Russia recorded 65,000 excess deaths in August, data published Friday by the Rosstat national statistics service showed, as another brutal wave of the coronavirus pandemic continues to show no sign of abating. The figures revealed that August 2021 was one of the most deadly months since the beginning of the pandemic in Russia, with the…
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Nobel Peace Prize winner Dmitry Muratov credited the independent Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta, where he has served as editor-in-chief for over two decades, for the prestigious award on Friday. “I can’t take credit for this. This is Novaya Gazeta’s,” Muratov said after the Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded him and prominent journalist from the Philippines, Maria…
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Russia added the investigative outlet Bellingcat and nine journalists from various news outlets to its “foreign agents” registry Friday. The additions come hours after the independent Novaya Gazeta newspaper’s editor Dmitry Muratov received the Nobel Peace Prize for “defending freedom of speech in Russia under increasingly challenging conditions.” Bellingcat, as well as the independent Caucasian…
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A new Russian drag competition has sparked controversy among the country’s LGBT community, with activists saying the YouTube show ignores issues LGBT people face in Russia. Nastya Ivleeva, a popular blogger with millions of followers on Instagram and YouTube, last week launched “Royal Cobras,” a drag competition that resembles the hit U.S. series “RuPaul’s Drag…
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Enjoy golden autumn This year Moscow seems to have missed its usual “old woman’s summer,” those few days of warm weather that suddenly appear and as suddenly disappear amidst the cool days of fall. Instead we went from summer to gloomy autumn in the blink of an eye in early September. But after a month…
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Russia broke another one-day coronavirus death toll record Friday, as more regions reimpose restrictions aimed at slowing the spread of the virus and the Kremlin stops short of reintroducing nationwide measures. A government tally recorded 936 Covid deaths over the past 24 hours, bringing the number of total deaths based on daily figures to 213,549.…
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The editor of one of Russia’s leading independent newspapers, Novaya Gazeta, has won the Nobel Peace Prize. The awards committee, based in Oslo, Norway, handed the prestigious prize to Dmitry Muratov, 59, editor-in-chief of the liberal paper, which focuses on reporting related to human rights, freedom of speech and other politically sensitive topics. “Muratov has…
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The European Union has accused Russia of delaying the mutual recognition of coronavirus vaccine certificates to ease travel between countries. EU Ambassador to Russia Markus Ederer said the 27-member bloc had sent the Russian Health Ministry “all the information and requests needed to decide on recognizing the equivalence” of EU and Russian certificates. “Russia has…
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At least 17 people died from counterfeit alcohol poisoning in central Russia, authorities said Friday, a problem that has plagued the country for years despite the Kremlin’s campaign against so-called surrogate alcohol. The victims included residents of neighboring towns in central Russia’s Orenburg region aged 36 to 79, according to the Investigative Committee, which probes…
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The World Health Organization said on Thursday it was about to restart the process of approving Russia’s Sputnik V Covid-19 vaccine following a series of problems with the dossier. WHO authorisation has been sought for the Sputnik V jab created by Russia’s Gamaleya research institute, which is already being used in 45 countries, according to an AFP…
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October 7, 2021, 18:45 A working meeting between Elena Burmistrova, Deputy Chairman of the Gazprom Management Committee, Director General of Gazprom Export, and Joe M. Kang, President of the International Gas Union (IGU), took place today at St. Petersburg International Gas Forum 2021. The parties expressed appreciation for the long-term cooperation between Gazprom and the IGU. In particular, the discussion touched upon the…
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October 7, 2021, 18:15 A number of documents for developing the Russian NGV market were signed today at St. Petersburg International Gas Forum 2021. Gazprom Gazomotornoye Toplivo signed agreements on the wider use of natural gas as a vehicle fuel with the governments of three Russian regions: the Republics of Tatarstan and Mordovia and the Kaliningrad Region. The documents were signed in furtherance of previously existing agreements. The…
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Russian President Vladimir Putin celebrates his 69th birthday on Thursday. While he typically spends his birthdays at work, ending the day with family and friends at home, he occasionally marks the big day with special celebrations like a hockey game with NHL stars or drinking vodka with Chinese and Japanese heads of state. Here’s a…
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October 7, 2021, 16:05 A number of documents relating to the development of scientific & technical cooperation and standardization were signed today at St. Petersburg International Gas Forum 2021. Gazprom and TMK signed a scientific and technical cooperation program for another five-year period spanning from 2021 to 2025. TMK will place its core focus on mastering the manufacture of new types of high-tech pipe products,…
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October 7, 2021, 16:00 A number of contractual documents relating to the implementation of the construction project for the Gas Processing Complex near Ust-Luga (GPC of CPECG, forms part of the Complex for processing ethane-containing gas (CPECG)) were signed today at St. Petersburg International Gas Forum 2021. A license agreement was signed, ensuring the provision of rights for the use of the natural gas liquefaction technology by Gazprom…
