Eight swimmers from around the world braved the freezing waters of Lake Baikal in Siberia this week to raise awareness toward the environmental threats facing the world’s largest and oldest freshwater lake. Lake Baikal, a UNESCO World Heritage site, has been plagued with environmental problems caused by industrial pollution, mining, sewage discharge and agricultural run-off.…
Belarus on Friday jailed 11 university students and raided the homes of 18 journalists in a continuing crackdown on the opposition by President Alexander Lukashenko’s regime. A court in the authoritarian country sentenced 10 students and a teacher to two years and six months in prison on charges of violating public order. Another student was…
Bashneft – part of Rosneft – has carried out the largest landscaping of the territory over the past 20 years.
Muscovites and guests of the capital will no longer be required to present QR codes in order to dine indoors at Moscow’s restaurants, cafes and bars, according to a mayoral decree published Friday. The decree comes into effect starting Monday, July 19, exactly three weeks after the controversial measure was put in place. Last month,…
President Vladimir Putin’s lengthy treatise on Russia and Ukraine’s shared history has been added to the Russian military’s curriculum, the RBC news website reported Thursday, citing unnamed sources. Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu reportedly personally ordered the 5,300-word opus published by the Kremlin on Monday to be added into the military-patriotic directorate’s curriculum. Russian media called…
Russia on Friday said that the United States had failed in its mission in Afghanistan and blamed the withdrawal of foreign forces for the war-torn country’s rapidly deteriorating stability. Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan have capitalised on the last stages of the withdrawal of foreign troops to launch offensives, capturing a swath of districts and border…
Independent Russian investigative outlet Proekt has promised a new and potentially explosive investigation in the coming week in defiance of its new “undesirable” ban. Proekt is Russia’s first news outlet to be declared “undesirable,” a designation that forces labeled organizations to disband and places members and financial contributors at risk of significant jail time. Over…
Russian prosecutors have asked for a six-year suspended sentence for American investor Michael Calvey in an embezzlement case that has sent shockwaves through the Russian business establishment, Calvey’s lawyer confirmed to The Moscow Times on Thursday. Speaking to reporters after Thursday’s court hearing, Calvey slammed the request, saying his innocence was fully proven in documents…
Russia has added independent investigative outlet Proekt to its registry of “undesirable” organizations, a designation that bans the outlet’s activities and puts its staff at risk of jail time, and labeled several of its journalists “foreign agents.” Founded in 2018, Proekt, one of the country’s last independent news outlets, has been behind several high-profile investigations…
A pair of elite Russian swimmers have been provisionally suspended from the Tokyo Olympics over doping violations on the eve of the games, the International Swimming Federation (FINA) announced in a statement on its website Wednesday. The athletes, Veronika Andrusenko and Alexander Kudashev, had been set to compete under the banner of the Russian Olympic…
Rosneft-Bunker bunkered the legendary training sailing vessel Khersones in the port of Novorossiysk with eco-friendly fuel.
Russian officials’ plans to restrict live streams from polling stations in upcoming parliamentary elections have been met with accusations of pre-emptive attempts to conceal voter fraud, including ballot stuffing. Russia’s Central Election Committee (CEC) said Wednesday that only members, candidates and political parties will have access to the live feeds when voters go to the…
At St. Petersburg’s historic Baltic Shipyard, cranes hover over the shining Neva River as hundreds of workers build four nuclear-powered icebreakers. Fronted by a Russian flag and named after the country’s northern regions, the giant vessels are meant to ensure Moscow’s dominance over the melting Arctic. Russia has scrambled to become a leading power in…
The German government has said it is unable to help repair a Siberian village road in response to appeals from local residents, Russia’s Sib.Realii news website reported Wednesday. Residents of Verkhny Karbush, which was founded by ethnic Germans, sent two letters and filmed a video last month asking for German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s help after…
