Facebook posts. Bakhrom Khamroyev, 59, was detained the day Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022. He was previously a member of the Nobel Peace Prize-winning civil rights group…
Russian energy giant Gazprom, whose gas exports have plummeted in the wake of the Ukraine conflict, said Tuesday its net profit fell by 41% last year due to a tax increase. The company reported a profit of 1.2 trillion rubles ($15 billion) for 2022, down from 2.1 trillion rubles in the previous year. In a…
A Moscow court has extended the pre-trial detention of jailed Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich by three months, the state-run TASS news agency reported Tuesday. The Lefortovo District Court granted the Federal Security Service’s (FSB) request to extend Gershkovich’s pre-trial detention until Aug. 30 in a closed-door hearing, TASS reported. Gershkovich, a United States…
Russia’s Embassy in Norway on Tuesday harshly criticized a planned visit by a U.S. aircraft carrier to Oslo as an “illogical and harmful” show of force. The 337-meter (1,106-foot) USS General Ford is scheduled to dock in the Norwegian capital this week. “There are no issues in the North that require a military solution, nor…
Russian lawmakers swiftly approved amendments Tuesday that would expand border guards’ power to seize the passports of Russians traveling outside the country. According to the legislation introduced by the government and approved by the lower-house State Duma in just a single day, border guards will be able to confiscate passports from Russian citizens who are…
This week’s incursion into Russia’s western Belgorod region sparked mixed reactions from prominent pro-Kremlin voices. The armed incursion, the most serious since the beginning of Moscow’s offensive in Ukraine last year, prompted the Kremlin to express “deep concern” and the evacuation of nine villages in the Belgorod region. Ukrainian officials denied involvement as two anti-Kremlin…
A Russian man has fined a local man for “discrediting” the country’s military, the fourth time he has been convicted for the same offense since December. Ivan Losev, from the Siberian city of Chita, had been fined in February 2023 for speaking to the press about a fine he had previously received for sharing a…
A group of activists said it has mapped more than 250 locations inside Russia where Ukrainian children have been forcibly transferred since the start of Moscow’s full-scale invasion. Kyiv says more than 16,000 Ukrainian children have been deported to Russia since its February 2022 invasion, with many believed to have been placed in institutions and foster…
Russian troops have spent the past six months constructing extensive defensive fortifications aimed at preventing Ukraine from launching its widely anticipated counteroffensive and liberating its occupied territories. However, analysts warn that the effectiveness of these defenses will largely depend on Russian troops’ ability to repel the Ukrainian armed forces’ assault. Lines of defense Satellite images…
Russia’s government has introduced legislative changes that would not punish mapmakers for displaying occupied territories as Ukrainian regions before their capture by Russian forces, the Vedomosti business daily reported Tuesday. Russia’s lower house of parliament passed the original draft bill in December imposing up to 15 days of jail or fines of up to 1…
Russia’s prime minister on Tuesday hailed economic ties with China during a visit in which he will meet with President Xi Jinping and ink a series of trade deals. The two nations have in recent years ramped up economic and diplomatic cooperation, with ties growing closer since Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine despite Beijing’s insistence it…
The arrest of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich in March was the first time a Western journalist had been held on espionage charges in post-Soviet Russia — but it opened a floodgate of memories for Nicholas Daniloff. Daniloff was working as a journalist in the Soviet Union in 1986 when he was snatched off…
Ukraine’s occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant was briefly cut off from the power grid Monday, its Russian administrators and the Ukrainian atomic agency said. The incident marked the seventh time that the plant, Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, had been cut off from the power grid since invading Russian forces took control of the plant…
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said Monday that his country could withdraw from Moscow-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), in a fresh show of discontent over the lack of support from its ally Russia. Yerevan has grown increasingly frustrated over what it calls Russia’s failure to protect Armenia in the face of military threats from…
The head of Russia’s Belgorod region which borders Ukraine, claimed Monday that a Ukrainian “sabotage group” had infiltrated the region, while anti-Kremlin Russians fighting alongside Ukraine’s forces appeared to take responsibility. “A VSU [armed forces of Ukraine] sabotage group entered the territory of Grayvoron district,” Belgorod Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov wrote on Telegram, referring to a…
Belarusian authorities have pardoned dissident journalist Roman Protasevich, the state-run Belta news agency reported Monday. “I have signed all the documents about my pardon literally just now. This is, of course, simply wonderful news,” Belta quoted Protasevich as saying. Protasevich, 27, was arrested in 2021 when Belarusian authorities forced his EU-bound plane to land in Minsk,…
President Vladimir Putin has agreed on the sale of a majority stake in the Russian side of splintered tech giant Yandex to three sanctioned billionaires and the state-owned VTB Bank, the news websites The Bell and Meduza reported Sunday, citing four unnamed sources close to the company. Yandex, often referred to as the “Russian Google,”…
The occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant has been reconnected to Ukraine’s electricity grid again after being offline for several hours, officials in Kyiv said on Monday. Earlier Monday Ukraine’s nuclear agency Energoatom had accused Russia of carrying out attacks that caused a power cut. It said it was the seventh time the plant entered “blackout mode”…
Russian forces targeted the eastern Ukrainian city of Dnipro overnight with 16 missiles and 20 attack drones, Ukraine’s army said Monday. The attacks on troops and infrastructure were carried out by various types of missiles and Iranian-made Shahed drones, the general staff wrote on Facebook, saying its air defenses had destroyed all the drones and…
Russia has exported almost 20% more coal by sea so far this year than during the run-up and early months of its invasion of Ukraine, the Kommersant business daily reported Monday, citing an unnamed source familiar with the data. Russia shipped 69.9 million metric tons of the polluting fuel from ports in January-April 2023, or…