A pair of elite Russian swimmers have been provisionally suspended from the Tokyo Olympics over doping violations on the eve of the games, the International Swimming Federation (FINA) announced in a statement on its website Wednesday. The athletes, Veronika Andrusenko and Alexander Kudashev, had been set to compete under the banner of the Russian Olympic…
Details
Russian officials’ plans to restrict live streams from polling stations in upcoming parliamentary elections have been met with accusations of pre-emptive attempts to conceal voter fraud, including ballot stuffing. Russia’s Central Election Committee (CEC) said Wednesday that only members, candidates and political parties will have access to the live feeds when voters go to the…
Details
At St. Petersburg’s historic Baltic Shipyard, cranes hover over the shining Neva River as hundreds of workers build four nuclear-powered icebreakers. Fronted by a Russian flag and named after the country’s northern regions, the giant vessels are meant to ensure Moscow’s dominance over the melting Arctic. Russia has scrambled to become a leading power in…
Details
The German government has said it is unable to help repair a Siberian village road in response to appeals from local residents, Russia’s Sib.Realii news website reported Wednesday. Residents of Verkhny Karbush, which was founded by ethnic Germans, sent two letters and filmed a video last month asking for German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s help after…
Details
A chorus in medical scrubs intones “polonium, polonium” as an opera about the poisoned Kremlin critic Alexander Litvinenko premieres in a British theatre on Thursday. The former Russian security agent died in 2006 after drinking tea laced with the radioactive isotope Polonium-210 at a London hotel. As he lay dying in hospital, he pointed the…
DetailsAn ally of jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny who is running for local office has said that she faces a court-approved forced hospitalization in a coronavirus ward despite her negative Covid-19 test, preventing her from submitting election paperwork on time. Violetta Grudina, who had headed Navalny’s political network in the far northern city of Murmansk,…
DetailsJuly 14, Irkutsk Region: The International Transbaikal Ecology Swim BAIKAL GREAT SWIM scored the results. The swim was supported by the Irkutsk Region Government, ROSATOM, and UN Information Center in Moscow. The swim was held to attract attention to the environmental problems of Lake Baikal. The swim was organized by the regional public organization ‘Cold…
Details
What Russian artists do you know? If you ask that question in Russia and then abroad, the answers are usually entirely different. Outside Russia, the best known artists are from the early 20th-century avant-garde: Kazimir Malevich, Vassily Kandinsky, and Marc Chagall. Their works are in the collections of the world’s great museums, from the Louvre…
Details
Russia on Wednesday launched military exercises in Tajikistan as the Taliban continue their blistering offensive in neighboring Afghanistan. The militants in recent weeks have brought huge swathes of the country under their control as foreign troops withdraw, including Afghanistan’s main Shir Khan Bandar border crossing with Tajikistan. Moscow is closely watching the offensive, concerned about…
Details
The FBI and U.S. federal prosecutors are investigating an American company for allegedly bypassing sanctions to supply lab equipment for Russia’s weapons of mass destruction programs, The Daily Beast reported Tuesday, citing newly unsealed documents it said it obtained. According to the federal court documents, Intertech Corporation allegedly “intentionally falsified shipping documents, avoided and circumvented…
Details
Russia recorded its highest-ever daily death toll from the coronavirus since the start of the pandemic on Wednesday, the country’s Covid-19 task force said. Russia reported 23,827 new coronavirus cases and 786 deaths on Wednesday as the country battles the surging Delta variant first detected in India. The country’s previous record daily death count of…
Details
Russian President Vladimir Putin told U.S. climate envoy John Kerry that Moscow and Washington have a shared interest in battling climate change, the Kremlin said Wednesday, in a rare area of common ground between the rivals. “The climate problem is one of the areas where Russia and the United States have common interests and similar…
Details
Russian athletes competing under a neutral flag have been instructed to avoid answering “provocative” political questions at the Tokyo Olympics that will open to mostly empty stands next week, the Vedomosti business daily reported Wednesday. “No comment” is the most commonly recommended response on issues ranging from Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the Russian doping…
Details
A Russian-based hacker group blamed for a massive ransomware attack went offline Tuesday, sparking speculation about whether the move was the result of a government-led action. The “dark web” page of the group known as REvil disappeared some two weeks after an attack that crippled networks of hundreds of companies worldwide and prompted a ransom…
DetailsCairo, 12th of July, 2021 – ROSATOM, a global technological leader , organized a focused media roundtable with the honorable presence of the Egyptian Nuclear Power Plants Authority (NPPA). The event assembled journalists representing the leading Egyptian media. It was attended by Alexander Voronkov, director and regional vice-president of the Rosatom Regional Center in Middle…
