Russian tourists appear to be undeterred by a new flu-like coronavirus in China, Russian travel agencies told the state-run TASS news agency as the country’s Health Ministry called it a “biological threat.” The virus has killed nine people and infected more than 400 in an outbreak originating from the central city of Wuhan, spreading fear…
President Vladimir Putin proposed to make several amendments to the Russian Constitution last week in what has been seen by many observers as an move to secure his executive power beyond 2024. The proposals, made during his annual state of the nation address, set off a chain of events including the prime minister’s resignation, a…
Three days after being announced as Russia’s new prime minister, Mikhail Mishustin has granted Gazprom Oil the development rights to the Khambateyskoye gas and oil field on the Yamal Peninsula. According to the federal government, the oil company will pay about 2 billion rubles ($32 million) for the production licenses. The field is located both…
Police near Moscow have put out a request for information about a popular comic’s stand-up performance from a year ago, the comic said Tuesday, prompting speculation that he could be targeted for jokes he made about religion and the authorities. It was not immediately clear what prompted the Orekhovo-Zuevo police department to send the request…
Russia and Syria have conducted joint exercises aimed at protecting economic interests in Moscow’s key naval foothold in the Mediterranean, the Defense Ministry’s Zvezda news channel reported. These are at least the second joint Russian-Syrian naval drills to take place in the port of Tartus in a month. Russia seeks to invest $500 million in…
The Trump administration is planning to add seven countries — Belarus, Eritrea, Kyrgyzstan, Myanmar, Nigeria, Sudan and Tanzania — to its controversial travel ban list, according to media reports on Tuesday. Some countries will face bans only on some visa categories, the Wall Street Journal reported. The list of countries was not final and could yet…
President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday approved a new Russian government that kept many veteran and senior ministers in place, but brought in a new economy minister and a new first deputy prime minister. The new government was formed less than a week after Putin unveiled a sweeping shake-up of the political system, which led to the…
Russian President Vladimir Putin approved a new government on Tuesday which he described as a break with the past, bringing in some fresh faces but retaining many senior ministers. The new government included a new economy minister and a new first deputy prime minister, but the finance, foreign, defense, energy and agriculture ministers all kept…
Rosneft is implementing an artificial intelligence (AI) system on its drilling rigs operating on the fields in Orenburg Region.
U.S. troops have “blocked” Russian soldiers from accessing an oilfield in northeast Syria, Turkey’s Hurriyet Daily News outlet has reported, citing the state news agency Anadolu. News of the standoff appeared two years after an incident in which anywhere from five to 200 Russian mercenaries were killed by U.S. airstrikes while attempting to take over…
Two Russians who identified themselves as plumbers despite carrying diplomatic passports were checked in Switzerland on suspicion of espionage ahead of this week’s World Economic Forum (WEF), the Tagez Anzeiger newspaper reported Monday. Held annually in the Swiss ski resort of Davos, the WEF gathers world leaders such as U.S. President Donald Trump and German…
Russian airports have stepped up screening of travelers arriving from China to try to identify people infected with the new coronavirus, airport officials said Tuesday. The World Health Organization has said that the coronavirus outbreak, which the mayor of the Chinese city of Wuhan says has killed six people, was likely to spread. The virus…
Russian airports have stepped up screening of travelers arriving from China to try to identify people infected with the new coronavirus, airport officials said Tuesday. The World Health Organization has said that the coronavirus outbreak, which the mayor of the Chinese city of Wuhan says has killed six people, was likely to spread. The virus…
Iran has confirmed that it used two Russian-made missiles in the downing of a Ukrainian airliner earlier this month, according to the country’s latest investigation report cited by Bloomberg. All 176 people died onboard the Kiev-bound Ukrainian International Airlines flight when it crashed six minutes after taking off from Tehran on Jan. 8. Iran has…
A swimming pool in southern Russia has banned women without explanation, according to its announcement published by the popular listings magazine Afisha on Monday. The Anzhi Arena spa in Russia’s republic of Dagestan did not say what prompted the abrupt rule change. Afisha reported that a different public pool in the Dagestani city of Makhachkala…
A fire killed 11 people, most of them laborers from Uzbekistan, in a wooden building in Siberia early on Tuesday, according to emergency services and Russian news agencies. Officials say that two people managed to escape the flames that destroyed the single-story building in a village in the region of Tomsk. Many of the dead…
