Russia has blocked an average of 4,900 websites per week so far in 2022, according to an internet freedom NGO’s tally published by the Kommersant business daily Monday. According to the NGO, Roskomsvoboda, authorities restricted 14,800 websites last week alone — the highest total in a single week in several years. While it did not name…
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Authorities in St. Petersburg said the Russian military has opened collection points for musical instruments for Russian soldiers in Ukraine to boost morale. “The Russian Defense Ministry has organized the collection and transfer of musical instruments to the mobilized [and] military personnel performing special tasks who have no professional musical education,” reads a message posted…
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The body of a Zambian student who died while fighting in Ukraine after he was recruited in a Russian jail arrived home in a makeshift coffin Sunday. AFP journalists saw a white, glass-paneled hearse adorned with small curtains affording a partial view of the container holding the body arrive on the tarmac at Lusaka airport,…
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Moscow transportation authorities have removed city bus ads recruiting Central Asian nationals into the Russian military with promises of expedited citizenship, media reported Sunday. Photos showing an Uzbek-language recruitment message on board a Moscow bus went viral last week. “If you join the Russian Armed Forces under contract, you can easily obtain Russian citizenship in…
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U.S. efforts to negotiate the freedom of a former Marine held in Russia as part of the swap involving basketball star Brittney Griner were thwarted by Moscow’s demand for the release of a convicted murderer held in Germany, according to a top U.S. official and media reports. The swap of Griner for convicted Russian arms…
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Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan told Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin on Sunday that it was imperative the Kremlin “clear” Kurdish forces from northern Syria. Erdogan has been threatening to launch a new incursion into northern Syria to push out Kurdish forces he blames for a November bomb blast that killed six people in Istanbul. A…
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Russia’s ex-president Dmitry Medvedev said on Sunday the country was ramping up production of new-generation weapons to protect itself from enemies in Europe, the United States and Australia. “We are increasing production of the most powerful means of destruction. Including those based on new principles,” Medvedev said on messaging app Telegram. “Our enemy dug in…
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In Russia’s rural villages, there are very few cultural institutions. Oftentimes, there is only a single library and a single House of Culture (community center for arts and culture). Because libraries are free to visit, they are crucial in low-income regions where people can’t afford to spend money on culture and education. In addition to…
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A trio from the three nations at the center of the war in Ukraine accepted their Nobel Peace Prize on Saturday, calling for an unabated fight against Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s “insane and criminal” invasion. Jailed Belarusian rights advocate Ales Bialiatski, Russian organisation Memorial and Ukraine’s Center for Civil Liberties (CCL) were honoured by the…
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Viktor Bout, a notorious arms dealer dubbed the “Merchant of Death,” praised Russian President Vladimir Putin and backed Moscow’s assault on Ukraine in his first interview since being released from a U.S. prison as part of an exchange for U.S. basketball star Brittney Griner. Speaking to the Kremlin-backed RT channel in an interview released on…
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Western sanctions on Russia over its invasion of Ukraine may not have resulted in the dramatic economic collapse some predicted — but they have still had a far-reaching impact. Russia is now the world’s most-sanctioned country and shortages of goods, limited access to services and other restrictions are slowly changing everyday life in sometimes surprising…
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Like many Russians in and outside of Russia, we can’t imagine New Year’s without Salad Olivier. It was made in our parents’ homes a half-century ago, and we’ve been making it ourselves for as long as we can remember. We’re sure that our children and grandchildren will also serve this immortal salad, too. Some people…
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The southern Ukrainian city of Odesa was left without power Saturday following a night-time attack by “kamikaze drones” launched by Russia, authorities said. “As of now, the city is without electricity,” Kyrylo Tymoshenko, deputy head of the Ukrainian presidential administration, said on messaging app Telegram. Only critical infrastructure including hospitals and maternity wards had access…
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The Russian military has sustained over 10,000 verifiable deaths in the course of its nine-month invasion of Ukraine, according to open-source research conducted by the BBC and independent Russian news outlet MediaZone that was released on Friday. Among the 10,002 dead servicemen identified in the investigation are scores of elite servicemen belonging to Russian airborne…
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French energy group TotalEnergies said Friday it was withdrawing from the board of Russian gas giant Novatek and taking a $3.7 billion hit in the wake of sanctions against Moscow. While other Western oil and gas majors have exited Russia following Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, TotalEnergies has come under criticism for maintaining investments in the country. The…
