The head of the Directorate for Combating Economic Crimes and three police officers in Russia’s east Siberian Zabaikalsky Territory are suspected of taking bribes worth 14 million rubles (more than $450,000), a spokesman for the local investigation committee said. The suspects are accused of helping local businessmen to acquire documents to export lumber products to [...]
The CEO and major shareholder of a Russian bank was shot dead on Wednesday evening in southwestern Moscow, a spokesman for Russia’s investigation committee said. Mikael Daudov, 66, was shot in the head with a small-caliber gun while leaving his office on Leninsky Prospekt. Daudov owned an 18.34 percent stake in the small Moscow-based bank, [...]
A Russian Rokot carrier rocket blasted off from the Plesetsk space center in northern Russia early on Wednesday to put a Gonets-M and two Kosmos satellites into orbit, a Defense Ministry spokesman said. The launch took place on schedule at 07:30am Moscow time (03:30 GMT), Lt. Col. Alexei Zolotukhin said, adding that the satellites are [...]
Police in Russia’s Kamchatka have seized 29.5 tons of red caviar worth some 30 million rubles ($970,000) from a refrigerator found in the street in a local town, a Kamchatka police spokesman said on Wednesday. Some 1,340 plastic containers full of caviar were seized in the town of Sobolevo, the official said. A total of [...]
Galina Litvyak had stopped by the kiosk down the road, wandered through nearby supermarkets and badgered friends for the latest rumors. Nobody knew where to find it. All over her middle-class neighborhood, the stores were filled with an ample selection of goods, reflecting just how much Moscow has changed over the last two decades. With [...]
Three icons, one of which contained relics of one of Russia’s most venerated saints, have been stolen from a church in a village north of Moscow, a police source said on Sunday. The theft was apparently committed on Saturday afternoon. Priests discovered that the icons of St. Sergiy of Radonezh, Elijah the Prophet, and St. [...]
Vladimir Putin hinted that he would run for a third and possibly even a fourth term as Russian president as he likened himself to former US President Franklin D Roosevelt. The 57-year-old Russian Prime Minister appeared to deliberately fan speculation on Monday when he met with foreign academics and journalists at the Black Sea resort [...]
The Russian and Israeli defense ministers, Anatoly Serdyukov and Ehud Barak, are planning to sign on Monday an agreement on military cooperation between the countries during talks in Moscow, the Russian defense minister’s spokeswoman has said. Barak will arrive in the Russian capital on a two-day visit later on Monday. “This agreement will regulate cooperation [...]
Kyrgyz Interim President Roza Otunbayeva will sign a decree pardoning persons who had committed economic crimes over the last two years, a spokesman for the Kyrgyz government said. The document will relieve from criminal liability persons who had committed commercial or official crimes between March 24, 2005 and April 7, 2010, Kyrgyz Justice Minister Aida [...]
The Belarusian Prosecutor General’s Office will inquire into the death of opposition journalist and human rights activist Aleh Byabenin, whose hanged body was found on Friday. Byabenin, 36, was one of the leading figures of the human rights organization Charter97 and ran the Charter97 website. The journalist’s relatives found his corpse hanged in his summer [...]
President Alexander Lukashenko’s remarks suggesting Russia could have been behind an attack on its own embassy in Minsk are “obscene”, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Friday. A day after Russia strongly condemned the attack, Lukashenko retaliated by saying that “thugs and scoundrels” from Moscow may be to blame. “I do not want to [...]
A Russian businessman accused of being responsible for the death of 156 people in a horrific night club fire last December has been arrested while on the run in Spain. Konstantin Mrykhin is wanted in his native Russia on charges of involuntary manslaughter in connection with a blaze that tore through the Lame Horse night [...]
The ghosts of the “Russian spies” roam the foggy Albion – at least, that is what keeps appearing before the British counterintelligence officers. MI5 officers believe they are on a trail of a “new Anna Chapman” – this is the nickname given by the media to Liberal Democrat Mike Hancock’s legislative aide, 25-year-old Katya Zatuliveter. [...]
A Russian Proton-M carrier rocket with three GLONASS satellites blasted off early on Thursday morning from the Baikonur space center in Kazakhstan. The rocket was launched at 4:53 Moscow time (0:53 GMT), Lt. Col. Alexei Zolotukhin, a spokesman for Russian Space Forces said. Glonass – the Global Navigation Satellite System – is the Russian equivalent [...]
The body of one of Russia’s top spies has washed up on the Turkish coast after he disappeared close to a sensitive Russian naval facility in neighboring Syria. Major-General Yuri Ivanov, 52, was the deputy head of Russia’s foreign military intelligence arm known as GRU which is thought to operate the biggest network of foreign spies [...]
Russian police have arrested more than 100 people, including Boris Nemtsov, a former deputy prime minister, who were taking part in anti-Kremlin protests in Moscow and St Petersburg. Opposition leaders and rights activists have been converging at the capital’s Triumph Square on the 31st of each month, symbolising the right to free assembly guaranteed in Article 31 of Russia’s constitution. [...]
The Russian Embassy in Minsk was the target of a violent attack late on Monday night, when unknown assailants hurled fire bombs at the building. “At around 10:50 p.m. local time (19:50 GMT), two fire bombs were thrown onto the territory of the Russian Embassy,” a local emergencies spokesman told RIA Novosti. “One of them [...]
The Russian Mir-2 mini-sub has found several shiny metal objects on the bottom of Lake Baikal that could be the legendary Tsarist gold lost during the Russian civil war, the Fund for the Protection of Lake Baikal said. Explorers have long been searching for the Tsarist gold that was allegedly carried by Admiral Alexander Kolchak [...]
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has accused western countries of using unfair political methods including deceit and breaking promises to obstruct the process of “resetting” relations between Russia and the West. In an interview in Kommersant Daily, Putin said his speech at the 2007 Munich Security Conference, which several western politicians considered a declaration of [...]
Nine people suffocated to death during fire at a retirement home in Central Russia’s Tver Region on Monday, a spokeswoman for the regional emergencies service said. The fire brigade was called out at 5:05 Moscow time [1:05 GMT], the first firefighting unit arrived three minutes later. “At 5:30 [1:30 GMT] the fire was put out [...]
Five civilians were killed in an attack which occurred early on Sunday when militants tried to attack Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov’s home village of Tsentoroi, a source from the Chechen police force said. “According to the latest information, five civilians and two police officers were killed in a shootout with a group of up to [...]
