The black labor market in Russia is shrinking as fewer people try to keep their work off the books and their wages away from the taxman. So said a recent survey by the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA), which found one in three Russians are currently engaged in the so-called…
A Russian aluminum plant closed as a result of U.S. sanctions is set to be transformed into a bitcoin mining hub. The Nadvoitsy Aluminum Plant in Russia’s northern Karelia region, owned by Russian metals giant Rusal, stopped production last summer after it lost access to American customers following the introduction of U.S. sanctions against Rusal…
Sberbank, Russia’s largest bank, is to purchase a $170 million stake in tech giant Mail.Ru. The deal will see Sberbank buy into a company called MF Technologies, which owns a majority of Mail.Ru’s voting rights, from Gazprombank — another state-owned Russian financial outfit. Sberbank’s 35% stake in MF Technologies would give it control of one-fifth…
President Vladimir Putin has granted Russian citizenship to eight leaders of Old Believer communities in the United States and Brazil who are planning to move back to their motherland, authorities have said. Thousands of Old Believers — members of a traditionalist Christian denomination at odds with the Orthodox Church — fled Russia in the 19th…
Officials from Russia, Ukraine and the European Union met again on 28 October in Brussels to discuss terms for the transit of Russian gas via Ukraine next year, with still no breakthrough in negotiations in sight. Ukraine is the largest single transit route for Russian gas entering Europe, handling 86.8 billion cubic meters (bcm) of…
Russia’s counter-sanctions against western food imports cost its citizens $70 per person every year through higher prices. New research into the impact of Russia’s counter-sanctions and its import substitution policies found that the costs to Russian shoppers through higher prices for food, including fish, meat, cheese and vegetables far outweigh any of the program’s benefits.…
A Russian history magazine featuring a 1939 caricature of Stalin in a wedding gown holding hands with Hitler on its cover has sparked a backlash that led at least one Moscow bookstore to pull the issue from its shelves. The latest edition of the Diletant monthly featured a colorized U.S. cartoon criticizing the Soviet Union’s…
An Indian citizen has been held in Russia for more than three months after being caught in a Moscow airport transit zone with half a gram of marijuana while traveling, the Mediazona news website has reported. Aashish Bhadurya’s detention comes less than a month after the sentencing of a U.S.-Israeli citizen to 7.5 years in…
Microsoft Corp said it has tracked “significant” cyberattacks coming from a group it calls “Strontium” or “Fancy Bear,” targeting anti-doping authorities and global sporting organizations. The group, also called APT28, has been linked to the Russian government, Microsoft said in a blog post. At least 16 national and international sporting and anti-doping organizations across three continents…
A Russian court on Monday ordered opposition leader Alexei Navalny and his allies to pay $1.4 million in damages, a blow to the Kremlin critic’s group, whose bank accounts have been frozen amid what he says is a broad government crackdown. The Moscow Arbitration Court told Navalny, his Anti-Corruption Foundation and ally Lyubov Sobol each to…
A Russian diplomat who Bulgarian prosecutors suspect was involved in espionage has the left Bulgaria, the Bulgarian foreign ministry said on Monday. The ministry had asked for his recall in a meeting with the Russian ambassador on Friday. The exact circumstances of the diplomat’s departure were not clear. “A request has been made to the Russian institutions to…
Poland has detained and charged a man with spying for Russia, the country’s state broadcaster TVP reported Monday. The arrest is the latest in a string of espionage-related cases in Russia, which sentenced a Polish national to 14 years in prison in June, and Poland, which sentenced an ex-government employee to three years in July.…
Russia’s military top brass are forcing junior officers to serve in the armed services against their will, often long after they apply for dismissal, the investigative Novaya Gazeta newspaper reported Monday. Russian law makes it “nearly impossible” to resign from the army without a compelling reason, lawyers say. “This issue affects everyone [in the military],…
Russian national Maria Butina arrived in Moscow on Saturday after serving 18 months in American prison after admitting to working as a Russian agent. Butina pleaded guilty in December last year to one count of conspiring to act as a foreign agent for Russia by infiltrating a gun rights group and influencing U.S. conservative activists…
The Kremlin said on Monday that U.S. President Donald Trump will have made a major contribution to the fight against international terrorism if a U.S. assertion that Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is dead is true. Trump on Sunday announced that Baghdadi had killed himself during a daring overnight raid by elite U.S. special…
