The Russian authorities’ decision to arrest Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich on spying charges came under intense scrutiny Friday, with speculation over why the Kremlin decided to take a step that was not only provocative but has no analogy in post-Soviet Russia. As the dust settled on Gershkovich’s detention on Thursday in the Ural…
The Russian company that made President Vladimir Putin’s limousine has taken over Japanese car maker Toyota’s St. Petersburg plant, the Russian Trade and Industry Ministry announced Friday. The former Toyota production facilities have been transferred to the Central Scientific Research Automobile and Automotive Engine Institute (NAMI), a subsidiary of the ministry. NAMI was responsible for…
President Vladimir Putin on Thursday signed an order allowing Russia’s Defense Ministry to enlist 147,000 men for their compulsory military service in the upcoming spring call-up. The number of draftees to be called up this year marks an increase of 12,500 compared to last year’s recruitment figures. The Defense Ministry will kick off the conscription…
Georgia has more than tripled its exports of automobiles to Russia in the first months of 2023 amid claims that Tbilisi is helping Moscow skirt Western sanctions, the Kommersant business daily reported Friday. The former Soviet republic in the South Caucasus delivered 978 passenger vehicles to Russia between January and February, worth a total value…
Belarusian strongman and close Kremlin ally Alexander Lukashenko called Friday for a “truce” in Ukraine and for talks “without preconditions” between Moscow and Kyiv. “We must stop now, before an escalation begins. I’ll take the risk of suggesting an end of hostilities … a declaration of a truce,” Lukashenko said during a televised state-of-the-nation address.…
As Ukraine marked the first anniversary of the mass killing of Ukrainian civilians by Russian forces in the Kyiv suburb of Bucha, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield has made the case that Russia “should not be” a permanent member of the UN Security Council in an interview with AFP. “Russia is a…
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Friday that Ukraine would “never forgive” Moscow for its occupation of Bucha, a year after the town became a symbol of alleged Russian war crimes. Russian forces pulled back from the commuter town northwest of Kyiv on March 31, 2022, just over one month after President Vladimir Putin ordered his…
Four bankers from Gazprom’s Swiss affiliate have been found guilty by a Zurich court of failing to properly check vast sums of money flowing through the accounts of a Russian cellist and close confidant of Russian President Vladimir Putin. The accounts in the Swiss branch of Gazprombank were held by Sergei Roldugin, the artistic director…
A Moscow court on Thursday sentenced a rail worker to seven years in jail for online posts denouncing the Russian bombing of Ukrainian cities. Mikhail Simonov, 63, was detained in the fall for publishing anti-war comments on the Russian social network Vkontakte in March. “While killing children and women, we sing songs on Channel One [state…
Russian President Vladimir Putin has for the second time appointed an official serving in one of the Russian-installed administrations in occupied Ukrainian territories to head one of Russia’s regions where gubernatorial elections are due to place later this year. Putin named Vitaly Khotsenko, who was appointed prime minister of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic last year,…
Austrian banking group Raiffeisen, one of the last major Western lenders in Russia, said Thursday it was considering a “sale or spin-off” of its subsidiary in the country. The RBI Group, which owns the bank, has been under scrutiny over its links to Russia since Moscow invaded Ukraine in February last year. Ukrainian President Volodymyr…
Updates with confirmation of Moskalev’s arrest. Alexei Moskalev, the single father from Russia’s Tula region who fled house arrest on the eve of his sentencing in a criminal case for “discrediting” the Russian military earlier this week, has been detained in Belarus, Russian news outlet RBC reported Thursday. Moskalev, who first came to the attention of…
Updated with details of arrest. Russia on Thursday arrested Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich on espionage charges in a major escalation of the Kremlin’s wartime crackdown on independent journalism. After being detained in the Ural Mountains city of Yekaterinburg, Gershkovich was formally arrested by a Moscow court in a hearing held behind closed doors. Russia’s…
Russia’s Federal Penitentiary Service has offered the state-owned defense conglomerate Rostec the use of inmate labor to boost the production of military equipment for the country’s armed forces, the Russian daily newspaper Kommersant reported on Wednesday. Rostec head Sergei Chemezov, who is widely believed to be close to Russian President Vladimir Putin, is said to have received a proposal from…
Elvira only found out that her son, a soldier serving in Russia’s Armed Forces, had been taken prisoner when she received a phone call from a Ukrainian security officer. “I was really shocked when Ukraine’s Security Service called me to say that my son was in captivity,” Elvira told The Moscow Times, recalling the moment…
