Russia’s gross domestic product shrank by 1.9% in the first quarter of 2023, the country’s statistic agency Rosstat said Wednesday. The economy was weighed down by another wave of sanctions imposed over its offensive in Ukraine, including a ban by the European Union on Russian petroleum products, on top of a price cap agreed with…
Russia has agreed to extend the Ukraine Black Sea grain deal for another two months, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced Wednesday, just a day before a 60-day extension agreed to back in March was set to expire. “Our Russian friends said that they will not interfere with Turkish ships leaving [Ukraine’s] ports. We thank…
Dozens of Europe-based companies have continued to do business with Russian firms that supply Moscow’s military with critical goods and equipment as it wages war on Ukraine, according to a report published Wednesday by investigative news outlet The Insider. The outlet found that 25 companies from Germany, France, Switzerland, Hungary, Slovakia, Italy, Estonia, Lithuania, Austria…
Tax incentives introduced by the Russian government for reconstructing occupied areas of Ukraine have provided large profits for the black market, The Moscow Times’ Russian service reported Tuesday. Mariupol, a port on the Sea of Azov with a pre-war population of 400,000, was nearly completely destroyed in a brutal Russian siege last spring. The Russian…
A Moscow court has sentenced opposition figure and anti-war activist Mikhail Krieger to seven years in prison. Krieger, 63, was arrested in November 2022 and charged with “justifying terrorism” over a 2020 social media post in which he praised two men who staged attacks at Federal Security Service (FSB) buildings as “heroes.” He was also charged with…
Iran and Russia agreed Wednesday to collaborate on the construction of the final part of a commercial transport network linking to the Gulf and India while avoiding Western sea lanes. Iranian Transport Minister Mehrdad Bazrpash, who signed the agreement with his Russian counterpart in Tehran, said the 164-kilometer (102-mile) railway in Iran’s north would be…
YouTube has started taking down videos about Russia’s Wagner mercenary group, The Moscow Times’ Russian service reported Tuesday. Wagner, which has been at the front of Russia’s war effort in eastern Ukraine for months, has been accused of brutality and war crimes in Ukraine and other war zones abroad. The Google-owned video platform said in a…
Finland’s Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto said Wednesday that Russia had frozen in late April the bank accounts of its embassy in Moscow and consulate in St. Petersburg. “The accounts of the Finnish missions in Russia are frozen and cannot be used at the moment,” Haavisto told a press conference, adding that Finland had been in…
Russia’s Central Election Commission on Wednesday revealed the official logo for the country’s upcoming regional elections which features a large letter V, one of the symbols of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. “It depicts both the familiar checkmark and the letter V in the colors of the Russian flag — as a symbol of support for…
At least four prominent Kremlin critics outside of Russia have experienced symptoms of poisoning or faced surveillance over the past year, according to a report by the investigative outlet Agentstvo published Tuesday. Among those affected in the cases examined by Agentstvo include foreign journalists, Russian opposition activists, and even a former U.S. ambassador. One suspected…
Russia’s surprise move to restore visa-free access for Georgian citizens and direct flights between the two countries signals a continued warming of relations between Tbilisi and Moscow, potentially at the cost of Georgia’s integration with the West, analysts and Russian government officials told The Moscow Times. Some observers have described the decision as a “gift”…
Russian prosecutors on Tuesday requested a prison sentence of nine years for opposition figure and anti-war activist Mikhail Kriger. Kriger, 63, was arrested in November 2022 on charges of justifying terrorism and inciting hatred. After Tuesday’s court hearing, Kriger, who denied his guilt, sang the Ukrainian folk song “Chervona Kalyna,” which has become an anthem…
Fighting is raging and Kyiv is relentlessly pressing its allies for more military hardware. But has Ukraine’s long-promised counteroffensive against the Russian invasion actually begun? Analysts say Ukraine has stepped up its activity along the front line, seeking notably to pin Russia down and inflict maximum casualties around the flashpoint town of Bakhmut. Meanwhile, President Volodymyr Zelensky…
Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) said Tuesday it had arrested a 25-year-old Ukrainian woman accused of illegally gathering information on the Russian military, charges punishable by up to 20 years in prison. “On the instructions of foreign special services, the suspect transmitted information regarding facilities, military equipment, fortifications and combat positions of the Russian Armed…
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said his Russian and Ukrainian colleagues have agreed to host an African peace initiative aimed at resolving the nearly 15-month war, Reuters reported Tuesday. “My discussions with the two leaders [Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky] demonstrated that they are both ready to receive the African leaders,”…
