Russia Inflation Accelerates to 6.7%

Russia’s annual inflation rate accelerated to 6.7% in October, the country’s federal statistics agency said Friday, as a weak currency and surging military spending push prices higher across the economy. Rising prices have caused concern for the Kremlin and Russia’s Central Bank, which has raised interest rates to 15% in a bid to battle inflation.…

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Kremlin Says Convicts Fighting in Ukraine Atone for Crimes ‘With Blood’

Russian prisoners sent to fight in Ukraine are atoning for their crimes “with blood,” the Kremlin’s spokesman said Friday, answering questions about the controversial pardon of a man who brutally murdered his ex-girlfriend. Tens of thousands of Russians convicted of violent crimes including murder and rape have been recruited to fight in Ukraine, being offered…

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Moscow Accuses Ukraine of ‘Ecocide’ in Occupied Regions

Russia has accused Kyiv of committing environmental crimes in the Ukrainian territories that its troops currently occupy, including soil contamination caused by exploding artillery shells, the state-run TASS news agency reported. Moscow said it will begin collecting evidence of Ukraine’s “ecocidal violations” in the Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions, which it claims to have…

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Private Clinics in Russia’s Kursk Region Stop Providing Abortions

Nearly all private clinics in southwestern Russia’s Kursk region have stopped providing abortion services in a Kremlin-ordered effort to reverse the country’s demographic crisis, a senior official said Thursday. Kursk region Deputy Governor Andrei Belostotsky said authorities in Moscow had instructed regional governments to come up with their own policy solutions for boosting birth rates, according to…

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Russia Jails Buryat Activist 7 Years in Absentia for ‘War Fakes’ 

A court in the Siberian republic of Buryatia on Friday sentenced the head of the anti-war advocacy group Free Buryatia Foundation to seven years of prison in absentia for spreading “war fakes.” Russian authorities accused activist Alexandra Garmazhapova of spreading “knowingly false information” about the Russian Armed Forces in a video about Russian servicemen who…

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Latvia Jails Ex-Interior Minister for Pro-Russia Spying

A Latvian court on Thursday jailed former interior minister Janis Adamsons and a Russian accomplice for spying for Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB). The court in Riga sentenced Adamasons to eight-and-a-half years in prison and Russian citizen Gennady Silonov to seven years in prison.  “Adamsons collected secret and unclassified information for the Russian secret services, in…

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Putin Visits Military HQ Overseeing Ukraine War Operations

President Vladimir Putin paid a surprise overnight visit to the military headquarters overseeing Moscow’s war against Ukraine, the Kremlin said on Friday. It is his second visit to military headquarters, which is located in southern Russia’s Rostov-on-Don, in the past month.  Putin “visited the headquarters of the Russian Armed Forces in Rostov-on-Don, after completing his…

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Putin to Hold Call-In Show, Annual Press Conference in ‘Combined Format’

Russian President Vladimir Putin will hold his end-of-year press conference and televised call-in show in a “combined format” this year, the Kremlin announced Thursday. Set-piece political events involving Putin have been delayed or scrapped altogether in the tumultuous months following Moscow’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine. The Russian leader did not hold his Direct Line…

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Crimean Private Clinics Stop Providing Abortion Services

Private clinics in annexed Crimean have “voluntarily” stopped providing abortion services to patients, Kremlin-installed health officials on the peninsula said Thursday, amid growing concerns about a possible nationwide abortion ban.  Crimea’s Health Ministry was informed about the decision by the region’s private clinics to stop providing abortion services following a meeting with state officials and…

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Russian TV Channel Removes ‘LGBT’ Rainbow From K-Pop Music Video

A popular Russian television channel removed the rainbow featured in a K-pop music video over concerns that it could violate the country’s laws against “LGBT propaganda,” Russian media reported. TNT Music, which runs a chart show dedicated to South Korean pop music, has already been fined for violating Russia’s “LGBT propaganda” laws with previous broadcasts of foreign-made music videos.  But…

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Russian University to Train ‘Social Media Police’ for Fighting Online Extremism

