VSGLYAD, KOMMERSANT FM, KOMMERSANT, NOVAYA GAZETA, ROSBALT.RU (Russia) Worldcrunch MOSCOW – As the three members of Pussy Riot face jail time, the fallout from their case is being felt around Russia, with very diverse – and unexpected – ramifications. Vzglyad reports that there is a commercial war going on over the Pussy Riot brand. The […]
Tag: russia
KOMMERSANT, RAPSI (Russia) Worldcrunch Moscow – Five days after the Khamovnichesky District Court handed down a guilty verdict against Russian punk band Pussy Riot, the Court’s website was hacked, RAPSI reports. The hackers struck on Tuesday morning, and used the opportunity to post a sexually suggestive music video of the flamboyantly gay Bulgarian singer Aziz […]
WTA (United States), SPORT.RBC.RU (Russia) Worldcrunch Top Russian tennis player Maria Sharapova has launched her own brand of candy called Sugarpova. Famed Fifth Avenue retailer Henri Bendel held the New York City launch on Monday, the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) reports. Sugarpova’s 12 kinds of sweets will be sold worldwide by IT’SUGAR candy stores, and […]
SAINT PETERSBURG – A well-known art collector buys a painting from a long-time acquaintance, who is also a publisher of books about Russian art. He displays it in an art exhibition, and an art expert happens to see it and recognize it as a fake that she had see before and identified as a forgery […]
THE GUARDIAN (UK), THE MOSCOW TIMES (Russia) Worldcrunch On Friday, the three members of Russian punk-band Pussy Riot were found guilty of “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred” and sentenced to two years in prison. Judge Marina Syrova said the defendants had “crudely undermined social order” when they staged an impromptu performance in Moscow’s Cathedral of […]
KOMMERSANT (Russia), KOMMERSANT UKRAINE, ROSBALT (Ukraine) Worldcrunch ODESSA – The second of two men accused of planning a plot against Russian president Vladimir Putin and Chechen leader Ramzan Kadirov, Ilya Pyanzin, filed an appeal on Thursday with the local appeals to court in an attempt to fight extradition to Russia. Adam Osmaev, the man Pyanzin […]
AL JAZEERA (Qatar), RADIO SVOBODA NOVAYA GAZETA (Russia), SUNDAY TIMES (UK) MOSCOW – Vladimir Putin, comfortably back in the Russian presidency, presents himself as a humble, down-to-earth man of average means. But rumors about his wealth, and the secrecy surrounding it, have been circulating for years, as far back as his time as deputy mayor […]
MOSCOW – They say that the most expensive lunch enjoyed by anyone in the world was when the head of Greenlight Capital, David Einhorn, spent ‘only’ $250,100 for the right to dine with Warren Buffet, who he had always admired. Nikolai Taishikhin, who lives in a small town on Russia’ border with Mongolia, didn’t quite […]
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS (USA), THE GUARDIAN (UK) Worldcrunch Russian authorities have charged members of an Islamic sect with child abuse after discovering underground cells near Kazan in Tatarstan where a self-proclaimed prophet and his followers kept one to 17-year-olds for nearly a decade without heat or sunlight. The Guardian reports that prosecutors have opened a […]
AL JAZEERA (Qatar) Worldcrunch MOSCOW – Vladimir Putin, the newly re-elected president of Russia, presents himself as a humble, down to earth man of average means. But rumors about his wealth, and the secrecy surrounding it, have been circulating for years, as far back as his time as deputy mayor of St. Petersburg in the […]
MOSCOW – The three members of Pussy Riot, the Russian punk band accused of hooliganism for anunauthorized performance in a Moscow cathedral, had their last words in court on Wednesday after a weeklong trial. The verdict will be announced on August 17. For those outside Russia, this whole affair has been a litmus test for […]
MOSCOW – Proposed legislation in the Russian Duma (Lower House of Parliament) would forbid all public employees, including government ministers, the President and the Duma MPs themselves, from owning any real estate, stocks or bank accounts outside of Russia. In its current form, public employees found to have property or accounts abroad would be removed […]
Syria is sinking deeper into civil war as the UN Security Council remains deadlocked. The death toll keeps rising, massacres and torture continue, all under the helpless eyes of the international organization that’s in charge of peacekeeping and human rights. The inaction of the Security Council is largely due to the Russian veto, or threat […]
REUTERS, RIA NOVOSTI, ROSCOSMOS (Russian Federation) Worldcrunch MOSCOW – Russia’s Proton rocket failed to bring two satellites into orbit after the launch late on Monday from the Baikonur space center in Kazakhstan, the Russian Federal Space Agency Roscosmos said. Although the launch itself was a success (see video below), the rocket — carrying two multi-million […]
KAZAN – Nobody has the exact numbers. The arrests are only talked about when the suspect is someone already well-known in the region. People like Artyom Kalashov, a Russian weightlifting champion, who they first interrogated, then tried to arrest without actually accusing him of the crime. The court blocked the arrest. Then they arrested the […]
The members of the Russian female punk rock group are on trial for a protest concert in an Orthodox shrine that offended many believers. But now, Church leaders are in a bind of their own as public opinion could sway against them.
Vladimir Putin has made a priority out of expanding and updating the military capacity of the Russian military, but there is still much heavy lifting required to move beyond the mechanical and human rust of the Soviet era.
