Moscow hosted a new dance party last week featuring a line-up composed exclusively of refugees who are DJs. The Civic Assistance Committee, a Russian NGO that helps migrants in Moscow, hosted the event. Meet Simba, a DJ from Zimbabwe, as he shares the difficulties and hopes of life in Russia’s capital.
A series of corruption scandals, cost overruns and mishaps at Russia’s new Vostochny Cosmodrome have brought long-simmering questions about the leadership of the country’s space agency into public view. “The situation is unacceptable for everyone, including the construction of the first stage and the second stage” of the space center, Deputy Prime Minister Yury Borisov…
Russian lawmakers have ordered a study on assisted human reproduction, including a cutting-edge and controversial gene-editing technology that would create a “new type of society.” New gene-editing tools such as CRISPR/Cas9 have made it possible to rearrange the genetic code much more precisely and at lower costs than before. A Chinese scientist caused outrage last…
Kremlin critic Mikhail Khodorkovsky hopes a new documentary film about his life chronicling his journey from being Russia’s richest man to an exiled dissident will open the West’s eyes to the nature of modern Russia. The film, “Citizen K,” was made by Oscar-winning U.S. filmmaker Alex Gibney and premiered at the Venice Film festival this…
Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif said on Monday after talks with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov that Tehran welcomed a Russian proposal for ensuring security in the Gulf. Iran and Russia’s energy ministers were also holding talks in Moscow on Monday, Lavrov told reporters at a joint news conference with Zarif.
The international community has called for restraint as Georgia warned of a “serious confrontation” with the Russian-backed breakaway territory of South Ossetia last week. Only Moscow and a handful of other states have recognized the independence of South Ossetia after Russia and Georgia fought a five-day war over the region in August 2008. Russian troops…
Crimea has offered Iran access to its ports as a way for Tehran to avoid Western sanctions on oil exports, a senior official in the annexed region’s Kremlin-backed administration told Russian media. Iran is increasingly looking for alternative trade routes to skirt tensions in the Persian Gulf brought on by U.S. sanctions. The OPEC member’s…
On the last official day of summer in Russia, several thousand people in Moscow turned out for what has become the flavor of the season: the Saturday protest. But the turnout was lower and the mood subdued compared with previous demonstrations in this year’s summer of discontent, which saw as many as 50,000 people at…
Thousands of Russians took to the streets of central Moscow on Saturday to demand free elections to the capital’s city legislature on Sept. 8, defying a ban which has been enforced with violent detentions during previous protests. Weeks of demonstrations over elections for the city legislature have turned into the biggest sustained protest movement in…
Russian students are preparing for Sept. 1, which marks the beginning of the school year and the onset of fall. But with summer barely behind us, we’re not ready to let the season go just yet. The past three months have been tumultuous ones for Russia. It seemed like the country was simultaneously burning, drowning…
Sept. 1 in Russia marks the beginning of the school year for Russian students and the unofficial start of fall. But with summer barely behind us, we’re not ready to let the season go just yet. The past three months have been tumultuous ones for Russia. It seemed like the country was simultaneously burning, drowning…
Ninety-eight percent of Moscow’s popular shawarma restaurants do not comply with Russian food hygiene standards, according to the city consumer protection watchdog. Last year, a Federal Consumer Protection Service (Rospotrebnadzor) inspection uncovered foodborne bacterial pathogens in a majority of the 252 shawarma spots in Moscow. This year, health violations were uncovered in 65 of 66…
Russia is ramping up its imports of plastic waste year after year as its lack of a national waste sorting system leaves recycling plants lacking enough raw materials, the RBC news website has reported. Russia generated over 7.2 billion tons of household and industrial waste in 2018, almost 315,000 tons of which were imported, according…
As far as marriage proposal pranks go, Russia is a torchbearer of the extreme and the unsparing. One such proposal — with armed men ambushing a couple and turning up fake drugs with an engagement ring inside — went viral and made international headlines this summer. The scenes of initial horror that turned into hysterical…
The development of the Northern Sea Route appeared on the agenda in the Foreign Ministry’s latest weekly press conference after several foreign leaders reportedly commented on the environment in the region. Among them was French President Emmanuel Macron, who was called upon to protect Arctic nature in a meeting with business leaders. According to Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, Macron had…
At least 40,000 ATMs in Russia operated by at least four major banks accept counterfeit bills, resulting in tens of thousands of dollars in theft, according to the Kommersant business daily. The issue reportedly affects 40,000 ATMs made by a single manufacturer, the U.S.-based NCR Corp, out of the 135,000 ATMs that accept cash in…
The mysterious explosion in northern Russia that caused a spike in radiation levels happened during a mission to salvage a nuclear-powered cruise missile from the bottom of the sea, media have cited a U.S. intelligence assessment as saying. Five nuclear engineers were killed in a liquid propulsion system blast at Russia’s naval missile test facility,…
Update: The prisoner exchange will not happen Friday and a final date hasn’t yet been determined, a spokeswoman for Ukraine’s security service (SBU) told Ukrainian media. She added that the process is going according to plan. The office of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Friday said no prisoner swap had taken place with Russia yet and the process was ongoing,…
The Russian military has unveiled footage of large-scale exercises in Mongolia with a slick production value of shooting helicopters and firing rocket launchers. The 11th annual Russian-Mongolian drills, the Selenga-2019, took place from Aug. 15-24 and involved 1,400 troops from both countries this year. Online viewers were treated to videos of GRAD truck-mounted multiple rocket…
Rosneft Deutschland, a subsidiary of Rosneft Oil Company, has supplied its customers in airports of Germany with 142,500 tonnes of jet fuel in the first half of 2019.