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Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has backed out of an annual Russia-India summit because of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s threats to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine, Bloomberg reported Friday citing an anonymous source in the Indian government. Modi believes that drawing too much attention to the relationship with the Kremlin could be damaging to his image,…
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A Chechen dissident blogger living in Sweden who it was claimed earlier this week had been murdered is reportedly still alive, according to Chechen government in exile. “Tumso Abdurakhmanov is alive and is under the protection of the Swedish police,” news website Kavkaz.Realii, an affiliate of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, quoted the government-in-exile’s press officer…
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Слово года 2022: Word of the year, 2022 Every year a group of Russian word-watchers track all the words and expressions that seem to capture the spirit — or obsessions — of the year coming to an end. The group, headed by linguist and professor of Russian language and literature Mikhail Epstein, is made up…
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American basketball star Brittney Griner arrived in the United States Friday morning after being released from a Russian prison in exchange for an arms dealer known as the “Merchant of Death.” Griner, 32, who was arrested in Russia in February on drug charges, was seen by an AFP reporter walking across a runway after her…
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American basketball star Brittney Griner returned to the United States after she was released from a Russian prison in exchange for an arms dealer known as the “Merchant of Death.” Griner’s family and WNBA teammates rejoiced at the news that the star athlete’s imprisonment in Russia on drug charges had come to an end. Russia’s…
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Russia’s largest social network VKontakte has started labeling LGBT-themed pages on its site with warnings that they may violate draconian legislation signed into law this week banning the depiction of non-heterosexual relationships and identities. “There may be controversial material in this community,” a warning label displayed to potential visitors reads before allowing users the option…
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Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout, who was freed in a prisoner swap with U.S. basketball star Brittney Griner, told Kremlin-run media on Friday that Western countries are seeking to “destroy” and “divide” Russia. “The West believes that they did not finish us off in 1990, when the Soviet Union began to disintegrate… They think that they…
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A Moscow court on Friday sentenced prominent opposition politician Ilya Yashin to eight and a half years in jail for spreading “false” information about the Russian military in his criticism of the Kremlin invasion of Ukraine. The 39-year-old Moscow city councilor was found guilty for saying that occupying Russian forces in Ukraine were responsible for…
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Millions of barrels of oil on apparently non-Russian tankers were stuck in Turkish waters due to Ankara’s proof-of-insurance demands as part of a Western price cap on Russian crude, Bloomberg reported Thursday. Shipping data compiled by the news agency showed 26 tankers with more than 23 million barrels of oil from Kazakhstan had been unable…
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A massive fire at one of Russia’s largest shopping malls has killed one person and burned down a formerly German-owned home improvement store in northwest Moscow, emergency officials and state media reported early Friday. The fire, which broke out before dawn, engulfed 18,000 square meters of the MEGA Khimki mall at its peak. It was eventually contained…
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Russian President Vladimir Putin will attempt to shore up Russia’s regional authority on a visit Friday to the Central Asian state of Kyrgyzstan for a summit of a Moscow-led trade bloc, analysts and an ex-official told The Moscow Times. The war in Ukraine has not only led to Western sanctions on Russia and wide-spread condemnation…
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A former Russian paratrooper who took part in the Russian invasion of Ukraine before fleeing the country and writing a book about his experience has taken the prominent human rights NGO Gulagu.net, which helped him leave Russia, to court in an attempt to win back the royalties for his work. Pavel Filatyev’s lawsuit claims that…
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Russia and the U.S. on Thursday conducted a one-for-one prisoner swap that secured the release of American basketball star Brittney Griner in exchange for Russian arms trafficker Viktor Bout. Bout, 55, was meant to serve a 25-year sentence in a prison in Illinois after being convicted of a handful of offenses by the U.S. courts,…
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Russia and the United States have exchanged the U.S. basketball star Brittney Griner for notorious Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout, U.S. and Russian officials said Thursday. The WNBA star, who was serving a nine-year-prison sentence in a Russian jail on drug charges, was released on Thursday in a one-for-one swap for Bout, an arms dealer…
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Russian-annexed Crimea remains at risk of Ukrainian attacks, the Kremlin said Thursday after Russian-aligned authorities claimed to have shot down a drone over the Black Sea peninsula. The Crimean affiliate of the U.S. news organization RFE/RL reported hearing powerful explosions in the port of Sevastopol, which is home to Russia’s Black Sea Fleet. Sevastopol’s Kremlin-aligned Governor…
