Kremlin Bans High-Ranking Officials From Resigning Amid War in Ukraine – iStories

High-ranking Russian officials have been banned from resigning during the war in Ukraine under the threat of criminal prosecution, the iStories investigative outlet reported Monday, citing four sources familiar with the matter. The Kremlin imposed the unofficial ban after many officials expressed a desire to resign from their posts, iStories cited a source close to…

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Russian Airlines Ask Employees to Report Fewer Aircraft Malfunctions – Proekt

Russia’s flagship airline Aeroflot has asked its employees to refrain from recording equipment defects on aircraft, leading to planes regularly flying with malfunctions, according to the investigative news outlet Proekt, citing current and former employees at the airline.  A former employee at Aeroflot explained that the policy, in force since last spring, was introduced “to…

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Drone Sales Surge Twentyfold in Russia

Amateur drone sales in Russia have skyrocketed this year as the war in Ukraine has exposed a dire shortage of the small and effective devices on the battlefield, the Kommersant business daily reported Monday, citing the analytical service Moneyplace. Russia’s largest online retailer Wildberries recorded a twentyfold increase in sales to 26,700 drones in January-March.…

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Spring for Green Borshch

Dishes made of wild greens  — not herbs and lettuces grown in the garden  — are not necessarily sign of hard times. Nettle, sorrel, ground elder and wild garlic have all been used in our kitchens since time immemorial. Even today one of the most popular May soups is “green” vegetable soup. In Ukraine and…

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Pro-Russian Official Wounded in Assassination Attempt In Occupied Ukraine

A pro-Russian official in Ukraine’s partially occupied Zaporizhzhia region has been injured in an explosion that authorities called an assassination attempt, the state-run TASS news agency reported Friday. Russia’s Investigative Committee, which probes major crimes, said that an explosive device was placed in a trash can at the entrance of an apartment building in the city of…

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Putin Orders Measures to Reverse Mass Wartime Exodus

President Vladimir Putin on Friday ordered officials to develop measures aimed at reversing the mass emigration of Russian citizens sparked by the invasion of Ukraine and the country’s “partial” mobilization of reservists. Putin’s decree on amendments to Russia’s state migration policy notes that the emigration of Russian nationals abroad “increased” in 2022 “due to changing…

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Ravaged By Fires, a Tatar Village in West Siberia Calls on Tatarstan to Fund Reconstruction

Residents of Yuldus, a Tatar village in western Siberia destroyed by ongoing forest fires, have called on the head of Russia’s republic of Tatarstan to invest 500 million rubles ($6.5 million) into the area’s reconstruction.  “The republic won’t lose much [by allocating] half a million, but…we will know that Tatarstan hasn’t forgotten about us,” local…

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Major Russian University Urges Students to Report ‘Suspicious’ Classmates

A major university in Russia’s Volga region is urging students to report “suspicious” peers to the authorities amid heightened anxieties over possible sabotage acts aimed at hampering the war effort. Penza State University’s vice-rector in charge of security, Vladimir Shimkin, flagged a Federal Security Service (FSB) warning that a group of 15-to-21-year-olds are allegedly plotting attacks…

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Tricks of the Trade

Измена: replacement (sometimes); betrayal (sometimes) If there is one bit of Russian that continues to confuse me, it’s prefixed verbs. You know — when you take a basic verb and then add при-, от-, из-, пере-, об-, за-, or по-, at the beginning of the verb to get seven new verbs with 27 meanings, except…

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Kremlin ‘Strongly’ Denies Accusations of Meddling in Turkish Vote

The Kremlin on Friday denied it was meddling in Turkey’s presidential election campaign, after Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s main rival accused Moscow of spreading “deep fakes” targeting him. Turkish opposition candidate Kemal Kilicdaroglu claimed earlier this week that Russia was behind an online smear campaign against him ahead of the crucial election on Sunday. …

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U.S. Explores ‘Narrow’ Sanctions Relief to Free Gershkovich, Whelan From Russia – Reports

