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/ 24 October 2007
A Russian supermarket worker branded ”the chessboard murderer” was found guilty on Wednesday of killing 48 people after he confessed in court that the first time he took a life was like falling in love. He was given his nickname by Russian media because he had hoped to put a coin on every space of a 64-place chessboard, one for each victim.
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/ 24 October 2007
Russia and the European Union (EU) have agreed to set up an early warning system which will alert them to any disruptions to gas and oil supplies flowing through Russian pipelines. Russia is one of the EU’s main energy suppliers, pumping oil and gas through its pipeline systems west across Belarus and Ukraine into Europe.
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/ 18 October 2007
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday announced ”grandiose” military plans, including development of a new nuclear weapon, and attacked United States policies in Iraq and Iran. Putin, who must step down at the end of his second term next year, also confirmed that he wants to retain major political influence.
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/ 18 October 2007
Russia launched an inter-continental ballistic missile on Thursday from its Plesetsk cosmodrome in the north of the country, a Russian military spokesperson said. The RS-12M Topol’, called the SS-25 Sickle by Nato and configured for a mobile platform, was successfully launched at 9.10am Moscow time.
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/ 12 October 2007
Russian President Vladimir Putin threatened on Friday in talks with United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to abandon a key nuclear-missile treaty, while also telling Washington to freeze plans for a European anti-missile shield. The Kremlin leader said the Cold War-era INF treaty limiting Russian and US short- and medium-range missiles was outmoded.
Workers rebuilding a 19th-century Moscow house unearthed the remains of nearly three dozen people apparently dating back to the era of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin’s political purges nearly 70 years ago, police officials said on Thursday. Police also found a rusted pistol on the estate where the remains of an estimated 34 people were discovered.
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/ 18 September 2007
Russia expressed worry on Tuesday over the possibility of war with Iran as French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner pressed for tougher sanctions against the Islamic Republic’s nuclear programme. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov emphasised Russia’s "concern" over "multiple reports that military action against Iran is being seriously considered.
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/ 16 September 2007
Svetlana Kuznetsova saved two match points in the second set tiebreaker before beating Francesca Schiavone 4-6 7-6 7-5 in the first reverse singles on Sunday to give Russia their third Fed Cup title in four years. Kuznetsova’s victory gave the home team an unassailable 3-0 lead over last year’s surprise winners Italy in the final at Moscow’s Luzhniki arena.
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/ 12 September 2007
President Vladimir Putin accepted the resignation on Wednesday of his prime minister and government, paving the way for the Russian leader to hand-pick a successor when he steps down next year. The resignation of Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov and the entire Cabinet was shown on state-run Vesti television.
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/ 11 September 2007
One young Russian woman sends an SMS to another’s cellphone in central Moscow: ”Hi, Katya. Ne poiti li nam drink coffee? Call asap! Cheers, Masha.” The uninitiated might take this for some technical garble, but when 24-year-old student Masha Kuznetsova recently invited her journalist friend Katya out for a coffee, she was using the latest argot of the new Russia.
Russia plans to send a manned mission to the moon by 2025 and wants to build a permanent base there shortly after, the head of Russian space agency Roskosmos said on Friday. ”According to our estimates, we will be ready for a manned flight to the Moon in 2025,” Roskosmos chief Anatoly Perminov told reporters.
Russian prosecutors announced an investigation on Friday after the discovery of what are thought to be the remains of the last two unaccounted children of murdered Tsar Nicholas II: his heir Alexei and daughter Maria. The prosecutor general’s office is reopening a criminal investigation into the 1918 murder of Russia’s royal family.
Residents in Russia’s far east have been warned to use caution in the sea after the capture of a great white shark like that made famous in the 1975 horror film Jaws, a newspaper said on Monday. ”Great white sharks have appeared off southern Sakhalin” island, the popular daily Novye Izvestiya said.
The BBC said on Friday its Russian-language FM broadcasts have been taken off the air by its Moscow distributor, which said its programmes were ”foreign propaganda”. The decision leaves the BBC’s Russian-language services available only on medium and shortwave broadcasts, the BBC said in a press release.
More questions were raised on Wednesday about a shocking internet video that shows Russian neo-Nazis beheading one man and shooting another, as police probed its origin and authenticity. The video appears to show a pair of masked men executing a Tadjik national and an ethnic Dagestani man in a forest with a Nazi flag in the background.