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October 7, 2021, 15:55 A number of documents were signed today at St. Petersburg International Gas Forum 2021 to advance activities in the areas of natural gas processing & liquefaction, as well as NGV market development. Gazprom and Caspian Innovation Company (CIC) signed a long-term contract for supplies of ethane fraction and liquid hydrocarbons (LPG). The document stipulates the basic terms of supply of valuable components that will…
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October 7, 2021, 15:50 Gazprom and Irkutsk Oil Company (INK) signed a Memorandum of Intent today at St. Petersburg International Gas Forum 2021. According to the document, the parties are interested in starting a joint project for the production and processing of formation brines (saline groundwaters) from the Kovyktinskoye field of Gazprom in order to obtain lithium compounds and other valuable components. The groundwaters of the Kovyktinskoye field contain…
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October 7, 2021, 15:45 A number of documents were signed today at St. Petersburg International Gas Forum 2021 to advance cooperation between Gazprom and Russian industrial enterprises. Gazprom, the Rostec State Corporation, and the Republic of Bashkortostan signed an Agreement of Intent. According to the document, UEC-UMPO (part of the Rostec State Corporation) is going to create a production and technological complex (PTC) for the repair and…
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NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said Thursday the alliance had to act against rising Russian “malign activities” after expelling members of Moscow’s delegation for alleged spying. “The decision to withdraw the accreditation of eight members of the Russian delegation to NATO was done based on intelligence because these are undeclared Russian intelligence officers,” Stoltenberg said. …
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Russia has invited the Taliban to attend negotiations on Afghanistan in Moscow later this month, the Kremlin’s envoy to Afghanistan said Thursday. The hardline Islamist group seized control of the Afghan government in August following a lightning-fast offensive that coincided with the United States’ withdrawal of troops that ended its 20-year war. Russia’s presidential envoy to Afghanistan,…
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SARANSK, Mordovia — Saransk Football Club’s last three home games attracted fewer than 250 fans, a quarter of the crowd allowed under Russia’s coronavirus restrictions. While lackluster attendance is no surprise for a team formed only months ago and playing in the third rung of Russia’s football pyramid, the idle turnstiles and empty stands seem…
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October 7, 2021, 12:50 The commissioning ceremony for six compressed natural gas (CNG) filling stations of Gazprom located in Maikop (Republic of Adygea), Karamaskaly (Republic of Bashkortostan), Akhtubinsk and Seitovka (Astrakhan Region), Kemerovo (Kemerovo Region), and Millerovo (Rostov Region) was held today at St. Petersburg International Gas Forum 2021. Taking part in the event were Viktor Zubkov, Chairman of the Gazprom Board of Directors, Vitaly…
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Russians were set Thursday to commemorate the killing of top journalist Anna Politkovskaya 15 years ago on President Vladimir Putin’s birthday, while her newspaper warned time had run out to name the mastermind of the murder. Politkovskaya, a fierce critic of Putin and the Kremlin’s brutal wars in Chechnya, was gunned down on October 7,…
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Russia’s inflation rate shot up to a new five-year high in September, heaping more pressure on the country’s economic recovery from the coronavirus pandemic. Annual price rises came in at 7.4%, the Rosstat statistics agency said Wednesday — ahead of market expectations and a significant jump from the 6.7% inflation rate recorded in August. That…
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Russia’s inflation rate shot up to a new five-year high in September, heaping more pressure on the country’s economic recovery from the coronavirus pandemic. Annual price rises came in at 7.4%, the Rosstat statistics agency said Wednesday — ahead of market expectations and a significant jump from the 6.7% inflation rate recorded in August. That…
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A German prize for democracy and freedom of expression was on Wednesday awarded to imprisoned Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny and his FBK anti-corruption foundation. “Of course, we’ll keep going,” Navalny’s close ally Leonid Volkov, who lives in exile, said as he accepted the M100 Media Award in Potsdam, just outside Berlin. Despite repression by…
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Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu has taken disciplinary action against his subordinates in St. Petersburg for sending honor guards to the country’s first royal wedding in over a century, news agencies reported Wednesday. The Russian military’s honor guard was filmed last Friday forming a saber arch during Grand Duke George Mikhailovich Romanov and his Italian…
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NATO said on Wednesday it had stripped eight members of the Russian mission to the Alliance of their accreditation, calling them “undeclared Russian intelligence officers,” meaning spies. A NATO official giving the information said that “we can also confirm that we have reduced the number of positions which the Russian Federation can accredit to NATO…
