Updated with AFP report. The espionage trial of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich resumed on Thursday morning behind closed doors in the Russian city of Yekaterinburg, local media reported. The hearing was originally set to resume on Aug. 13, but Gershkovich’s defense lawyers had requested the date be moved up. Thursday’s hearing is closed…
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Russia’s Defense Ministry said on Thursday morning that it had downed dozens of Ukrainian aerial and waterborne drones targeting the annexed Crimean peninsula in an overnight attack. “Air defense systems on duty destroyed and intercepted 33 aerial drones over… Crimea,” the ministry said in a statement, adding that forces “in the Black Sea destroyed 10…
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President Vladimir Putin warned on Wednesday that unregulated cryptocurrency mining risks overloading Russia’s electrical grid and causing widespread power outages. “An uncontrolled increase in electricity consumption for mining cryptocurrencies can lead to power shortages in certain regions,” Putin told senior government officials at a meeting focused on the economy. Russia’s Energy Ministry estimates that crypto mining consumes…
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Lithuania will no longer allow passenger vehicles with Belarusian license plates to enter the country, the Baltic nation’s customs agency announced on Wednesday. The ban, which takes effect Thursday, applies to passenger cars “regardless of the nationality of their owner or driver,” the agency said. An exception will be made until Aug. 16 for Belarusian…
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A young couple was killed in a Ukrainian drone strike while driving in southwestern Russia’s Belgorod region, Russian authorities said Wednesday. Belgorod region Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said the latest attack took place in the village of Tserkovny, less than 10 kilometers from the border with northeastern Ukraine’s Kharkiv region. “As a result of a car fire,…
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In a forest in the Kharkiv region, Commander Vyacheslav walks briskly, his eyes fixed on the sky. The radio on his shoulder crackles: “The sky is clear, no more drones, we can go.” The men of one Territorial Defense Brigade of Kharkiv have come to locate a Ukrainian tank destroyed earlier by a Russian drone…
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The Kremlin on Wednesday dismissed suggestions that its ground offensive on northeastern Ukraine’s Kharkiv region had failed, coming a day after Russian officials said they would seal off border villages to protect civilians from Ukrainian shelling. Russia launched a surprise assault into the Kharkiv region in early May in a bid to push Ukrainian forces…
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Russia and Ukraine have exchanged 190 captured soldiers as part of a deal mediated by the United Arab Emirates, the Russian Defense Ministry announced Wednesday. “As a result of a negotiation process, 95 Russian servicemen … have been returned,” the ministry wrote on Telegram, adding that 95 Ukrainian soldiers had also been released. Ukraine’s human…
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Russian media executive Andrei Shmarov, whose short stint as editor-in-chief of the business daily Vedomosti was marred by censorship scandals, has died at the age of 69, the newspaper said Wednesday, citing a family friend. Vedomosti did not name the cause of Shmarov’s death, but anonymously run Telegram news channels with links to Russia’s law…
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Around 650,000 Russians have left the country and not returned since Moscow launched the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, according to a new report by the independent business news outlet The Bell, citing migration data from dozens of countries. Russia saw two waves of outward migration in 2022 — one initially after the start…
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Last month’s deadly attacks on Orthodox churches and synagogues in Russia’s North Caucasus republic of Dagestan have renewed the debate over introducing a nationwide legal ban on the niqab, a full-face veil worn by some Muslim women. The debate was triggered by a report that one of the armed assailants had planned to escape from…
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Authorities in Russia have issued an arrest warrant for exiled investigative journalist Andrei Zakharov, the independent news website Mediazona reported Wednesday, citing the Interior Ministry’s database of wanted persons. The database does not specify what criminal charges Zakharov faces, but Mediazona noted that he was previously charged with failing to comply with Russia’s “foreign agent” labeling…
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Piet Ploeg lost his brother Alex, his brother’s wife Edith and their son Robert while they were traveling from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur in 2014. They were among the passengers on Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 when it was shot down over war-torn eastern Ukraine on July 17, killing all 298 people on board. The remains…
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Updated with restrictions in Krasnodar. Power was restored across southern Russia early Wednesday after a malfunction at a major nuclear plant the day before led to sweeping outages and emergency restrictions across the region. A power unit at the Rostov nuclear plant automatically shut down on Tuesday afternoon due to a “false alarm” in the…
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The governor of Russia’s Belgorod region bordering Ukraine said Tuesday that public access to 14 border villages will be restricted due to constant bombardment. The announcement came after Russian President Vladimir Putin launched a May ground offensive on Ukraine’s northeastern Kharkiv region that he said was intended to create a buffer zone to protect the…
