Category Archives: Russia

Russia blocks access to websites of Alexei Navalny and close allies

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Action comes as Kremlin increases pressure on opponents and critics ahead of parliamentary elections

Russian authorities have restricted access to Alexei Navalny’s website and those of dozens of his close allies, the imprisoned opposition leader’s team has said.

The action came as the government increased pressure on opposition supporters, independent journalists and human rights activists ahead of the country’s parliamentary election. The September vote is widely seen as an important part of Vladimir Putin’s efforts to cement his rule before a 2024 presidential election.

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Plans of four G20 states are threat to global climate pledge, warn scientists

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‘Disastrous’ energy policies of China, Russia, Brazil and Australia could stoke 5C rise in temperatures if adopted by the rest of the world

A key group of leading G20 nations is committed to climate targets that would lead to disastrous global warming, scientists have warned. They say China, Russia, Brazil and Australia all have energy policies associated with 5C rises in atmospheric temperatures, a heating hike that would bring devastation to much of the planet.

The analysis, by the peer-reviewed group Paris Equity Check, raises serious worries about the prospects of key climate agreements being achieved at the Cop26 summit in Glasgow in three months. The conference – rated as one of the most important climate summits ever staged – will attempt to hammer out policies to hold global heating to 1.5C by agreeing on a global policy for ending net emissions of greenhouse gases by 2050.

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About 100 CIA officers and family have been sickened by Havana syndrome

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Director William Burns has initiated a taskforce to investigate the syndrome and tripled the size of the medical team involved

About 100 CIA officers and family members are among about 200 US officials and kin sickened by “Havana syndrome”, the CIA director, William Burns, said on Thursday, referring to the mysterious set of ailments that include migraines and dizziness.

Burns, tapped by Joe Biden as the first career diplomat to serve as CIA chief, said in a National Public Radio interview that he had bolstered his agency’s efforts to determine the cause of the syndrome and what is responsible.

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Danish military spots Iranian navy ships in Baltic Sea

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Newly built destroyer and support vessel thought to be on way to Russian naval parade in St Petersburg

The Danish military has said that it has spotted an Iranian destroyer and a large support vessel sailing through the Baltic Sea, thought to be heading to Russia for a military parade in the coming days.

The Danish defence ministry posted photographs online on Thursday from the Royal Danish Air Force of the new domestically built Iranian destroyer Sahand and the intelligence-gathering vessel Makran passing by the Danish island of Bornholm.

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Siberia hit by unprecedented heatwave and forest fires – video report

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A heatwave in one of the world’s coldest regions has sparked forest fires and threatened the Siberian city of Yakutsk with an 'airpocalypse' of thick toxic smoke, atmospheric monitoring services have reported.

Local authorities have warned the 320,000 residents to stay indoors to avoid choking fumes from the blazes, which are on course to break last year’s record.

Officials have described this summer’s weather as the driest in the past 150 years

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‘Everything is on fire’: Siberia hit by unprecedented burning

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Locals fear for their health and property as smoke from raging forest fires shrouds an entire region of eastern Russia

Every morning and evening for the last few days, shifts of young villagers have headed out into the taiga forest around Teryut with a seemingly impossible task: to quell the raging fires that have burned closer and closer for a month, shrouding this remote eastern Siberian village in an acrid haze.

So far, little has worked. Amid the worst wildfire season in memory, locals have vowed to defend their village to the last, sending away small children for their protection from the smog while they stay on to fight back the flames.

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Russia rights group linked to Navalny closes amid prosecution fears

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Team 29 is the latest victim of Kremlin crackdown on organisations it considers ‘undesirable’

A rights group in Russia has announced it is shutting down, citing fears its members and supporters may be prosecuted after authorities blocked its website for allegedly publishing content from an “undesirable” organisation.

Team 29 – an association of lawyers and journalists specialising in treason and espionage cases and freedom of information issues – said on Sunday that Russian authorities accused it of spreading content from a Czech non-governmental organisation that had been declared “undesirable” in Russia.