A court in the Russian Far East on Tuesday handed a six-year suspended jail sentence to a Jehovah’s Witness, Grigoriy Bubnov, after finding him guilty of extremist activity, a spokesman for the religious group said. Jehovah’s Witnesses have been under pressure for years in Russia, where the dominant Orthodox Church is championed by President Vladimir…
An influential spiritual leader plans to build the world’s largest Orthodox Christian Church in central Russia, the Znak.com news website reported Monday. Once completed, the 25-story structure on the site of a women’s monastery in the Sverdlovsk region will reportedly hold up to 37,000 worshippers. “The Saint Sophia Church will become an outpost and the…
President Vladimir Putin proposed giving broad new authority to set the direction of foreign, domestic and economic policy to the State Council as part of the constitutional overhaul he announced last week. Putin laid out the details of the plan — widely seen as the Kremlin’s effort to lay the groundwork for Putin extending his…
Russian President Vladimir Putin has submitted a draft bill on sweeping constitutional amendments to Russia’s lower house of parliament, the State Duma, on Monday, less than a week after first proposing the changes. Among the nearly dozen changes he pledged during last Wednesday’s state of the nation speech, Putin vowed to limit the presidency to…
More than half of Russians believe that their country imprisons people for political reasons, an all-time high since the independent Levada Center polling agency first conducted the survey in 2004. Last summer saw the brief arrest of investigative journalist Ivan Golunov on falsified charges, a move that his supporters said was punishment for his work.…
A Russian official has apologized Monday for remarks suggesting that journalists should be “wiped out” for criticizing the authorities. Mikhail Ignatyev, who heads Russia’s republic of Chuvashia 680 kilometers east of Moscow, made the controversial remarks Saturday at an event commemorating the local press. “They need to be wiped out, as the people say,” Ignatyev…
There was deathly silence from Russia’s most prominent opposition politician for days after President Vladimir Putin sent shockwaves through the establishment last Wednesday by proposing a clutch of constitutional amendments that could allow him to stay in power beyond the end of his term in 2024. Just hours later the silence became even more deafening…
Record high temperatures in northern Russia this winter have prevented sea ice from forming, threatening the birth of baby seals as the pupping period approaches, a local NGO has warned. Thousands of ringed and grey seals live in the waters of the Gulf of Finland and Lake Ladoga near the city of St. Petersburg, which…
Russia’s new Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin transferred his wealth to his wife before returning to public office from the private sector a decade ago, the Kommersant business daily reported Sunday following questions about the origins of her declared income. Amid President Vladimir Putin’s power shake-up last week that saw Mishustin’s surprise appointment, critics questioned how…
Russia‘s Prosecutor General Yury Chaika is leaving his post, Interfax reported Monday, citing the Kremlin. President Vladimir Putin proposed that the Federation Council appoint Igor Krasnov, deputy head of the Investigative Committee, as the new prosecutor general, the Vedomosti business daily reported. According to officials, Chaika, 68, will leave the post he has occupied since 2006…
Two little-known Russian companies that signed oil and gas deals with Syria last year have links to a secretive businessman believed to be running a private military contractor, the investigative Novaya Gazeta newspaper reported Sunday. Syria’s parliament in December approved contracts for oil exploration with two Russian companies, Mercury and Velada. Syria’s oil minister had…
As the only remaining independent, English-language news source reporting from Russia, The Moscow Times plays a critical role in connecting Russia to the world. Editorial decisions are made entirely by journalists in our newsroom, who adhere to the highest ethical standards. We fearlessly cover issues that are often considered off-limits or taboo in Russia, from…
Finland has expressed interest in a new high-speed train that would connect its capital Helsinki to Moscow in just six hours and boost tourist traffic between the cities, the RBC news website reported Monday. The project would be an extension to a new high-speed railway between Moscow and St. Petersburg that is expected to be…
Five people, including one child, were killed in the Russian city of Perm on Monday when a hot water pipe exploded in the night and flooded a basement hotel room with boiling water. At least three other people were taken to hospital with burns after the incident in the Mini Hotel Caramel, which is located in…
Russian President Vladimir Putin said Saturday he did not want Russia to return to the late Soviet-era practice of having lifelong rulers who died in office without a proper succession strategy. His comments, made to World War Two veterans in St. Petersburg, came days after he unveiled a sweeping shake-up of the political system which…