An ally of jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny who is running for local office has said that she faces a court-approved forced hospitalization in a coronavirus ward despite her negative Covid-19 test, preventing her from submitting election paperwork on time. Violetta Grudina, who had headed Navalny’s political network in the far northern city of Murmansk,…
Russia on Wednesday launched military exercises in Tajikistan as the Taliban continue their blistering offensive in neighboring Afghanistan. The militants in recent weeks have brought huge swathes of the country under their control as foreign troops withdraw, including Afghanistan’s main Shir Khan Bandar border crossing with Tajikistan. Moscow is closely watching the offensive, concerned about…
The FBI and U.S. federal prosecutors are investigating an American company for allegedly bypassing sanctions to supply lab equipment for Russia’s weapons of mass destruction programs, The Daily Beast reported Tuesday, citing newly unsealed documents it said it obtained. According to the federal court documents, Intertech Corporation allegedly “intentionally falsified shipping documents, avoided and circumvented…
Russia recorded its highest-ever daily death toll from the coronavirus since the start of the pandemic on Wednesday, the country’s Covid-19 task force said. Russia reported 23,827 new coronavirus cases and 786 deaths on Wednesday as the country battles the surging Delta variant first detected in India. The country’s previous record daily death count of…
Russian President Vladimir Putin told U.S. climate envoy John Kerry that Moscow and Washington have a shared interest in battling climate change, the Kremlin said Wednesday, in a rare area of common ground between the rivals. “The climate problem is one of the areas where Russia and the United States have common interests and similar…
Russian athletes competing under a neutral flag have been instructed to avoid answering “provocative” political questions at the Tokyo Olympics that will open to mostly empty stands next week, the Vedomosti business daily reported Wednesday. “No comment” is the most commonly recommended response on issues ranging from Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the Russian doping…
A Russian-based hacker group blamed for a massive ransomware attack went offline Tuesday, sparking speculation about whether the move was the result of a government-led action. The “dark web” page of the group known as REvil disappeared some two weeks after an attack that crippled networks of hundreds of companies worldwide and prompted a ransom…
Authorities in Russia’s largest and coldest region have politely declined Hollywood actor and environmental activist Leonard DiCaprio’s offer to help with its fast-spreading wildfires. Russia’s Far East republic of Sakha, known by its former name of Yakutia, has been ravaged by wildfires since the start of the fire season, with forests the size of Latvia…
June 2021 was the second-hottest June in Russia’s recorded history, with even more record-breaking heat to come, the country’s weather chief said at a press conference Tuesday. Russia recorded its all-time temperature record for the month of June less than a decade ago in 2012. The country can expect to see more records broken in…
Businesses across Russia are racing to inoculate their employees against the coronavirus in order to meet new rules on mandatory vaccinations. Moscow’s service sector firms — from supermarket chains and bank branches to restaurants and bars — have until Friday to ensure at least 60% of their employees have received a first dose of one…
Europe’s top human rights court has ordered Russia to recognize same-sex unions in a new ruling on Tuesday. The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR)’s ruling came in response to complaints filed in 2010 by three Russian same-sex couples whose attempts to register their marriages in Russia were rejected. The ECHR judges unanimously ruled that…
Long lines formed outside Moscow vaccination sites over the weekend as demand for Russia’s third registered coronavirus jab outstripped supply and caused yet another shortage of the jab. Videos published to social media showed Muscovites lining up outside a dozen vaccination sites where authorities had shipped around 850 doses of CoviVac each. Moscow City Hall, which…
Subsidiaries of the Company, following the results of the implementation of nature restoration measures in 2020, reclaimed about 15,000 hectares of land.
