Senior members of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s regime have called for the country to bring back the death penalty following Friday’s attack on a Moscow concert hall. Critics have sounded the alarm over the demand, including due to Russia’s broad use of counter-terrorism and anti-extremist laws to target Kremlin opponents and supporters of Ukraine. Russia…
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The president of Tajikistan condemned the Moscow concert hall attack in a call with Russian leader Vladimir Putin on Sunday, amid allegations the gunmen were Tajik citizens. Russian media, including Telegram channels with links to the security services, and a lawmaker have alleged that the four suspected assailants were Tajiks. Russian authorities have said only…
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Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with Sunday’s strikes also coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A attack by militants on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people has also…
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FROM THE COMPILER* There are many political prisoners in Russia, and their number is only increasing. It’s axiomatic: the less freedom there is in a country, the more people are imprisoned for their beliefs. Before February 24, 2022, the authorities usually sentenced political prisoners on far-fetched criminal charges. Now political repression has become blatant. People…
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Russia said Saturday evening it had repulsed a barrage of Ukrainian missiles fired at the city of Sevastopol in Crimea, the city’s governor saying two people had been injured. “According to initial information, more than 10 missiles have been shot down,” Sevastopol’s Governor Mikhail Razvozhayev said on Telegram. He added that a child and a…
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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Saturday accused Russia’s Vladimir Putin of seeking to “shift the blame” onto Kyiv for the Moscow concert hall attack that killed 133 people. “What happened yesterday in Moscow is obvious: Putin and the other scum are just trying to blame it on someone else,” Zelensky announced, after Putin said the…
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MOSCOW – Russians are mourning the victims of the attack on a popular live music venue in Moscow’s suburbs that left at least 133 dead, including children, and injured dozens more. People are laying flowers, toys and candles outside Crocus City Hall, the concert hall in the Moscow suburb of Krasnogorsk, in memory of the…
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Russian state-run media on Saturday released videos of law enforcement agents interrogating three men suspected of carrying out the deadly attack on a Moscow region concert hall the night before. Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) earlier on Saturday announced the arrest of 11 people, including four suspected assailants, in connection to the attack on Friday.…
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Maryna Vasileuskaya, Belarus’ first woman cosmonaut, was aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft that blasted off successfully on Saturday headed for the International Space Station, Moscow’s Roscosmos space agency said. “The Soyuz took off from Baikonur” in Kazakhstan at 12:36 GMT, a Roscosmos statement said, adding that the spacecraft went into orbit “as planned.” Initially programmed…
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An attack by gunmen on a Moscow suburban concert hall Friday left at least 133 dead, according to Russian authorities. Here is what we know about the attack on the Crocus City Hall in Krasnogorsk ahead of a concert by the Piknik rock band: Attackers in ‘tactical uniforms’ The attack began around 8:15 pm before…
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Russia on Saturday claimed a new territorial victory over Ukrainian forces struggling to find weapons and troops while the two sides staged deadly new aerial attacks on each other. As a militant attack on a Moscow concert hall became a new flashpoint dispute between the arch-rivals, Russia’s armed forces said they had seized the Ukrainian…
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Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday called an attack on a concert hall that killed more than 100 a “barbaric terrorist act” and vowed harsh retribution to all those involved. In a televised address, Putin said all four gunmen had been arrested before they had a chance to cross the border into Ukraine. “I am…
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Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday vowed to punish those behind a “barbaric terrorist attack” on a Moscow concert hall that killed at least 133, saying Russia had arrested four gunmen who were trying to flee to Ukraine. Kyiv has strongly denied any connection, and Putin made no reference to claims of responsibility by the…
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In Russia today there is a belief that the food served in Russian Orthodox monasteries is the apotheosis of Russian cooking. Some people insist that the monasteries preserved the very best that had survived from ancient Russian cuisine — beautifully prepared, delicious, healthy food. But isn’t there a contradiction here? On the one hand, Christianity…
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World leaders denounced a deadly attack by gunmen on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed more than 60 people and wounded over 100. Attackers dressed in camouflage uniforms entered the Crocus City venue ahead of the start of a rock concert, opened fire and threw a grenade or incendiary bomb, according to a…