“What are your five reasons to live?” Moscow-based Instagrammer Natalya Krom asked her 116,000 followers last month in a post aimed at suicide prevention. Krom was diagnosed with bipolar personality disorder at 15. Now 20, she has been sharing everything from her daily life, including time spent in a psychiatric facility and coping techniques, since…
The Russian military has for the first time deployed the S-300 surface-to-air missile system at its military base near Afghanistan, the Defense Ministry has announced. Russia maintains troops at its military base in the ex-Soviet republic of Tajikistan, near the Afghan border, as a bulwark against the threat of Islamist radicals and drug trafficking. The…
An estimated 50 Russian women have disappeared after fleeing from a prison camp for the wives and children of Islamic State fighters in northern Syria, BBC Russia has reported. Russian women held in the Ain Issa camp had sought Moscow’s help earlier this month amid Turkey’s mounting offensive to clear the region of Kurdish rebels.…
On Oct. 27 Vladimir Bukovsky, one of the most important figures in the human rights movement in the Soviet Union and the world, died of heart failure in a hospital in Cambridge, U.K. He was 76 years old. Bukovsky was born in what is now the Republic of Bashkortostan and soon moved to Moscow, where…
U.S. President Donald Trump on Sunday thanked countries including Russia for their roles in an overnight raid led by U.S. military forces in Syria that killed Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. “I want to thank the nations of Russia, Turkey, Syria and Iraq and I also want to thank the Syrian Kurds for certain…
Russia‘s Defense Ministry on Saturday attacked U.S. plans to maintain and boost the American military presence in eastern Syria as “international state banditry” motivated by a desire to protect oil smugglers and not by real security concerns. U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper said on Friday Washington would send armored vehicles and troops to the Syrian…
Russian national Maria Butina, who was jailed in the United States in April after admitting to working as a Russian agent, arrived in Moscow on Saturday, greeted by her father and Russian journalists who handed her flowers. “Russians never surrender,” an emotional Butina told reporters at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport, flanked by her father and the…
SOCHI — Last winter, the head of Ghana’s state news agency received a message: Russia’s ambassador to the West African country wanted the agency to discuss a partnership with TASS, its Russian counterpart. For many years, Albert Kofi Owusu had thought negatively about Russia, a perception he attributes to the Western media and Hollywood films.…
Russia has unveiled a new combat icebreaker vessel in St. Petersburg on Friday which it says will help defend its national interests in the Arctic, the state-run TASS news agency reported. The launch of the Ivan Papanin comes amid Russia’s rapid military and economic development in its strategic Arctic region. Earlier this month, over 12,000 troops…
An American citizen whose Russian ex-wife is jailed in the United States could face up to 40 years in an American jail for drug smuggling after his arrest in Russia, the Fontanka news website reported Friday. A court in St. Petersburg ordered Aleth Terada, 50, to leave Russia by Nov. 1 after finding that he…
Russia’s flagship tech companies, Mail.Ru and Yandex, both reported strong third-quarter results this week amid ongoing concerns over government proposals to limit foreign ownership in Russia’s largest technology companies. With revenues and earnings up at both companies, representatives confirmed they were lobbying the government to water down the potentially damaging legislation to the two publicly…
Convicted Russian agent Maria Butina has been released from a U.S. prison after more than 15 months behind bars, CNN reported Friday, citing the U.S. Federal Bureau of Prisons. Butina, 31, a former graduate student at American University who publicly advocated for gun rights, pleaded guilty in December 2018 to one count of conspiring to…
A steppe eagle from Russia’s republic of Khakasia has been sending hundreds of expensive SMS messages to scientists after she flew into Iran, effectively bankrupting their research. Siberian scientists had equipped Min the eagle with a tracking device that sends SMS messages to document her flight movements. Min, who spent the summer in Kazakhstan with…
A Russian conscript serving in the Far East of the country shot dead eight other soldiers and badly injured two others on Friday after having a nervous breakdown, the Defense Ministry said, Interfax reported. The conscript has been detained, the ministry said, and the two injured troops are being treated in a military hospital. Their lives…
Traffic almost ground to a halt in Russia’s second-largest city of St. Petersburg following a series of police raids on bus and taxi drivers this week. Social media channels said that afternoon inspections created massive bottlenecks Thursday on a road leading to Pulkovo Airport. Passengers got out of their taxis and continued their journey on…