The Russian Foreign Ministry sent a diplomatic note to the U.S. Embassy after one of its employees was caught on video stealing a railway sign this spring, thus endangering passengers’ lives, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said. The unnamed 30-year-old U.S. Embassy staffer allegedly stole a railway sign at the Ostashkov railway station in the…
The European Union’s review of Russia’s Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine could be delayed until after the summer over “major” data shortcomings and the vaccine maker’s perceived lack of experience with overseas regulators, Reuters reported Tuesday. The European Medicines Agency (EMA) launched a rolling review of Sputnik V, which Russia touts as the world’s first government-approved…
The developers of Russia’s Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine said on Tuesday a deal had been struck with Indian vaccine maker the Serum Institute to produce 300 million doses annually. “The parties intend to produce over 300 million doses of the vaccine in India per year with the first batch expected in September 2021,” the Russian…
Russia-based hacker groups have been accused of massive ransomware attacks on major U.S. businesses and government agencies in the past year. The attacks, which have breached U.S. government agencies in addition to private enterprises, are now a major point of contention in already strained ties between Washington and Moscow, with U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration…
Drug overdose deaths in Russia have nearly doubled in two years amid the coronavirus pandemic, the Open Media news website reported Monday, citing the state anti-drug authority. A total of 7,400 Russians died from drug overdoses in 2020 compared with 6,300 in 2019, Open Media cited the State Anti-Drug Committee as saying in a report.…
The U.S. and Russia said on Monday they would cooperate on climate change despite strained relations, during a visit to Moscow by U.S. climate envoy John Kerry. Kerry, the former secretary of state who has become U.S. President Joe Biden’s globe-trotting climate envoy, said “the stakes could not be higher” as he met with Foreign…
Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine produces a weaker immune response against aggressive new mutations of the coronavirus such as the Delta variant, the jabs’ developers announced Monday in a new peer-reviewed study. Sputnik V’s developers used blood samples from people who had completed a course of vaccination with the jab to investigate the so-called virus-neutralizing activity…
Prominent Russian opposition-leaning columnist Fyodor Krasheninnikov has joined a growing list of activists and political figures to leave the country in recent months amid what Kremlin critics call an intensifying crackdown on dissent. Krasheninnikov fled Russia for neighboring Lithuania last August after being fined and then jailed for “disrespecting authorities” in his online posts criticizing…
Sudan’s Foreign Minister Mariam al-Mahdi said during a visit to Moscow on Monday that lawmakers in the African country would consider an agreement brokered by its ousted leader to establish a Russian naval base there. Russian President Vladimir Putin held talks with Sudan’s former president Omar al-Bashir in 2017 on establishing a naval base in…
Russia on Monday warned against any “outside interference” in Cuba after thousands took part in rare protests against the Communist government on the island nation. “We consider it unacceptable for there to be outside interference in the internal affairs of a sovereign state or any destructive actions that would encourage the destabilization of the situation…
Moldova’s main pro-European party has won a resounding victory in parliamentary polls, results showed Monday, strengthening the hand of President Maia Sandu as she pushes to reform her ex-Soviet country. Sunday’s snap election – called by Sandu in April to shore up her position against pro-Russia forces – saw her center-right Action and Solidarity (PAS)…
Moscow opposition municipal deputy Ilya Yashin said Monday he is stepping down as chairman of a local assembly over state pressure he attributes to his support for jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny. Yashin’s announcement comes less than a month after election officials removed him from the Moscow City Duma ballot, citing a new law that…
Russia’s average temperatures in June 2021 were 3 degrees Celsius hotter than normal as some regions of the country hit all-time heat records, scientists from the St. Petersburg-based Voeikov Main Geophysical Observatory told The Moscow Times. The data comes as Russia and Canada continue to swelter under historic heat waves that have been linked to…
From the man who brought you Platoon, Wall Street and Born on the Fourth of July comes a blockbuster, new eight-part documentary series about… the former president of Kazakhstan. That, at least, is how the Oliver Stone-fronted Qazaq: History of the Golden Man is being sold to the public. The series got its first airing…
Russia’s space chief Dmitry Rogozin has pressed his country’s oligarchs to take a page from their Western counterparts and invest into space after British billionaire Richard Branson’s journey to the frontier of space. Branson and five Virgin Galactic employees breached the U.S.-recognized boundary of space Sunday and experienced a few minutes of weightlessness at an altitude of…
Russia reported 752 coronavirus deaths on Saturday, a national record of pandemic-related fatalities over a 24-hour period, as the country battles a third wave. Russia has now set seven new pandemic highs for Covid-19 deaths in the last 12 days as it fights a surging outbreak driven by the highly infectious Delta variant and a sluggish vaccination…