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A university student who fled Russia last year to evade prosecution for criticizing the war in Ukraine said Monday that the Russian authorities canceled her internal passport. “I’m not worried since I didn’t have any rights before anyway,” Olesya Krivtsova wrote in a Telegram post announcing her passport cancelation. “The only thing that’s worrying is…
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The Dutch holding company that split from Russian tech giant Yandex after the West introduced sanctions over the war in Ukraine announced Tuesday that it was relaunching as an artificial intelligence venture in Europe. “Today we are launching Nebius Group, a tech company that aims to become a leading European provider of infrastructure and services…
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Finnish President Alexander Stubb on Tuesday signed a controversial law allowing the country’s border guards to refuse entry to asylum seekers who cross over from Russia. The Nordic country’s right-wing government had for months argued that new legal tools were needed to combat an uptick in asylum seekers from Russia, which in mid-December prompted the…
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Russian cybersecurity company Kaspersky Lab plans to gradually reduce its operations in the U.S. from July 20, the firm told state-run media on Monday. Kaspersky’s exit comes after the U.S. Commerce Department sanctioned the company in June, banning it from selling and updating its popular antivirus software in the country. “The company has carefully studied…
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At the age of 16, Yegor Balazeikin, a high-school student from St. Petersburg, threw Molotov cocktails at two military conscription centers — an anti-war protest that had become widespread across Russia following the invasion of Ukraine. The devices failed to ignite. No one was injured. But Balazeikin, who was initially charged with hooliganism, was eventually…
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Authorities in Russia have called on Google to restore more than 200 pro-government YouTube channels that have been blocked since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the state-run TASS news agency reported Tuesday. Russia’s state media regulator Roskomnadzor said it sent Google CEO Sundar Pichai a request to unblock the channels of “Russian media, federal authorities,…
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They may not have the prestige of the Euros or World Cup, but exhibition matches like these can never be seen in isolation from global conflicts and diplomatic tensions. Twenty-seven days after President Vladimir Putin left North Korea where he met with Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un, Russia’s women’s team hosted North Korea for the…
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The Kremlin on Tuesday gave a cautious response to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s apparent invitation to a future peace summit, saying that Russia first needs to understand what Kyiv means before attending talks. Zelensky said on Monday that Russia “should be” represented at a second summit on the Ukraine conflict, following high-level talks last month…
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Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has called on European Council President Charles Michel to resume diplomatic relations with Russia, the German newspaper Bild reported Monday, citing a letter written by the populist leader following his recent foreign trips that sparked anger in Brussels. Orban — whose country this month took over the rotating EU presidency —…
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A Russian court has rescheduled the closed-door trial of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich at the request of his defense team, the independent news website Mediazona reported Tuesday, citing the court’s press service. The Sverdlovsk Regional Court in the city of Yekaterinburg was originally scheduled to resume hearings in the espionage case against Gershkovich…
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A Russian military court on Monday granted house arrest to a general and former commander in Moscow’s Ukraine offensive who has been charged with fraud. Russia has recently arrested several senior military and defense figures over alleged fraud and bribe-taking, more than two years into Moscow’s offensive in Ukraine. Major General Ivan Popov was released…
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Russian volunteers are sending cats to fight off rodent infestations in the battlefield trenches during the country’s invasion of Ukraine, local media reported Monday. “The soldiers complained to me that they’re plagued by mice,” volunteer Vladimir Malygin told the state-affiliated media outlet Tatar Inform. “Cats saved the Hermitage during the Great Patriotic War [World War II],…
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This year’s Pitrau festival came and went in the republic of Tatarstan. Celebrated by the Kryashens, an Orthodox Christian ethnic sub-group of the Volga Tatars, the holiday has a deep folk and religious meaning. While Pitrau is largely to observe the Day of Saints Peter and Paul, the festival also has pre-Christian roots. The day…
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A U.S. citizen jailed in Russia for kicking a police officer two years ago has complained of being tortured by his fellow inmates, local state-run media reported Monday. Robert Gilman, 30, was sentenced to four years and six months in Russian prison for allegedly kicking a law enforcement officer in October 2022, a sentence that was…
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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Monday that Russia should be represented at a second summit aiming to secure lasting peace with the Kremlin, after more than two years of war. Dozens of world leaders voiced support for a just peace in Ukraine after a high-level summit convened by Zelensky last month in Switzerland, to which…