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One person died Saturday in the Russian border region of Belgorod adjoining Ukraine and a fire broke out at an oil refinery further east in Samara after drone attacks, officials said. Belgorod Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov wrote on Telegram that two districts in his region had been hit by drones. “It’s shaping up to be a…
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A group of armed men opened fire at a concert hall in a Moscow suburb on Friday night, killing at least 60 people and injuring 145 others, Russian authorities said, marking one of the deadliest such attacks in Russia in recent decades. A video shared online showed at least two masked men entering the Crocus…
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The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for a gun attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday, which Russian authorities said killed at least 40 people. IS fighters “attacked a large gathering… on the outskirts of the Russian capital Moscow,” the group said in a statement on the Telegram messaging app. The IS statement said…
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Russia is reeling from a mass shooting and blaze at a Moscow rock concert, which the government has labeled a “terrorist attack.” Here is a look back at previous attacks on the city in the past 25 years. Apartment building bombed, 118 dead (1999) A bomb blast in the early hours of Sept. 13, 1999,…
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The White House said on Friday it had no initial indication that Ukraine, which is fighting an invasion by Russia, was involved in a “terrible” attack on a concert hall in Moscow. National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said the United States was still gathering information after Russian officials said gunmen opened fire in a…
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A court in southwestern Russia’s Voronezh region has sentenced a man to 23 years in maximum-security prison on accusations that he sought to blow up a railway station, independent media reported Friday. Alexander Dimitrenko was detained in Voronezh in May 2022, two months after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Dimitrenko had accused agents…
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Rescue workers drilling through a gold mine in Far East Russia hope to reach over a dozen miners trapped under a rockslide within the coming days, Russia’s Emergency Situations Ministry said Friday. A rockslide at the Pioneer mine in the Amur region on Monday covered the 13 miners in rubble, with officials saying they believe…
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Фейк: fake I have been remiss. Although I have mentioned the “Russian” word фейк in many columns, I’ve never really focused on it. I suppose it’s because, well, what’s there to say? Фейк is the standard Russian insult for anything purported to be false, particularly factual information from non-Russian sources. There are plenty of official…
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Russia’s state financial watchdog Rosfinmonitoring has added the so-called “international LGBT public movement” to its list of terrorists and extremists. Being added to the registry allows the authorities to freeze designees’ bank accounts without a court order. It was not immediately clear how Rosfinmonitoring planned to enforce its rules against the vaguely defined “LGBT movement,”…
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Russia’s Central Bank left interest rates unchanged on Friday, as the war in Ukraine continues to fuel stubbornly high inflation and labor shortages across the economy. The regulator has progressively hiked rates to 16% over the past year in a bid to ease price pressures, and analysts are waiting for the bank to signal whether…
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Updated with comments from source close to Russia’s Defense Ministry. Russia is planning to recruit 300,000 soldiers for a renewed offensive to seize the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, the investigative news outlet Vyorstka reported Friday, citing sources in the Kremlin, Defense Ministry and regional governments. “We’re 300,000 snouts short, that’s why everything’s ready for ‘mobilization…
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Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) has arrested seven Moscow residents said to be linked to a pro-Kyiv militia accused of attacking Russia’s border regions, state news agencies reported on Friday. The arrests come days after Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the FSB to wage an unrelenting crackdown on volunteer units fighting on the side of…
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Updated with Peskov’s remarks during Friday’s press briefing. Russia has found itself in a “state of war” with Ukraine, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in an interview with the pro-government newspaper Argumenty i Fakty published on Friday. Moscow officially refers to its full-scale invasion of Ukraine as a “special military operation,” seeking to downplay the impact of the two-year…
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The Russian navy accidentally fired on a fishing trawler during training exercises earlier this week, causing an explosion and killing three people on board the vessel, the independent broadcaster Dozhd reported, citing one of the victims’ relatives. Authorities said Tuesday that one fisherman had died and four others were injured in a fire that had broken out…
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Authorities in Siberia’s Krasnoyarsk region plan to close several prisons this year after a drop-off in the number of inmates due to military recruitment efforts for the war in Ukraine, a regional official said Thursday. “A one-time large reduction in the number of convicts during the special military operation prompted some people to report to…