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A court in Norway has acquitted the dual-national son of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s former ally on charges of defying a ban on flying drones, media reported late Wednesday. Andrei Yakunin, 47, was arrested in October on accusations of launching drones from his luxury yacht over the strategic Arctic archipelago of Svalbard last summer. Yakunin,…
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Russia hit back Thursday at widely reported data which placed the country as a leader in new HIV infections worldwide as “provocative propaganda.” Russia accounted for 3.9% — the world’s fifth-highest share — of the 1.5 million new HIV cases reported around the world in 2021, the data platform Statista said last Thursday, citing the Joint…
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ST. PETERSBURG — Four years after achieving global football celebrity as host of the 2018 World Cup, Russia’s exclusion from international competitions in the wake of its invasion of Ukraine has led to declining standards in domestic matches, fan apathy and foreign players leaving in droves. The Brussels Bar, a sports bar in Russia’s second-largest…
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A Moscow court on Wednesday rejected an appeal by the jailed Russian journalist Ivan Safronov against his 22-year jail sentence for treason earlier this year. The decision to uphold Safronov’s sentence, which was announced at a closed-doors hearing, means that the journalist will soon be transferred from the detention facility where he is currently being…
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Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday that the threat of nuclear conflict in Ukraine was still on the rise, but stressed that Moscow had no intention of launching a pre-emptive strike amid concerns that nuclear arms could be used in Ukraine. “Such a threat is growing, needless to say,” the Russian leader said during…
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Time magazine named President Volodymyr Zelensky as well as “the spirit of Ukraine” as its 2022 person of the year on Wednesday, for the resistance the country has shown in the face of Russia’s invasion. Calling Zelensky’s decision to remain in Kyiv and rally his country amid the ongoing war “fateful,” Time editor-in-chief Edward Felsenthal…
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The Russian embassy in Berlin on Wednesday denied maintaining links to far-right terror groups in Germany after a Russian woman was among 25 people arrested in a series of police raids over a suspected plot to overthrow the government. “The Russian Embassy in Germany would like to make clear that Russian diplomatic and consular offices…
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The Kremlin has urged members of the presidential Human Rights Council “not to upset” Russian leader Vladimir Putin with thorny questions about the war in Ukraine when they meet Wednesday, independent media reported, citing unnamed sources close to the council. According to the investigative news website Vyorstka, HRC chairman Valery Fadeyev cleared the topics to…
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Western airlines should prepare to return to Russian airspace when the war in Ukraine has ended, the head of the global airline trade group said Tuesday. Flights between Russia and the West came to a virtual standstill following mutual airspace bans in the wake of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in February. The closures limited Russian-owned…
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Russia’s oil giant Rosneft said Wednesday its profit over the past nine months had been badly hit by the seizure of its German-based refineries by Berlin. “In 3Q 2022, the most significant negative impact on income came from the transfer of the company’s assets in Germany… which resulted in the recognition of an additional loss…
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The BBC has named Russian pop diva Alla Pugacheva, jailed anti-war activist Alexandra Skochilenko and prominent journalist Taisia Bekbulatova on its list of the year’s most influential women. The Russian entries in the 2022 edition of the annual 100 Women list of inspiring and influential women highlight the “female faces of conflict and resistance in Ukraine…
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Latvia’s decision Tuesday to withdraw the broadcast license of independent Russian television channel Dozhd caused disbelief and anger among the media outlet’s journalists and soul-searching among other Russian journalists in exile. The Baltic country’s media watchdog said in a statement announcing the revocation that Dozhd posed “threats to national security and social order” following a…
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A St. Petersburg court on Tuesday recognized the Russian human rights NGO Vesna as an extremist organization, the group announced in a statement, a move that if upheld will compel the organization to disband and cease all activity in Russia. “We plan to appeal this decision and to continue working … It’s not a secret…
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Belgorod Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said on Tuesday that the border region is forming self-defense units amid Russia’s ongoing war with neighboring Ukraine. “Literally from the very first days of the beginning of the special military operation, a large number of residents of the Belgorod region addressed the need to begin training and forming territorial defense…
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Do Russians support the war in Ukraine? This question has been discussed intensely since the invasion in February. According to surveys from major Russian pollsters (including the independent Levada Center and state-controlled VTsIOM) about 75% of the population does support the invasion. But many are deeply skeptical of these figures. Russian officials have access to…