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Russian billionaire settles with ex-wife five years after £450m payout ruling

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Farkhad Akhmedov had contested 2017 decision but has now reached an agreement over divorce

After almost five years of fighting a high court ruling that awarded the UK’s largest ever divorce payout, a Russian billionaire has reached a settlement with his ex-wife.

Farkhad Akhmedov and Tatiana Akhmedova have been embroiled in the most expensive family feud in history since a London high court judge awarded Akhmedova a £450m divorce payout in 2017.

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How public ‘apologies’ are used against domestic abuse victims in Chechnya

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Activists say Ramzan Kadyrov’s regime uses televised confessions ‘under duress’ to hold back women’s rights, despite changes in society

Khalimat Taramova, the 22-year-old daughter of a prominent Chechen businessman, sits demurely on a velvet sofa ornately embellished in gold. She is wearing a modest dress and a headscarf. With her on the sofa are three men dressed in suits. They are appearing on Grozny TV, the state television channel of Russia’s Chechen Republic.

Only a couple of weeks before the programme was shown on 14 June, Taramova fled her home, where she said she was subjected to violence after going against her family’s wishes. She sought help from a group of women’s rights activists, the Marem project , who let her stay in a flat owned by one of its members in the neighbouring republic of Dagestan. In a video released on social media on 6 June, she pleaded for the Chechen authorities not to come looking for her.

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Kremlin papers appear to show Putin’s plot to put Trump in White House

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Exclusive: Documents suggest Russia launched secret multi-agency effort to interfere in US democracy

Vladimir Putin personally authorised a secret spy agency operation to support a “mentally unstable” Donald Trump in the 2016 US presidential election during a closed session of Russia’s national security council, according to what are assessed to be leaked Kremlin documents.

The key meeting took place on 22 January 2016, the papers suggest, with the Russian president, his spy chiefs and senior ministers all present.

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‘We expect them to act’: Biden presses Putin on ransomware groups, hints at retaliation

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Joe Biden’s hour-long phone call with the Russian leader suggests growing impatience over attacks disrupting US sectors

Joe Biden has increased pressure on Vladimir Putin to move against ransomware groups operating from Russia, warning the United States is prepared to respond if cyberhacks are not stopped.

The two leaders held an hour-long phone call on Friday, their first since they discussed ransomware attacks at a summit in Geneva on 16 June. Biden’s message to Putin in the call was direct, suggesting a growing impatience over attacks that have disrupted key US sectors.

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‘It will be a catastrophe’: fate of Syria’s last aid channel rests in Russia’s hands

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Possible veto of Bab al-Hawa UN aid crossing could halt the flow of vital food and health supplies to 3.4 million people

Just over half a mile away from the Bab al-Hawa border crossing connecting Syria and Turkey a 6th-century triumphal arch still stands, the remains of a Roman road stretching straight as an arrow on either side. For millennia this part of the world has been a crossroads of trade, culture and history. Today, it’s more important than ever.

Bab al-Hawa is Syria’s last lifeline, through which vital UN aid supplies for 3.4 million people living in the war-torn north-west of the country arrive. But before 10 July, the security council must vote in New York on whether to keep the aid flowing. What might seem like an obvious decision to outsiders is actually far from certain: Russia may use its veto power as a permanent member of the council to close the UN’s last access point, as it has managed to do with the other three aid crossings.

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Iran and Russia move to fill diplomatic vacuum in Afghanistan

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Iranian foreign minister meets Taliban negotiators in Tehran, while Turkey offers troops to protect Kabul airport

Iran, Turkey, Pakistan and Russia have moved to fill the military and diplomatic vacuum opening up in Afghanistan as a result of the departure of US forces and military advances by the Taliban.

In Tehran the Iranian foreign minister, Javad Zarif, met Taliban negotiators to discuss their intentions towards the country, and secured a joint statement saying the Taliban do not support attacks on civilians, schools, mosques and hospitals and want a negotiated settlement on Afghanistan’s future.

