Kremlin Dismisses ICC Arrest Warrants for Military Officers

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…

Details

Another round of interdepartmental consultations between Russia and the IAEA takes place in Sochi

ROSATOM 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…

Details

Kidnap, Lies, and Propaganda: Documentary Film ‘Ukraine’s Stolen Children’ Comes to London

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…

Details

Alexey Likhachev addressed the participants of the World Youth Festival 2024

His 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…

Details

‘Judge Righteously; Show Mercy to One Another’

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…

Details

Heavy Police Presence Ahead of Navalny’s Funeral

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…

Details

All Roads Lead to Chechnya: How Chechen Authorities Return Escapees With Impunity

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…

Details

Disgraced ‘Nearly Naked’ Party Organizer Says Planning to Vote for Putin

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,…

Details

Russian Court Fines Novaya Gazeta Chief Editor for ‘Discrediting’ Army

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…

Details

Russian Officials Secretly Assigned Patriotism ‘Instructors’ – Report

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…

Details

Russia Says Thwarted Attack on South Ukraine Coast

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…

Details

Russia Sentences Ukrainian to 12 Years for Spying

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…

Details

New Zealand Announces New Sanctions Against Russia

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…

Details

Who Is Left to Lead Russia’s Opposition After Navalny?

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,…

Details

Criminal Cases Against ‘Foreign Agents’ Doubled in 2023 – Vyorstka

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. …

Details

Moscow Vows Response to Sweden’s NATO Accession

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…

Details

Navalnaya Urges EU Politicians to Target Western Assets of Putin’s Inner Circle

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…

Details

Public Funeral for Navalny Set for March 1 – Allies

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…

Details

Lawyer Who Helped Navalny’s Mother Recover His Body Briefly Detained

A lawyer who helped the mother of late opposition figure Alexei Navalny recover his body from prison authorities was briefly detained, independent media reported Tuesday. Vasily Dubkov had accompanied Lyudmila Navalnaya to Salekhard, the capital of Russia’s Yamal-Nenets autonomous district, following Navalny’s death in a nearby prison colony on Feb. 16. He and other Navalny lawyers helped…

Details

Russia Labels Ex-Lawmaker Gennady Gudkov ‘Terrorist’

Russia’s state financial watchdog Rosfinmonitoring has added exiled opposition lawmaker Gennady Gudkov to its list of “terrorists and extremists.” Gudkov, a former KGB colonel, served in Russia’s lower-house State Duma from 2001 until his ouster in 2012 over what an ethics committee said was unlawful entrepreneurship. At the time, the 67-year-old denied any wrongdoing and…

Details

Bears, Robots and Zhirinovsky: The Best and Weirdest of Russia’s Election Campaign Ads

With Russia’s presidential election weeks away and early voting already underway in parts of Russia and occupied Ukraine, campaign season is in full swing.  While President Vladimir Putin is all but certain to win in the March 17 vote, his political organization and the three candidates allowed to run against him are nonetheless blanketing television and the internet…

Details

Russia Develops ‘Spiritual’ Psychology University Course

Russia’s Science and Higher Education Ministry has created a new psychology course that trains future mental health professionals to instill traditional conservative values in their patients, the youth news website Doxa reported Tuesday. The new course, which will be offered to both undergraduate and master’s students, is called “Individual Spiritual Security and Traditional Russian Spiritual and…

Details

Moscow Police Detain Navalny Mourners

Police in Moscow have detained at least four people who were previously arrested at memorials to the late Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny, the rights group OVD-Info reported Tuesday. Hundreds were arrested across Russia for laying flowers at memorials in the days after Navalny died at a remote Arctic prison on Feb. 16.  OVD-Info said Mikhail…

Details

Russia to Ban Gasoline Exports for 6 Months

Russia will impose a six-month ban on gasoline exports starting March 1 to meet rising domestic demand, the RBC news outlet reported Tuesday, citing two government sources and a representative of Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak.  Novak was said to have told Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin in a letter last month that demand for fuel…

Details

‘I Believe in a Better Future’: Rights Veteran Oleg Orlov on His 2.5-Year Sentence for Opposing Ukraine War

A Moscow court sentenced veteran human rights campaigner Oleg Orlov to two-and-a-half years in prison on Tuesday for speaking against the war in Ukraine and “discrediting” the Russian military. Orlov, the co-chair of the Nobel Peace Prize-winning Memorial human rights group, is one of the few prominent anti-war figures who have stayed in Russia since the…

Details