Russian submarines are hunting down British Vanguard boats in a return to Cold War tactics not seen for 25 years, Navy chiefs have warned. A specially upgraded Russian Akula class submarine has been caught trying to record the acoustic signature made by the Vanguard submarines that carry Trident nuclear missiles, according to senior Navy officers. [...]
Over 2,000 law enforcers will be providing security on Wednesday at the long-awaited rock concert of legendary U2 in the Russian capital, a spokesman for Moscow police said. “Some 2,100 policemen and Interior Ministry’s troops will be providing security at the Luzhniki Stadium. Officers of the canine team and their dogs will inspect the stadium [...]
Four pounds of radioactive enriched uranium worth more than $10 Million, has been seized by Moldovan authorities from a suspected group of traffickers that included former officials from the interior ministry. Police found 1.8 kilograms (four pounds) of the substance Uranium-238 in a garage in the capital Chisinau where it was under guard and in [...]
Twenty-five inmates escaped from a prison in Tajikistan’s capital overnight, killing six personnel in a dramatic jail break, a police source said on Monday. The incident occurred after 1 a.m. when one of the convicts attacked a duty officer, took his keys and opened the cells with other inmates. The prisoners later grabbed weapons from [...]
Jobs in Russia’s law enforcement sector are being bought by the mafia for more than $45,000 a time, such is the level of corruption, according to a new report. It warned that Russian law enforcement structures were increasingly intertwined with the country’s organized crime scene and said the most popular job to be bought and [...]
Russian tennis star Maria Sharapova was named the world’s highest-paid female athlete by Forbes magazine. Sharapova pulled in $24.5 million over the past year, she earned $1 million in prize money and the rest was derived from endorsements and appearance fees, Forbes said. Sharapova, 23, became an overnight tennis sensation at the age of 17 [...]
The Thai appeals court ruled on Friday to extradite Russian businessman Viktor Bout to the United States. Bout said he is ready to prove his innocence in front of a U.S. court. “Well, now we’ll just go to a U.S. court and win there instead,” Bout told RIA Novosti after the court had given its [...]
Russia’s security services are planning to create an “automated atlas” of the country’s many national languages – and aim to use the database to establish a reliable means of identifying phonecalls in languages other than Russian. A tender published on the FSB website offers 24 million roubles ($787,000) to a company capable of creating a [...]
Russia’s military presence in Armenia will be extended by another 24 years, the Armenian foreign minister said on Wednesday. The term of a 1995 bilateral treaty on the Russian military base in Gyumri, northern Armenia, will be extended from 25 to 49 years, Eduard Nalbandyan said. Under the amendments to the treaty, to be signed [...]
Russia and Nicaragua signed on Tuesday an agreement on the supply of 250 Russian buses to the Latin American country as part of gratuitous aid program. Russia has already donated 130 buses to improve public transportation in Nicaragua under an agreement signed during a visit of Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega to Moscow in 2008. The [...]
Russia’s Federal Air Transport Agency, Rosaviatsiya, may impose restrictions on flights or even cancel the air operator licenses of 42 percent of the country’s airlines, including over a third of the country’s leading operators, due to their weak financial situation, Kommersant business daily said on Wednesday. Kommersant quoted the transport agency statement saying that companies [...]
A Moscow court extended on Monday the custody of former Yukos head Mikhail Khodorkovsky and his business partner Platon Lebedev for another three months. Both businessmen are already serving eight-year sentences for fraud and tax evasion. They are now accused of stealing $9.6 billion from the $15.8 billion profit generated by Yukos between 1999 and [...]
A senior Romanian diplomat who was detained in Moscow while trying to obtain military secrets from a Russian national has been declared persona non grata and ordered to leave the country within 48 hours, the Federal Security Service (FSB) said on Monday. The FSB has identified the alleged spy as Gabriel Grecu, first secretary of [...]
A religion-obsessed Russian tycoon has ordered his employees to quickly embrace the Russian Orthodox Church or lose their jobs. Vasily Boiko-The Great, who controls a major agricultural holding, has written to his 6,500 employees, ordering those “living in sin” to get married in church within two months or be fired. The deadline, 14 October, is [...]
The Agriculture Ministry said Friday that it would lift a ban on poultry imports for more than three-quarters of U.S. facilities now blocked, acknowledging that the plants satisfy its requirements for meat treatment and production processing. Presidents Dmitry Medvedev and Barack Obama struck a deal in June to allow U.S. producers to import poultry meat [...]
The court in the Indian state of Goa has sentenced a Russian tourist to one-year imprisonment over an expired Indian visa. Alexander Solomin from Russia did not extend his monthly Indian visa, which expired on April 25. He was arrested on May 29 after he went to local police to get an exit permit. The [...]
Iran is to launch its first nuclear power reactor next week, the Islamic republic and Russia which helped build the plant said on Friday after years of delays to the highly sensitive project. “We are preparing to transfer the fuel inside the plant next week… Then we will need seven to eight days to transfer [...]
An international oil consultant, who was the inspiration for the George Clooney film Syriana, has finally been brought to justice for his part in a $84 Million corruption scandal. Jim Giffen, has pleaded guilty to breaking anti-bribery laws after a ten-year investigation into his conduct that threatened to expose links between the oil industry and [...]
James Cameron, director of blockbusters Titanic and Avatar, is to take part in a demonstration dive this weekend on the Mir 1 and Mir 2 submarines near the village of Listvyanka on the shores of Lake Baikal. “A definite date for Cameron’s dive is not yet set, but the possibility was discussed earlier,” a representative of [...]
Siberian scientists will complete their report in September on previously unknown microbial colonies, found in Lake Baikal earlier this week, the Fund for the Protection of Lake Baikal said on Friday. The finding is thought to be methane-consuming bacteria living in a previously unknown type of a colonial organism, but final conclusions are yet to [...]
People come to see the kitten and Luntic poses for photographs with great pleasure. A bizarre kitten with four ears lives in a car maintenance shop in Russia’s city of Vladivostok. The kitten was named Luntic after a cute alien from the moon featured in a popular Russian cartoon. Luntic has rapidly become one of [...]
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Tuesday took part in extinguishing forest fires in Ryazan Province on board an amphibious firefighting airplane. The Russian head of government was the co-pilot for half an hour aboard a Be-200 plane scooping up water from the nearby Oka River and dumping it on raging forest fires some 200 [...]
Russian authorities have declared a state of emergency in Ozersk, home to major nuclear reprocessing plant, due to wildfires burning around the town. “A state of emergency has been introduced in forests and parks on the territory of the Ozersk city district due to a complicated fire hazard situation,” said a statement posted on the [...]