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Three female politicians who failed to gain seats in Russian parliamentary elections critics say were marred by fraud are launching a project that aims to prepare the next generation of women lawmakers. Former independent State Duma candidates Marina Litvinovich and Alyona Popova and former State Duma deputy Oksana Pushkina said they want to use their…
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Two Moscow restaurants have hung on to their places on The World’s 50 Best Restaurants list, while falling down the rankings. White Rabbit fell to number 25 this year from 13 in 2019, while Twins Garden dropped from 19 to 30 at a ceremony in Antwerp on Tuesday organized by World’s 50 Best, an influential…
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Russian President Vladimir Putin said Wednesday that Europe was to blame for the current energy crisis after soaring gas prices spurred accusations that Moscow is withholding supplies to pressure the West. “They’ve made mistakes,” Putin said in a televised meeting with Russian energy officials. He said that one of the factors influencing the prices was…
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“House Arrest” by Alexei German Jr., which premiered at the 74th Cannes Film Festival, has just opened in Russian movie theaters. Compared to the director’s earlier multifaceted films − from harsh dramas like “The Last Train” and “Garpastum” to the large-scale feature “Under Electric Clouds” – “House Arrest” is rather simple and clear. The action…
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Russia broke its daily coronavirus deaths record Wednesday, passing 900 fatalities as officials warn that new case numbers have tripled since last fall and are on course to pass the 30,000 mark. The government tally said 929 people died from Covid-19 across Russia in the past 24 hours, bringing the official death toll based on…
DetailsHot functional test of the reactor plant, a large-scale stage of commissioning works before the physical start-up, has been completed successfully at Unit 2 of Belarus NPP (its General Designer and the General Contractor being ROSATOM). In the process of hot functional test, the specialists conducted over 260 various tests, the main purpose of which…
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The Belarus edition of a popular pro-government Russian newspaper said Tuesday it was shutting down after Belarusian authorities blocked its website and detained one of its journalists last week. Komsomolskaya Pravda Belarus said it reached the decision “having analyzed the events of the past year and especially the past week.” Days earlier, Belarus blocked the…
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Leading senators have on the United States to consider expelling up to 300 Russian diplomats unless Moscow issues more visas for the U.S. embassy. The United States protested when Moscow on August 1 barred embassies from hiring Russian or third-country staff, forcing Washington to lay off nearly 200 locals at missions across Russia. In a…
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A group of 45 Western countries demanded at the global toxic arms watchdog on Tuesday that Russia provide urgent answers about the poisoning of Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny. Moscow now has 10 days to respond to the questions posed by the EU and countries including the United States, Canada and Australia, under the rules of…
DetailsOn October 6, the World Cerebral Palsy Day, ROSATOM joined the Dobroshrift charity campaign by installing a special font on its websites and social networks. The Dobroshrift project was developed by the “Gift to an Angel” charitable foundation to mark the World Cerebral Palsy Day. It is aimed at drawing the attention to the problems…
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Russia on Tuesday stepped up the pressure on Facebook, threatening to hit the company with its largest fine yet for repeatedly ignoring requests to remove banned content. The country’s media regulator Roskomnadzor said that it had drawn up a new protocol to penalize the U.S. social media giant for repeatedly failing “to remove information dangerous…
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When the show starts, the audience greets the actors by beeping their horns and flashing their headlights. All over the world, this would be a drive-in movie. But not far from St. Petersburg, the drive-in theater is a real theater with a stage, set decorations and actors. The theater is a joint project of the…
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A prominent NGO that tracks abuses in Russia’s prison system says it has received “thousands” of leaked video clips showing inmates being beaten and tortured by guards in several prisons across the country. “This is an unprecedented leak that will send shockwaves across the country. In total we have over 40 gigabytes of files showing…
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A Russian actress and director arrived at the International Space Station (ISS) on Tuesday to begin a 12-day mission to make the first movie in orbit. The Russian crew is set to beat a Hollywood project that was announced last year by “Mission Impossible” star Tom Cruise together with NASA and Elon Musk’s SpaceX. Actress…
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Prominent migrant rights defender Valentina Chupik has fled to Armenia following a 30-year entry ban to Russia, she told The Moscow Times on Tuesday. Chupik, an Uzbek activist who had held asylum in Russia since 2009, was detained at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport last month, with FSB officers telling her that her refugee status was revoked…
DetailsOctober 5 marked the start of a comprehensive, ecological expedition to study the western part of the Northern Sea Route (NSR); the expedition is overseen by Moscow State University’s Marine Research Centre. Commissioned by ROSATOM, the study will take place aboard the research vessel “Aleksey Maryshev,” which was provided by ROSATOM-subsidiary, The Hydrographic Enterprise. The…