At least three Russian scientists who have worked on hypersonic missile development have been arrested on suspicion of treason over the past year, their colleagues said in an open letter published Monday. Members of the Institute of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics of the Russian Academy of Sciences’ (RAS) Siberian Branch warned that the criminal cases risk…
Russian tech billionaire Arkady Volozh’s latest effort to evict a group of squatters from his luxurious Amsterdam mansion has been struck down in court, lawyers for the opposing parties told The Moscow Times’ Russian service Tuesday. Volozh, the founder of Russia’s largest search engine Yandex, was targeted by European Union sanctions following the invasion of…
Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) has recruited former Islamic State fighters to infiltrate Ukraine, Turkey and the United States, the independent Meduza news website reported Tuesday, citing four recruited fighters. The outlet said an unnamed source close to the FSB confirmed regular but largely unsuccessful attempts to penetrate Ukraine’s military circles. Meduza interviewed a former Russian Islamic…
Russia’s oil exports rose in April to the highest level since its invasion of Ukraine, boosting revenues by $1.7 billion despite Western sanctions, the International Energy Agency said Tuesday. The Paris-based organization said Russian exports increased by 50,000 barrels per day to 8.3 million bpd last month, estimating that the country did not fully deliver on…
Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov on Monday accused Ukrainian intelligence and Czech police of staging the kidnap for ransom of one of his favorite stallions. Zazu, a 16-year-old English Thoroughbred owned by Kadyrov, was stolen from a stable in the Czech village of Krabčice in March this year. In a Telegram post on Monday, Kadyrov alleged…
Ukraine’s looming counteroffensive against Russian forces, coupled with an increased number of drone attacks and military incidents on Russia’s territory, are making the realities of the war increasingly visible to ordinary Russians. More than a year in, the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine — which was once presented to Russians as a short-term, victorious “special military…
Seven people including a Russian-installed senior official and a teenager were wounded when an explosion ripped through the center of Russian-controlled Luhansk in eastern Ukraine on Monday, the regional head said. “As a result of an explosion in the center of Luhansk, seven people were injured,” Leonid Pasechnik, head of the Russian-backed self-proclaimed Luhansk People’s…
The number of acts of sabotage in Russia has more than doubled so far in 2023 compared to the previous year amid the war in Ukraine, the independent news site Vyorstka reported Monday. At least 57 attacks on Russian railways, military enlistment centers, energy sites and other targets were publicly reported in January-May 2023. That compares with…
The commander of South Africa’s ground forces is in Moscow for talks on improving combat readiness, Russian news agencies said Monday, citing Russia’s Defense Ministry. Lieutenant General Lawrence Mbatha is heading a delegation that met his Russian colleague, Colonel General Oleg Salyukov, according to the state-run TASS news agency. The two discussed “issues relating to military cooperation…
The Kremlin on Monday slammed comments made by French President Emmanuel Macron, who said Russia was becoming a vassal to China as a result of the conflict in Ukraine. “We categorically disagree with this. Our relations with China have the character of a special, strategic partnership,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters. Peskov said Macron’s…
The exiled opposition leader of reclusive Belarus on Monday called on the public to be “prepared” for political change following reports speculating on the declining health of strongman Alexander Lukashenko. The 68-year-old who has been in power since 1994 has not been seen in public for six days, skipping important events. He was last seen…
High-ranking Russian officials have been banned from resigning during the war in Ukraine under the threat of criminal prosecution, the iStories investigative outlet reported Monday, citing four sources familiar with the matter. The Kremlin imposed the unofficial ban after many officials expressed a desire to resign from their posts, iStories cited a source close to…
Russia’s flagship airline Aeroflot has asked its employees to refrain from recording equipment defects on aircraft, leading to planes regularly flying with malfunctions, according to the investigative news outlet Proekt, citing current and former employees at the airline. A former employee at Aeroflot explained that the policy, in force since last spring, was introduced “to…
Amateur drone sales in Russia have skyrocketed this year as the war in Ukraine has exposed a dire shortage of the small and effective devices on the battlefield, the Kommersant business daily reported Monday, citing the analytical service Moneyplace. Russia’s largest online retailer Wildberries recorded a twentyfold increase in sales to 26,700 drones in January-March.…
Russia said Sunday that two of its military commanders had been killed in combat near the frontline hotspot of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine. In a rare announcement of its losses on the battlefield, the Russian Defense Ministry said the commander of the 4th motorized rifle brigade, Vyacheslav Makarov, and the deputy commander of the Army Corps…