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The Supreme Court of Russia’s republic of Tatarstan on Thursday sentenced infamous serial killer Radik Tagirov, widely known as the “Volga Maniac,” to life in prison. Tagirov, a native of Tatarstan’s capital Kazan, was found guilty of murdering 31 elderly women and committing assault against another 33 between March 2011 and October 2012, according to Russia’s Investigative…
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Updated with Boris’ statement. The launch of a Russian Soyuz MS-25 spacecraft to the International Space Station (ISS) was aborted just seconds before liftoff on Thursday, with officials blaming a loss of pressure at a power source. “There was an automatic launch cancellation,” a flight controller said in a live stream broadcast by Russia’s space…
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Russia has expelled a journalist from the Spanish El Mundo daily after refusing to renew his work visa, the newspaper reported Thursday, calling it an attack on press freedom. Xavier Colas, who had been reporting from Moscow for 12 years, was on Wednesday given 24 hours to leave Russia since he was unable to obtain…
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A Moscow court on Thursday ordered the arrest in absentia of Vladimir Osechkin, the exiled founder of the Russian prisoners’ rights NGO Gulagu.net. Osechkin is accused of justifying terrorism and calling for terrorist attacks online, a crime punishable by up to seven years in prison, according to a ruling published by Moscow’s Meshchansky District Court.…
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Russia’s Federal Customs Service (FTS) on Thursday accused Lithuanian authorities of blocking freight trucks from entering Lithuania from the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad. “Since 23:00 on March 20, without explanation, Lithuania has not accepted a single truck from Russia,” the FTS said in a statement, saying the blockage created a line of 140 trucks on the…
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Moscow said Thursday that it had captured another village in east Ukraine, around 10 kilometers from the city of Avdiivka, which fell to Russian forces last month. It was the second village west of Avdiivka that Moscow claimed to have seized this week, with Russia seeing some recent successes on the battlefield as Kyiv faces…
DetailsMarch 21 marks the International Day of Forests, which was established by the UN General Assembly to draw attention to the sustainable management of these natural resources
The Kremlin on Thursday slammed the West for putting “unprecedented pressure” on Chinese banks accepting payments from Russia, admitting there were some “problems” with cross-border transactions. Citing Russian financial sources, the pro-Kremlin Izvestia newspaper reported earlier on Thursday that some Chinese lenders had stopped accepting payments in Chinese yuan from Russian companies. “The unprecedented U.S.…
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Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) said Thursday that it arrested a man in the western Belgorod region on suspicion of planning attacks in coordination with pro-Ukrainian paramilitary groups. “A supporter of Ukrainian nationalist ideology was preparing acts of sabotage and terrorism against the Russian military on the instructions of the terrorist organization Russian Volunteer Corps,” the FSB said…
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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called for the West to deliver air defense systems to Kyiv after an overnight Russian missile attack injured 17 in the capital and surrounding region. Ukraine’s air force said it shot down 31 Russian missiles targeting Kyiv, an attack that comes after Moscow vowed to respond to an escalation in Ukrainian…
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“Kissing Day” is a short animated film based on an interview with the famous Russian journalist, writer and LGBTQ+ activist Elena Kostyuchenko. It tells the story of the “Kissing Day” event that Elena organized in front of the Russian State Duma in 2012 during the first hearings of the law against “gay propaganda” among minors.…
DetailsOrenburgneft, Rosneft’s key production asset in the Volga Federal District, invested 2.9 billion roubles in 2023 to implement environment-oriented and nature restoration measures
Documentary filmmaking has a long and illustrious history in Russia, with waves of popularity that have tended to correlate with changes in the political climate. Soon after Vladimir Putin became president in 2000 and his government began chipping away at media freedom, interest in documentary film began to rise. As television network news became more…
DetailsIts participants will address the optimal combination of different types of low-carbon generation. On March 25, 2024, the International Forum ATOMEXPO-2024 will host a round table on the synergy of renewable and nuclear generation. Invited to participate are: Maxim Bystrov, Chairman of the Board, NP Market Council Association; Andrey Maximov, Director of the Department of…
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This past week Russians across the country celebrated Maslenitsa. The weeklong holiday marks Shrovetide, the last week before Lent begins, but has roots in Slavic pagan traditions. The holiday culminates in large bonfires and the burning of straw effigies — a symbolic funeral for the winter that has just passed. This is the last week…