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“Limonov: The Ballad,” directed by Kirill Serebrennikov, was screened at the Cannes Film Festival and will be released in the US in September. The screenplay, written by Serebrennikov with Ben Hopkins and Paweł Pawlikowski in an adaptation of Emmanuel Carrère’s 2015 fictionalized biography, tells the story of the poet, writer and Soviet dissident who became…
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A Russian soldier who was medically discharged from Ukraine was accused of firing at a group of children in southern Russia’s Volgograd region, local media reported Monday, citing authorities and the victims’ relatives. A 12-year-old boy was hospitalized with a gunshot wound in the leg, according to the news website v1.ru. The outlet said several anonymous…
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Russia’s state-run Rossiya 1 TV channel ran a segment threatening to strike European capitals during its primetime broadcast on Sunday evening. “Almost all European capitals will be under threat if our missiles are stationed in Kaliningrad: Berlin, Warsaw, all the Baltic states, Paris, Bucharest, Prague, and of course, the American bases in Germany,” TV host and…
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The Dutch holding company of Russian tech giant Yandex has closed a deal to sell its remaining stake in Russia, the company said on Monday. The $2.8 billion sale of a 28% stake completes the Amsterdam-based Yandex NV’s exit from Russia, after most of its assets in the country were sold to a Russian consortium…
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Russian television will for the first time in 40 years not broadcast the Olympics due to the near-total absence of its athletes, the news outlet sports.ru has reported, citing unidentified sources. Russian and Belarusian athletes are only allowed to compete in the Paris Olympics this month as neutrals without national flags and anthems. Additional vetting…
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A Moscow court has sentenced Russian-American journalist Masha Gessen to eight years in prison in absentia for spreading fake information about Russia’s military, the human rights NGO Net Freedoms Project reported Monday. Moscow’s Basmanny District Court found Gessen, who was born in Russia but lives in the U.S., guilty of “disseminating knowingly false information about…
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Russia on Monday denied a plea from a Siberian shaman for transfer out of a severe psychiatric hospital over three years after being confined for protesting against President Vladimir Putin, his lawyer said. Alexander Gabyshev, 55, was sent to a psychiatric hospital in January 2021 after repeatedly attempting to walk from his native republic of…
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The Kremlin strongly condemned any violence in the context of politics, spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Sunday following an attack on Donald Trump. The former U.S. president was hit in the ear in an assassination attempt during a campaign rally on Saturday that saw the shooter and a bystander killed and two spectators critically injured.…
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China and Russia conducted a joint naval patrol in the northern and western Pacific, Beijing’s Defense Ministry said Sunday, adding that the exercise was not “targeted” at any other nation. The two countries have drawn closer in recent years and tout their friendship as having “no limits.” Both share hostile relations with U.S.-led Western defence…
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Two Russian warships have arrived in the southern Chinese port city of Zhanjiang to take part in joint naval exercises, the Russian Defense Ministry said Saturday. China and Russia have greatly reinforced ties since the start of the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine that began in February 2022. Their common goal is also to reduce…
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An oil depot caught fire Saturday in Russia’s Rostov region after a Ukrainian drone attack, its governor Vasily Golubev said on Telegram. Both Moscow and Kyiv have used drones, including larger self-detonating craft with ranges stretching hundreds of kilometers extensively throughout the conflict, which began in February 2022. “After a drone attack, a fire broke…
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The fig might seem to be an exotic fruit, but it has been a culinary treat in Russia for ages. Hundreds of years ago it was brought by Asian merchants to Muscovy. Most commonly called a wine berry, this fruit was written about in many ancient books. Figs are an amazing fruit. They are harvested…
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Artist Artiom Loskutov, like many Russians, had to leave the country after the invasion of Ukraine. Born in 1986 in Novosibirsk, Loskutov is one of the creators of the annual “Monstration” parade, known for its absurdist slogans like “Enough tolerating this, let’s tolerate something else!” and “Our hearts demand dumplings!”, as well as dubinopisy —…
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A Russian student artist has been sentenced to nine years in prison on treason charges for sending $30 to the Ukrainian army, the independent Mediazona news website reported Thursday, citing the court’s press service. Tatiana Laletina, 21, was arrested in the Siberian city of Tomsk in late February and charged with state treason, a crime punishable…
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Russia’s flagship Sukhoi Superjet 100 regional airliner crashed outside Moscow, killing all three pilots on board, state news agencies reported Friday. The Gazpromavia SSJ 100 crashed in the Moscow region’s Kolomensky district during a test flight after “planned repairs,” TASS quoted anonymous emergency services as saying. The Russian-made jet was flying from its base at…
