US embassy called last week for Russia to free former marine Paul Whelan, detained in 2018
A Moscow court has extended the detention of the former US marine Paul Whelan until 29 March on espionage charges, the Interfax news agency has reported.
Whelan, who holds US, British, Canadian and Irish passports, was detained in December 2018 and accused of spying.
Continue reading...PM mingled with Russian elite amid claims of Moscow interference in UK politics
It was the equivalent of a V-sign cheerfully flashed at his critics. The day after his landslide election victory, Boris Johnson and his girlfriend Carrie Symonds dropped into a caviar-fuelled Christmas party in London hosted by former KGB agent Alexander Lebedev and his son Evgeny.
During the campaign Johnson had stubbornly refused to publish the Russia report, written by the last parliament’s intelligence and security committee.
Continue reading...Man, 39, opened fire on intelligence agency offices in Moscow, killing two and injuring others
A man who was shot dead in central Moscow after opening fire on the offices of the Federal Security Service (FSB), Russia’s main intelligence agency building, in an attack that killed two has been identified as a gun enthusiast.
Investigators named him as Yevgeny Manyurov, 39, from Podolsk, a small town some 30 miles south of Moscow.
Continue reading...Impasse continues as Russia calls for reduction in number of crossings for delivering aid
Vital cross-border aid to Syria is under threat after the UN security council was unable to overcome Russian and Chinese objections to the programme.
The aid, which is sent over borders at four UN approved checkpoints and without the formal permission of the Syrian regime, is seen as critical as the humanitarian crisis in Idlib and north-east Syria continues to mount.
Continue reading...One person has been shot dead after an unidentified gunman opened fire on the office of the Federal Security Service (FSB), Russia’s main intelligence agency, in the heart of Moscow. According to Russian media reports, the man attacked the reception of the Lubyanka building, home to the FSB and its communist-era predecessor, the KGB. The victim was described as a traffic police officer. Other FSB guards were injured in the shooting, with two in a critical condition, officials said
Continue reading...Unidentified man fired on reception of Federal Security Service and was later shot dead
One person has been shot dead after an unidentified gunman opened fire on the office of the Federal Security Service (FSB), Russia’s main intelligence agency, in the heart of Moscow.
According to Russian media reports, the man attacked the reception of the Lubyanka building, home to the FSB and its communist-era predecessor the KGB. The victim was described as a traffic police officer. Other FSB guards were injured in the shooting, with two in a critical condition, officials said.
Continue reading...Speaking at his annual end-of-the-year press conference, the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, said pressure on Ukraine by Donald Trump was 'made up' by the Democrats in order to impeach the US president
Continue reading...From 2 December until 11 January, the sun does not rise above the horizon in Murmansk, the city in the Russian Arctic circle. Here are Amos Chapple’s stirring images of life in the area
Continue reading...Zelenskiy sitcom lasted just one night after alluding to Putin in crude sub-language
A Russian television channel has abruptly cancelled a sitcom starring Ukraine’s president after an allusion to a crude joke about Vladimir Putin was aired in Russia’s far east.
The political satire Servant of the People served as a platform for the former comedian Volodymyr Zelenskiy to gain popularity and eventually win the Ukrainian presidency, in a vote largely driven by anger at the country’s previous leaders.
Continue reading...Melting sea ice is prompting fevered dreams of ever-easier access, and a renewed jockeying among Arctic nations for status, profit and ownership
I could not keep my eyes off the graves, could not stop staring at them even as I walked away, turning repeatedly to look over my shoulder at them as I slogged my way across the gravel-strewn shore of Beechey Island until they disappeared from view.
It was profoundly saddening to contemplate their presence on a low-lying, windswept outpost of the Canadian Arctic, to imagine the fear and loneliness those buried here must have felt as they faced death in the harshest of conditions, thousands of miles and a world removed from their homes. And yet, they were the lucky ones, the first casualties of an expedition that vanished 173 years ago while searching for the fabled Northwest Passage between Atlantic and Pacific, whose remaining members met their doom after their ships became frozen in never-yielding sea ice, who perished one by one waiting for a summer that never came.