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Police in Russia’s Rostov region are searching for a suspected deserter from the Russian army who shot at police officers in the southern Russian city of Novoshakhtinsk near the Russian-Ukraine border on Tuesday, Russian news agency TASS reported. The man reportedly fired at police officers after emerging from a wooded area on the outskirts of…
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Russian bookstores have started removing LGBT-themed works from their catalogues after President Vladimir Putin signed a wide-reaching ban on expressions of LGBT identity into law on Monday. Under the new law that entered into force immediately after its signing, bookstores, film and video game makers, as well as advertisers and media outlets, risk being shut…
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President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday met with top officials on Russia’s “domestic security” as the Kremlin said the latest Ukrainian drone attacks presented a danger to the country. Earlier Tuesday, authorities said that a drone had struck near an airfield in Russia’s Kursk region bordering Ukraine, a day after Moscow blamed Kyiv for drone strikes…
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Russia has pounded Ukraine with newly made cruise missiles in recent weeks, British weapons researchers said Monday, suggesting that production has continued months after Western governments imposed unprecedented sanctions on Moscow. The Conflict Armament Research (CAR) said its experts were in Kyiv on Nov. 23 when Russia fired around 70 cruise missiles. Analysis of two…
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Updates with court ruling, adds top three lines. A Moscow court on Tuesday ordered the arrest in absentia of two Ukrainian ministers after they were accused of violating Russia’s territorial integrity. The decision came following a request by the FSB security service to arrest in absentia Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk and Deputy Foreign…
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Jailed Belarusian opposition leader Maria Kolesnikova, who was admitted to intensive care last week, has been returned to jail and is being monitored by doctors, her allies have said. She was arrested and handed 11 years behind bars last year in the wake of huge and long-running popular protests against the authoritarian rule of strongman…
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Latvia said Tuesday that it is revoking the independent Russian television channel Dozhd’s broadcasting license, citing “threats to national security and social order” following a series of infringements related to the channel’s coverage of the war in Ukraine. “Dozhd TV will disappear from the airwaves on Thursday, Dec. 8,” tweeted Ivars Abolins, chairman of Latvia’s…
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Ukraine worked to restore power on Tuesday after Russia’s latest wave of missile strikes caused power disruptions across the country, right as winter frost builds and temperatures plunge. Out of the 70 missiles launched by Moscow, “most” were shot down, President Volodymyr Zelensky said, but the barrage still hit Ukraine’s already battered infrastructure. Fresh power…
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The Russian Defense Ministry said Ukrainian drone attacks caused explosions at two airfields in the Saratov and Ryazan regions on Monday, leaving three dead. On Monday morning “the Kyiv regime attempted to strike the Dyagilevo airfield in the Ryazan region, and the Engels airfield in the Saratov region, with Soviet-made drones,” the ministry said in…
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The investigation of the war in Ukraine by the International Criminal Court (ICC) should not be “set up to fail” by plans to create a separate special tribunal for Russia, its prosecutor said on Monday. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen last week proposed a UN-backed special court to prosecute the Russian leadership for…
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The battle for the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut in the country’s eastern Donetsk region has become the bloodiest of the war so far and has even prompted comparisons to the great battles of World War I for its trench warfare, high casualty numbers and largely static frontline. While the medium-sized city has been shelled by…
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Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a law expanding the existing ban on the prohibition of “LGBT propaganda” to children to include the entire population on Monday. People of all ages are now banned from accessing certain content under the new legislation. From now on, LGBT relationships and “lifestyles” cannot be displayed or mentioned, according to…
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President Vladimir Putin on Monday visited the bridge that links Moscow-annexed Crimea to the Russian mainland weeks after the vital link was hit by a blast, images on state television showed. It was the closest the 70-year-old Russian leader has come to the frontline in Ukraine, after sending troops to the pro-Western country on Feb.…
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A former Russian prisoner who had his jail sentence reduced to allow him to serve in the Russian military in Ukraine has been confirmed dead after claiming to have been threatened with execution, investigative news website The Insider reported, citing prominent prisoners’ rights NGO Gulagu.net. Victor Sevalnev, who served as the commander of the 7th…
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After six months of combat with Russia’s 64th Motorized Rifle Brigade in Ukraine, Alexei Astashov quietly rejoiced when he was discharged from the army and sent back to his former life as a veterinarian in the Far East. But amid the elation of being reunited with his wife and son, he has still not been…
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