Details
Authorities in Russia’s largest and coldest region have politely declined Hollywood actor and environmental activist Leonard DiCaprio’s offer to help with its fast-spreading wildfires. Russia’s Far East republic of Sakha, known by its former name of Yakutia, has been ravaged by wildfires since the start of the fire season, with forests the size of Latvia…
Details
Dissident director Kirill Serebrennikov – who is banned from leaving Russia – said Tuesday that he laid a red carpet in Moscow to recreate the Cannes film festival’s premiere he was not allowed to attend. Serebrennikov – who was under house arrest when his last movie “Leto” picked up a prize at the festival three…
Details
June 2021 was the second-hottest June in Russia’s recorded history, with even more record-breaking heat to come, the country’s weather chief said at a press conference Tuesday. Russia recorded its all-time temperature record for the month of June less than a decade ago in 2012. The country can expect to see more records broken in…
Details
Businesses across Russia are racing to inoculate their employees against the coronavirus in order to meet new rules on mandatory vaccinations. Moscow’s service sector firms — from supermarket chains and bank branches to restaurants and bars — have until Friday to ensure at least 60% of their employees have received a first dose of one…
Details
July 13, 2021, 17:15 The Gazprom Board of Directors resolved to form the Sustainable Development Committee of the Board of Directors and to approve the regulation on the Committee. Viktor Zubkov, Chairman of the Gazprom Board of Directors, was elected as Chairman of the Committee, while Alexey Miller, Deputy Chairman of the Board of Directors, and Andrey Akimov, Member of Board of Directors, were elected as members of the Committee. Background The matters falling within…
Details
Europe’s top human rights court has ordered Russia to recognize same-sex unions in a new ruling on Tuesday. The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR)’s ruling came in response to complaints filed in 2010 by three Russian same-sex couples whose attempts to register their marriages in Russia were rejected. The ECHR judges unanimously ruled that…
Details
Long lines formed outside Moscow vaccination sites over the weekend as demand for Russia’s third registered coronavirus jab outstripped supply and caused yet another shortage of the jab. Videos published to social media showed Muscovites lining up outside a dozen vaccination sites where authorities had shipped around 850 doses of CoviVac each. Moscow City Hall, which…
DetailsFrom July 5 through 9, the 10th International School on Safety Culture “Developing Leadership and Strong Culture for Safety in the Nuclear Industry” was held online by Rosatom Technical Academy. The professionals and management of leading international organizations – the nuclear industry representatives from Russia, Slovakia, France, Finland, Japan, Austria, Hungary, Turkey, and the USA…
Details
The Russian Foreign Ministry sent a diplomatic note to the U.S. Embassy after one of its employees was caught on video stealing a railway sign this spring, thus endangering passengers’ lives, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said. The unnamed 30-year-old U.S. Embassy staffer allegedly stole a railway sign at the Ostashkov railway station in the…
Details
The European Union’s review of Russia’s Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine could be delayed until after the summer over “major” data shortcomings and the vaccine maker’s perceived lack of experience with overseas regulators, Reuters reported Tuesday. The European Medicines Agency (EMA) launched a rolling review of Sputnik V, which Russia touts as the world’s first government-approved…
Details
The developers of Russia’s Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine said on Tuesday a deal had been struck with Indian vaccine maker the Serum Institute to produce 300 million doses annually. “The parties intend to produce over 300 million doses of the vaccine in India per year with the first batch expected in September 2021,” the Russian…
Details
Russia-based hacker groups have been accused of massive ransomware attacks on major U.S. businesses and government agencies in the past year. The attacks, which have breached U.S. government agencies in addition to private enterprises, are now a major point of contention in already strained ties between Washington and Moscow, with U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration…
Details
Drug overdose deaths in Russia have nearly doubled in two years amid the coronavirus pandemic, the Open Media news website reported Monday, citing the state anti-drug authority. A total of 7,400 Russians died from drug overdoses in 2020 compared with 6,300 in 2019, Open Media cited the State Anti-Drug Committee as saying in a report.…
Details
July 13, 2021 PAO Severstal, one of the world’s leading vertically integrated steel and mining companies, has set a medium-term goal to reduce the carbon intensity of its CO2 emissions per tonne of steel, calculated in accordance with the methodology established by the World Steel Association (Worldsteel) by 10% by 31 December 2030, compared with…
Details
The U.S. and Russia said on Monday they would cooperate on climate change despite strained relations, during a visit to Moscow by U.S. climate envoy John Kerry. Kerry, the former secretary of state who has become U.S. President Joe Biden’s globe-trotting climate envoy, said “the stakes could not be higher” as he met with Foreign…