For the first time, Rosneft Aero, Rosneft Oil Company’s fuel-filling business operator, has been awarded the status of the official jet fuel supplier at the 14th International Aviation and Space Salon MAKS 2019 taking place in Zhukovsky from August 27 to September 1.
Pushing Russia further into isolation would be a “profound error” by Europe, French President Emmanuel Macron has said in his latest overture toward the country that has been under Western sanctions since annexing Crimea from Ukraine in 2014. Macron played up efforts to “tie Russia and Europe back together” when he hosted President Vladimir Putin…
The Moscow Times recently learned that one of the first managing editors of the newspaper, Jay Ross, passed away at the age of 85. Julian “Jay” Ross was born in San Mateo, California, and graduated from the University of California, Berkeley. Over his long career in journalism, he was the sports editor and deputy managing…
Russia is working to win influence in at least 10 African states with high-cost nuclear technology that for the most part does not suit their needs, researchers and NGOs have told The Guardian newspaper. With booming exports, nuclear energy is one example of Russia’s increasing presence in Africa in recent years. Elsewhere, a businessman known…
Pro-Kremlin activists have for the second time in a week stormed a private event in Moscow, this time wreaking havoc at an LGBT play in Moscow on Wednesday evening. Members of the fringe NOD and SERB nationalist groups, known for attacks on opposition activists and art exhibits, most recently disrupted a seminar on how to…
Russian opposition activist Lyubov Sobol has been attacked with an unknown liquid outside her Moscow apartment, the activist said on Thursday. Sobol emerged as the de facto leader of this summer’s Moscow protest movement to demand fair local elections after several of her fellow opposition candidates were jailed on protest-related charges. Following a two-week lapse…
The Arctic shortcut that connects Asia and Europe is open and ice-free and shipping appears smooth, including for vessels without ice class standards. The last pieces of frozen water vanished in mid-August and data shows that the whole route is now free of ice. This includes the East Siberian Sea, a region that normally has…
More than $175 billion had circulated in Russia’s shadow economy in 2017, according to the latest available official data analyzed by the RBC news website on Thursday. Russia’s State Statistics Service (Rosstat) defines the shadow economy as off-the-books salaries, unofficial employment and informal sales, but not criminal activity. Financial authorities say the shadow economy’s share…
Ukrainian filmmaker Oleg Sentsov has been moved from a jail in northern Russia to Moscow ahead of a rumored prisoner exchange with Kiev, Russian news agencies reported Thursday, citing unnamed sources. Sentsov, 43, is serving a 20-year sentence at a penal colony north of the Arctic Circle on charges of terrorism, which the filmmaker has…
In 1H 2019 Rosneft Aero, a subsidiary of PJSC NK Rosneft, increased its overwing fueling at Russian airports by 9.5% y-to-y to 1.035 mln tons.