Russia’s Central Bank is circulating as of today a modified 1,000 ruble bill, which experts say is the most security protected of its kind around. The current 1,000 ruble bills will remain current and are expected to gradually go out of circulation by the end of next year. The current exchange rate for 1,000 Russian [...]
Adnan Mirvany, an ethnic Iranian who runs a shop in Brooklyn, is still unsure how to spell the Russian soft drink’s name correctly and wonders how it became so popular with New Yorkers. He labels his drink both “Cwas” and “Cvass;” either way, it tastes good. “I added the slogan ‘a great product from Russia,’ [...]
The worsening ecological situation in the Russian capital prompted several countries to evacuate their embassy staff from Moscow, while other states recommended their nationals to abstain from visits to Russia. Austria, Poland and Canada have evacuated some of their non-essential embassy employees and their families, while Germany temporarily closed the embassy and the consular department, [...]
The US State Department has warned Americans to “carefully consider” the risks involved in travel to parts of Russia, as heavy smog continues to grip Moscow and wildfires rage. “Forest fires and extreme high temperatures in the Moscow region and surrounding areas of central Russia have produced hazardous levels of air pollution and caused numerous [...]
Russia’s grain harvest in 2010 may total just 60 million metric tons, or 38% less than last year, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said at a government presidium meeting. “According to the latest Agriculture Ministry forecasts, the harvest will be much more modest than we assumed at the beginning of the year. It could total 65 [...]
The Moscow skyline of the Kremlin and St. Basil’s Cathedral vanished Friday as a blanket of thick, noxious smoke shrouded the metropolis, leaving many of the city’s 10 million residents with sore throats and burning eyes. On Friday, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev visited a Moscow ambulance station, accompanied by top health officials. He was told [...]
Russia could lose up to $13 Billion due to an extensive arms embargo imposed on Iran over its controversial nuclear program, a Russian arms trade expert said on Tuesday. “This amount includes deliveries under signed contracts and potential revenues from prospective projects,” said Igor Korotchenko, head of a Moscow-based think tank on the international arms [...]
The North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) and the Russian Air Force will hold their first-ever joint air defense exercise on August 8-11, NORAD said. The exercise, dubbed VIGILANT EAGLE, involves Russian, Canadian and U.S. Air Force personnel operating from command centers at the Elmendorf airbase in Alaska, and in Khabarovsk, Russia. “Airborne warning and [...]
A forest fire destroyed at least 13 hangars containing aircraft and equipment at a navy base outside Moscow last Thursday, Russia’s Prosecutor General’s office disclosed on Tuesday. Russia’s beleaguered defense ministry had initially denied reports of the blaze. It described a story that 200 planes had been destroyed as “fiction” and said the base concerned [...]
A U.S. woman is suspected of smuggling military hardware to Russia, although she firmly believes that she helped sending humanitarian aid for Russian orphans, ABC News.com reported. The 44-year-old woman from Wisconsin was landed a job via a Website and had to change packaging and address labels on parcels she received, which in reality contained [...]
A passenger, who survived an An-24 crash with 15 people on board in Russia’s Krasnoyarsk Territory in East Siberia, died in a hospital bringing the death toll to 12, a spokesman for the regional emergencies ministry said. The plane, which was flying from the city of Krasnoyarsk to the town of Igarka, crashed on Monday [...]
Russian firefighters on Sunday battled the flames from spreading forest fires that have already killed 30 people, destroyed thousands of homes and mobilised hundreds of thousands of emergency workers. The emergency situations ministry said Sunday that forest fires had engulfed more than 128,500 hectares across Russia. It mobilised almost 240,000 emergency workers to fight the [...]
March of Dissent rallies demanding freedom of assembly took place in at least 10 constituent territories of the Russian Federation, a Russian Interior Ministry spokesman said on Saturday. He said protest rallies were held in the cities of Vladivostok and Blagoveshchensk in the Russian Far East, Barnaul in the south Siberian Altai region, Stavropol in [...]
Canadian fighter jets scrambled to repel Russian bombers that made several attempts to probe Canadian airspace on Wednesday. QMI Agency has learned that two CF-18s took off from CFB Bagotville to intercept two TU-95 long range bombers about 463 km east of Goose Bay, N.L. Attempts by Russia to test Canadian airspace have been going [...]
Canada’s Magna, one of the largest car utilities producers in the world, will open a car utility plant in St. Petersburg in fall 2010, the city government said on Monday. The decision was made after a meeting between St. Petersburg Governor Valentina Matvienko and Magna President Siegfried Wolf, the government said in a statement. Three [...]
People in this Russian town used to stare at Jean Gregoire Sagbo because they had never seen a black man. Now they say they see in him something equally rare — an honest politician. Sagbo last month became the first black to be elected to office in Russia. In a country where racism is entrenched [...]
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin arrived to the bike show in the Ukrainian port of Sevastopol, riding three-wheeled Harley Davidson “tricked out piece of iron”. The bikers, gathered at the 14th International annual bike show, welcomed premier who headed the line of bikers. He was riding a posh Harley Davidson trike decorated with Russian and [...]
Several U.S. and Japanese warships are taking part in celebrations dedicated to the Russian Navy Day, a spokesperson for the Russian Pacific Fleet said on Sunday. “Two groups of U.S. and Japanese warships, which arrived on Friday in the Pacific Fleet’s main naval base [in Vladivostok] on an unofficial visit, are taking part in the [...]
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said he had met with Russian spies deported from the United States following Russia-U.S. spy scandal and assured them of a bright and interesting life in the future. The ten individuals were arrested by U.S. law enforcement on June 27 on suspicion of being part of an espionage ring spying [...]
Police in the Krasnodar Territory, southern Russia, have launched a search for the donkey forced to parasail as an advertising stunt high above the beach last weekend as well as its owner, a police spokesman said. On July 15, the donkey was forced to parasail along a beach on the Sea of Azov for half [...]
The Kazakh Oil and Gas Ministry has revoked the license on the development of the Shagyrly-Shomyshty gas deposit, one of the largest in the country, from U.S. company CaspianGasCorporation over debts, the Novosti-Kazakhstan news agency said. CaspianGasCorporation, a subsidiary of the American Petroleum company, has been developing the field since February 2004. Kazakh Oil and [...]
At least two people have been killed and two others wounded in an attack at a hydroelectric power plant in Russia’s North Caucasus region, RusHydro, the company that runs the plant has said. “According to preliminary information, a terrorist act was the cause of the explosion and of the fire,” RusHydro said in a statement. “Two guards died, two [...]