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Russia’s big cities may appear to be flourishing, filled with shops, restaurants, recently built apartment buildings, malls and entertainment venues. But many if not most of Russia’s villages are not enjoying the same economic boom. Infrastructure is in poor shape, job opportunities are scant, schools are closed as families move to larger towns and cities,…
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VILNIUS, Lithuania — Thousands of Russian opposition activists fled to Lithuania’s capital following the Kremlin’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, seeking safety from the political crackdown quickly sweeping their home country. That sense of safety was blighted when Leonid Volkov, a close aide of late opposition leader Alexei Navalny, was attacked near his home with a…
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In a separate post, Gladkov announced that schools and shopping centers in the city of Belgorod and some surrounding districts would close temporarily over the coming days, the second time this month. Russia’s Defense Ministry earlier said it had downed rockets, missiles and drones in the border regions of Belgorod and Kursk which have suffered…
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When people think of the Orthodox Christian Maslenitsa (Shrovetide), they almost all think of one food: pancakes (blinis). But pancakes are not a purely Russian culinary achievement, and it’s silly to associate them solely with Orthodox traditions. Pancakes have been around for much longer. The Mari people (in Russia once called Cheremis) live mainly between…
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Russian missiles pounded Ukraine’s Black Sea port city of Odesa on Friday, killing more than a dozen people including rescue workers in an attack President Volodymyr Zelensky described as “vile.” AFP journalists on the scene saw bodies covered by blankets strewn on the street, while images from officials showed exhausted emergency service workers smeared with…
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In Russia’s ethnic republics, outsize war casualties, worsening economic conditions and even sweeping repressions are unlikely to catalyze voters against President Vladimir Putin in this weekend’s presidential election, experts and activists told The Moscow Times. With most of the Russian opposition imprisoned, in exile or dead, Putin is expected to easily secure victory in the…
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President Vladimir Putin cast his vote online Friday in Russia’s presidential elections being held in occupied regions of Ukraine. Images distributed by the Kremlin showed the long-time Russian leader voting at a computer in his office and waving to the camera. … we have a small favor to ask. As you may have heard, The…
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President Vladimir Putin said Friday that his military would respond to this week’s spate of Ukrainian attacks on Russia, which he described as an attempt by Kyiv to derail the March 15-17 presidential election. “The goal of these pointless acts from a military standpoint and criminal acts from a humanitarian standpoint was to try to…
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Newlyweds, a legendary Slavic hero and Tucker Carlson greeted voters at polling stations across Russia as the country’s presidential election began. Here’s a look at some of the most colorful scenes from the first day of voting: Fictional Characters A local resident came to a polling station in Yugorsk dressed as Cheburashka. He voted in…
DetailsThis important production stage precedes the commencement of installation of the main equipment at Unit 8 The lower part of the inner containment dome has been installed in design position at Unit 8 of Tianway NPP, which is under construction in China under the Russian VVER-1200 design. Large metal structures were pre-assembled on the ground…
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More than 400 polling stations in remote parts of Russia’s Far East have reported a 100% turnout on the first day of the presidential election, the independent news website Vyorstka reported Friday. Early voting began in difficult-to-reach areas across 37 Russian regions, as well as parts of occupied Ukraine, in late February. Vyorstka noted that…
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Хлам: junk In my part of the world, my neighbors seem to be doing some intensive early spring cleaning. Every day by the garbage bins there are new piles of tattered armchairs, ancient toilets, fake wood storage units, bags of baby clothes and (revoltingly stained) mattresses. In Russian, all this is хлам: junk, rubbish, old…
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Russia has opened polling stations for the 2024 presidential election in the Moscow-occupied regions of Ukraine despite ongoing fighting and the regions being internationally recognized as part of Ukraine. Moscow claimed to have annexed Ukraine’s Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions following 2022 referendums that Ukraine and the West described as a sham. It previously…
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At least four people in regions across Russia carried out arson attacks at polling places on Friday as the first day of voting in the March 15-17 presidential election got underway. In Moscow, an elderly woman was detained for setting fire to a voting booth, according to the independent news outlet Sota. A video published…
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Russian election and law enforcement authorities have reported a spate of incidents involving voters spilling green antiseptic dye into ballot boxes on the first day of the presidential election. The dye, called zelyonka in Russian, was widely used in attacks on opposition activists figures during the 2010s. Russia’s Central Election Commission (CEC) called for security…
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