Category Archives: Russia

‘Resign!’: Alexander Lukashenko heckled by factory workers in Minsk

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Embattled Belarus president looked shaken as people yelled ‘liar’ in fresh blow to regime

Alexander Lukashenko’s grip on power in Belarus has taken a further hit, as workers heckled him during a visit to a factory on the outskirts of Minsk.

The visit to the the state-owned MZKT military vehicles factory on Monday was meant to show the Belarusian president was still in control and retained the support of workers at the vast factories that are the backbone of the country’s neo-Soviet economy, a day after the biggest rally in the country’s recent history against his rule.

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Belarus’s leader pleads for Putin’s help as post-election protests grow

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Alexander Lukashenko tells the Kremlin that unrest could spread to Moscow next if his regime is destabilised

The embattled Belarusian president, Alexander Lukashenko, has called on Vladimir Putin to help him quell the growing wave of protest inside the country, which has left his legitimacy in tatters and his regime facing its biggest crisis since he first came to power 26 years ago.

Lukashenko appealed to the Russian president’s visceral fear of revolution at home and suggested that if his regime fell, Putin too was in danger. “This is a threat not just to Belarus … if Belarusians do not hold out, the wave will head over there too,” he said in televised remarks to a meeting of advisers on Saturday, claiming that the protests were organised by shadowy figures from abroad.

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Lukashenko and Putin say Belarus ‘problems’ will be resolved

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Pressure mounts on Alexander Lukashenko to go as protests threaten to spill beyond Belarus’s borders

The Belarusian president, Alexander Lukashenko, and the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, have expressed confidence that all problems that had arisen in Belarus would soon be resolved, the Kremlin said.

“These problems should not be exploited by destructive forces seeking to harm the mutually beneficial cooperation between the two countries within the framework of the union state,” the Kremlin said in a statement on Saturday.

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Russia says suggestion its coronavirus vaccine may be unsafe is ‘groundless’ – video

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Russia said on Wednesday the first batch of its Sputnik V Covid-19 vaccine would be ready within two weeks and rejected safety concerns over its rapid approval as 'groundless'. The health minister, Mikhail Murashko, said the vaccine, developed by the Gamaleya Institute, would be administered on a voluntary basis. The vaccine has not yet completed its final trials. Only about 10% of clinical trials are successful and some scientists fear Moscow may be putting national prestige before safety

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‘They’ve jumped the gun’: scientists worry about Russia’s Covid-19 vaccine

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Rising chorus of concern over Sputnik V vaccine stems from opaque development and lack of mass-testing

In 1977 Scott Halstead, a virologist at the University of Hawaii, was studying dengue fever when he noticed a now well-known but then unexpected feature of the disease.

Animals that had already been exposed to one of the four closely-related viruses that cause dengue and produced antibodies to it, far from being protected against other versions became sicker when infected a second time, and it was the antibodies already produced by the first infection that were responsible, allowing the second infection to hitchhike into the body.

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Russia approves Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine despite testing safety concerns – video

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Russia has approved a controversial Covid-19 vaccine for widespread use after less than two months of human testing, including a dose administered to one of Vladimir Putin’s daughters.

Kirill Dmitriev, the head of the country’s RDIF sovereign wealth fund, said the vaccine would be marketed abroad under the brand name Sputnik V with international agreements to produce 500m doses and requests for 1bn doses from 20 countries.

The vaccine’s name evokes the world’s first satellite to be launched into orbit, Sputnik, during the cold war space race, which was also seen as a competition for international prestige.

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Russia’s coronavirus vaccine: will it work, and is it safe?

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Sputnik V’s development has been marked by worrying opacity and ethical issues

The race to find a vaccine against Covid-19 has not always been particularly edifying, driven at times by so-called “vaccine nationalism”, much cautioned against by the World Health Organization, which has itself been accused of being invested as much in self-interest and prestige as global public health.

Russia’s announcement that it has registered its Sputnik V vaccine as safe and effective for mass production and inoculation even before so-called phase 3 large-scale safety trials, which usually take months, fits the pattern.