Seventy-one people drowned in Russia in a single day, officials said Tuesday, as many sought relief from a prolonged heat-wave by jumping into lakes and rivers. The Russian emergency ministry registered 85 cases of people getting into difficulties in water, with 71 people drowning in the last 24 hours alone, it said on its website [...]
Soviet Russia’s missiles and soldiers snaking through Red Square made chilling images, but one Russian-American filmmaker is casting a new light on this time to show there was life beneath the ice. Semyon Pinkhasov, an emigre to the United States at the height of the Cold War, has made documentary films about prominent Soviet-era artisans [...]
A Moscow court on Wednesday found the opposition New Times magazine guilty of defaming a United Russia deputy by writing that he “supervised” an ultranationalist youth group and awarded him a token 1 ruble (3 cents) in damages. Analysts warned that the verdict spelled a setback for free media that would encourage self-censorship. The author [...]
Microsoft said the 12th suspected member of a Russian spy ring operating in the United States was an employee at the company’s Redmond, Washington, headquarters. The man, a Russian citizen in his early 20s named Alexei Karetnikov, worked for Microsoft as a software tester for about nine months, a spokeswoman for Microsoft in Moscow, who [...]
Shamen trying to perform an exorcism in eastern Russia allegedly suffocated the four-year-old boy they were trying to save. Dmitry Kazachuk, who apparently had pneumonia, was left alone with the ritual healers by his parents. Before leaving, Dmitry’s mom observed the woman performing the ritual insisting her son’s name was “Lucifer the demon.” The parents [...]
Russia’s intelligence service fears one of its 10 deported spies is a double agent and is planning to put them through three weeks of tests to flush out any traitors. The 10, who were flown back last Friday after the biggest spy swap since the end of the Cold War, are being held in a [...]
Two men who organized a controversial art exhibition in Moscow in 2007 have been found guilty by a Russian court of inciting hatred. Andrei Yerofeyev and Yuri Samodurov had set up the Forbidden Art exhibition at the Sakharov Museum in Moscow. The show provoked condemnation from the Russian Orthodox Church, among others, for artworks that [...]
The Russian army is fighting accusations of bullying and murder after the mysterious death of a young conscript. Just a few days after beginning his military service, Roman Suslov, 19, was found dead. His family and human rights groups believe he was murdered and his internal organs were sold. Al Jazeera’s Neave Barker reports from [...]
As the ten Russian spies return to their homeland in a prisoner swap with America, a Russian prisoner who was himself exchanged in a similar deal tells Harriet Alexander about the troubles that lie ahead. Vladimir Bukovsky, 67, is a Russian dissident, author and human rights activist. He spent 12 years in Russian prisons, labour [...]
Anna Chapman’s father worked as a diplomat in Kenya alongside Mr Ivanov, Russia’s first deputy prime minister, a career spy and a friend of Vladimir Putin’s, it was claimed on Saturday. The claim suggests that her family may also enjoy serious political connections inside the Kremlin. If confirmed, it will strengthen suspicions voiced by Alex [...]
Russia has expressed interest in swapping a scientist jailed for espionage with one of 10 alleged Russian agents detained by US authorities last month, a lawyer for the scientist has said. Igor Sutyagin, a nuclear weapons expert, was convicted by a Russian court in 2004 on charges of passing classified military information to a British [...]
Listvyanka, Russia — On the edge of this Siberian village is a resort with a veiled guest list and armed guards at the front gate. When local officials have expressed unease about what goes on inside, the reply has always been the same: do not interfere. Two and half years ago, the village’s mayor, Tatyana [...]
An unmanned Russian resupply vessel docked at the International Space Station (ISS) Sunday, two days after an earlier attempt failed, the Russian and US space flight control centers said. The Progress M-06M cargo ship, launched on June 30, is carrying 2.6 tons of fuel, food and water for the three Russia and three US astronauts [...]
An unmanned Russian space capsule carrying supplies to the International Space Station failed in a docking attempt, Russian Mission Control and NASA have confirmed. The Progress space capsule is carrying more than two tons of food, water and other supplies for the orbiting laboratory. Three Russian and three U.S. astronauts comprise the current crew. None [...]
Earlier this week Russian airline Avianova aired a new commercial, which shows a team of bikini-clad flight attendants washing an airplane while a gaggle of men watch, and caused quite a controversy. The Australian newspaper The Daily Telegraph reported that Secretary of the Flight Attendants Association of Australia Jo-Ann Davidson said ads like this “put [...]
“Juan Lazaro”, one of the suspects in an alleged Russian spy ring, has admitted that he worked for Russia’s intelligence service, according to a bail letter provided by the United States Attorney’s office in the Southern District of New York. The document states Lazaro made a “lengthy post-arrest statement on June 27th,” after he waived [...]
A red-headed femme fatale is among eleven people arrested by the FBI and accused of spying for Russia in an extraordinary Cold War-style espionage plot. Anna Chapman, believed to be a 28-year-old divorcee with a masters’ degree in economics and her own online real-estate business, is being held without bail after prosecutors called her a [...]
Russia angrily denounced the U.S. arrest of 10 alleged Russian spies as an unjustified throwback to the Cold War, and senior lawmakers said some in the U.S. government may be trying to undercut President Barack Obama’s warming relations with Moscow. The Russian Foreign Ministry said Tuesday it was regrettable that the arrests came amid Obama’s [...]
Ten alleged Russian spies have been arrested and charged in the United States. Eight were held for allegedly carrying out long-term, deep cover assignments on behalf of the Kremlin. Two others were arrested for allegedly participating in the same Russian intelligence programme within the U.S., the Justice Department announced. Each of the ten was charged [...]
The Russian Foreign Ministry considers a U.S. report on the arrest of a group of suspected Russian spies controversial, a ministry spokesman said. “We are looking into the reports; they are controversial and require further clarification,” the spokesman said without providing any further details. The U.S. Department of Justice said in a statement on Monday [...]
The Russian Armed Forces started on Tuesday large-scale Vostok-2010 military exercises in Siberia and the country’s Far East, a spokesman for the Far Eastern military district said. “The exercises started on schedule, without delays. They are held on the territory of the Far Eastern and Siberian military districts from June 29 through July 8,” the [...]
The Desert Is Not Silent, an exhibition of ancient and contemporary Libyan art, was opened in Moscow on Monday by the son of Libyan leader Muammar al-Gaddafi. Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, who heads the Gaddafi International Charity and Development Foundation (GICDF), brought to Russian capital a sophisticated mix of archeological artifacts from several Libyan museums and [...]
A 26-year-old TV host for a satellite business channel, Dmitry Okkert, was found dead in his apartment in southern Moscow on Friday, Moscow’s chief investigator said. The Investigative Committee of the Russian Prosecutor General’s office said the body had a stab wound in the neck, and a murder case was launched. The official cause of [...]