DetailsChepetsky Mechanical Plant (ChMP), an enterprise of Rosatom’s TVEL Fuel Company in Glazov, Russia’s Udmurt Republic, has mastered the technology of zirconium sponge production. The ceremony of the new facility launch took place on October 5, 2021 with participation of Director General of ROSATOM Alexey Likhachev and President of TVEL Fuel Company Natalia Nikipelova. Until…
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Ivan Lubennikov, one of Russia’s most original and celebrated monumental artists, died at age 70 on Sunday. His funeral was held today at the Kuntsevo cemetery. His mosaics, murals and mixed media installations can be found in Moscow and other Russian cities as well as abroad. One of his most famous works is the new…
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Russia broke its daily coronavirus deaths record again on Tuesday as the rising toll and the spike in new cases prompt regional response centers to reimpose restrictions that have been absent since the start of the year. The government tally reported 895 Covid-19 deaths across Russia in the past 24 hours, bringing the official death…
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Russian officials highlighted the need to develop the country’s own “sovereign” social media platforms after a massive outage at Facebook’s vast family of apps affected billions of users worldwide late Monday. Facebook and its Instagram and WhatsApp platforms essentially “disappeared” from the internet for several hours after a traffic routing problem left the sites unreachable for…
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Russia on Tuesday is set to launch an actress and a film director into space in a bid to best the United States to the first movie in orbit. If successful, the Russian crew will beat a Hollywood project that was announced earlier this year by “Mission Impossible” star Tom Cruise together with NASA and…
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Russia said Monday it has developed software that monitors social media to help authorities prevent young people from harming themselves and others, but which critics say could be used to silence dissent. The initiative comes after an 18-year-old student at Perm State University last month shot dead six people in the latest in a growing…
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Moscow car enthusiasts had the opportunity to visit the annual Bolshaya Progulka (“Big Walk”) exhibition next to the Kremlin on Saturday. This year’s theme centered on the 1990s, when Russia opened its doors to the mass import of foreign-made cars:
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The operator of the controversial Nord Stream 2 pipeline from Russia to Germany — criticized by some Western countries as a geopolitical weapon — said on Monday it had begun filling the pipeline with gas. The latest step pushing the Baltic Sea pipeline to completion comes as Europe faces an energy crisis with natural gas…
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Leaked financial papers published by an international group of investigative journalists Sunday implicated several close associates of Russian President Vladimir Putin in allegedly hiding mass amounts of wealth in offshore firms. The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists said that Russian nationals are “disproportionately represented” in the Pandora Papers, with 14% of the more than 27,000…
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The Museum of Russian Impressionism in Moscow has once again organized a show of little-known but fascinating Russian art. “Other Shores” is a partial reconstruction of an almost forgotten exhibition held almost 100 years ago in New York, in 1924. The exhibition included works by Petr Konchalvsky, Igor Grabar, Mikhail Lariononv, Aristarkh Lentulov, Boris Grigoriev,…
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Russian film director Klim Shipenko said Monday the first movie in orbit would be an “experiment,” on the eve of his journey into space hoping to beat a rival Hollywood project. The 38-year-old director and one of Russia’s most famous actresses, Yulia Peresild, 37, are due to blast off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan at…
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The November-class K-159 submarine sank in late August 2003 while being towed in bad weather from the closed naval base of Gremikha on the eastern shores of the Kola Peninsula toward the Nerpa shipyard north of Murmansk. Researchers have monitored the wreck ever since, fearing leakages of radioactivity from the two old nuclear reactors onboard…
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Russia’s top cabinet official on Monday criticized the country’s stalling vaccination rates for failing to slow the spread of Covid-19 as Russians die in numbers not seen since the start of the pandemic. Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin said health officials have made it easy for people across the country’s 11 time zones to get the Covid…
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Belarusian security officers detained a pro-government reporter who covered a deadly shooting incident involving Belarus’ KGB security agency and an IT worker in Moscow before transporting him to Minsk, activists said Saturday. Russian officials and media executives have criticized the actions, along with other steps seen as the continuation of Belarusian authorities’ crackdown on remaining…
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Russia said on Monday it had launched a new hypersonic cruise missile from a submarine, the latest test of emerging weapons President Vladimir Putin has dubbed “invincible.” Moscow has in recent years touted the development of weapons that it hopes will give it the edge in any arms race with the United States at a…
DetailsThe ROSATOM’s first Sustainable Development Report for 2020 was first posted on the website of the UN Global Compact Network October 1, 2021. The report is qualified rated at level “Active”. Head of Sustainable Development Department of ROSATOM Polina Lion commented: “The adherence to the sustainable development principles requires the company’ fundamentally new level of…
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