Continue reading...Politicians in Germany say claims from Russian leader are designed to muddy waters around murder
Vladimir Putin has claimed the Chechen separatist shot dead in Berlin in what prosecutors believe was a state-sanctioned assassination had been responsible for carrying out killings on Russian soil, frustrating German politicians who have sought clarification over the Kremlin’s involvement in the murder.
At a joint press conference with the leaders of Germany, France and Ukraine at the end of a summit in Paris, Putin described the Georgian citizen Zelimkhan Khangoshvili as “a cruel and bloodthirsty person” whom Russian authorities had sought to have extradited from his exile in Germany.
Continue reading...Jordan, Turkey and UAE singled out for ‘routinely and blatantly’ supplying weapons
UN member states have systematically violated a Libyan arms embargo, according to a long-awaited UN report due to be published on Monday that will identify Jordan, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates as the main culprits.
The report is expected to say these three countries “routinely and sometimes blatantly supplied weapons with little effort to disguise the source”. It is also likely to link the UAE to a bombing of a detention centre that has been described as a war crime.
Continue reading...Volodymyr Zelenskiy to meet Russian counterpart at summit on Kyiv’s five-year war with Russian separatists
The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, faces a major test at a high-stakes summit with Vladimir Putin in Paris as he pursues a campaign promise to negotiate an end to the war in south-east Ukraine despite vocal opposition at home.
Zelenskiy and his Russian counterpart will meet at the Élysée Palace on Monday alongside European leaders for their first face-to-face talks since the comedian-turned-president took office in May.
Continue reading...Guards detain man who took thousands from migrants before leading them on bogus journey into what they thought was EU
Russian authorities have detained a man who built a fake frontier post in the woods near the country’s border with Finland and promised migrant workers he could smuggle them into the European Union.
The man erected mock border posts and charged four men from south Asia more than $10,000 to take them to EU member Finland, the Russian border guard service said on Wednesday.
Continue reading...Technology of deploying drones in squadrons is in its infancy, but armed forces are investing millions in its development
As evening fell on Russia’s Khmeimim airbase in western Syria, the first drones appeared. Then more, until 13 were flashing on radars, speeding towards the airbase and a nearby naval facility.
The explosives-armed aircraft were no trouble for Russian air defences, which shot down seven and jammed the remaining six, according to the country’s defence ministry. But the failed attack in January last year was disturbing to close observers of drone warfare.
Continue reading...Environmentalists fear animal filmed in Russia now lacks camouflage to properly hunt
A video showing a polar bear spray-painted with graffiti has sparked outrage among environmentalists amid fears that the creature was targeted by locals in an area where the animals increasingly forage.
Scientists were concerned that the bear filmed in Russia – daubed with the letters “T-34”, the name of a second world war-era Soviet tank – would have trouble hunting and maintaining camouflage with the black lettering clearly visible on its side.
Continue reading...Former insurgent Zelimkhan Khangoshvili was shot dead in a Berlin park in broad daylight
Germany’s chief public prosecutor suspects Russian intelligence agencies to be behind the killing of a former Chechen insurgent in Berlin and plans to take over investigations into the case, various German media outlets have reported.
Coming three months after Georgian citizen Zelimkhan Khangoshvili was shot in broad daylight in a Berlin park, such a move would amount to the German state officially accusing the Kremlin of carrying out a political assassination on German soil and likely lead to a similar diplomatic fall-out as over the poisoning of Sergei Skripal in the UK in March 2018.
Continue reading...Questions about dissemination of documents do not mean they are fake, but poses new puzzle
Leaked documents said by Labour to prove that the NHS was “on the table” in trade talks with the US were initially disseminated online by anonymous posters operating in a way similar to a Russian information operation known as Secondary Infektion, according to a social media research firm.
A 19-page report published on Monday by the consultancy Graphika said that while it could not conclusively prove a Russian origin to the leak, the early distribution of the cache of files via Reddit, three German-language websites and an anonymous Twitter account reflected a method of operation seen repeatedly over recent years.
Continue reading...Serbian authorities are investigating a video that purportedly shows a Russian spy handing over a bag of cash to an unnamed Serbian official. The video, uploaded anonymously to YouTube on Wednesday, later shows the Serbian man counting money from inside the bag while sitting in his car. Serbian officials confirmed the video was genuine and identified the agent as Georgy Kleban.
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