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said at a briefing, after the G8 and G20 summits, that he was skeptical about establishing a parliamentary republic in Kyrgyzstan, but that he considered this a domestic Kyrgyz affair. The Russian leader said the situation in Kyrgyzstan could cause endless reorganizations inside the republican parliament.
Ten people have been arrested for allegedly serving as secret agents of the Russian government in the United States, the Justice Department said Monday. Eight of 10 were arrested Sunday for allegedly carrying out long-term, deep cover assignments in the United States on behalf of Russia. Two others were arrested for allegedly participating in the [...]
Georgian authorities have removed a historic statue of Joseph Stalin in the former Soviet leader’s hometown of Gori, officials have said. Municipal workers and police worked from midnight to take down the six-metre-high bronze statue from the central square of the city, where it had stood since the 1950s. A local official said they intended [...]
There have been more claims of ethnic violence in Kyrgyzstan as rights groups say that at least four people were killed when Kyrgyz forces raided an ethnic Uzbek village near Osh, the main city in the country’s south. However, the government says two people died when troops encountered “armed resistance”. Osh witnessed the worst of [...]
A 71-year-old Russian grandmother has been issued with a restriction order by Moscow police for swindling businessmen out of more than $500,000. The geriatric fraudster, identified only by her first name Svetlana, posed as an influential lobbyist with close ties to Moscow’s City Hall between 2007 and 2008, during which she committed the crime, popular [...]
Maxim Bakiyev, the son of Kyrgyzstan’s deposed president, has won temporary asylum in Britain. Mr Bakiyev, 33, has been temporarily allowed to enter Britain, according to his lawyers Carter Ruck. He claims he fled Kyrgyzstan as authorities there were trying to make him a “scapegoat” for all their problems. They accuse him of instigating the [...]
Makeshift camps on both sides of Kyrgyzstan’s border with Uzbekistan are home to 400,000 refugees uprooted by ethnic violence, the United Nations said on Thursday, and the area remains extremely tense. Many refugees are running short of basic supplies and fear fresh attacks. In one camp, clay houses were crammed with dozens of refugees and [...]
Russian police seized 100,000 copies of a book critical of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin that activists planned to hand out at the Saint Petersburg International Economic Forum. Copies of ‘Putin. The Results. 10 Years on’, written by opposition politicians Boris Nemtsov and Vladimir Milov were “intended for participants of the forum”, starting Thursday, according to [...]
Fearful that violence could spread to the north of Kyrgyzstan, police in the capital of Bishkek said on Wednesday that 111 people had been detained on suspicion of trying to foment unrest, as accusations mounted that days of brutal bloodletting in the country’s south had been deliberately organized. “The population is being bribed by third [...]
Uzbekistan has closed its border as tens of thousands of ethnic Uzbeks fled clashes in Kyrgyzstan amid reports that Kyrgyz soldiers were taking part in the violence. The UN refugee agency has pledged to dispatch emergency aid to the border. Uzbekistan ordered Monday its frontier closed to an exodus of refugees fleeing deadly violence in [...]
The leader of the Uzbek community in Kyrgyzstan says more than 200 Uzbeks have been killed in ethnic rioting in the Central Asian nation and 100,000 Uzbeks have fled to the border. Jallahitdin Jalilatdinov, who heads the Uzbek National Center, told The Associated Press on Monday that 200 Uzbeks have been buried so far. His [...]
Kyrgyzstan’s government ordered troops to shoot to kill as ethnic riots engulf the country’s south with mobs burning villages and slaughtered their residents. The government order to shoot rioters dead failed to stop spiraling violence that has cost more than 100 lives and over 1,000 wounded in the impoverished Central Asian nation since the violence [...]
Ethnic riots wracked southern Kyrgyzstan on Saturday, forcing thousands of Uzbeks to flee as their homes were torched by roving mobs of Kyrgyz men. The interim government begged Russia for troops to stop the violence, but the Kremlin offered only humanitarian assistance. At least 77 people were reported killed and more than 1,000 wounded in [...]
Kyrgyzstan’s worst outbreak of violence since the president was overthrown in April raged for a second day on Saturday and officials said the death toll in the ethnic conflict had risen to at least 49. “Entire streets are on fire,” Interior Ministry spokesman Rakhmatillo Akhmedov said of the violence in the southern city of Osh. [...]
At least 45 people are dead and more than 632 have suffered various injuries in the latest violence in the city of Osh in southern Kyrgyzstan, Kyrgyz officials said Friday. Speaking from the capital, Bishkek, the nation’s top health official, Dinara Sagynbayeva, said casualty numbers have been rising during the day and are not final. [...]
Ten militants, including a Jordanian, were killed during an operation by Russian forces in the volatile Chechnya region, Interfax news agency reported Thursday. The operation took place in a forest in the Vedeno region of southwest Chechnya, an official with the Russian special forces in the north Caucasus told the agency. “Ten rebels were shot [...]
A Russian woman has been accused of murdering 20 senior citizens in western Siberia after winning their trust by doing household chores for them. A 39-year-old woman was detained on Monday during an investigation into 20 murders of female senior citizens over the past seven years, Sverdlovsk police spokesman Valery Gorelykh said in a ITAR-TASS [...]
A Russian arms control researcher serving a 15-year sentence for spying for Britain and the United States has been turned down for parole after prison guards found breadcrumbs on his bedside table. Igor Sutyagin (Игорь Сутягин), who has already spent more than 10 years in jail, was also reprimanded for speaking to his wife on [...]
More than 200 bodies have been unearthed from a mass grave in Russia’s Far East believed to date back to the totalitarian rule of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, local officials said. The mass grave was discovered outside the Pacific port city of Vladivostok by workers building a road for the upcoming Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, [...]
The French secret service has reportedly expressed alarm over plans for a Russian Orthodox cathedral in Paris, fearing it will be used by Moscow as a front for spies. The go-ahead for the onion-domed cathedral – the first to be built in the French capital in more than a century – by the Eiffel Tower [...]
It is the latest campaign in a war between property developers and conservationists over the fate of Moscow’s dwindling historical districts. For the third successive day dozens of protesters prevented workmen from demolishing buildings close to a 17th-century church. The site, next to the Church of the Resurrection in central Moscow, has been earmarked by [...]
The blast struck near a cultural center just minutes before the concert of a folk group from the troubled Caucasus region, which sees frequent attacks in a guerilla war between Russian forces and separatist rebels. “An unnoticed explosive device exploded in front of a building next to the Palace of Culture and Sports at Stavropol,” [...]