An event company owned in part by Elizaveta Peskova — the daughter of Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov — was revealed to have grown its revenue by 70 times in 2022 compared to the previous year, independent news outlet Verstka reported on Tuesday. Centrum Moscow, whose clients include Russia’s Ministry of Trade and Industry, the Moscow Government, and…
A St. Petersburg court has sentenced a 54-year-old man to five-and-a-half years in prison for spreading “fakes” about the Russian army and for “calling for extremist activities,” local news website Fontanka reported on Wednesday. The case is the first time strict war censorship laws have been used in Russia’s second city since their introduction last year,…
The head of the UN’s nuclear power watchdog arrived at Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant on Wednesday in a rare visit to Europe’s largest atomic facility, which is currently controlled by Russian forces. There have been persistent fears over the safety of the nuclear plant in the southern Zaporizhzhia region, where there has been frequent…
Stockholm said on Wednesday that it was summoning the Russian ambassador to Sweden for warning the country would become a “legitimate target” of “retaliatory measures” if it joined NATO. Sweden and neighbor Finland both ended decades of military non-alignment in May when they decided to join the Western defense alliance in the wake of Russia’s…
The demand for Mandarin language classes in Russia has surged in the wake of the country’s increasing economic dependence on China and its pivot to Asia amid tensions with the West over the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine. The number of Russian job vacancies requiring some knowledge of Mandarin has doubled in sectors such as sales,…
The Kremlin’s spokesperson predicted a long-lasting hybrid war against Russia’s Western adversaries on Wednesday after a media report revealed he had urged colleagues to brace themselves for a “forever war” three months ago. According to the report published by The Guardian on Tuesday, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov warned members of Russia’s cultural and political elite at a New…
The top global agricultural commodity trader Cargill is to stop exporting Russian grain this summer while maintaining its other operations in the country, Russia’s RBC news website reported Wednesday, citing a letter sent by Cargill Russia to a senior Russian official. Cargill Russia has reportedly notified Russian Deputy Agriculture Minister Oksana Lut of its intentions to…
Brazilian Viktor Ferreira was elated in May 2018 when he was accepted into the elite Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) in Washington. “Today we made the future!” he wrote a colleague. But Ferreira was no normal student: according to a U.S. indictment, he was a Russian spy under deep cover, an “illegal”…
Olympic chiefs on Tuesday recommended the return to competition of Russian and Belarusian athletes as individual neutrals, but refused to give a timeline on their potential participation at next year’s Paris Olympics. IOC president Thomas Bach said the body’s Executive Board had recommended to international federations and international sports event organizers that “athletes with a…
The mayor of Vorkuta, a coal-mining town in the Arctic republic of Komi, has enlisted in the Russian army to fight in the country’s war against Ukraine. “The time has come to offer direct support to our boys and for me to join the special military operation as a military serviceman of Russia’s Defense Ministry,”…
A Russian unmanned Soyuz MS-22 capsule returned to Earth on Tuesday from the International Space Station (ISS), landing in Kazakhstan three months after experiencing a coolant leak. The vessel landed at 5:46 p.m. local time in the vast Central Asian country, a Roscosmos live transmission showed. Russia’s space agency said the capsule carried “around 218…
A local court in the town of Yefremov in Russia’s Tula region on Tuesday sentenced single father Alexei Moskalev to two years in a penal colony for repeated violation of wartime censorship laws that criminalize “discrediting” the Russian military, Mediazona reported. However, Moskalev himself reportedly escaped from house arrest on the eve of his sentencing…
A Russian entrepreneur accused of smuggling American technologies to Russian arms manufacturers may have received help from Russian security services to flee house arrest in Italy, the Italian newspaper la Repubblica reported, citing unnamed sources. Artyom Uss, 40, the son of the governor of Russia’s Krasnoyarsk region, is known to have removed his electronic bracelet…
A court in Russia’s southwestern Kaluga region last week ordered a university in St. Petersburg to pay compensation to a student who was expelled for his anti-war stance, media outlet iStories reported on Tuesday, citing the student’s lawyer. Andrei Kotenko, a former journalism student at St. Petersburg University of the Humanities and Social Sciences (SPbGUP),…
Belarus said on Tuesday that it felt compelled to host Russian nuclear weapons after “unprecedented” Western pressure, insisting their deployment did not violate international agreements. Russian President Vladimir Putin recently announced plans to station tactical nuclear weapons on the territory of Belarus, its closest ally, which drew condemnation from the West. “Belarus is forced to…
