Russia’s Central Election Commission (CEC) announced Wednesday that it will set up special polling places for next week’s presidential race along the country’s borders with Poland, Belarus and the three Baltic states. The CEC said Russian citizens “who for various reasons” live in the five neighboring countries would be able to vote at specially organized…
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“The Master and Margarita” was released in late January 2024 and quickly became one of the highest-grossing films in Russian history. The Moscow Times talked to the film’s director about his creative process and the backlash he faced from Russian state propagandists. Andrei Muchnik: How did you first become involved in this project? Michael Lockshin:…
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Figure skater Kamila Valieva has been removed from the Russian national team, the head of Russia’s Figure Skating Federation told state media on Thursday. “Valieva is currently not part of the national team. Everything was done in accordance with legal documents,” Alexander Kogan, who heads the figure skating body, was quoted as saying by the…
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Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) said Thursday it killed Islamic State militants who were planning a “terrorist attack” on a Moscow synagogue, state news agencies reported. The FSB said the Islamic State cell, based in central Russia’s Kaluga region, had been planning to kill Jewish worshippers at a synagogue in the Russian capital. “During their arrest, the…
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A Finnish court on Thursday gave a businessman a nine-month suspended jail sentence for violating EU sanctions against Russia, the first case of its kind in the Nordic country, the newspaper Helsingin Sanomat reported. Gabriel Temin, CEO of the Finland-based logistics and warehouse companies Luminor Oy and Siberica Oy, was arrested in September on suspicion of…
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Rising high above Russia’s Black Sea coast, the Western Caucasus mountain range is home to a pristine alpine ecosystem that earned it UNESCO World Heritage Site status. “The Western Caucasus has a remarkable diversity of geology, ecosystems and species,” UNESCO said when inscribing the site in 2007. “Along with the Virgin Komi World Heritage site,…
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Moscow summoned the U.S. Ambassador to Russia on Thursday and threatened to expel American diplomats in protest against what it said was American interference in the country’s domestic affairs. Russia’s Foreign Ministry said Washington was funding “anti-Russian” non-profit groups and “spreading disinformation” about the March 15-17 presidential election, as well as Moscow’s so-called “special military…
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A Belarusian opposition activist was shot and killed by Federal Security Service (FSB) officers in northern Russia’s republic of Karelia, media reported Thursday. The FSB claimed that the unidentified Belarusian citizen born in 1974 was recruited by the Ukrainian special services to carry out a terrorist attack in the city of Olonets, Interfax cited the law…
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Germany has revised its travel advice for Russia to “strongly” discourage its citizens from traveling there, German media reported Thursday. Previously, Germany had only advised citizens against visiting Russia. The updated travel recommendation now includes the word “strongly.” Germany’s Foreign Ministry, which issued the travel advice, said the change was “due to the continuing deterioration…
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India’s embassy in Moscow has confirmed the death of a citizen recruited by the Russian army, days after a relative told AFP he had been sent to fight in Ukraine. Two years after Russia’s invasion began, tens of thousands of its soldiers have been killed in Ukraine and Moscow is on a global quest for…
Details37 social infrastructure facilities were opened in the Republic of Bashkortostan in 2023 with the support of Bashneft (part of Rosneft)
Ukraine stepped up attacks behind Russian lines on Wednesday with the apparent killing of a Russian election official in a car bomb and a drone assault on a metals plant. Deadly Russian strikes also rocked the Ukrainian port city of Odesa during a visit by Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, who was holding talks there…
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Armenia said Wednesday that it had officially asked Russia to withdraw its border guards from an airport in Yerevan. “Armenia has a clear position on this issue and it informed Russia in an official letter,” Armenian Security Council Secretary Armen Grigoryan told reporters. Under a 1992 agreement signed with Armenia, Russia maintains several border guard detachments at…
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Seven people were killed on Wednesday in separate incidents in the eastern Ukrainian region of Luhansk under Russian control, Moscow-installed authorities announced. Five civilians were killed when the bus they were traveling in hit a mine and two more were killed by alleged Ukrainian shelling, authorities said. “There was a tragedy in the city of…
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Russia has added former chess champion and exiled Kremlin critic Garry Kasparov to its state list of “terrorists and extremists.” While state financial watchdog Rosfinmonitoring did not specify the reason for Kasparov being added to the list, he has been a vocal critic of President Vladimir Putin for years and has condemned Moscow’s military aggression in…