A former Miss Russia was busted for forging a prescription for Vicodin pills on a form that was filched from her Manhattan shrink, authorities said. Anna Malova, a leggy blond beauty who held the pageant crown in 1998, was collared Tuesday moments after a West Village pharmacy filled her phony prescription for 85 pills. The [...]
Vladimir Putin has admitted for the first time that he spent his stint as a KGB spy in 1980s East Germany conducting industrial espionage against the West, lamenting that the secrets he stole were ignored. In his most candid comments on the subject to date, the Russian prime minister said that at least part of [...]
A group of Latvian criminals scammed the Vancouver Olympics (VANOC) and ticket sellers on the fan-to-fan Olympics site for close to $2 Million at the tail end of the Winter Games, officials say. The group used fake credit cards and posed as legitimate sellers on the site which VANOC was running with VISA to help [...]
The imprisoned Russian tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky has gone on a hunger strike to draw attention to what he claims are improper court rulings against suspects charged with economic crimes. In an open letter to the chairman of the Supreme Court, Khodorkovsky said Russia’s courts were ignoring recent legal changes that allowed people charged with economic [...]
Russian police have arrested 28 people after clashes during a protest in a Siberian mining town, where at least 66 were killed after a series of explosions last weekend. At least 200 people had blocked a railway line in Mezhdurechensk on Friday evening, calling for better working conditions for coal miners, the Echo of Moscow [...]
The Moscow-based group controlled by Oleg Deripaska made a net profit in the first quarter of $247 Million. Rusal, the aluminium group controlled by controversial billionaire investor Oleg Deripaska, has surged back into the black on soaring Asian demand. Rusal, which plunged into the red last year in the midst of the global downturn, was [...]
Russia has convicted “an American spy” of passing military secrets to the US Defense Department in a Cold War-style case that is embarrassing for both countries. Gennady Sipachyov, a Russian citizen whose age and profession have been kept secret, was found guilty of “state treason in the form of espionage” and sentenced to four years [...]
Eight people were killed on Thursday in a bomb attack in Russia’s southern region of Dagestan, the latest unrest in the troubled North Caucasus, officials said. “At around 10:30, an explosive device went off as repair workers drove by in a vehicle,” the investigative committee of Russian prosecutors said in a statement. “As a result, [...]
The air temperature in Moscow this week may hit the highest mark in history ever since the 19th century, local media reported Wednesday. On Wednesday the temperature in downtown Moscow reached 27 degrees Centigrade. Moscow meteorologists forecast that the temperature of Thursday will be even higher and may hit the 30- degree mark. The long-standing [...]
Rescuers plunged into the dangerous rubble of Russia’s largest coal mine Monday in search of 58 trapped miners, but the head of the rescue operation said hope was dimming for finding them still alive in the city-sized maze of black and smoky tunnels deep underground. The official death toll stood at 32 after rescuers recovered [...]
At least fifty-two (52) miners were killed and more than 80 were trapped underground after a methane explosion occurred inside a coal mine in Russia’s west Siberian region late Saturday night, the emergency situations ministry said. The explosion took place at 8.55 p.m. Moscow time (1655 GMT) Saturday at the Raspadskaya coal mine in Kemerovo, [...]
Russian special forces freed 23 sailors from an oil tanker, which had been captured by Somali pirates, during a dawn raid. The raid against the Liberian-flagged ship Moscow University came 24 hours after pirates had taken the ship over and the crew locked themselves in a safe room. The vessel is carrying 86,000 tons of [...]
Kyrgyzstan’s interim government said Monday it would offer up to $100,000 U.S. dollars for information leading to the arrest of ex-president Kurmanbek Bakiyev and his aides. The interim government will pay from $20,000 U.S. dollars to $100,000 dollars for valuable information leading to the arrest of the wanted criminals, said Kyrgyz official news agency Kabar, [...]
Russia offered on Friday to merge gas giant Gazprom with Ukraine’s state energy firm Naftogaz, to a furious outcry from Ukraine’s opposition accusing Moscow of trying to destroy Ukraine’s independence. Since the election in February of Kremlin ally Viktor Yanukovich as Ukraine’s president, ties with Moscow have rapidly improved with accords on gas pricing and [...]
Ekaterina Gerasimova has piercing blue eyes, an innocent girl-next-door face, and likes to do a little amateur modelling. But if her “victims” are to be believed, she is the Kremlin’s most effective secret agent and a latter-day Mata Hari. Her mission, it is claimed, is to discredit prominent Kremlin critics by luring them into compromising [...]
Wealthy Russians are preparing to leave Britain or remove their money from the City of London because of Labor’s high tax policies, says a leading Moscow investment guru. His warning of a capital flight comes after a decade which has seen affluent Reds-to-Riches billionaires buying up property, investing their vast fortunes, and using London as [...]
A senior Russian judge who presided over the high-profile trial of a gang of racist killers was assassinated in Moscow today. Eduard Chuvashov was shot in the stairwell of his central Moscow home as he was leaving for work. Police said that they suspected that he had been killed by ultranationalists in a revenge attack [...]
That’s the trouble with being a multi-billionaire: you wait ages for a superyacht to arrive, then two come along at once. After many delays, and the budget spiralling by hundreds of millions of dollars, Roman Abramovich is finally poised to get his hands on the world’s largest private yacht — just as another vessel he [...]
Russia suspended all child adoptions by U.S. families Friday after a 7-year-old boy adopted by a woman from Tennessee was sent alone on a one-way flight back to Moscow with a note saying he was violent and had severe psychological problems. The boy, Artyom Savelyev, was put on a plane by his adopted grandmother, Nancy [...]
Kyrgyzstan’s self-proclaimed new leadership said on Thursday that Russia had helped to oust President Kurmanbek Bakiyev, and that they aimed to close a U.S. airbase that has irritated Moscow. Their comments set Wednesday’s overthrow of Bakiyev, who fled the capital Bishkek as crowds stormed government buildings, firmly in the context of superpower rivalry in central [...]
Opposition leaders in Kyrgyzstan announced today that they had toppled the Government and taken power after a day of rioting that left as many as 100 dead and hundreds wounded. Vladimir Putin, the Russian Prime Minister, has in effect recognised the new leadership and the opposition this morning took control of the country’s armed forces. [...]
Reaching anew for peace, President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on Thursday signed a treaty to shrink their nations’ nuclear arsenals, the biggest such pact between the former Cold War foes in a generation. Tenaciously negotiated by even the leaders themselves, the treaty commits their nations to slash the number of strategic nuclear [...]
