While ice-cold fall storms were gathering force in Russia’s far northern region, Russian and Italian businessmen and state officials exchanged warm handshakes in a party tent erected on desolate lands about 80 kilometers northeast of the city of Murmansk. The spot will soon house 57 major wind turbines, making it Russia’s largest wind park and…
Details
Terrorists in Syria get help from an “outside” source in assembling their combat drones, the Russian military has claimed. Russia’s Khmeimim airbase in northwest Syria has been subjected to numerous drone attacks in recent weeks, including a Sept. 3 attack repelled by Russian air defense. The drones can travel over a path of 150 kilometers…
Details
Russia is testing face- and voice-recognition technology to identify mobile device users as it moves toward approving eSIM technology which allows consumers to switch easily between carriers, the pro-Kremlin Izvestia newspaper has reported. The Central Bank is overseeing a pilot project that uses personal biometric data to remotely open accounts despite concerns over state surveillance,…
DetailsRN Bunker LLC – a specialized Rosneft subsidiary – has started bunkering of ships with RMLS 40, a marine fuel that has advanced environmental properties in the Far East.
Europe’s three largest low-cost airlines have applied to fly in and out of St. Petersburg in a move that would increase tourism to Russia’s northern capital but has drawn criticism from Russian airlines. St. Petersburg’s Pulkovo Airport could become the first Russian airport to permit “seventh freedom flights,” which allow international carriers to operate flights…
Details
A Russian man pleaded guilty on Monday to U.S. charges he took part in a massive computer hacking scheme that targeted JPMorgan Chase & Co and other financial services companies. Andrei Tyurin, 36, pleaded guilty in Manhattan federal court to six counts including wire fraud and computer hacking conspiracy, admitting that he illegally obtained the…
Details
Russia will miss the World Athletics Championships for the second time in a row after the sport’s governing body, the IAAF, extended the ban against country’s federation on Monday. The IAAF confirmed the decision four days before the start of the competition in Qatar after hearing a report from its Task Force (TF) overseeing Russia’s…
DetailsThe World Association of Nuclear Operators (WANO) completed the follow-un peer review at Smolensk NPP. It was part of the plan of the cooperation with Rosenergoatom. Five experts from Russia, Ukraine and Armenia independently assessed progress achieved by the plant in the areas of improvement marked by the 2017 peer review. “I noted the great…
Details
Moscow has landed in CNN Travel’s list of the top 10 destinations to witness the red and golden hues of autumn. While acknowledging that “no country has a patent on trees filled with russet, scarlet and golden leaves,” the outlet singles out the Russian capital for “some unexpectedly fine spots for autumn hues.” Tsaritsyno, CNN…
Details
At Ruski, the chef likes to mix things up a bit, sometimes preparing traditional recipes authentically, sometimes recreating them with modern flair. Sugudai is a traditional northern dish made of fresh, uncooked fish such as salmon, dressed with oil, vinegar or other acidic ingredient, green onions, fresh herbs and salt and pepper. Here it is…
Details
Background In August 2009, Gazprom brought into operation the Dzuarikau – Tskhinval gas trunkline to provide direct gas supplies from the Russian Federation to South Ossetia. In April 2010, Gazprom and the Government of South Ossetia signed the Cooperation Agreement until 2029. Gazprom developed the General Scheme for gas infrastructure expansion in South Ossetia. The document provides for gas infrastructure expansion in some…
Details
Russia is now home to the tallest Buddha statue in Europe. The 30-ton golden monument to the Maitreya — a bodhisattva who will appear in the future — was unveiled in Russia’s Buddhist stronghold of Kalmykia on Sunday. Sitting at 12.5 meters tall, the Russian Buddha in the Kalmyk city of Lagan overtakes the 10-meter…
Details
From Sept. 20 – 24, Moscow’s annual “Circle of Light” festival lights up the capital with dazzling displays of art, history, playful projections and more. Light designers and multimedia artists from around the world had the chance to reimagine the Russian capital’s iconic architecture for the festival, incorporating not just light, but also flame, lasers…
Details
A phone call between U.S. President Donald Trump and Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskiy has become a political flashpoint in Washington following reports that Trump repeatedly pressed Zelenskiy to investigate Democratic presidential hopeful Joe Biden and his son. The July 25 call has wide-ranging implications for Russia’s western neighbor Ukraine, which depends heavily on U.S. aid…
Details
Release September 23, 2019, 17:25 The Coordination Council of Gazprom and Uniper for sci-tech cooperation and staff training & development held a meeting in the Krasnodar Territory. The Co-Chairmen of the Coordination Council – Sergey Khomyakov, Deputy Chairman of the Gazprom Management Committee, Oleg Aksyutin, Deputy Chairman of the Gazprom Management Committee, Head of Department, and Andreas Schierenbeck, Chairman of the Management Board of Uniper – noted the…
Details
As many as 4 million people in 200 countries took to the streets for the Global Climate Strike on Friday — but Russia, the world’s largest country, was largely absent from the event. Inspired by 16-year-old Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg’s “Fridays for Future” campaign, young people around the world have organized protests calling for…
Details