Over a dozen cities and districts on Russia’s Pacific coast have declared a state of emergency over torrential rains that have caused severe floods this week. Footage showed flooded roads and homes, as well as dangerous mudslides, in the major Far Eastern city of Vladivostok. Weather forecasters say a month’s worth of rainfall has descended…
Prominent Russian opposition figure and rejected Moscow city election candidate Ilya Yashin has been detained for a record fifth time Wednesday after serving four consecutive jail terms. Yashin, 36, is among a slew of opposition candidates who were barred from running for Moscow’s legislature on Sept. 8 and handed short jail terms on protest-related charges.…
Three families have entered Forbes Russia’s 2019 list of the country’s 10 wealthiest dynasties, which is dominated by the Gutseriyev family and the Rotenberg brothers. The business magazine estimates that Russia’s 10 richest families held a combined $25 billion this year, slightly up from $24.98 billion in 2018. Gutseriyev, along with his son Said, brother…
Over a dozen Russian cabinet offices will relocate to a cluster of skyscrapers in the sprawling financial district of western Moscow, the Kommersant business daily has reported. More than two decades in the making, Moscow’s business hub has struggled to fill its office space following the 2008 global financial crisis and Western sanctions on Russia.…
Moscow’s mayor has raised the city’s monthly retirement payout less than two weeks before a local election that has triggered the largest sustained protest movement in Russia in recent years. The protests broke out this summer after election authorities barred a slew of opposition candidates from running for the Moscow City Duma on Sept. 8.…
The Kremlin said on Wednesday that the murder of an ethnic Chechen exile in Berlin last week had nothing to do with the Russian state or its official agencies. German prosecutors are considering whether there was a political motive behind the killing on Friday of 40-year-old Zelimkhan Khangoshvili, allegedly by a Russian citizen who shot…
The Russian military has officially confirmed the discovery of five new Arctic islands which have emerged as climate change accelerates glacial melting. The new islands were discovered by a student onboard a Russian Navy research vessel that conducted a voyage through Arctic waters in late 2016. Russia has been increasing its military and commercial presence…
A court in Ukraine ordered jailed Russian journalist Kirill Vyshinsky to be freed on bail and released from custody, as Moscow and Kiev hold behind-the-scenes talks on a possible prisoner swap. Vyshinsky, the head of Russia‘s state-backed RIA Novosti news agency in Ukraine, was arrested last year and accused of supporting pro-Russian separatists. Vyshinsky faces up to…
Russia and Turkey are discussing the possibility of deliveries of the Russian-made Sukhoi Su-57 stealth fighter jet and Su-35 aircraft to Turkey, the state-run RIA news agency cited a Russian official as saying on Wednesday. Russia began delivering S-400 missile systems to Turkey this year, in a step that strained ties with Ankara’s NATO allies…
Republican and Democratic U.S. senators said Russia refused to grant them visas for a visit to Moscow next week, amid disagreement within Washington and among U.S. allies over whether the country should be readmitted to the Group of Seven. Democratic Senator Chris Murphy said on Tuesday that Russia denied him a visa. Senator Ron Johnson,…
More than 4,000 Red List tortoises, which were smuggled into Russia in a cabbage truck, were safely returned to their Arys region of Kazakhstan, the Russian Interior Ministry said on Tuesday. The tortoises were hidden amongst cabbage in 24 bags on the back of a truck which was stopped at the Russia-Kazakhstan border on June…
Russia spends almost $73 billion per year on secret weapons and intellectual property, expenditures that total over 5% of the economy, according to official data analyzed by the RBC news website. Russia’s gross domestic product (GDP) totaled $1.5 trillion in 2017. A Swedish think tank reported this year that Russia officially spent $66.3 billion on defense…
President Vladimir Putin said on Tuesday that Russia and Turkey had agreed steps to tackle militants in northwest Syria and “normalize” the situation there after a Syrian army offensive encircled rebel fighters and a Turkish military post. Putin was speaking after talks in Moscow with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has said the Syrian army attacks…
Russia’s 30-year-old nuclear-powered Sevmorput container carrier will soon transport 5,000 tons of fish from the country’s Far East to St. Petersburg via the Northern Sea Route. “This test voyage with the container carrier gives hope that someday such deliveries will become regular,” the Kamchatka region governor Vladimir Kuzmitsky has said in an interview with the region’s official news portal.…
Abnormally low water levels driven by drought are threatening the livelihoods of thousands of people in the Russian Arctic, The Siberian Times has reported. The Lena and other rivers in Russia’s northern republic of Sakha have reportedly experienced the worst shallowing in 30 years, hampering navigation in remote areas that are only reachable by boat.…