DetailsThe reactor vessel, components of the pressurizer and the pipeline valves will be manufactured from blanks weighing more than 650 tons. Metallurgical plant AEM-Special Steels (Mechanical engineering division of Rosatom) has manufactured and shipped a large lot of blanks for the equipment of El Dabaa NPP Unit 1, which is being built in Egypt by…
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A court in Ukraine’s Russian-controlled Donetsk region on Friday jailed a member of the OSCE monitoring mission to Ukraine for “espionage” in a judgment condemned by the European security organization. The Supreme Court of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic found Vadym Golda, 56, guilty and sentenced him to 14 years in a strict-regime penal colony,…
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China said Friday it was conducting joint military drills with Russia along its southern coast, after a U.S.-led Western defense alliance met in Washington and Japan warned of a growing threat from Beijing’s strong ties with Moscow. China’s Defense Ministry said the two militaries had begun the exercises, called Joint Sea-2024, in “early July” and…
DetailsThe second field season of hydrobiological research organized by Rosneft and Innopraktika, a non-governmental development institute, started in the White Sea
YouTube will be slowed down in Russia due to “technical problems” with Google’s equipment in the country, state-owned telecom giant Rostelecom announced Friday. Rostelecom said in a statement that “growth in traffic” had led to a “serious overload” of equipment that is used to speed up the loading of YouTube videos and other Google services. “This…
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A shooting at a military deployment site in southwestern Russia’s Belgorod region near the border with Ukraine has left a number of Russian soldiers dead and wounded, media reported Friday. Baza, a Telegram news channel believed to have links to Russia’s security services, said a manhunt was underway for a serviceman armed with a Kalashnikov automatic…
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Australian police have charged a married Russian-born couple with spying for Moscow, top officials said Friday, accusing them of accessing national security-related material from the military. The 40-year-old woman, Kira Korolev, and her 62-year-old husband Igor — both holders of Russian passports — had lived in Australia for more than 10 years and obtained citizenship,…
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Russia had plans to assassinate the CEO of German defense company Rheinmetall, a key producer of artillery shells and military vehicles for Ukraine, CNN reported Thursday, citing five anonymous U.S. and Western officials familiar with U.S. intelligence. U.S. intelligence had informed Berlin of these plans, allowing German security services to foil the plot against Papperger, the…
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Russian lawmakers have called on the country’s largest lender Sberbank to remove a rainbow-colored unicorn from its bank cards for kids, saying that “rainbow symbols” are an attribute of the “international LGBT movement.” In an appeal to Sberbank head German Gref, the lower-house State Duma’s Family, Women and Children Committee said that it had received…
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Three EU citizens were detained this week for illegally entering the Russian-controlled Baikonur Cosmodrome in central Kazakhstan, local authorities said Thursday. The secretive space launch facility in a remote area of the Kazakh steppe has become a magnet for daredevil tourists, many of whom attempt to break into the hangars housing old Soviet-era spacecraft. The…
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A Russian court Thursday sentenced a student in the Far East city of Birobidzhan 6,000 kilometers from Ukraine to five years in prison for passing troop locations to Kyiv. The unidentified man collected information “using the internet” on “Russian troops and locations of military units in the zone of the special military operation” in Ukraine…
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Exiled Russian opposition politician Leonid Gozman has been sentenced to 8.5 years in prison in absentia for criticizing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Moscow judicial press service said Thursday. Gozman, 73, was charged in connection with his criticism of the invasion of Ukraine on his Facebook profile and Telegram channel, as well as in appearances on political shows…
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President Vladimir Putin on Thursday granted Russian citizenship to 22 foreigners including a Serbian national who said he faced prosecution in his native country for fighting on Russia’s side in Ukraine. Aleksandar Jokic recorded a video appeal to Putin this spring to ask the Russian president to help him avoid serving 25 years in Serbian prison on mercenarism…
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Russian authorities have added exiled opposition figure Yulia Navalnaya to the federal list of “terrorists and extremists” days after issuing a warrant for her arrest, media reported Thursday. A Moscow court said this week that it placed Navalaya, who currently lives outside Russia, in pre-trial detention in absentia for “participating in an extremist organization.” Russian authorities…
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Russian Nobel Peace Prize laureate Dmitry Muratov has called on foreign leaders to facilitate the exchange of political prisoners from Russia in a rare video appeal published Wednesday. “Let’s start exchanging civilians imprisoned on politically motivated charges. Many of them simply won’t survive [in prison],” Muratov said in a 20-minute long YouTube clip. “Let’s exchange…
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