The Bank of Russia has cut interest rates to 6.5% on the back of low inflation, weak domestic growth and fears of a global slowdown. The central bank said further rate cuts could be on the horizon if inflation, which it expects to come in between 3.2-3.7% this year, does not pick-up. Announcing the cut…
Russian network operators could be forced to block internet traffic from countries they believe hoax bomb threats come from, the RBC news website reported Friday. A wave of hoax threats swept Russia in 2017, and during the football World Cup last year, causing disruptions for businesses and public buildings. The Russian Federal Security Service (FSB)…
Around 300 more Russian military police have arrived in Syria, the defense ministry said on Friday, under an accord between Ankara and Moscow which halted Turkey’s military incursion into northeast Syria. The deal, reached on Tuesday by Presidents Tayyip Erdogan and Vladimir Putin, requires that Russian military police and Syrian border guards remove all Kurdish YPG militia…
Moscow on Thursday dismissed media reports that Russian hackers piggy-backed on an Iranian cyber-espionage operation to attack government and industry organizations in dozens of countries as an “unsavory” interpretation of a security report. British security officials have said the Russian group, known as “Turla” and accused by Estonian and Czech authorities of operating on behalf…
Efforts by Russian influence campaigns to stay undetected on social media ahead of next year’s U.S. elections are undermining their ability to gain followers and spread divisive political messages, a senior Facebook executive told Reuters. Social media users need to stand out from the crowd to gain traction online, but that type of behavior also…
The discarded nets of North Korean fishermen are threatening the lives of spotted seals and other marine life in Far East Russia, scientists warn. Moscow has called on Pyongyang to crack down on its poachers in Russian waters after border guards detained hundreds of North Korean fishermen recently. Russian marine biologists estimate that North Korean…
An engineer accused of using one of Russia’s most powerful supercomputers at a secret nuclear laboratory to mine Bitcoins has been sentenced to three years and three months in prison. Andrei Rybkin is one of three scientists to be convicted of using a workplace supercomputer to mine the cryptocurrency in the closed city of Sarov.…
The CEO of Rosneft Oil Company Igor Sechin gave a keynote speech “Pricing the Turbulence” at the XII Eurasian Economic Forum in Verona, Italy.
A new project aimed at cutting food waste by helping restaurants sell their leftovers has opened in Moscow, the Village news website reported, citing the project’s press service. In Russia, 17 million tons of food worth more than 1.6 trillion rubles ($25 billion) are thrown out each year, according to a study by the Russian…
Yelena Baturina and Tatyana Bakalchuk are household names in Russia’s billionaire circles. Months after cementing their status as Russia’s only women billionaires, Baturina and Bakalchuk have once again topped Forbes magazine’s ranking of the country’s 25 richest women. But while Baturina’s fortune stayed at $1.2 billion this year, Bakalchuk nearly doubled her net worth to…
A Russian commission on Thursday recommended President Vladimir Putin pardon a Norwegian man jailed for spying, spurring hopes in Norway that he may be released as part of a spy swap brokered behind closed doors. Frode Berg, a retired guard on the Norwegian-Russian border, was detained in December 2017 and jailed for 14 years after…
Around $1 trillion of capital has been pulled out of Russia since the fall of the U.S.S.R., a close aide to President Vladimir Putin has told world leaders at the Russia-Africa forum in Sochi. Sergei Glazyev, who was a long-time economic adviser to Putin and is now minister in charge of integration at the Eurasian…
President Vladimir Putin hosted the first-ever Russia-Africa summit Wednesday and Thursday in the latest display of Moscow’s efforts to restore its geopolitical foothold on the continent after the fall of the Soviet Union. Amid a deluge of memoranda of understanding and cooperation agreements, Russia clinched a series of trade agreements with some of the 54…
Russia’s biggest foreign-owned utilities company Enel Russia has finally sold its biggest coal-burning power station Reftinskaya for an undisclosed amount as part of its efforts to go green as well as become more profitable. The Italian-owned firm is already a leader in investing into renewable energy and has several large wind and solar power projects…
A performing bear has mauled its handler during a show in northern Russia, as animal rights activists step up their campaign to ban traveling circuses that use trained animals in the country. Audience members filmed dramatic scenes Wednesday of the brown bear slamming its trainer to the ground and an assistant kicking it in an…