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Friday allowed Prime Minister Oleksiy Honcharuk to keep his job after the leak of an embarrassing audio recording prompted Honcharuk to submit his resignation. In a carefully choreographed video of the two men sitting at a desk that was released on Friday evening, in which Honcharuk was mostly silent, Zelenskiy…
Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport opened the first phase of its newest international terminal Friday. Sheremetyevo is the eighth-busiest airport in Europe, with more than 49.9 million travelers using its terminals last year. Terminal C, the airport’s fifth terminal, covers 127,000 square meters and has an annual capacity of 20 million passengers. With the opening of Terminal…
Ukrainian Prime Minister Oleksiy Honcharuk submitted his resignation on Friday after an audio recording suggested he had criticized the president, but then appeared to suggest that he might stay in his job. President Volodymyr Zelenskiy would consider the resignation letter later on Friday, the president’s office said. Speculation over Honcharuk’s position has grown this week…
Russia’s Northern Fleet is set to acquire new anti-submarine aircraft that will be modeled on a late-Soviet passenger plane. A modified version of the Tupolev-204/214 passenger plane will be the equivalent of U.S. built Boeing P-8 Poseidon that Norway, among other countries, will deploy for surveillance flights over the Barents and Norwegian Seas. The revamped…
One of Russia’s elite universities is considering banning its students and faculty from exercising political speech in the wake of high-profile scandals involving free speech last year, according to its newly proposed rules. Moscow’s Higher School of Economics (HSE) became embroiled in several controversies in 2019, including the cancellation of its student talk show after…
The number of ships escorted by Russian icebreakers along the Northern Sea Route increased by 54% between 2018 and 2019. The increase in ship escorting is caused by an increase in LNG production on the Yamal Peninsula, Rosatomflot, the company managing Russia’s fleet of nuclear-powered icebreakers, said. The 510 vessels that were escorted through the…
Few people on the streets of Moscow on Thursday had heard of Mikhail Mishustin, the former Federal Tax Service chief plucked from relative obscurity by President Vladimir Putin this week to serve as new prime minister. But many welcomed the abrupt exit of his long-time predecessor and said sweeping changes at the top had been…
Around 350,000 Syrians, mostly women and children, have fled a renewed Russian-backed offensive in the opposition-held Idlib province since early December, and have sought shelter in border areas near Turkey, the United Nations said on Thursday. Conditions for people were deteriorating because of the increased hostilities, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs…
The Russian capital experienced a total of eight hours of sunlight in December, the head of Russia’s meteorological center said Thursday. While less than 4% of the city’s possible sunlight hours without cloud coverage, the eight hours still surpassed the six minutes of clear skies that Moscow saw in December 2017. “Muscovites saw only eight…
Specialists of Rosneft United Research and Development Centre have developed the Ht-100RN diesel fractions hydrotreating catalyst, which provides the production of Euro-5 diesel fuel and has operational properties that are significantly superior to foreign counterparts.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s new prime minister appears to own elite real estate in a prestigious suburb outside Moscow, the Proekt investigative news website reported Thursday. Russia’s parliament voted to approve Mikhail Mishustin, head of the country’s tax service, into office Thursday. Putin’s surprise choice is part of the president’s shake-up of the political system,…
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday signed a decree appointing Mikhail Mishustin as prime minister, shortly after the former head of the tax service won the backing of parliament. Mishustin received 383 votes of 424 cast by Russia’s lower house of parliament, with no votes against and 41 abstentions — a victory that had been…
Russia’s Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev announced his and his cabinet’s resignation on Wednesday just hours after President Vladimir Putin delivered his state of the nation speech. The resignation of longtime Putin ally Medvedev, 54, came as an unexpected move to many. It is widely seen as a move that will give Putin room to reshape…
Russia‘s top economic officials have canceled keynote speeches they were due to make at the country’s first economic forum of 2020, an updated schedule showed on Thursday, a day after the government quit amid plans for a constitutional shakeup. President Vladimir Putin proposed changes on Wednesday that would give him scope to extend his grip…