Details
Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine produces a weaker immune response against aggressive new mutations of the coronavirus such as the Delta variant, the jabs’ developers announced Monday in a new peer-reviewed study. Sputnik V’s developers used blood samples from people who had completed a course of vaccination with the jab to investigate the so-called virus-neutralizing activity…
Details
Prominent Russian opposition-leaning columnist Fyodor Krasheninnikov has joined a growing list of activists and political figures to leave the country in recent months amid what Kremlin critics call an intensifying crackdown on dissent. Krasheninnikov fled Russia for neighboring Lithuania last August after being fined and then jailed for “disrespecting authorities” in his online posts criticizing…
Details
For Johann Nikadimus, it all started during what was going to be rather routine museum visit in 2014. But then he saw a painting of a woman wearing a kokoshnik by Konstantin Makovsky and was stopped in his tracks. That was the beginning of Nikadimus’ artistic journey as one of just a handful of artisans…
Details
Sudan’s Foreign Minister Mariam al-Mahdi said during a visit to Moscow on Monday that lawmakers in the African country would consider an agreement brokered by its ousted leader to establish a Russian naval base there. Russian President Vladimir Putin held talks with Sudan’s former president Omar al-Bashir in 2017 on establishing a naval base in…
Details
Russia on Monday warned against any “outside interference” in Cuba after thousands took part in rare protests against the Communist government on the island nation. “We consider it unacceptable for there to be outside interference in the internal affairs of a sovereign state or any destructive actions that would encourage the destabilization of the situation…
Details
Moldova’s main pro-European party has won a resounding victory in parliamentary polls, results showed Monday, strengthening the hand of President Maia Sandu as she pushes to reform her ex-Soviet country. Sunday’s snap election – called by Sandu in April to shore up her position against pro-Russia forces – saw her center-right Action and Solidarity (PAS)…
Details
Moscow opposition municipal deputy Ilya Yashin said Monday he is stepping down as chairman of a local assembly over state pressure he attributes to his support for jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny. Yashin’s announcement comes less than a month after election officials removed him from the Moscow City Duma ballot, citing a new law that…
Details
Russia’s average temperatures in June 2021 were 3 degrees Celsius hotter than normal as some regions of the country hit all-time heat records, scientists from the St. Petersburg-based Voeikov Main Geophysical Observatory told The Moscow Times. The data comes as Russia and Canada continue to swelter under historic heat waves that have been linked to…
Details
From the man who brought you Platoon, Wall Street and Born on the Fourth of July comes a blockbuster, new eight-part documentary series about… the former president of Kazakhstan. That, at least, is how the Oliver Stone-fronted Qazaq: History of the Golden Man is being sold to the public. The series got its first airing…
Details
Russia’s space chief Dmitry Rogozin has pressed his country’s oligarchs to take a page from their Western counterparts and invest into space after British billionaire Richard Branson’s journey to the frontier of space. Branson and five Virgin Galactic employees breached the U.S.-recognized boundary of space Sunday and experienced a few minutes of weightlessness at an altitude of…
Details
Russia reported 752 coronavirus deaths on Saturday, a national record of pandemic-related fatalities over a 24-hour period, as the country battles a third wave. Russia has now set seven new pandemic highs for Covid-19 deaths in the last 12 days as it fights a surging outbreak driven by the highly infectious Delta variant and a sluggish vaccination…
Details
The Ukrainian army said on Saturday that a soldier had been killed and three others wounded in the country’s pro-Russian separatist east, amid rising tensions in the conflict-torn region. It was the fourth Ukrainian soldier killed in the past week. The wounded soldiers were being treated in hospital and their injuries not life-threatening, the army…
Details
US President Joe Biden on Friday once again told his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin to “take action” against ransomware hackers operating from Russia, but the Kremlin gave little sign of listening. The White House said Biden and Putin spoke for about an hour by phone, focusing on the ransomware threat and separately about allowing humanitarian aid…
Details
When we recently became the happy owners of a second small refrigerator, I celebrated with a trip to the market and loaded up on bulky stuff like kale, beets and their greens, celery root, an obscene number of eggplants, and several perfectly ripe melons. “Do we need four melons?” asked my husband, who I think…
Details
Russia recorded its lowest number of excess deaths in May 2021 since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, statistics published Friday showed. But the falling mortality rate came just before the country was plunged into a third wave of the coronavirus, which has seen case numbers and Covid-19 fatalities spiral in the weeks since. The…
Details