The Ukrainian army said on Saturday that a soldier had been killed and three others wounded in the country’s pro-Russian separatist east, amid rising tensions in the conflict-torn region. It was the fourth Ukrainian soldier killed in the past week. The wounded soldiers were being treated in hospital and their injuries not life-threatening, the army…
US President Joe Biden on Friday once again told his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin to “take action” against ransomware hackers operating from Russia, but the Kremlin gave little sign of listening. The White House said Biden and Putin spoke for about an hour by phone, focusing on the ransomware threat and separately about allowing humanitarian aid…
Russia recorded its lowest number of excess deaths in May 2021 since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, statistics published Friday showed. But the falling mortality rate came just before the country was plunged into a third wave of the coronavirus, which has seen case numbers and Covid-19 fatalities spiral in the weeks since. The…
Wildfires ravaging northeastern Siberia have spread by nearly 70,000 hectares in the past day, marking a 17.5% increase in a single day, the Kommersant business daily reported Friday, citing the regional emergencies ministry. Some 400,000 hectares of forest are now burning in Russia’s republic of Sakha. Abnormally high temperatures and historic drought as well as strong winds…
Russia’s Interior Ministry has prepared a bill calling for major changes in how residence permits are issued to migrant workers. The bill, which is still in development, would replace the existing system of three-year temporary residence permits with a three-tier scheme. It would allow foreign citizens to receive permits for short-term (less than 90 days…
Russia’s Black Sea coastal resorts including Sochi will require visiting tourists to vaccinate against the coronavirus within three days of arrival, regional authorities announced Friday as infections spiked and Russians canceled bookings en masse over the new rules and newly opened foreign destinations. The new rules revised previously announced requirements, which take effect Aug. 1,…
Search teams have found two black boxes and the remains of all 28 people who died when a passenger plane crashed in Far Eastern Russia earlier this week, Interfax reported Friday. The An-26 disappeared from radars with 22 passengers and six crew members on board en route from the Kamchatka peninsula’s main city of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky…
Russians view jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny in an increasingly bad light and largely approve or remain indifferent toward the authorities’ decision to brand his political movement as “extremist,” according to an independent survey published Friday. The Levada Center polling agency said 14% of its respondents approve of Navalny’s activities, dropping from 20% last year…
Russia on Friday said the Taliban controls about two-thirds of the Afghan-Tajik border and urged all sides in Afghanistan to show restraint. “We have noted a sharp rise in tension on the Afghan-Tajik border. The Taliban movement quickly occupied a large part of border districts and currently controls about two-thirds of the border,” Russian Foreign…
Russia has awarded an Emirati royal exclusive rights to sell its Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine to a host of countries in at least three continents in a deal that has seen buyers paying huge premiums for supplies, a Moscow Times investigation has found. Since the outbreak of the coronavirus, Russia has advertised Sputnik V as…
Russia submitted a draft resolution Thursday to its 14 UN Security Council partners providing for a six-month extension of the authorization of cross-border aid to Syria, UN and diplomatic sources said. This Russian text — tabled following the formalization of the draft proposed by Ireland and Norway calling for an extension of one year — suggests…
Russian President Vladimir Putin has overturned a 2015 decree banning charter flights to Egyptian resorts, ending a six-year hiatus on travel to a popular destination for Russian tourists. Putin also withdrew his previous recommendation against selling tours to Egyptian resorts on the Red Sea. Russia had banned all air travel to Egypt in 2015 after…
The European Union has approached Russia for talks on recognizing each other’s coronavirus vaccination certificates, EU Ambassador to Russia Markus Ederer said Thursday. The EU launched its own digital vaccination certificate on July 1, allowing vaccinated EU citizens to travel freely within the 27-member bloc. As the certificate only recognizes vaccines authorized by the EU,…
Belarus authorities on Thursday blocked another independent news organization, Nasha Niva, and dispatched police to its editorial offices, clamping down further on media not yet under tight state control. Authorities in the ex-Soviet country, which is in the throes of a months-long crackdown on dissent, said it had barred access to Nasha Niva over accusations…
Russia’s Football Union said Thursday it has terminated head coach Stanislav Cherchesov’s contract after the team’s disappointing first-round exit from the Euro 2020 championship. Ahead of the RFU’s statement, Cherchesov himself said he did not plan to resign after Russia ranked last in its group and failed to qualify for the quarter-finals last month. The…
Russia must prepare for major revenue losses brought by a global push toward renewable energy and subsequent fall in demand for fossil fuels, Finance Minister Anton Siluanov warned in an interview with Bloomberg on Thursday. The rising share of renewables in the global energy market and carbon pricing measures could lead to “radical changes in…
Dressed in heavy protective gear during a record-breaking heatwave, doctors at St. Petersburg’s Mariinsky hospital have struggled in recent weeks to treat an overwhelming influx of coronavirus patients. Like the rest of Russia, the city has been hard hit by a new wave of the pandemic fueled by the highly infectious Delta variant. The country’s…