Vladimir Kara-Murza Dies at 59

On Sunday morning July 28, the journalist Vladimir Kara-Murza (senior) passed away after a long illness. His son, Vladimir, who is also a prominent journalist and an opposition politician, announced that his father had died at “8 o’clock in the morning on his name-day.” He was 59 years old. Kara-Murza was a historian who became…

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Siberian Wildfires Swell to Crimea-Sized Area, Authorities Say Extinguishing Them Is ‘Pointless’

Massive wildfires sweeping through Russia have spread to an area the size of annexed Crimea as regional authorities have been slow to declare emergencies and firefighting efforts have been scaled back. Scientists have observed an “unprecedented” number of wildfires in Siberia and the Russian Arctic since June. Russian authorities have said a combination of lightning…

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Vintage Soviet Cars Cruise Into Moscow

Moscow’s Red Square roared to life with vintage chic on Sunday as an extensive collection of unique Soviet cars cruised past the Kremlin and St. Basil’s Cathedral. The annual GUM AutoRally began in 2014 and is the most prestigious event of its kind in Russia. During the rally, 120 cars raced each other along a…

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‘The Political Regime Against the People’: The Reactions to Moscow’s Election Protest and Crackdown

A mass protest that rocked Moscow on Saturday was marked by one of the biggest crackdowns in recent years against an increasingly defiant opposition decrying President Vladimir Putin’s tight grip on power.  The protest, which demanded that the authorities allow opposition-minded candidates onto the ballot in Moscow’s city council elections, has drawn international attention to…

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North Korea Releases Detained Russian Fishing Boat

North Korea has released a Russian fishing boat held after being accused of violating entry regulations, the Russian embassy in North Korea said on Sunday, in an incident that prompted a Russian warning of a freezing of talks on fisheries cooperation. North Korea detained the 15 Russian and two South Korean crew members of the fishing boat on July…

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On This Day in 1841 Mikhail Lermontov Died

Mikhail Lermontov was born on Oct. 15, 1814 in Moscow to a noble military family. When he was three years old, his mother died of tuberculosis and Mikhail’s father sent him to live with his grandmother in Tarkhany in southwest Russia where he would spend most of his childhood. His grandmother provided a lavish lifestyle…

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Wildfires Engulf Russia’s Siberia

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Moscow Warns U.K. Media of Consequences After London Fines RT News Channel

Russia‘s Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Friday warned British media operating in Russia that they should be ready to face the consequences after a British regulator fined Russia‘s RT state-financed TV channel. Moscow was responding after Ofcom, Britain’s media regulator, earlier on Friday fined RT £200,000 ($248,740) for breaching broadcasting impartiality rules in its coverage of the poisoning…

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PhosAgro’s Domestic Fertilizer Sales Rise by 14.3% year-on-year to 1.65 million tons in 1H 2019

Moscow – Russia’s largest mineral fertilizer distribution network PhosAgro-Region (a PhosAgro subsidiary) increased the total volume of mineral fertilizer sales to Russian agricultural producers by 14.3% year-on-year to 1.65 million tonnes in 1H 2019. Sales of PhosAgro mineral fertilizers to the domestic market increased by 17.4% year-on-year to 1.4 million tonnes in 1H 2019, while…

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Russia’s Retirees Dazzle on the Dance Floor

On July 25, hundreds of retirees joined a 10-hour dance marathon in Moscow’s Sokolniki Park. Part of the Moscow Longevity project, where Moscow’s senior citizens are invited to continue to develop their skills in IT, sport and dance, 220 couples in their golden years twisted and tangoed for the contest’s main prize. Here’s a look…

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What’s Killing Russia’s Honey Bees?

As footage pans over honey bees lying dead on the ground, a beekeeper breaks into tears. “How can we go on?” he says.  From the Moscow suburbs to the Altai republic more than 4,000 kilometers to the east in Siberia, millions of bees were reported to have died off this summer. Mass bee deaths were…

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Don’t Discriminate Against Russia’s Rich, Top Senator Says

Rich Russians should not be discriminated against, the country’s senate speaker has said days after Forbes published a ranking of the 100 wealthiest civil servants.  Regional deputies, governors and federal executive and legislative officials collectively earned 71 billion rubles ($1.1 billion) in 2018, Forbes Russia said earlier this month. The business magazine used the incomes…

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TVEL Fuel Company of Rosatom supplied equipment for VVER fuel fabrication at Yibin plant in China

TVEL JSC has supplied to China a batch of Russian-made equipment for VVER fuel fabrication at Yibin plant (Sichuan province), an enterprise of China National Nuclear Corporation’s nuclear fuel division. The consignment includes three installations for production of fuel rods, in particular, a welding complex, a rod geometry control system and VVER fuel rod lacquering…

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Completio of Mii-Mill Balakovo Sale

July 25, 2019 PAO Severstal, one of the world’s leading steel and steel-related mining companies, announces that it has completed the sale transaction of Mini-Mill Balakovo to Abinsk Electric Steel Works LTD. The consideration of the transaction is $215 million. The sale of Mini-Mill Balakovo will enable Severstal to focus fully on steel production at…

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Russia Moves to Legalize Bowhunting

Russian lawmakers have passed legislation to allow bow-and-arrow hunting. Possession of bows for purposes other than sport and research is currently prohibited in Russia. Around 1 million unlicensed bows, crossbows and similar ranged weapons are owned by “hundreds of thousands” of Russians, lawmakers cite official data as saying. A newly passed bill distinguishes throwing weapons…

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Putin Loyalists Clash in Public Oil Feud

The blame game over a contamination scandal in Russia’s oil industry has breached President Vladimir Putin’s inner circle. Igor Sechin, head of Rosneft, the world’s biggest publicly-traded oil company, and Nikolai Tokarev, the boss of Transneft, the world’s largest pipeline network, are embroiled in an unusually public and rancorous dispute over their companies’ responses to…

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80 Years Strong: The VDNKh Experience

The VDNKh park has had a long history as one of Moscow’s main exhibition spaces. Constructed in the 1930s, it was first known as the All-Union Agricultural Exhibition before it was renamed in 1959 as the Exhibition of Achievements of the National Economy, or Vystavka Dostizheniy Narodnogo Khozyaystva. Today, VDNKh is home to a number…

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‘She Was Not Afraid to Tell The Truth’: Russia Reacts to LGBT Activist’s Gruesome Killing

The fatal stabbing of Russian LGBT activist Yelena Grigoriyeva in St. Petersburg has drawn strong reactions worldwide, with fellow activists lamenting a system that failed to protect her and anti-LGBT figures saying her killing was justified. Activists noted that a website that encourages visitors to “hunt down” people believed to be sexual minorities had added Grigoriyeva…

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