Thousands of protesters furious over corruption and spiraling utility bills seized government buildings and clashed with police Wednesday in Kyrgyzstan, throwing control of the Central Asian nation into doubt. Police opened fire on demonstrators, killing over 100 and wounding 400 hundred. The eruption of violence shattered the relative stability of this mountainous former Soviet republic, [...]
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said Monday that Russia would export military equipment to Venezuela worth $5 billion. “The orders for military hardware may exceed $5 billion,” said Putin at a conference over the development of Russia’s defense sector. The orders will be placed at Russia’s 13 head defense firms, the Itar-Tass news agency reported. [...]
A bomb has exploded on a railway track in Russia’s Dagestan province, causing eight carriages of a cargo train to be derailed. Police said there were no casualties in Sunday’s blast on the line from Moscow to the former Soviet state of Azerbaijan. A criminal investigation has been opened into terrorism, arms trafficking and illegal [...]
A Swedish diplomat who saved tens of thousands of Jews from the Holocaust, was actually still alive after his Soviet captors reported his death in a Moscow prison, according to new Russian archive evidence. Swedish and American researchers have unearthed new facts surrounding the fate of Raoul Wallenberg, whose disappearance after his January 1945 arrest [...]
One of the Moscow subway suicide bombers was the 17-year-old widow of a slain Islamist rebel from the North Caucasus, a leading Russian newspaper reported on Friday, according to The Associated Press. Monday’s bombings killed 39 people and injured about 90 in attacks that the security chief blamed on unnamed militants from the volatile southern [...]
At least 12 people have been killed and another 18 injured in two bomb blasts in Russia’s volatile North Caucasus region, two days after a deadly attack on Moscow’s transport network. The first blast occurred in the town of Kizlyar in the southern province of Dagestan on Wednesday morning, when car bomb near a school [...]
At least 40 people have been reported killed in twin explosions at stations on Moscow’s metro rail network. The first blast took place at the Lubyanka metro station in the center of the city, followed by a second explosion at Park Kultury in the southwest of the city. The cause of the explosions was not [...]
Climaxing months of hard negotiations, President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev agreed on Friday to sharp cuts in the nuclear arsenals of both nations in the most comprehensive arms control treaty in two decades. “We have turned words into action,” Obama declared. President Obama said the pact, to be signed April 8 in [...]
A reclusive Russian genius has refused to accept $1 Million in prize money for solving the Poincare Conjecture, one of the most difficult puzzles in mathematics. Dr Grigori Perelman, who has been dubbed “the smartest man in the world”, refused the money, despite living in poverty in a cockroach-infested flat in St Petersburg. When told [...]
Horsemen take part in a Kok-boru, or goat grabbing, competition as part of Navruz celebrations to mark the spring equinox in Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan. Kok-boru is a traditional Central Asian game which is considered to be Kyrgyzstan’s national sport. Players grab a goat carcass from the ground in full gallop and try to [...]
Investigators have opened a criminal case into Saturday’s fire in a business center in northern Moscow that killed the Russian capital’s chief firefighter, investigators said Sunday. Colonel Yevgeny Chernyshev died Saturday when personally checking whether there were people left in the fire-engulfed building. The fire embraced an area of 1,800 square meters and took five [...]
Thousands of demonstrators took to the streets across Russia on Saturday demanding the resignation of local and national leaders, including Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, over lingering economic woes. A coalition of opposition groups, hoping to channel rising anxiety over unemployment and financial policy into anti-government activism, had called for nationwide protests under the slogan “Day [...]
Russia will build 12 nuclear reactors in India, half of them by 2017, and sell an aircraft carrier and MiG fighter jets, officials say. Sergei Kiriyenko, head of Russia’s state nuclear corporation Rosatom, announced in New Delhi on Friday that six of the reactors would be built between 2012 and 2017. Kiriyenko is accompanying Vladimir [...]
Even by the standards of a city that celebrates extravagance, it was a spectacular shopping spree: In just two weeks early last year, an 11-year-old boy from Azerbaijan became the owner of nine waterfront mansions. The total price tag: about $44 million — or roughly 10,000 years’ worth of salary for the average citizen of [...]
The Russian army is embroiled in an embarrassing scandal after 200 of its tanks were found abandoned near a forest in central Russia, unguarded and unlocked. A news website near the city of Yekaterinburg posted a video of the forgotten tanks showing passers-by clambering inside the vehicles and playing with empty ammunition belts. The only items [...]
In a high-profile court case, a Moscow police officer was sentenced to life in prison Friday for killing two people and injuring seven in a drunken shooting rampage at a supermarket last year. The verdict comes at a time when the Russian government has launched a crackdown on out-of-control police departments throughout Russia. The dramatic [...]
The daughter of the mayor of Kiev has been the victim of a robbery in Paris. Kristina Chernovetskaya said she had $6 Million (£4m) of jewels stolen as she drove into the city from Charles de Gaulle airport. She was being driven along the motorway in a luxury rental car when the thief struck, she [...]
A security guard takes out four activists of the Ukrainian women’s movement FEMEN. Four topless women barged into a Ukrainian polling station on Sunday as the country voted to elect a new president. The eye-popping protest came just before Viktor Yanukovich showed up to vote in Kiev. The women wore nothing except for jeans and [...]
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin says Moscow has agreed to sell Libya weapons in a $1.8 Billion deal. Mr. Putin made the announcement Saturday while meeting with the head of Izhmash, a major Russian gun manufacturer. He said the contract was signed Friday, and covers both small arms and more complex weapons. Russia’s Interfax news [...]
A Russian journalist who was thrown into a Siberian drunk tank and savagely beaten by a young police officer died Wednesday, in a case that has sparked a national conversation about the latent alcoholism and casual violence that wind their way through life in this winter-hardened land. Konstantin Popov was a little-known journalist who specialized [...]
Russia’s parliament has ended years of resistance and ratified an international agreement intended to strengthen and speed up the work of the European Court of Human Rights. The State Duma had refused to ratify Protocol 14, a key element of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights, in 2006, but backed the measure [...]
A suicide bomber killed at least seven policemen and wounded another 16 people on Wednesday in Russia’s southern region of Dagestan by detonating a car packed with explosives at a traffic police depot. The suicide bomber tried to drive a Neva car packed with explosives into a traffic police depot at 07:55 a.m. on the [...]
For five years, as the world convulsed with war, the unassuming Soviet couple rubbed elbows with the likes of Walt Disney and Orson Welles. They took in a private screening of “The Great Dictator,” at the invitation of Charlie Chaplin. Their son’s earliest memories are set in Los Angeles — the yellow house nestled in [...]