Russia said it would implement the 2015 Paris Agreement to fight climate change after Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev on Monday approved a government resolution signifying Moscow’s final acceptance of the deal. The same resolution said Russia would not technically ratify the accord however due to a legal nuance. Medvedev said Moscow would adapt the accord to existing legal…
Details
Russia, China and India held joint anti-terrorism exercises with Pakistan and four Central Asian republics last week. Nearly 130,000 troops, 20,000 pieces of equipment, 600 aircraft and up to 15 warships were rolled out across eight Russian training grounds for the Tsentr-2019 (Center-2019) drills. The Sept. 16-21 war games, which President Vladimir Putin observed Friday…
Details
Russia is once again in danger of being banned from next year’s Olympics after the World Anti-Doping Agency revealed that historical data supplied by the country’s anti-doping authority contained “inconsistencies.” WADA said on Monday it had opened compliance proceedings against the Russian Anti-Doping Agency (RUSADA) after examining the vast bank of historical testing data finally…
Details
IZHEVSK — It was a Tuesday morning like any other. Albert Razin, a 79-year-old activist, stood outside the State Council building in the capital of Russia’s republic of Udmurtia holding two handwritten signs. One read: “Do I have a fatherland?” The other quoted Soviet Avar poet Rasul Gamzatov: “If tomorrow my language will be forgotten,…
Details
Russia has officially declared a former Kremlin official alleged to have been a CIA informant missing and is looking for him, according to an entry in the Interior Ministry’s database, the state-run RIA news agency reported on Monday. U.S. media reports, confirmed to Reuters by two sources, have said a CIA informant in the Russian government was…
Details
Around 2,000 people have staged an authorized protest in the northern Russian city of Arkhangelsk on Sunday demanding the government drop plans to create a giant landfill in the remote Shiyes railway station. Residents of nearby regions have for over a year fiercely opposed plans to ship more than 2 million tons of garbage a…
Details
Former British Prime Minister David Cameron has said in his new memoir that Russian President Vladimir Putin told him he passed a law against “gay propaganda” to reverse the country’s declining birth rates. Russia banned “propaganda of homosexuality toward minors” in 2013 around the same time England legalized same-sex marriage, drawing criticism from Western states…
Details
Russian President Vladimir Putin has approved a government proposal to bankroll the modernization of the armed forces in the breakaway Georgian region of Abkhazia, a government document published online showed on Monday. Georgia lost control of the Black Sea region of Abkhazia after an inter-ethnic conflict which followed the collapse of the Soviet Union. Russia…
Details
HOLLYWOOD — Writer, creator and producer Craig Mazin’s HBO hit “Chernobyl” won the American television academy’s Emmy award for best limited series on Sunday. Mazin was also awarded the best writing Emmy for his script. In a short acceptance speech, Mazin thanked the “hundreds of people around the area dedicating themselves to telling this story.”…
Details
On this day in 1900 Sergei Ozhegov, the writer of one of the first Russian dictionaries, was born. Born in Kamennoe village in the Tver region, Ozhegov is celebrated for his “Dictionary of the Russian Language,” which remains the most widely used reference for the Russian language today, especially for writers, journalists and interpreters. The…
DetailsSeptember 20, 2019, Vienna – The 63rd Annual Regular Session of the IAEA General Conference was held in Vienna. The Conference brought together high-ranking delegates from more than 170 IAEA Member States to discuss the most relevant issues and set priority directions for developing cooperation in the global nuclear industry. Director General of ROSATOM Alexey…
Details
Release September 20, 2019, 18:30 The Russian stage of the international Blue Corridor – Gas into Engines 2019 Rally for vehicles powered by natural gas was launched today at the Russkaya compressor station (CS) in the Krasnodar Territory. Via a video link, the participants in the Russian stage of the race took over from the European-stage crews that had traveled 5,320 kilometers from Istanbul, Turkey,…
Details
An estimated 14,000 Indians currently live in Russia — most in Moscow — and an ever-increasing number of Indian tourists visit the capital every year. Consequently, while perhaps not a staple of the native Russian diet just yet, Muscovites are familiar with Indian cooking, and there is an array of restaurants available to satisfy a…
Details
Russia on Friday accused the United States of brazenly threatening it after a senior U.S. general said Washington had drawn up a plan in case it needed to destroy air defenses in Russia’s Kaliningrad exclave in Europe. U.S. General Jeffrey Harrigian said on Tuesday that “If we have to go in there to take down,…
Details
Low-cost international airlines could soon fly in and out of St. Petersburg more freely after an easing of restrictions announced by Russian officials, Russian media have reported. No other Russian city allows so-called “seventh freedom flights,” which allow international carriers to operate flights outside their country of registration. St. Petersburg’s Pulkovo Airport projects that the permissions will…
Details
If all goes to plan for St. Petersburg’s new governor, Russia’s second-largest city may soon have the landscaped public parks, brand-new buses and budget surpluses of its big brother Moscow. The man behind the promises, Kremlin protégé Alexander Beglov, was inaugurated Wednesday in the gold and marble halls of the Mariinsky Palace in the city…
DetailsSpecialists of the Nenets Nature Reserve have launched an extensive field survey of a population of the Atlantic subspecies of walrus as a part of the biological indicator species monitoring programme implemented by Rosneft Oil Company.