Online mysticism courses have experienced a nearly 20-fold surge in popularity among the Russian public, the Vedemosti business daily reported Tuesday, citing data provided by telecommunications companies. Analysts attribute Russians’ growing interest in mysticism to the stress and uncertainty being caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Online schools offering lessons in fortune telling, astrology, and…
Russia has increased its oil exports to India by a massive 2,200% since sanctions over the invasion of Ukraine cut the country off from its European markets, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak said Tuesday. “Most of our energy resources have been redirected to other, friendlier markets,” Interfax quoted Novak as saying. “If we look at…
Russia’s Defence Ministry said Tuesday that its navy had fired test anti-ship missiles at mock targets in the Sea of Japan during military exercises. Russia’s Pacific Fleet drills came a week after Tokyo’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida visited Ukraine. Moscow holds regular naval drills off its Pacific coast, but Tokyo said these had been “increasing”…
The number of murders in Russia last year increased for the first time in 20 years in what some analysts suggest is a knock-on effect of the country’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine, Russian business daily Kommersant reported Tuesday, citing a bar association report. The past two decades had seen a steady decline in the number…
An arrest warrant for exiled Russian activist and Mediazona publisher Pyotr Verzilov has been issued by a Moscow Court in absentia on charges of spreading “knowingly false” information about the Russian Armed Forces, Mediazona reported on Monday. Verzilov, who is also a member of the anti-Kremlin activist group Pussy Riot, was accused of spreading “fake…
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Rafael Grossi on Monday announced a joint visit to the southern frontline region of Zaporizhzhia, which is partly occupied by Russian forces. “I met Zelensky today in Zaporizhzhia City and had a rich exchange on the protection of the Zaporizhzhia [nuclear power plant] and…
Top Russian officials — including lawmakers, governors and senior managers of state-owned companies — have been placed under strict foreign travel restrictions by the Kremlin since the start of the Ukraine war in an apparent attempt to head off defections and hinder the work of foreign intelligence services. The system of controls on leaving the…
An audio recording of a telephone conversation allegedly taking place between Russian music producer Iosif Prigozhin and billionaire former senator Farhad Akhmedov continued to send shockwaves through Russia’s elites on Monday, as one media outlet publicly backed its authenticity. The unusually frank discussion between two well-connected and wealthy members of the Russian elite, supposedly a…
The town of Yefremov in Russia’s Tula region has become the focus of national attention as local father Alexei Moskalev stands trial for “discrediting” the country’s armed forces for an anti-war picture drawn at school by his 13-year-old daughter Maria. When Maria Moskaleva drew a picture of missiles next to a Russian flag heading towards…
President Vladimir Putin’s plan to station Russian tactical nuclear weapons on the territory of neighbor and ally Belarus would go ahead despite the Western backlash that followed the announcement over the weekend, the Kremlin said Monday. On Saturday, Putin announced plans for Russia to station tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus “without violating our international agreements…
Russian authorities have placed the leader of a far-right Russian military volunteer unit fighting alongside the Ukrainian Armed Forces on their wanted list, the state-run TASS news agency reported Monday. Denis Kapustin, who heads the Russian Volunteer Corps, was added to the Russian Interior Ministry’s wanted list without specifics on the nature of the charges against…
Members of Russia’s lower house of parliament sent to visit Russian-occupied areas of eastern Ukraine on official business are to be exempted from filing tax returns this year, Russian business daily Vedomosti reported Monday, citing two lawmakers. The news follows President Vladimir Putin’s decision last year to waive a transparency measure requiring government officials to publicly disclose…
Kyiv on Sunday said Russia took Minsk as a “nuclear hostage” after President Vladimir Putin announced the deployment of tactical nuclear weapons to Belarus, bringing the arms to a country at the gates of the European Union. Putin, who has issued thinly veiled warnings that Russia could use nuclear weapons if threatened, said the move…
Russian President Vladimir Putin said Saturday he would deploy tactical nuclear weapons in neighbor and ally Belarus, bringing the arms to a country at the gates of the European Union. Putin has previously issued thinly veiled warnings that he could use nuclear weapons in Ukraine if Russia were threatened, reviving Cold War-era fears. He also said he…
Kyiv said its forces were “managing to stabilize” the situation around Bakhmut, a now-destroyed city in eastern Ukraine that has seen the longest battle of the Russian invasion. Bakhmut — which once had an estimated population of around 70,000 people — has been virtually emptied of civilians over months of fierce fighting between Russian and…