Russia has opened a new oil export terminal in the far eastern port of Kozmino, a key gateway for Russian energy exports to Asian markets including energy hungry China. Vladimir Putin, Russia’s prime minister, pressed a button to fill a Russian tanker bound for Hong Kong on Monday, the first official export from the terminal. [...]
Russia’s Supreme Court today ruled that the 2003 arrest of jailed oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s main business partner, Platon Lebedev, was illegal. The ruling on Russia’s most politicized case came as a surprise in a country that often chooses to ignore those who question the legality of its court’s decisions, while pressing on with a trial [...]
Three Russian activists critical of the Kremlin have received the EU’s top human rights award, in recognition of the dangers they face in carrying out their work. Lyudmila Alexeyeva, Sergei Kovalyov and Oleg Orlov from human rights group Memorial were awarded the Sakharov Prize, which comes with a $72,850 honorarium, at a European parliament ceremony in [...]
When it snows on the steppes of Chengelsy Gorge in eastern Kazakhstan, hunters saddle up and gallop off with eagles on their arms in search of prey. The men follow the animal tracks in the snow then release their giant eagles into the air to snatch up foxes and rabbits. “Hunting is my life,” said [...]
[U.S. astronaut Timothy J. Creamer, Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kotov and Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Soichi Noguchi (L-R) during a news conference at the Star City Space Center outside Moscow Dec. 3, 2009. The three crew members of the 22nd mission are scheduled to take off from Kazakhstan's Baikonur cosmodrome aboard a Russian Soyuz TMA-17 [...]
More than 100 people are reportedly dead after an explosion at a Russian nighclub in Perm, according to Russian officials. Russian news agencies say an explosion apparently caused by pyrotechnics tore through a nightclub in the city of Perm, killing 100 people. Emergency officials quoted by state-run news agency RIA-Novosti say the cause was pyrotechnics, [...]
Four carriages of a passenger Nevsky Express train derailed between Russia’s two main cities, enroute from Moscow to St. Petersburg. It is reported that 39 passengers have died and another 87 are injured. The carriages came off the track on Friday evening as the train was travelling 174 miles from St. Petersburg, Russian officials reported. [...]
Russian authorities have refused to release the body of Sergei Magnitsky, the lawyer campaigning against fraud and corruption who died in a Moscow jail this week, for an independent autopsy. According to friends, the authorities rejected several requests and are only releasing the body for burial. Mr. Magnitsky’s funeral will be held at noon today [...]
Chechen security forces have killed up to 20 anti-government fighters in a helicopter gunship attack, according to the region’s leader Ramzan Kadyrov. The raid took place in a mountain area outside the village of Shalazh, 19 miles southwest of the captial Grozny, the Chechen government statement said on Saturday. Kadyrov, whose region has suffered a [...]
Thirty-five people initially thought to be missing after a series of blasts tore through an arms depot outside the Russian city of Ulyanovsk, have been found and all are safe. More than 3,000 people were evacuated from the area following the blasts, which took place while munitions were being detonated in a controlled operation at [...]
There’s not much in John Hattenberger’s corner office on the 25th floor of the Bank of America tower to indicate that he’s Gazprom’s man in America’s oil and gas capital. The computer terminals outside his glass walls – where Mr. Hattenberger’s team began trading natural gas contracts last month – are staffed by the same type of [...]
Federal authorities have busted what they call “one of the most sophisticated computer hacking rings in the world” winning indictments against eight people from Russia, Estonia and Moldova. The ring allegedly stole more than $9 million in less than 12 hours after hacking into payroll debit card information last November from the Royal Bank of [...]
Spartak’s owner Shabtai von Kalmanovich hug his coach Laszlo Ratgeber during their final basketball match of the Euroleague Women’s Final Four 2009 against Halcon Avenida at the Sanchez Paraiso Arena, in Salamanca, on April 05, 2009. Spartak won the match 85-70. A Russian businessman who had been convicted in Israel of being a KGB spy [...]
According to foreign media reports on Oct. 22, a nine-month-old baby has seen passages of the Koran appear on his leg twice a week and has shocked his local community in Kizlyar, Russia’s Dagestan Region. The baby named Ali Yakubov receives hundreds of pilgrims lining up to visit him and catch a glimpse of 9-month-old miracle [...]
Dmitry Medvedev, the Russian president, has reversed his decision to deploy missiles in the Baltic region of Kaliningrad in response to the US scrapping missile shield plans in Europe. “When I first mentioned this idea, I said we would site Iskander missiles in response to the decision to implement the missile shield,” Medvedev told reporters on Friday after [...]
Wolves are seen in a forest in the 19 mile exclusion zone around the Chernobyl nuclear reactor during a foggy morning near the abandoned village of Borshchevka, which is situated now in the radiation-ecology reserve some 242 miles southeast of Minsk, September 6, 2009. Wildlife in the exclusion zone has been teeming despite radiation, since [...]
The freighter the Artic Sea left Finland in late July heading for Algeria with a crew of 15 and a cargo of lumber. On July 24th the ship was boarded by ten armed men who proclaimed that they were police. They conducted a thorough search of the ship over a 12 hour period and then [...]
In progress this weekend, the MAKS-2009 International Air Show in Zhukovsky, outside Moscow, August 22, 2009, has participants from all over Europe. Especially endearing to the enormous crowds are the French and Italian air force displays with multi-colored exhaust streaming as they race across the sky in perfect formation. MiG-29 “Strizhi” fighter planes fly in [...]
The bodies of Zarema Sadulayeva and Alik Dzhabrailov, her husband, were found in Grozny, the Chechen capital, on Tuesday in the trunk of their car, shot to death. They had been kidnapped a day earlier by five armed masked men from the offices of the “Save the Generation” charity, which provides medical and psychological help [...]
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin today signed numerous agreements with Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan for construction of a pipeline through Turkish waters in the Black Sea and for the construction of Turkey’s first nuclear power plant. Putin said the negotiations would “open the road to new major projects in the energy sector. Such [...]
Image by True Russian Vodka via Flickr Russian’s preoccupation with drinking their favorite domestic beverage, vodka, results in some of the highest drunk-driving statistics in the world. This week alone over 100 Russian’s died in collisions caused by drunk drivers. So far this year over 10,000 Russian’s have died on Russia’s highways. [...]
Image by Annie Mole via Flickr The Russian Federation entered into a contract with the Republic of Cuba to explore for oil in the Gulf of Mexico where it is predicted there could be as much as 20 billion barrels. A term of the contract provides Cuba with $150 Million [...]
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