The enterprise responsible for Russian seaport and maritime infrastructure development today operates a total of 36 icebreaking vessels. This is the largest fleet of its kind in the world, the state-run Rosmorport company says. And more is to come. According to company deputy general director Vasily Strugov, another nine vessels will be added to the fleet by 2024. Among them, there…
Details
A Moscow court has ruled to release novice actor Pavel Ustinov from custody days ahead of his appeal following widespread public outcry over his conviction. Ustinov, 23, was found guilty Monday of dislocating a riot police officer’s shoulder during mass anti-government protests in Moscow last month. A court sentenced Ustinov to three and a half years…
Details
Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) said on Friday that one North Korean poacher, captured by Russian border guards in the Sea of Japan, has died, the Interfax news agency reported. A Russian border patrol discovered two North Korean schooners and 11 motorboats fishing illegally off its far eastern coast on Tuesday and detained the first…
Details
When Ponnuchamy Jeevanantham first came to Moscow from Tamil Nadu in southern India in 1987 to study agriculture at the Peoples’ Friendship University he was dismayed by how mild Russian food was compared to Indian cuisine. “You couldn’t find any spices,” he said. “There were bay leaves, black pepper and maybe some chilli powder —…
Details
Officials have sent a Siberian shaman to a psychiatric hospital after he was apprehended on his way from Far East Russia to Moscow to exorcise President Vladimir Putin, authorities said Friday. Alexander Gabyshev embarked on his odyssey in March, promising to walk more than 8,000 kilometers from his native republic of Sakha to Moscow to…
Details
The United States military has a secret blueprint targeting the air defense system protecting Russia’s westernmost territory of Kaliningrad, according to the U.S. Air Force’s top commander in Europe. NATO members perceive Russia’s missile deployments in Kaliningrad as a threat at a time when tensions between Russia and its Western neighbors are running high over…
Details
Russia cast its 13th veto on Thursday of UN Security Council action on the Syrian conflict, blocking a demand for a truce in northwest Syria because it does not include an exemption for military offensives against UN blacklisted militant groups. China backed Russia by also blocking the text, drafted by Kuwait, Belgium and Germany. It…
Details
A court in southern Russia has found six Jehovah’s Witnesses guilty of “extremism” and sentenced them to prison terms between two and three and a half years Thursday. Russia outlawed Jehovah’s Witnesses in 2017, making it a criminal offense for the group’s estimated 175,000 worshippers to meet or distribute literature. Human rights groups have condemned…
Details
A Russian university is said to have threatened a student with expulsion after his pink phone case and membership in pro-LGBT social media groups fueled suspicions about his alleged sexual orientation. The reported threats made by Ural State University of Economics (USUE) administrators in Russia’s fourth-largest city of Yekaterinburg come six years after the Russian…
Details
Moscow is full of Soviet-era institutions built on once-sacred ground. While passers-by might have little reason to notice these buildings, the Russian Orthodox Church is, in many cases, fighting legal battles to evict long-time tenants and claim valuable, centrally located real estate that was once appropriated by Soviet authorities. Just this year, the Church has…
Details
Russia’s Federal Antimonopoly Service said Thursday it had fined Google 100,000 rubles ($1,560) for circulating adverts for financial services by Ali Trade, a company it said did not have the required license for such activity. Russia has fined Google on several occasions in recent years, although those fines typically amount only to small sums. It…
Details
Thousands of Russians from different walks of life have added their names to the growing chorus of voices against a crackdown following the biggest anti-Kremlin protests in the capital in years. Over a dozen protesters and bystanders are being held in custody on accusations of mass unrest, using violence against police, attending multiple unauthorized rallies…
Details
Wearing a traditional black cassock and long Orthodox beard, Father Oleg Batov heaves a pensive sigh. “I really feel for the boys. A great evil is being done to them,” he told The Moscow Times in an interview in his office on the second floor of Moscow’s 16th-century Church of the Dormition of Theotokos, located…
Details
A Russian volcano’s eruption this summer has turned sunrises and sunsets in the Northern Hemisphere more purple, according to research by the University of Colorado Boulder. Raikoke erupted on June 22 on an uninhabited island south of the Kamchatka peninsula in the Russian Far East after lying dormant for 95 years. NASA said the eruption…