At least one helicopter crashed on Saturday in a southern Russian region bordering Ukraine, local authorities said, with one official saying Moscow has lost four aircraft. In a terse statement on messaging app Telegram, Alexander Bogomaz, the governor of the Bryansk region in southern Russia, said a helicopter crashed in the town of Klintsy. He…
Russia said Saturday that its forces were still pushing inside the frontline town of Bakhmut and had wrested control of an area in the eastern Ukrainian city. “In the Donetsk direction, assault detachments liberated a block in the northwestern part of the city of Artemovsk,” the defense ministry said, referring to Bakhmut by its Russian…
Moscow said Saturday that Kyiv used British long-range missiles to target civilian sites in the eastern city of Luhansk, wounding six children. The defense ministry said that on Friday evening Ukraine’s armed forces had struck two civilian enterprises. “Storm Shadow air-to-air missiles supplied to the Kyiv regime by Great Britain were used for the strike,…
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky met with Pope Francis and Italy’s prime minister on Saturday as part of a diplomatic tour also involving Germany, as Berlin unveiled a huge new weapons package ahead of an expected Ukrainian counteroffensive. “An important visit for approaching victory of Ukraine!” Zelensky tweeted shortly after arriving in the EU and NATO…
South Africans were left angry and baffled on Friday after the US accused their country of secretly shipping a South Africans were left angry and baffled on Friday after the US accused their country of secretly shipping arms to Russia, a charge that triggered both a government rebuke but also the announcement of an inquiry.rms…
French drinks giant Pernod Ricard said Friday it had stopped exporting all its brands to Russia and would no longer distribute them following public pressure over its business activities there. The group, which owns a host of premium drinks brands including Havana Club rum, Jameson whiskey and Mumm champagne, stopped exporting to Russia at the end of April, it…
A pro-Russian official in Ukraine’s partially occupied Zaporizhzhia region has been injured in an explosion that authorities called an assassination attempt, the state-run TASS news agency reported Friday. Russia’s Investigative Committee, which probes major crimes, said that an explosive device was placed in a trash can at the entrance of an apartment building in the city of…
Russia said Friday a decision by the U.K. to deliver Storm Shadow long-range missiles to Ukraine was an extremely hostile move. By announcing it would deliver the air-launched deep-strike weapon, Britain became the first country to provide longer-range armament to Kyiv. “We see this decision as an extremely hostile step from London, aimed further pumping…
President Vladimir Putin on Friday ordered officials to develop measures aimed at reversing the mass emigration of Russian citizens sparked by the invasion of Ukraine and the country’s “partial” mobilization of reservists. Putin’s decree on amendments to Russia’s state migration policy notes that the emigration of Russian nationals abroad “increased” in 2022 “due to changing…
Residents of Yuldus, a Tatar village in western Siberia destroyed by ongoing forest fires, have called on the head of Russia’s republic of Tatarstan to invest 500 million rubles ($6.5 million) into the area’s reconstruction. “The republic won’t lose much [by allocating] half a million, but…we will know that Tatarstan hasn’t forgotten about us,” local…
The head of Russia’s private Wagner mercenary group Yevgeny Prigozhin on Friday said Moscow’s conventional army was leaving its positions near the eastern Ukraine hotspot town of Bakhmut. His comments came just after Russia’s Defense Ministry announced it had redeployed forces around to take up stronger defensive positions north of Bakhmut. “This is not called…
A major university in Russia’s Volga region is urging students to report “suspicious” peers to the authorities amid heightened anxieties over possible sabotage acts aimed at hampering the war effort. Penza State University’s vice-rector in charge of security, Vladimir Shimkin, flagged a Federal Security Service (FSB) warning that a group of 15-to-21-year-olds are allegedly plotting attacks…
Police in Russia’s second-largest city St. Petersburg have formed a special unit for shooting down drones, the city’s Interior Ministry said Friday, as concerns have risen over drone attacks on Russian territory amid its war on Ukraine. The so-called “sky control unit” in St. Petersburg mainly consists of officers who have served in Russian-occupied areas…
British consumer goods giant Unilever has doubled profits and increased ad spending in Russia despite its pledge to stop profiting from the market after Moscow invaded Ukraine last year, investigative media reported Friday. Unilever became the first major European food company to stop imports and exports from Russia, as well as media and ad spending there,…
The Kremlin on Friday denied it was meddling in Turkey’s presidential election campaign, after Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s main rival accused Moscow of spreading “deep fakes” targeting him. Turkish opposition candidate Kemal Kilicdaroglu claimed earlier this week that Russia was behind an online smear campaign against him ahead of the crucial election on Sunday. …