Navalny’s home was ransacked by police barely two weeks ago, and he spent 15 days in jail in May. So why did the government support his appointment to the board of Aeroflot, Russia’s largest airline?
Loggers in the Russian Far East are facing off against conservationists over the fate of forests in wildlife reserves, with the Siberian tiger’s natural habitat hanging in the balance. And for local indigenous peoples, it’s not just an e
More and more people are criss-crossing Russia to take part in protest actions, spawning a new breed of “political tourists” just in time for the summer travel season.
Worldcrunch NOVAYA GAZETA (Russia) MOSCOW – Russian aviation has been making an impact in all the wrong ways. Last May, a new airplane on a demonstration flight in Indonesian crashed into a mountain, killing all 50 people on board. And now Novaya Gazeta has revealed that Russian airlines are using scheduling tricks to cut the […]
Analysis: The depreciation of the Russian ruble hurts the whole country, especially the poorer masses who don’t deal in dollars. And no, you can’t just blame it on foreigners.
Worldcrunch KOMMERSANT, GAZETA.RU (Russia) MOSCOW – Ksenia Sobachak is the daughter of St. Petersburg’s first post-Soviet mayor, a graduate of Moscow’s prestigious State University and a popular reality show host. She says that the country’s president is a friend of the family, Kommersant reports. Still, she has actively supported protests against that president, Vladimir Putin, […]
Worldcrunch AP, LENTA.RU (Russia) MOSCOW – Thousands of Russians have gathered in the capital for the first protest march against Vladimir Putin since his reelection last month as president. According to organizers, up to to 20,000 people took part in the “March of Millions’, the Moscow-based news website Lenta.ru reports. The protest began without top […]
On the eve of another mass protest in Moscow, opposition leaders had their apartments turned upside down by special security forces.
In the Russian capital, where rush-hour traffic lasts past midnight, the Mayor has decided to make the city more pedestrian and bicycle friendly. Will drivers finally give way?
Foreign students in the Russian city of Orenburg are being asked to move out of their dorms because city officials think African students risk raping children in the nearby summer camp. And this is supposed to be a Russian city known for tolerance…
GAZETA.RU (Russia) MOSCOW – A manhunt is underway in the Siberian region of Altai Krai after two poachers where spotted shooting animals and collecting their meat in a wildlife reserve, Gazeta.ru reports. The incident was caught on a mobile-phone video, reigniting a debate on helicopter-assisted poaching in the region. In January 2009, a helicopter crash […]
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Russia And Syria Get Even Cozier
GAZETA.RU (Russia) MOSCOW – Russia and Syria are in talks to establish a new free-trade zone, the latest sign that Moscow will stand by their man in Damascus. In an interview with ITAR-TASS news agency, Russian Vice-Premier Alexander Khloponin announced the possibility of a new free trade zone to expand commerce between Syria and the […]
A book fair planned for this weekend was supposed to liven up Moscow’s Taganski neighborhood with a bit of poetry and music. City authorities saw a threat to public order.
AL JAZEERA (Qatar) KABUL/KRASNOKAMENSK – When asked if he thought Vladimir Putin might change now that he’s returned to the Kremlin, jailed former Russian tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky replies: “No.” But he also offers a caveat. Commenting just two weeks after Putin was sworn in for a third presidential term (after an interim as Prime Minister), […]
NOVAYA GAZETA, KOMMERSANT (Russia) MOSCOW – In the aftermath of the “March of the Millions’ on May 6th and the arrest of several hundred protesters that night, an improvised camp sprung up overnight in Moscow in the Park of Chistye Prudy, Novaya Gazeta reports. The camp looks in many ways like the protest camps that […]
NOVAYA GAZETA (Russia) MOSCOW – Roughly 60% of synthetic narcotics in Europe are made with an ingredient that is illegally exported from Russia, possibly with the help of high-ranking officials in the Russian Drug Enforcement Agency and Security Agency, Novaya Gazeta reports. The allegations stem from an audit started after a former top-level officer in […]
Protesters in Russia have spent the nights since Vladimir Putin’s inauguration walking the streets of Moscow as a new way to keep the opposition movement kicking after the election. Moscow’s heavy-handed police force is not amused.
Police arrested nearly 600 during demonstrations against Vladimir Putin’s latest presidential inauguration. Hundreds of others were injured in the melee and one photographer died. Putin’s press secretary said later that police should hav
Op-Ed: The Russian Orthodox Church seems more concerned about criticism of its top leaders than about physical attacks on its clergy. Is it suffering a post-Soviet identity crisis?
A new program in Moscow aims to give incentives for private developers to restore historical buildings that are on the brink of crumbling. The program’s first auction attracted almost 20 bidders, and it looks like the program may be a win for eve
Perfect 10, an American magazine and website specializing in “beautiful, natural models,” has a long history of unsuccessful copyright suits. That isn’t stopping it, however, from going after Russian search engine giant Yandex.
Russia is wary of plans by NATO to build missile defense bases in Poland and Romania. The military alliance insists Moscow has nothing to fear, that Russia and NATO are not “enemies.” Why then, Russia would like to know, is NATO unwilling to build a joint
A Russian punk-feminist band called Pussy Riot has spent the past two months in jail after singing “Dear God, Chase Out Putin” in a Moscow cathedral. This week Russian police arrested some of their fans too.