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Shampanskoye: French champagne industry in a fizz over Russian law

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Non-Russian producers now required to mark their bottles as sparkling wine

If anything is guaranteed to get French wine producers in a fizz, it is the suggestion that champagne can be made anywhere outside the Champagne region in France.

As a protected appellation, the term is jealously guarded and legally defended. As the Champagne committee’s website clearly states: “Champagne only comes from Champagne.”

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Six children killed in Syria shelling

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Artillery fired from government-controlled area kills eight civilians and injures others in Idlib province

Artillery fire from government-controlled territory and airstrikes killed at least eight civilians in Syria’s last rebel enclave on Saturday, most of them children, rescue workers and a war monitor said.

The shelling in Ibleen, a village in the southern Idlib province, hit the home of Subhi al-Assi, killing him, his wife and three of his children in their sleep, according to the rescue service known as White Helmets and Idlib’s health directorate. Al-Assi was an administrator in a local health centre.

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Former Guantánamo detainee faces forced repatriation to Russia after release, say experts

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Ravil Mingazov, who spent 15 years in the US prison camp, could be sent to Russia where ‘he will not be free for the rest of his life,’ experts warn

A former Guantánamo detainee is facing forced repatriation from the United Arab Emirates to Russia where he faces a “substantial risk of torture” according to UN human rights experts.

Ravil Mingazov is a Muslim Tartar who spent 15 years without charge in the US prison camp on Guantánamo Bay before being transferred to the UAE in January 2017. The conditions of the transfer were kept secret, but his family and legal team were given assurances that he would be freed after a few months. Those assurances were not kept.

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Putin says he was jabbed with Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine

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President endorses domestic vaccine campaign but distances himself from tough measure

Vladimir Putin has for the first time said that he was inoculated with Russia’s own Sputnik V vaccine as he gave a careful endorsement of the country’s floundering campaign while distancing himself from tough new measures designed to pressure more Russians into taking the jabs.

Putin has cut a mercurial figure during the pandemic, intrepidly donning a medical suit to visit a coronavirus hospital last March and then shunning public events for months, prompting ridicule that he was sheltering in a “bunker”.

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China blasts Japanese minister’s ‘sinister’ remarks about Taiwan

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Beijing lodges diplomatic protest with Japan after defence minister calls island a ‘democratic country’

China and Japan are once again embroiled in a diplomatic row over Taiwan, in the latest example of Beijing’s extreme sensitivity over the status of the self-ruled island and Tokyo’s changing attitude towards Beijing.

Speaking to the US conservative thinktank Hudson Institute on Monday, Japan’s state minister of defence, Yasuhide Nakayama, spoke of a growing threat posed by Chinese and Russian collaboration, and said it was necessary to “wake up” to Beijing’s pressure on Taiwan and protect the island “as a democratic country”.

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Global report: rise in Delta variant cases forces tougher restrictions

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Moscow has reported the highest death toll of any Russian city, while the Delta variant is forcing tighter restrictions in the Asia-Pacific region

Moscow has recorded the highest Covid-19 daily death toll of any Russian city so far, as the highly contagious Delta variant forced tougher restrictions on countries across the Asia-Pacific region and fuelled mounting concern over holiday travel in Europe.

Vaccinations have brought infection numbers down in many wealthy countries, and curbs on daily life continue to ease in much of the EU and US, but experts warn the fast-spreading strain means the pandemic – while slowing globally – is far from over.

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‘I don’t have a choice’: Russians scramble to get Covid vaccine amid new restrictions

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With infections at highest since January, country is introducing curbs for non-vaccinated

Russia has finally admitted it has a vaccination problem – but with an “explosion” of new cases driving the country’s daily toll to its highest since January, the question is whether that public realisation has come too late.

Just 11% of Russia’s 146 million population is fully vaccinated – whether due to vaccine skepticism, doubts about Sputnik or other Russian-made vaccines, or “nihilism”, as a Kremlin spokesperson has suggested.

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