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A Russian court on Wednesday sentenced a journalist to seven years in prison for criticizing the Ukraine offensive in social media posts. Roman Ivanov, 51, was found guilty of spreading “false information” about Russia’s Armed Forces and punished under Moscow’s strict military censorship laws. Moscow has used laws against “discrediting” the Armed Forces or publishing…
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Ukrainian drones attacked a metal plant in Russia’s border region of Kursk on Wednesday, causing a fire at a fuel tank, the local governor said. Kyiv meanwhile announced it had intercepted dozens of Russian drones, as both sides launched a wave of overnight aerial attacks in an attempt to hit targets deep behind the front…
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Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Wednesday that Russia has the “best democracy” and lashed out at those who criticize Moscow for its handling of domestic political affairs. “We will no longer tolerate criticism of our democracy and claims that it is not the kind that it should be,” Peskov said during a talk at the World…
DetailsRepresentatives from eight countries became the selection winners. Within the framework of the World Youth Festival (WYF) program ROSATOM selected 15 participants to join the scientific and educational expedition to the North Pole. The selection started on February, 28 – the Arctic Day – and was arranged in several stages. In total more than 2,000…
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A group of men from northern India who claim to have been tricked into fighting for Russia in its war on Ukraine are now calling on their government to help secure their release, Indian media reported Wednesday. In a video published by the broadcaster NDTV, seven men can be seen standing in a dingy room…
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The Kremlin said Wednesday that it does not recognize the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrants for two senior Russian military officers over their role in Moscow’s war against Ukraine. The court accused Lieutenant General Sergei Kobylash and Navy Admiral Viktor Sokolov of targeting Ukraine’s power infrastructure with strikes between October 2022 and March 2023. “We…
DetailsROSATOM Director General Alexey Likhachev and IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi head the Delegations. On 6 March, another round of interdepartmental consultations of the Russian delegation with the IAEA delegation led by Director General Mr. Rafael Grossi took place in Sochi. The Russian delegation was headed by Director General of ROSATOM Mr. Alexey Likhachev. The…
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Yulia Navalnaya has called on her late husband’s supporters to protest against President Vladimir Putin and the invasion of Ukraine by turning up to polling places “at noon” on the final day of Russia’s upcoming election. In January, Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny, who died at an Arctic penal colony last month, announced the protest action —…
DetailsOrenburgneft (an enterprise of Rosneft’s oil production complex) introduced a domestic innovative technology to increase operational efficiency of the pipeline system in the fields
A special screening of Shahida Tulaganova’s film “Ukraine’s Stolen Children” drew large audiences in London. The film is an exploration of one of the most insidious practices of Russia’s war: the mass abduction of children from occupied territory for adoption by Russian families. Veteran war correspondent Tulaganova has won multiple awards for her films, including…
DetailsThe grant programme of Vostsibneftegaz (an enterprise of Rosneft) turned 10 years old. In honour of the anniversary date, the company held a competition and allocated new grants to scientists to support environmental and ethnographic projects in the Evenkia of Krasnoyarsk Region
Experts and young eco-leaders decided to create an international ecological club following the session. On March 3, a session titled “International Eco-Community – Creating the Future Together” was held within the framework of the World Youth Festival with the support of ROSATOM. During the session, participants discussed which areas of international cooperation in the field…
DetailsThe total installed wind power capacity of Rosatom exceeded 1 GW. The second stage of Rosatom’s Trunovskaya wind power plant in Stavropolsky Krai, with an installed capacity of 35 MW, began supplying energy to the Unified All-Russian Power Grid. In total, the Trunovskaya WPP has an installed capacity of 95 MW and consists of 38…
DetailsHis lecture “Nuclear Technologies for Sustainable Development” opened the marathon of the Russian Knowledge Society. The lecture by Alexey Likhachev, the Director General of ROSATOM, “Nuclear Technologies for Sustainable Development” opened the program of the first day of the educational marathon of the Russian Knowledge Society. The event is taking place within the World Youth…
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Classic goulash is a soup so thick a spoon can stand up among the meat and vegetables. Eat a bowl of goulash and you won’t be hungry for the rest of the day. In Russia people will tell you that goulash is “just stewed meat with gravy” and that it’s the same thing as a…
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Похороны: funeral If you have been following the the funeral of Alexei Navalny in Russian, you might be struggling to understand some of it. And no wonder. The Russian language makes a distinction between a religious (in this case Orthodox Christian) funeral and a non-religious funeral. But for both, the general term for a funeral…