Details
A Moscow court said on Thursday that it would review the jailing of an actor over an opposition protest after state prosecutors formally requested that he be released on bail following a public outcry over his conviction. Pavel Ustinov, 23, was sentenced on Monday to three and a half years in jail for dislocating a…
Details
Uganda said on Wednesday it had signed an Inter-Governmental Agreement (IGA) with Russia to help the East African country build capacity to exploit nuclear technology for energy, medical and other peaceful purposes. The government of President Yoweri Museveni has previously said it is eager to use the country’s uranium deposits to boost energy production capacity.…
Details
An anti-Putin shaman from Siberia has been kidnapped by armed and masked men thought to be security officials, Russian media have reported. Alexander Gabyshev has been walking on foot from the Far East republic of Sakha to Moscow since March to “expel” President Vladimir Putin. Last week, the detention of his supporters in the city…
Details
Russia has uncovered Islamic State terrorist group cells in nearly 20 of the country’s regions stretching as far as Siberia, a top anti-extremism official at the Interior Ministry has said. Extremism accounts for 1% of all crimes in Russia, Oleg Ilyinykh wrote in a piece for the ministry’s “Russian Police” magazine published Tuesday. “But even…
Details
Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that Israel is a Russian-speaking state and that the two countries share a common history and extensive family ties. Israel is home to the world’s largest population of Russian Jews, a large portion of whom emigrated there from the former Soviet Union in the 1990s. About 17% of Israel’s…
Details
The start of fall turning Moscow’s trees into colorful pieces of art also marks the start of the cultural season, with the city’s theaters, museums and conservatories inviting people to enjoy the artworks inside. This is Russia’s Year of Theater, and events will be held across the country, including a Theatrical Olympiad, an All-Russian Theater…
Details
A Moscow court has ordered the release of one of several activists charged with “mass civil unrest” during the Russian capital’s biggest wave of anti-government protests in nearly a decade. More than a dozen men, including Sberbank software engineer Aidar Gubaidulin, were placed in pre-trial detention on accusations of organizing mass unrest during election-related protests…
Details
Russia may drop its embezzlement case against embattled U.S. investor Michael Calvey and other executives at the Baring Vostok private equity group, the Kommersant business daily reported Wednesday. Calvey and three other Baring Vostok executives were detained in February on embezzlement charges, which they denied. They said the case was being used to pressure them…
Details
A pair of nationalists from Moscow is suspected of a hate crime after allegedly stabbing a Central Asian migrant in St. Petersburg, the Fontanka.ru news website has reported. Unofficial data estimates that at least 245 acts of violence against Central Asians were committed in Russia out of a total of 772 hate crimes in 2010-2018.…
Details
Russia is holding 161 suspected North Korean poachers who were detained in the Sea of Japan on Tuesday after one of the boats they were on attacked a Russian patrol, the state-run RIA news agency said on Wednesday. A Russian border patrol discovered two North Korean schooners and 11 motorboats fishing illegally off its far eastern coast on…
Details
Hundreds of people have lined up for single pickets outside President Vladimir Putin’s administration building in central Moscow to support an actor who was jailed for using violence against a policeman during one of this summer’s unauthorized election protests. Pavel Ustinov’s sentencing to 3.5 years behind bars Monday for allegedly dislocating an officer’s shoulder while…
Details
The Directorate for the Russian Federation State Border Arrangement plans to build a major radar at Cape Chelyuskin, the Krasnoyarsk news agency NGS24 has reported. The facility is to be built in 33 months. Its development tender was recently announced by Rosgranstroy, the federal border development authority. The project is officially called “Radiotechnical point Chelyuskin” and includes a cost frame…
Details
Scores of Russian priests have joined the chorus of voices calling on the authorities to stop the criminal prosecutions of protesters and bystanders following this summer’s mass election protests in Moscow. Around a dozen men, some as young as 21 years old, are being held on various charges after the largest sustained protest movement in…
Details