Russia will send a further 276 military policemen and 33 units of military hardware to Syria in a week, Russia‘s RIA news agency cited a defense ministry source as saying on Thursday. Earlier, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu spoke by video conference to the leader of Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), Russian news agencies reported on Wednesday. Shoigu told the SDF head that Russia will increase the number of its military police near…
Russia has inched upward in the World Bank’s latest Doing Business report, rising three places but still missing President Vladimir Putin’s goal of breaking into the top 20. Putin set the challenge of leaping up the ease-of-business ratings by 2018 after the country placed a dismal 120th in 2011. The 2020 Doing Business report published…
A former U.S. Marine held in Russia on suspicion of spying said on Thursday that a prison guard had forced him to his knees in custody and that he had been threatened with a gun, the Interfax news agency reported. Paul Whelan, who holds U.S., British, Canadian and Irish passports, was detained in December and accused of…
Russia said on Thursday a division of its S-400 missile defense system would take part in a military drill in Serbia, underlining Moscow’s wish to keep a traditional ally on side even as Belgrade pursues links with NATO and the European Union. It will be the first time that the sophisticated S-400s, together with a…
A Russian priest who lives in Italy has whipped up a frenzy over a pro-Kremlin pundit’s citizenship status. Almost 195,000 people have signed Father Sergius’ online petition urging Italy to deny citizenship to political talk show host Vladimir Solovyov, even though Solovyov has not applied for citizenship and has had an Italian residence permit for…
Russians trust President Vladimir Putin less than they do their armed forces, according to a new independent survey seen by the Vedomosti newspaper. The army emerged as Russia’s most trusted institution last year as a result of what sociologists called the Kremlin’s “saber-rattling.” This year’s institutional trust rating published by the independent Levada Center pollster placed…
Russian internet firm Yandex will begin testing its driverless cars in the United States next summer, the company said Wednesday. As part of the North American International Auto Show in Detroit, to take place from June 6-21, Yandex will provide a driverless taxi service in the city’s business center. “The first 10 cars will take…
A Russian migrant in Latvia has launched a hunger strike to protest the country’s refusal to allow his elderly mother-in-law to obtain a residence permit there without taking the required language exam. Around one-third of Latvia’s population of 2 million are ethnic Russians, many of whom do not have Latvian citizenship and are thus unable…
A European uranium enrichment firm has resumed shipments of a highly toxic and radioactive waste product from Germany to Russia, Greenpeace Russia warned Wednesday. The enrichment firm Urenco and Russia’s state nuclear company Rosatom halted the radioactive waste imports from Germany in 2009 over revelations that the waste was stored in the open. German media…
Russia will land two nuclear-capable strategic Tu-160 bombers in South Africa on Wednesday, Interfax news agency cited South Africa’s military as saying. Observers say it would be the first such deployment on the African continent. The Tupolev Tu-160 strategic bomber, nicknamed the White Swan in Russia, is a supersonic Soviet-era aircraft capable of carrying up…
Russian political consultants ran online campaigns supporting Bolivian President Evo Morales and criticising his election opponents in a bid to secure a fourth-term for the Kremlin-friendly leader, Russian news site Proekt has reported. The support, which focused on pumping out hostile social media campaigns against Morales’ critics, was orchestrated by political consultants close to Rosatom,…
Russia’s mega high-speed rail project to link Moscow, St. Petersburg and Nizhny Novgorod is set to cost 2.3 trillion rubles ($36 billion), according to Russian media reports. Around 600 billion rubles ($9.4 billion) will come in the form of direct state grants or cheap government-backed loans, while the rest will be financed directly by Russian…
The Czech Republic’s chief of counterintelligence has said that his country’s security forces had dismantled a Russian espionage ring last year that had been planning cyberattacks against the European Union member state. The BIS counterintelligence service said last year that Russian intelligence services were behind cyber attacks targeting the Czech foreign ministry. The BIS warned…
The Kremlin said on Wednesday that the United States had betrayed and abandoned the Syrian Kurds and advised the Kurds to withdraw from the Syrian border as per a deal between Moscow and Ankara or be mauled by the Turkish army. The comments by Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov to Russian news agencies followed a deal…
The last picture police officer Nikolay Korokhov posted on the Russian social media site VKontakte shows him carrying his young daughter on his shoulders while his wife Yekaterina takes a photo of the three of them. They’re all wearing silly sunglasses and smiling. A week later Korokhov shot himself in his office. He left a…