The United States is considering easing sanctions against Moscow in order to secure the release of jailed Americans Evan Gershkovich and Paul Whelan from Russian prison, CNN reported Thursday, citing unnamed senior White House officials. The U.S. has classified Gershkovich, a Wall Street Journal reporter, and Whelan, a former U.S. Marine, as “wrongfully detained.” The “narrow…

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Ukraine Launching Preparatory Strikes Ahead of Counteroffensive – CNN

Ukrainian forces have launched preparatory strikes on Russian military targets ahead of their highly anticipated counteroffensive, CNN reported Friday, citing a senior unnamed U.S. military official. “Shaping” operations prepare the battlefield for advancing forces by attacking weapons depots, command centers and armor and artillery systems. CNN describes these operations as a standard tactic employed ahead…

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Russia Adds Anti-War Actor, Ukraine Ex-Presidential Adviser to ‘Terrorist’ Registry

Russia has added exiled actor Artur Smolyaninov and former Ukrainian presidential adviser Oleksii Arestovych to its list of “terrorists and extremists,” the state-run RIA Novosti news agency reported Thursday. Russia’s Investigative Committee opened a criminal case in January against war movie star Smolyaninov, 39, for his support of Ukraine and criticism of the war. At the time,…

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Russia to Build ‘Migrant Village’ for Conservative American Expats

Russian authorities will launch construction of a village outside Moscow for conservative-minded Americans and Canadians next year, the state-run RIA Novosti news agency reported Thursday. Russia has for years positioned itself as a bastion of “traditional” values in contrast with Western liberalism as its relations with the West have deteriorated over its 2014 annexation of Crimea…

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Russia Jails Ex-Teacher 5.5 Years for Calling Crimean Bridge Blast ‘Putin’s Birthday Gift’

A Russian court has sentenced a former teacher to five and a half years in prison for referring to last fall’s Crimean Bridge explosion as President Vladimir Putin’s “birthday gift” online, independent media reported Thursday. Nikita Tushkanov, 28, was accused of “approving of” the blasts, which badly damaged the bridge linking mainland Russia to annexed Crimea,…

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Poland Changes Kaliningrad’s Official Name in Move Against ‘Russification’

Poland will stop using the official name for Russia’s Kaliningrad enclave and revert to its historic equivalent, the government in Warsaw said Wednesday, drawing Moscow’s ire. Citing a recommendation by a state commission tasked with standardizing foreign names in the Polish language, Poland’s development minister Waldemar Buda said Kaliningrad would now officially be called Konigsberg (“Krolewiec”…

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Leaders of Six Former Soviet Republics to Join Putin on Victory Day 

Updates with Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko’s arrival in Moscow on Monday evening. The leaders of six former Soviet republics are now expected to attend Russia’s annual Victory Day parade in Moscow on Tuesday, after Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko arrived unannounced in Moscow on Monday evening for what his press service said would be a “working visit.”…

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Russia to ‘Develop’ Its Military Facilities in Kyrgyzstan

Russia will “develop” its military installations in Central Asian ally Kyrgyzstan, the Kremlin said Monday, following talks between the two countries’ leaders in Moscow. “The heads of state emphasized the importance of strengthening the Kyrgyz Republic’s armed forces and developing Russian military facilities on its territory,” the Kremlin said in a statement. Kyrgyzstan, a majority-Muslim…

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Russia Set for Muted Victory Day as Ukrainian Counteroffensive Looms

Updated with leaders of Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan planning to attend Russia’s Victory Day celebrations.  Russia is due to hold drastically scaled-back Victory Day celebrations Tuesday amid heightened security concerns following last week’s drone attack on the Kremlin and an imminent Ukrainian counteroffensive. The 78th anniversary of the Soviet Union’s defeat of…

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Deadly Forest Fires Engulf Central, Eastern Russia

Several people have been killed, more than 300 homes destroyed and states of emergency declared in two Russian regions as forest fires raged across western Siberia, news agencies reported Monday. The governors of the Tyumen and Kurgan regions issued back-to-back emergency declarations Sunday as residents were evacuated and efforts to contain the fast-moving flames proved unsuccessful. Siberia’s…

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