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Russia, China and Iran seeking to influence US ahead of elections, top intelligence official says

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Statement says China is opposed to Trump but offers more concrete evidence of Russia’s efforts to undermine Biden

Russia is backing Donald Trump, China is supporting Joe Biden and Iran is seeking to sow chaos in the US presidential election, a top intelligence official has warned in a sobering assessment of foreign meddling.

The statement on Friday by William Evanina, director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, raises fears of a repeat of the 2016 election, when Russia manipulated social media to help Trump and hurt his opponent Hillary Clinton.

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Donald Trump flounders in interview over US Covid-19 death toll

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President again says he is doing ‘incredible job’ fighting pandemic and casts doubt on Jeffrey Epstein’s cause of death

Donald Trump visibly floundered in an interview when pressed on a range of issues, including the number of coronavirus cases and deaths in the US, his claims that mail-in voting is fraudulent, and his inaction over the “Russian bounty” scandal.

The US president also repeatedly cast doubt on the cause of death of Jeffrey Epstein, and said of Ghislaine Maxwell, the British socialite who has pleaded not guilty to participating in the sex-trafficking of girls by Epstein, that he wished her well.

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Liam Fox is the latest in a long line of victims duped by Russia’s GRU

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Over the past 20 years, the military intelligence agency has stolen information from targets around the world

Liam Fox, the former UK trade secretary, is merely the latest in a long line of victims apparently duped by the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence agency.

Over the past two decades GRU spies have stolen classified information from numerous targets around the world. According to Reuters, last summer they broke into Fox’s email account. They made off with secret US-UK trade documents later dumped out before the 2019 election.

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The Guardian view on Belarus: slippers and democracy | Editorial

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A remarkable election campaign by the wife of a jailed blogger is causing major problems for ‘Europe’s last dictator’

It takes unusual courage to take on Alexander Lukashenko in an election. In 2010, for example, when the president of Belarus was seeking a fourth term of office, a number of his opponents were arrested and charged with organising mass disorder on polling day. But if your spouse has been jailed and your family threatened, the stakes of standing against the man often described as “Europe’s last dictator” must seem unbearably high.

This is the challenge that 37-year-old Svetlana Tikhanovskaya has accepted, ahead of Belarus’s latest exercise in pseudo-democracy this Sunday. With no previous political experience, Ms Tikhanovskaya took over the presidential candidacy of her husband, Sergei, a well-known blogger, in May, after he was ruled out of the race and imprisoned on trumped-up charges. So far, she is knocking it out of the park.

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Russians ‘hacked Liam Fox’s emails’ to obtain dossier on US-UK trade talks

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Hackers reportedly accessed account last year and obtained dossier cited by Jeremy Corbyn during election campaign

Classified documents relating to US-UK trade talks are believed to have been hacked by Russians from an email account belonging to the former minister Liam Fox, it has emerged.

A report from Reuters said Russian hackers accessed Fox’s account several times between July and October last year and obtained a dossier that ultimately ended up in the hands of Jeremy Corbyn during the election campaign. The then Labour leader said the 451-page dossier showed the NHS “was on the table” in trade talks with the US.

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‘The Kremlin wants me dead’: Russia’s sports doping whistleblower speaks out

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Grigory Rodchenkov was head of Russia’s ‘anti-doping’ centre but, in 2015, he fled to the US. He talks to the Observer’s former Moscow correspondent about the lies, the truth and life on the run

The man in front of me is wearing a disguise. We are talking on Skype. I’m at my home near London and Dr Grigory Rodchenkov is at an undisclosed location somewhere in America, guarded 24/7 by armed FBI agents. How is he? “My life is good. My mood is very good,” he says. He’s grinning, I think. Since he’s wearing a black scarf over his face and dark glasses, it’s hard to tell.

The cloak-and-dagger atmospherics surrounding our interview might seem a little overblown. Until, that is, you remember, Vladimir Putin’s roving assassins are trying to establish Rodchenkov’s secret location so they can snuff him out, a traitor to the state. Russia’s president has a long list of enemies. But Rodchenkov – the most significant sports whistleblower of the 21st century – is probably at the top.

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Is this the beginning of the end for ‘Europe’s last dictator’?