As the only remaining independent, English-language news source reporting from Russia, The Moscow Times plays a critical role in connecting Russia to the world. Editorial decisions are made entirely by journalists in our newsroom, who adhere to the highest ethical standards. We fearlessly cover issues that are often considered off-limits or taboo in Russia, from…
An unnamed shooter has opened fire inside a courthouse in the Siberian mining city of Novokuznetsk, killing a bailiff and injuring a witness, authorities said Thursday. The 45-year-old shooter armed with a rifle critically wounded a 45-year-old bailiff and a 43-year-old female witness inside a Novokuznetsk magistrates’ court, regional investigators said in a statement. The…
Russia‘s ruling party on Thursday unanimously backed President Vladimir Putin’s surprise choice for prime minister, Mikhail Mishustin, a man with almost no political profile. Mishustin’s elevation is part of a sweeping shake-up of the political system announced by Putin on Wednesday, which led to the resignation of Dmitry Medvedev as prime minister along with his…
Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov has ceded power as head of the southern Russian region due to a “temporary disability,” according to a decree on the regional government’s website dated Monday. Kadyrov, 43, announced a similar brief transfer of power in February 2019, later explaining that he was recovering from a common cold. “I entrust the…
For over an hour, President Vladimir Putin’s annual state-of-the-nation speech on Wednesday sounded just like those that had come before it. As in previous years, Putin proposed measures for encouraging Russians to have more children, tackling poverty levels and stimulating economic growth. And, not for the first time, Prime Minister Dmitry Medevev had trouble staying…
Mikhail Mishustin, President Vladimir Putin’s surprise choice to become Russia‘s prime minister, is a tax chief with almost no political profile who analysts say could be a “technocratic placeholder.” The Kremlin-dominated lower house of parliament, which rarely opposes Putin on important issues, is due to decide whether to approve Mishustin on Thursday. Mishustin, 53, has been…
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday formally put forward Mikhail Mishustin, the little-known head of Russia‘s Federal Tax Service, to be Russia‘s new prime minister, the Kremlin said. Putin submitted his candidacy to the Russian parliament for approval after Mishustin agreed to be put forward for the role, the Kremlin said. Russia‘s government resigned unexpectedly earlier on Wednesday…
Russian President Vladimir Putin proposed constitutional changes on Wednesday that would give him scope to extend his grip on power after leaving the presidency, and picked a new prime minister after Dmitry Medvedev and his cabinet stepped down. Most importantly, Putin suggested diminishing the powers of the presidency and beefing up those of the prime…
As the only remaining independent, English-language news source reporting from Russia, The Moscow Times plays a critical role in connecting Russia to the world. Editorial decisions are made entirely by journalists in our newsroom, who adhere to the highest ethical standards. We fearlessly cover issues that are often considered off-limits or taboo in Russia, from…
President Vladimir Putin turned an eye toward Russia’s domestic affairs in his annual state-of-the-nation speech Wednesday, outlining proposals for fixing the country’s political, economic and social problems. Addressing both houses of parliament, the Federal Assembly, at the Manezh Central Exhibition Hall, Putin discussed Russia’s demographic crisis, the poverty level and Russia’s defense. In addition to…
President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday proposed a nationwide vote on sweeping constitutional changes that would shift power from the presidency to parliament and the prime minister, a move that could allow him to extend his rule after leaving the Kremlin. In power as either president or prime minister since 1999, Putin, 67, is due to…
The United States may be using a “climate weapon” to cause an unseasonably warm winter in Russia, a lawmaker has claimed in an interview with the Govorit Moskva radio station Tuesday. Weather experts say the anomaly in Moscow and parts of Russia this winter was caused by an atmospheric front from the Atlantic Ocean. “I’m…
The Russian car market is braced for a turbulent year ahead, as a leading business association warns sales are likely to drop and more manufacturers could give up on Russia altogether. Sales of new cars dropped by 2.3% in 2019 to around 1.76 million units, and will fall by a further 2.1% in 2020, the…
Russia does not plan to exchange a U.S.-Israeli backpacker jailed on drug charges ahead of President Vladimir Putin’s visit to Israel this month, the Russian Foreign Ministry said Tuesday. Naama Issachar, 27, was sentenced to seven and a half years for drug smuggling after airport authorities found less than 10 grams of hashish in her…
Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Wednesday Moscow has been urging Gulf countries to consider a common security mechanism for the region and it was time the world got rid of unilateral measures such as sanctions. “We have been suggesting to the Gulf countries to think about collective security mechanisms … starting with confidence-building…