A Russian bakery in Siberia has been fined $150 for hanging a sign at its entrance that banned LGBT people from entering. The Ipakov Brothers bakery in the city of Kemerovo placed a wooden sign near its entrance that said “F*****s are not allowed” when it opened in February. The bakery’s co-owner, Anton Ipatov, told…
President Tayyip Erdogan will seek steps from Russia’s Vladimir Putin to safeguard Turkish troops in the face of an offensive by the Syrian army in the country’s northwest when the two leaders meet on Tuesday, a senior Turkish official said. Erdogan, who is making a one-day visit to Russia, told Putin last week that attacks…
Russia’s national carrier Aeroflot has disputed a recent ranking of global airlines’ gender gaps among pilots, saying it has a higher ratio of women aviators than reported. Aeroflot was ranked the last of 45 major airlines worldwide in the FromAtoB.com travel platform’s study cited by Bloomberg last week, with 1.4% of its pilots being women.…
Russia test-fired Sineva and Bulava ballistic missiles from two submarines from the polar region of the Arctic Ocean and from the Barents Sea on Saturday as part of combat training, the Defense Ministry said in a statement. The Sineva, a liquid-fueled intercontinental missile, was fired from the Tula submarine, while a Bulava, Russia’s newest solid-fueled…
A Russian Soyuz spacecraft carrying a humanoid robot failed to dock with the International Space Station (ISS) on Saturday, Russian news agencies reported, citing a live broadcast. The FEDOR (Final Experimental Demonstration Object Research) robot is on its way to the ISS for a planned two-week mission to support the crew and test its skills. The docking…
A Russian doctor found to have a radioactive isotope in his body after treating victims of an Aug. 8 rocket engine explosion had been contaminated by food and not radiation, authorities said Friday. Earlier, The Moscow Times reported that a group of doctors who treated the radiation victims had been flown to Moscow for medical…
The International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) said on Friday it had suspended Russian national team player Evgeny Kuznetsov for four years for testing positive for cocaine. Kuznetsov, who plays for the Washington Capitals in North America’s National Hockey League (NHL), said he accepted his suspension. “Representing my country has always been so close to my heart…
Authorities in the Russian region of Chechnya on Friday inaugurated what they said was the largest mosque in Europe in a pomp-filled ceremony attended by local and foreign officials. Named after the Prophet Mohammed, the marble-decorated mosque has capacity for more than 30,000 people and has been described by the Chechen authorities as the “largest…
Aug. 23 marks 30 years since the Baltic Way protest, when 2 million people in Soviet Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania joined hands to create a 600-kilometer “human chain.” The peaceful protest was held on the 50th anniversary of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact to demand independence from the U.S.S.R.
The explosion that killed five Russian scientists during a rocket engine test earlier this month was followed by a second blast two hours later, the likely source of a spike in radiation, Norway’s nuclear test-ban monitor said Friday. The second explosion, detected only by infrasonic air pressure sensors and not by the seismic monitors that…
An explosion that killed five Russian scientists during a rocket engine test this month was followed by a second blast two hours later, the likely source of a spike in radiation, Norway’s nuclear test-ban monitor said on Friday. The second explosion was likely from an airborne rocket powered by radioactive fuel, the Norsar agency said —…
It would be impossible for modern-day Russia to cover up an accident the size of Chernobyl, the Kremlin said on Friday as mystery continues to surround this month’s rocket engine explosion in northern Russia. Government officials have given a muted, occasionally contradictory response in the weeks since the Aug. 8 accident that has killed seven…
Russia opened a showroom Friday selling its first post-Soviet luxury limousine under the Aurus brand, a type of car used by President Vladimir Putin at his inauguration last year. Russia has been trying to reduce its dependence on imported goods and technology, a drive that gathered speed after Moscow was hit by Western sanctions in…
Russia’s first floating nuclear power plant set sail Friday from the Arctic port of Murmansk to provide power to one of the country’s most remote regions, sparking environmental concerns. Developed by the Russian state nuclear company Rosatom, the plant, known as “Akademik Lomonosov,” set off on a 5,000 kilometer (3,100 mile) journey through Arctic waters…
A former U.S. Marine held in Russia on suspicion of spying said on Friday that prison authorities in Moscow had injured him, as a court ruled to extend his detention by two months. Paul Whelan, who holds U.S., British, Canadian and Irish passports, was detained in a Moscow hotel room on Dec. 28 and accused of espionage,…