Wildfires ravaging northeastern Siberia have spread by nearly 70,000 hectares in the past day, marking a 17.5% increase in a single day, the Kommersant business daily reported Friday, citing the regional emergencies ministry. Some 400,000 hectares of forest are now burning in Russia’s republic of Sakha. Abnormally high temperatures and historic drought as well as strong winds…
DetailsThe International Conference on Quantum Technologies ICQT-2021 will be held on July 12-16. It is organized by the Russian Quantum Center, ROSATOM and National Quantum Laboratory; the event partners are the Russian Academy of Sciences, Sberbank, Gazprombank, and Roscongress Foundation. The conference is included in the program of “Year of Science and Technology in Russia”.…
Details
Russia’s Interior Ministry has prepared a bill calling for major changes in how residence permits are issued to migrant workers. The bill, which is still in development, would replace the existing system of three-year temporary residence permits with a three-tier scheme. It would allow foreign citizens to receive permits for short-term (less than 90 days…
Details
Russia’s Black Sea coastal resorts including Sochi will require visiting tourists to vaccinate against the coronavirus within three days of arrival, regional authorities announced Friday as infections spiked and Russians canceled bookings en masse over the new rules and newly opened foreign destinations. The new rules revised previously announced requirements, which take effect Aug. 1,…
Details
Watch “The Seagull” where Chekhov wrote it Every year Melikhovo, the small holding about 80 kilometers south of Moscow when writer and playwright Anton Chekhov lived for many years, puts on a several productions on the property. The most interesting is “The Seagull,” which was written at Melikhovo and seems to have been inspired, in…
Details
Search teams have found two black boxes and the remains of all 28 people who died when a passenger plane crashed in Far Eastern Russia earlier this week, Interfax reported Friday. The An-26 disappeared from radars with 22 passengers and six crew members on board en route from the Kamchatka peninsula’s main city of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky…
Details
Russians view jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny in an increasingly bad light and largely approve or remain indifferent toward the authorities’ decision to brand his political movement as “extremist,” according to an independent survey published Friday. The Levada Center polling agency said 14% of its respondents approve of Navalny’s activities, dropping from 20% last year…
Details
Russia on Friday said the Taliban controls about two-thirds of the Afghan-Tajik border and urged all sides in Afghanistan to show restraint. “We have noted a sharp rise in tension on the Afghan-Tajik border. The Taliban movement quickly occupied a large part of border districts and currently controls about two-thirds of the border,” Russian Foreign…
Details
Russia has awarded an Emirati royal exclusive rights to sell its Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine to a host of countries in at least three continents in a deal that has seen buyers paying huge premiums for supplies, a Moscow Times investigation has found. Since the outbreak of the coronavirus, Russia has advertised Sputnik V as…
DetailsAlesia Iunikova, Head of the Center for International Relations at Rosatom Technical Academy – Chairman of the International Business Committee of the Women in the Nuclear Industry Foundation took part in the panel discussion on the topic «Future – Proof Skills» within the framework of the Youth Day which was held on the first day…
DetailsAt the Volgodonsk branch of JSC “AEM-technology” “Atommash” (part of the ROSATOM machine-building division – Atomenergomash), the production of the first steam generator for the second power unit of Akkuyu NPP under construction in Turkey has been fully completed. The manufacturing cycle of a steam generator includes assembly-welding of vessels from separate shells and nozzles,…
Details
Russia submitted a draft resolution Thursday to its 14 UN Security Council partners providing for a six-month extension of the authorization of cross-border aid to Syria, UN and diplomatic sources said. This Russian text — tabled following the formalization of the draft proposed by Ireland and Norway calling for an extension of one year — suggests…
Details
Russian President Vladimir Putin has overturned a 2015 decree banning charter flights to Egyptian resorts, ending a six-year hiatus on travel to a popular destination for Russian tourists. Putin also withdrew his previous recommendation against selling tours to Egyptian resorts on the Red Sea. Russia had banned all air travel to Egypt in 2015 after…
Details
The European Union has approached Russia for talks on recognizing each other’s coronavirus vaccination certificates, EU Ambassador to Russia Markus Ederer said Thursday. The EU launched its own digital vaccination certificate on July 1, allowing vaccinated EU citizens to travel freely within the 27-member bloc. As the certificate only recognizes vaccines authorized by the EU,…
Details
Belarus authorities on Thursday blocked another independent news organization, Nasha Niva, and dispatched police to its editorial offices, clamping down further on media not yet under tight state control. Authorities in the ex-Soviet country, which is in the throes of a months-long crackdown on dissent, said it had barred access to Nasha Niva over accusations…
Details