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A Russian man pleaded guilty on Thursday to illegally exporting electronics to Russia for possible military use, in violation of sanctions imposed after Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the U.S. Department of Justice said. Maxim Marchenko, who lived in Hong Kong, operated a network with two other unidentified Russians that fraudulently bought large quantities of…
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Mourners of late opposition activist Alexei Navalny gathered under heavy police presence as they waited outside the Russian Orthodox church in southeastern Moscow where his memorial service will take place later Friday. Authorities have installed metal detectors, security cameras and metal fencing around the perimeter of the church, as well as the nearby cemetery where Navalny…
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Moscow is ready to give Kyiv the bodies of Ukrainian prisoners of war who were said to have died in a military plane crash last month, Russia’s presidential human rights commissioner Tatiana Moskalkova said Friday. Russia claims 65 Ukrainian servicemen en route for a scheduled prisoner exchange were killed on Jan. 24 when a missile…
DetailsThe Komsomolsk Refinery (an enterprise of Rosneft’s refining complex) has installed domestically produced VR simulators to train staff of the electrical equipment workshop
XII Rosneft Winter Sports Games, which took place in Krasnoyarsk from February 25 to 29, has ended
Seda Suleimanova, a young woman from Russia’s republic of Chechnya, was detained in St. Petersburg and returned to her home region last summer. She had fled Chechnya, a conservative, majority Muslim region of the North Caucasus, after her family threatened to kill her for being “insufficiently religious.” This month, rights activists announced that she may have been…
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India said Thursday it was working to secure the release of around 20 of its citizens who are “stuck” in the Russian army. Several Indian recruits told AFP this month that they had been lured into joining the Russian military by promises of high salaries and Russian citizenship. “It is our understanding that 20-odd people…
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Russian TV personality and blogger Anastasia Ivleeva said Thursday that she will vote for Vladimir Putin in next month’s presidential election after facing a conservative backlash for organizing her “nearly naked” party in December. Ivleeva and several other celebrities issued public apologies after pictures from the private event at a Moscow nightclub were leaked online,…
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A Swedish agency for grants for faith institutions said Thursday it was cutting support to the Russian Orthodox Church, after Sweden’s intelligence service warned the church was used for intelligence activities. The Swedish Agency for Support for Faith Communities said in a statement that it was also cutting financial support for the Church, also known…
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The European Parliament said Thursday that Russian President Vladimir Putin bore “criminal and political responsibility” for the death of opposition activist Alexei Navalny and should be held to account. Navalny, one of Putin’s most vocal critics, died in prison on Feb. 16 in unclear circumstances but EU leaders have blamed the Russian leader. “The Russian…
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Funeral homes in Moscow are refusing to transport the body of opposition activist Alexei Navalny to the church where his public memorial ceremony will take place on Friday, his allies said. “All the hearse services are getting calls from unknown people who threaten them so that they don’t take Alexei’s body anywhere,” Navalny’s spokeswoman Kira…
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Updated with court ruling. A Moscow court has fined the editor-in-chief of the independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta for breaking wartime censorship laws, the publication reported Thursday. Sergei Sokolov, who replaced Nobel Peace Prize winner Dmitry Muratov as Novaya Gazeta’s head editor last year, was found guilty of “discrediting” the Russian military in an article published…
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President Vladimir Putin has secretly assigned “political instructors” to Russian government ministries and state agencies to ensure loyalty among officials, the independent news outlets Meduza and IStories reported Thursday, citing leaked Kremlin files obtained by an international team of journalists. The political instructors — called “deputy heads for social and political work” — are tasked with instructing…
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Russia said Thursday it had defeated an attempted landing by Ukrainian special forces on the Tendra Spit sandbar in the Black Sea held by Russian troops, killing “up to 25” Ukrainian personnel. “Russian forces… destroyed a Ukrainian commando group…. trying to land on speedboats,” the Defense Ministry said in its daily update. It said that…
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A court in a Russian border region on Thursday sentenced a Ukrainian man to 12 years in prison on espionage charges for passing military information to Ukraine’s secret services. Russia has arrested and imprisoned dozens of people for allegedly cooperating with Ukraine’s army and intelligence agencies since it launched its full-scale military offensive in February…
DetailsThanks to the support of RN-Uvatneftegaz (an enterprise of Rosneft Oil Company’s upstream complex), scientists from the Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences have confirmed the fact that the red-nosed forest reindeer is a permanent resident of the Tyumen Region.