The U.S. Justice Department unveiled spying charges Friday against a Russian who, under a Brazilian alias, studied at a Washington university and then tried to join the International Criminal Court in The Hague. The Justice Department’s indictment of Sergey Vladimirovich Cherkasov suggests it will try to contest his extradition to Russia from Brazil, where he is currently…
The European Central Bank (ECB) has called on Austria’s Raiffeisen Bank to scale down its operations in Russia, Reuters reported Friday, citing sources familiar with the matter. The news comes just a day after Ukraine’s National Agency for the Prevention of Corruption (NAPC) added the Austrian banking group to its list of international sponsors of…
The United Nations on Friday said it was “deeply concerned” by what it described as the summary executions of prisoners of war being carried out by both Russian and Ukrainian forces on the battlefield in Ukraine. The head of the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine, Matilda Bogner, said her organization had documented killings, often…
The French home improvement retailer Leroy Merlin will transfer control of its stores in Russia to local management, parent company ADEO announced Friday, more than a year since the invasion of Ukraine triggered an exodus of Western businesses. Leroy Merlin was embroiled in controversy last month when a media investigation implicated the company and the French retailer…
The Russian Volunteer Corps (RVC), a Russian far-right unit fighting on the side of Ukraine, hit the headlines earlier this month after carrying out an incursion across the Russian border. The attack on Russia’s Bryansk region, in which two people were allegedly killed, was designed to encourage Russian citizens to commit anti-state violence and expose…
The Kremlin on Friday said that Russia would skip this year’s annual Earth Hour event on Saturday after the country’s authorities designated the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) a “foreign agent.” The move comes as Russia continues to crack down on foreign-linked groups, including environmental organizations, following its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Earth Hour, which WWF…
In a fresh attempt to avoid punishment for aiding Russia in bypassing Western sanctions, Kazakhstan will launch an online system to track all goods entering and leaving the country next month. The system, which a senior official told Eurasianet is due to come into effect on April 1, appears to be Kazkhstan’s most concerted effort so…
Denmark has invited Russian energy giant Gazprom to help recover a mystery object that was spotted near the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline six months after sections of it were sabotaged. Russian President Vladimir Putin, who revealed the discovery of the object earlier this month, said experts believe that the object could be a signal…
Star U.S. investor Michael Calvey and his French business partner Philippe Delpal have left Russia having complied with the travel restrictions imposed on them with their suspended sentences in a highly controversial fraud case, Interfax reported Friday, citing unnamed sources. A Moscow court in August 2021 handed Calvey a five-and-a-half-year suspended sentence in a trial…
A court in Siberia has sentenced a Russian citizen to six-and-a-half years in jail on charges of desertion for fleeing to neighboring Kazakhstan to avoid Russia’s mobilization drive last fall, media reported Friday. Former presidential guard officer Mikhail Zhilin, 36, sought asylum in Kazakhstan after entering the former Soviet republic illegally from Russia last fall. As a…
Russian authorities on Thursday added prominent human rights lawyer Pavel Chikov and journalist Ilya Varlamov to the country’s controversial “foreign agents” registry. Chikov and Varlamov were designated foreign agents for allegedly spreading “inaccurate information about the decisions made by public authorities,” the Justice Ministry said. Chikov, whose Telegram channel has more than 500,000 subscribers, was…
World Athletics on Thursday lifted the ban on the Russian track and field federation for state-sponsored doping although its athletes remain barred from competition while Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine continues. The Russian federation was banned in 2015 after a damning World Anti-Doping Agency report identified “a deeply-rooted culture of doping.” For the athletics superpower to return to…
The head of the 11th-century Kyiv Pechersk Lavra, Ukraine’s most significant Orthodox monastery, has said that the monks facing eviction because of their church’s links to Russia will not leave. The golden-domed religious complex overlooking the Dnipro River has a population of monks that were until recently under Moscow’s jurisdiction. The branch of the Ukrainian…
Russia’s only active female cosmonaut Anna Kikina on Thursday described a “wonderful” atmosphere during her mission to the International Space Station where she traveled aboard a SpaceX spaceship. The orbital station is one of the few remaining areas of cooperation between Moscow and Washington amid a breakdown of ties since Moscow sent troops to Ukraine.…
A Russian entrepreneur accused of smuggling American technologies to Russian arms manufacturers has escaped from house arrest in Italy 24 hours after a court there approved his extradition to the U.S., the Italian newspaper La Stampa reported Thursday. Artyom Uss, 40, the son of the governor of Russia’s Krasnoyarsk region, was one of five Russians…