When an oil depot in Russian-annexed Crimea was attacked in late April, the resulting fire sent a plume of thick black smoke into the sky. The incident at the facility in Sevastopol was one of at least five attacks on oil infrastructure in southern Russia in less than two weeks. There was also a double…
Ukraine claimed Friday to have retaken swathes of ground near the frontline city of Bakhmut, as Russia reported having repelled an attack along a broad stretch of the front line. The rival reports from the battlefront indicated an increase in fighting after months of relative stability, as expectations grow over Kyiv’s spring offensive. Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head…
The United States is considering easing sanctions against Moscow in order to secure the release of jailed Americans Evan Gershkovich and Paul Whelan from Russian prison, CNN reported Thursday, citing unnamed senior White House officials. The U.S. has classified Gershkovich, a Wall Street Journal reporter, and Whelan, a former U.S. Marine, as “wrongfully detained.” The “narrow…
Ukrainian forces have launched preparatory strikes on Russian military targets ahead of their highly anticipated counteroffensive, CNN reported Friday, citing a senior unnamed U.S. military official. “Shaping” operations prepare the battlefield for advancing forces by attacking weapons depots, command centers and armor and artillery systems. CNN describes these operations as a standard tactic employed ahead…
Russian prisoners are increasingly denied parole amid efforts by the Wagner mercenary group and later the Defense Ministry to recruit convicts for the war in Ukraine, the Nezavisimaya Gazeta newspaper reported Thursday. Only 23,000 requests for conditional early release (CER) were granted in 2022 out of nearly 59,000 requests reviewed by courts, according to judicial…
Russia has added exiled actor Artur Smolyaninov and former Ukrainian presidential adviser Oleksii Arestovych to its list of “terrorists and extremists,” the state-run RIA Novosti news agency reported Thursday. Russia’s Investigative Committee opened a criminal case in January against war movie star Smolyaninov, 39, for his support of Ukraine and criticism of the war. At the time,…
Armenia and Azerbaijan on Thursday blamed each other for an exchange of fire along their restive border, which killed one person and wounded four days ahead of EU-hosted peace talks. The Caucasus neighbors have been locked in a decades-long territorial dispute over the Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan, which has reignited in recent months. Russia urged…
Russian authorities will launch construction of a village outside Moscow for conservative-minded Americans and Canadians next year, the state-run RIA Novosti news agency reported Thursday. Russia has for years positioned itself as a bastion of “traditional” values in contrast with Western liberalism as its relations with the West have deteriorated over its 2014 annexation of Crimea…
Jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny said Thursday that he has been returned to solitary confinement for the 15th time since he was imprisoned in 2021. “Yesterday at 8 in the evening I was released from solitary confinement. Today at 9:30 in the morning I’m back in solitary,” read a tweet shared by Navalny’s team. According…
A Russian court has sentenced a former teacher to five and a half years in prison for referring to last fall’s Crimean Bridge explosion as President Vladimir Putin’s “birthday gift” online, independent media reported Thursday. Nikita Tushkanov, 28, was accused of “approving of” the blasts, which badly damaged the bridge linking mainland Russia to annexed Crimea,…
A Moscow confectioner fined for making cakes decorated with anti-war slogans told The Moscow Times that she plans to keep opposing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine despite harassment from pro-war figures and the risk of jail. Anastasia Chernysheva was ordered to pay 35,000 rubles ($446) last month on charges of “discrediting” the military over cakes with…
Russia is waging a “very difficult” military campaign in Ukraine, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in a rare concession of the Russian military’s underwhelming performance over a year into its war on Kyiv. “It’s a very, very difficult operation and of course certain goals have been achieved in a year,” Peskov told the Bosnian Serb broadcaster ATV…
Russia’s budget deficit has surpassed the government’s entire 2023 target in the first four months of the year as wartime spending and falling energy revenues continued to cut into the state budget. The federal budget deficit rose to 3.42 trillion rubles ($45 billion) in January-April 2023, according to the Finance Ministry figures published Wednesday. Revenues fell…
Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree Wednesday calling up military reservists for annual training as legal experts say those who turn up could face pressure to sign contracts to be sent to fight in Ukraine. Such trainings are a routine event in which reservists undergo two-month combat readiness drills in the Armed Forces, National…
The United States has for the first time transferred millions seized from a Russian oligarch to a fund for rebuilding Ukraine, the Justice Department announced Wednesday. Some $5.4 million seized from Russian tycoon Konstantin Malofeyev was handed over to the State Department to be used to “remediate the harms of Russia’s unjust war,” Attorney General…