Russia’s leading management university has launched an undergraduate program to train experts who can monitor and detect “extremism” online, the pro-Kremlin daily Izvestia reported Wednesday. Backed by Russia’s National Anti-Terrorist Committee, the Russian Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA) program aims to train future media managers as well as spokespersons for government ministries…

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Russian Activist Found in North Ossetia Jail After Disappearing in Georgia

A Russian left-wing nationalist activist has been placed inside a detention center in southern Russia after going missing in neighboring Georgia a month ago, the independent news website Mediazona reported Wednesday. Rafail Shepelev went missing on Oct. 12 in the Georgian capital of Tbilisi, where he has lived since 2021, according to the human rights project Perviy…

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Russian Prosecutors Seek 8-Year Jail Term for Artist Over Supermarket Protest

Russian prosecutors on Wednesday requested an eight-year prison sentence for artist Alexandra Skochilenko, who was arrested last year for an anti-war protest in which she replaced supermarket price tags with information about civilian deaths in Ukraine. The 33-year-old artist and musician has been in detention since April 2022, when she was arrested for swapping out price tags…

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5 Killed in Attacks Against Occupied Donetsk, Kremlin-Backed Mayor Says

Ukrainian shelling killed five people and wounded 18 in the Russian-occupied city of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine, the city’s Kremlin-backed mayor said Wednesday, a day after the attack was said to have taken place.  Officials in the occupied region accused Ukraine’s military of using long-range missiles supplied by the U.S. to carry out Tuesday evening’s deadly attack…

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Ukraine Says It Was Behind Car Bombing of Russian Proxy Politician

Ukraine said Wednesday it was behind the assassination of a Russia-backed politician and former militia leader who died in a car bomb attack in eastern Ukraine. Mikhail Filiponenko, a deputy in the pro-Moscow Luhansk regional parliament, was killed on Wednesday morning when an “unidentified explosive device” detonated under his 4×4, Russian investigators said earlier. In…

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Russia Hands Jehovah’s Witness Follower 7-Year Jail Term for ‘Extremism’

A court in Russia’s Chelyabinsk region has sentenced a Jehovah’s Witness follower to seven years in prison on charges of “extremism,” the religious organization’s Russian branch said Tuesday.  Yevgeny Bushev had been under house arrest since September 2022 on allegations of “organizing actions to continue the illegal activities of a banned religious organization,” the religious…

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As Russia’s Permafrost Thaws, Ancient Pathogens Risk Re-Awakening

Ancient pathogens that have been preserved in northern Russia’s permafrost for millennia could reawaken as global temperatures rise, scientists warn, potentially putting humanity at risk of never-before-seen diseases. Jean-Michel Claverie, a virologist and emeritus professor at the Aix-Marseille University School of Medicine, is one of the few scientists worldwide who has studied “zombie viruses” in…

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Russian Pro-War Pop Star’s Thesis Heavily Plagiarized From Wikipedia – Dissernet

Pro-Kremlin pop singer Shaman plagiarized large portions of his final thesis at a prestigious musical college in Moscow, according to the prominent anti-plagiarism project Dissernet.  Shaman, whose real name is Yaroslav Dronov, has emerged as one of Russia’s most well-known pop stars over the past year, as he has been regularly invited to perform at state-sponsored…

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Deputy Police Chief in Russia’s Dagestan Arrested After Anti-Israeli Riots

Updated to include official confirmation of Ismailov’s arrest. The deputy police chief of Russia’s North Caucasus republic of Dagestan has been arrested over a week after an anti-Israeli mob stormed a local airport, state media reported Tuesday. Searches were underway at the home and workplace of Dagestan’s Deputy Interior Minister Rufat Ismailov, according to the…

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Russian Subsea Telecoms Cable Damaged in Baltic Sea

Finnish authorities said Monday that a Russian telecommunications cable in the Baltic Sea was discovered damaged in October, roughly coinciding with damage to subsea infrastructure in Sweden and Finland. “The Russian salvage vessel Spasatel Karev began to repair Rostelecom’s Baltika telecommunications cable in the Gulf of Finland on Nov. 6,” Finland’s economic affairs ministry said…

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