President Vladimir Putin delivered his annual State of the Nation address on Thursday, using the speech to send a message of defiance to the West, which he accused of instigating the war in Ukraine, but also to highlight state social support programs and the Russian economy’s resilience against Western sanctions. “The West miscalculated and ran…
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New Zealand announced Thursday that it has imposed a new round of sanctions against Russia aiming to curb Moscow’s efforts to evade current restrictions over its war in Ukraine. “By targeting evasion methods, the government is contributing to the robustness of the sanctions system,” Foreign Minister Winston Peters said in a statement, describing Russia’s sanctions…
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Russia’s most prominent opposition figure Alexei Navalny died on Feb. 16 in the Arctic penal colony where he was serving a 19-year prison sentence, dealing a major blow to the country’s beleaguered opposition. Ahead of next month’s presidential election, which President Vladimir Putin is expected to easily win, Russia’s opposition is divided more than ever before — both physically,…
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LONDON — Marina Litvinenko, activist and widow of poisoned Russian dissident Alexander Litvinenko, told The Moscow Times that Yulia Navalnaya must “find her own voice” as she starts to build a political career following her husband’s death. Navalnaya announced last week that she would continue the work of her husband Alexei Navalny, the Kremlin’s most prominent…
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A Russian court has overturned the parole granted to a summer camp director who was jailed over the deaths of 14 children in a boating accident, media reported Wednesday. Yelena Reshetova was among several people arrested following the June 2016 incident at the Samozero camp in the northern republic of Karelia, where a rafting party carrying dozens…
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The number of criminal cases against “foreign agents” in Russia more than doubled last year compared to the preceding two years, the investigative news outlet Vyorstka reported Wednesday. Hundreds of journalists, activists and civil society figures have been branded “foreign agents” in recent years amid the Kremlin’s widening crackdown on independent media and the opposition. …
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Russia will take measures against Sweden following its accession to NATO, Russia’s Foreign Ministry said Wednesday. Sweden on Monday cleared the final hurdle to become the 32nd member of the U.S.-led military alliance after Hungary, the last holdout in accession talks, ratified the Nordic country’s membership. Stockholm dropped years of military non-alignment when it applied for…
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Latvia’s Justice Minister said that Russian citizens who live in the Baltic country and plan to vote in Russia’s upcoming presidential election “essentially support” Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. “We can’t prevent Russian citizens from entering the embassy. What they do there and why they do it is their own business with the state of which they are…
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Yulia Navalnaya, the widow of late Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny, urged European politicians to “investigate” the Western assets of President Vladimir Putin and his inner circle on Wednesday. “You cannot hurt Putin with another resolution or another set of sanctions,” Navalnaya told the European Parliament in Strasbourg. “The most important thing is people who…
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Russia’s threshold for using tactical nuclear weapons in an armed conflict is lower than previously made public, the Financial Times reported Wednesday, citing leaked military documents. In 2020, President Vladimir Putin approved a new nuclear deterrence policy that permits the use of nuclear first strikes in several scenarios, such as those where Russia’s existence as a state…
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Russia’s lower-house State Duma on Wednesday passed a bill that would ban advertisers from working with “foreign agents,” a move that will likely make it next to impossible for independent media outlets hit with the designation to earn money. If signed into law, businesses would no longer be able to advertise their products and services…
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A public funeral for late opposition activist Alexei Navalny will be held Friday afternoon at a church in southeastern Moscow, his spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh announced on social media Wednesday. The funeral service will take place at a Russian Orthodox church in Moscow’s Maryino district, where Navalny had lived with his wife and two children before being poisoned in…
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Russian authorities are investigating a woman in the Moscow region town of Lyubertsy for kicking out a Ukraine war veteran from the cafe she owns. Russia’s Investigative Committee, which probes major crimes, said Wednesday that its chief Alexander Bastrykin had ordered for a criminal case to be opened into “incitement of hatred” after pro-war activists…
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