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Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus faces threats from all sides as the country decides whether to give him a fifth term as president

Alexander Lukashenko is under pressure like never before. The past week has brought astonishing scenes in Belarus: an opposition rally hailed as the largest since the fall of the Soviet Union; the arrest of 33 Russian mercenaries allegedly sent to destabilise the country; and an admission from Lukashenko that after months of minimising the coronavirus epidemic, he had tested positive for the virus.

It is likely that the president, who has held power for 25 years, will claim victory in the 9 August elections and remain the country’s leader. But he is on the defensive, facing an energised opposition amid bitter spats with Russia over economic integration, and with the west over human rights. It is the most precarious moment of his career.

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Up to 1,000 babies born to surrogate mothers stranded in Russia

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Exclusive: closure of borders means biological parents from other countries have not been able to meet their children

As many as 1,000 babies born to surrogate mothers in Russia for foreign families have been left stranded in the country by the coronavirus pandemic and closure of international borders, the Guardian has been told.

The babies, some born as far back as February, are being cared for mainly by hired caregivers in rented apartments in Moscow, St Petersburg, and other Russian cities.

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Russia used English-language sites to spread Covid-19 disinformation, US officials say

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Intelligence services reportedly targeting American and western audiences to exploit crisis ahead of US presidential election

US officials say Russian intelligence services are using a trio of English-language websites to spread disinformation about the coronavirus pandemic, seeking to exploit a crisis that America is struggling to contain ahead of the presidential election in November.

Two Russians who have held senior roles in Moscow’s military intelligence service known as the GRU have been identified as responsible for a disinformation effort reaching American and western audiences, US government officials said on Tuesday. They spoke to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

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Ransomware attack on Garmin thought to be the work of ‘Evil Corp’

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Russian cybercrime gang is believed to be responsible for taking Garmin services offline

A ransomware attack that took the GPS and smartwatch business Garmin entirely offline for more than three days is believed to have been carried out by a Russian cybercriminal gang which calls itself “Evil Corp”.

Garmin began to restore services to customers on Monday morning, after being held hostage for a reported ransom of $10m, although some services were still operating with limited functionality.

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Germany by far most admired country, with US, China and Russia vying for second – global poll

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Annual Gallup survey casts doubt on Mike Pompeo’s claim that the US is ‘perfectly positioned’ to lead the free world in rivalry with China

Germany is the most admired country in the world for the third year running, leaving the US in a tight battle for distant second place with China and Russia, according to a new global leadership poll.

The annual poll, conducted by Gallup, casts more doubt on US secretary of state Mike Pompeo’s claim on Friday that the US was “perfectly positioned” to lead the free world in a new ideological rivalry with the Chinese Communist Party.

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49% of voters believe Kremlin interfered in Brexit referendum

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Opinium poll for the Observer also reveals 47% of public think Putin’s government affected UK’s 2019 general election

Almost half the British public believes the Russian government interfered in the EU referendum and last year’s general election, according to a poll. The latest Opinium poll for the Observer found that 49% of voters think there was Russian interference in the Brexit referendum, with 23% disagreeing. Some 47% believed Russia interfered in the December general election.

The poll findings come after the long-awaited publication of the report into Russian interference by parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee last week. It found that the government had not attempted to investigate potential Russian interference in the referendum. It said the UK had “badly underestimated” the Russian threat.

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Timid, incompetent … how our spies missed Russian bid to sway Brexit

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MPs who compiled the Russia report were incredulous at Britain’s reluctance to tackle Kremlin

In September 2015 a tall young man with jet black hair and a pleasant grin made his way to Doncaster. His name was Alexander Udod. With the EU referendum vote on the horizon, Udod was attending Ukip’s annual conference. In theory he was a political observer. Actually Udod was an undercover spy, based at the Russian embassy in London.

Udod chatted with the man who would play a key role in Brexit – the Bristol businessman Arron Banks. The spy invited Banks to meet the Russian ambassador Alexander Yakovenko. What allegedly followed was a series of friendly encounters between Leave.EU and the Russians in the crucial months before the June 2016 poll: a boozy lunch, pints in a Notting Hill pub, and the offer of a Siberian gold deal. (Banks denies receiving money from Russia and previously stated his only contact with the Russian government in the run-up to the referendum consisted of “one boozy lunch” with the ambassador.)

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