A Russian submersible reached the bottom of the Arctic Ocean on Thursday in a mission to symbolically claim the resource-rich region by planting a flag on the seabed under the North Pole, Russian media reported. Two Russian submersibles started their dive from an ice hole near the North Pole and dived about 4Â 261m, Itar-Tass news agency reported.
Russian rugby has come a long way since the Stalinist dark days when the former Soviet dictator banned it for being too bourgeois. Now with a French coach in charge and with a marketing guru in place, the Russian federation is aiming to qualify for the 2011 World Cup in New Zealand.
Russia tried to contain fallout from its diplomatic row with Britain on Friday as Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov headed for talks in Germany likely to touch on the affair. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov acknowledged worries that the row over the poisoning of ex-agent Alexander Litvinenko could damage relations with the European Union.
Russia announced on Thursday the expulsion of four British diplomats, a visa ban on British officials and the suspension of counter-terrorism cooperation amid a mounting diplomatic row. ”The British ambassador has been officially notified that four British embassy employees have been declared persona non grata,” a Foreign Ministry spokesperson said.
Russia suspended its participation in a key pact limiting military forces in Europe on Saturday, fulfilling a threat after months of verbal sparring with the West. The suspension comes amid worsening relations with Europe and Washington on a range of fronts, including United States plans for a missile shield in Eastern Europe.
It is already the world’s biggest country, spanning 11 time zones and stretching from Europe to the Far East. But this week Russia signalled its intention to get even bigger by announcing an audacious plan to annex a vast, 1,19-million-square-kilometre chunk of the frozen and ice-encrusted Arctic.
Frozen North Korean assets that have held up a nuclear disarmament deal have not yet been fully transferred, a Russian diplomatic source was quoted as saying on Friday. Japan’s Kyodo News agency earlier quoted authorities in Macau as saying the funds from the Banco Delta Asia had arrived at the New York branch of the Federal Reserve.
Vladimir Putin, whose term as Russian president ends next year, does not rule out running again in 2012, a leading Russian daily reported on Saturday. The future plans of the 54-year-old Putin, by far Russia’s most powerful and popular politician, are the hottest topic of the Russian presidential succession.
Russia’s Foreign Ministry summoned Nigeria’s ambassador on Monday over the kidnapping of six Russian workers in the volatile Niger Delta. ”Today the Nigerian ambassador in Moscow will arrive at the Foreign Ministry for a discussion on this topic,” Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who is on a visit to South Korea, told reporters in televised comments.
Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has described himself as the world’s only ”pure” democrat and attacked the United States and Europe, which have criticised him, for falling short of their own ideals. In an interview released on Monday, he rejected criticism that he has centralised power in the Kremlin, marginalised the opposition and increased state control over the media.
President Vladimir Putin said Russia would go back to its Cold War stance of aiming its missiles at Europe if Washington went ahead with a plan to build a missile defence shield near Russia’s borders. Putin said Moscow would not be responsible for the consequences because Washington had started the escalation.
Russia accused Britain of politicising the case of murdered Kremlin critic Alexander Litvinenko on Friday and said the affair was hurting the two countries’ relations. ”We see attempts from the British side to use the criminal case to build up some sort of political campaign,” said Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.
The man charged by Britain with murdering former Russian agent Alexander Litvinenko denied involvement on Thursday, saying British intelligence and a self-exiled Russian billionaire were far more likely suspects. ”Britain is making me a scapegoat,” said a confident and combative Andrei Lugovoy.
Britain’s ambassador on Monday submitted an official request to Russia for the extradition of the man suspected of murdering Alexander Litvinenko. British prosecutors said last week they wanted to bring Russian businessman Andrei Lugovoy before a British court to try him for the murder of Litvinenko, who died on November 23 last year.
Riot police used violence to break up a gay rights demonstration in Moscow on Sunday and arrested several European parliamentarians in what critics say is the latest violation of human rights in Russia. A group of gay rights activists came under attack from neo-Nazi thugs when they tried to present a petition to Moscow’s mayor.
Russian nationalists, communists and religious believers gathered in Moscow on Saturday to denounce plans for a Gay Pride march, as gay activists prepared to lobby the mayor to lift a ban on the event. About 200 protesters, including flag-waving communists or old women carrying religious icons, held a ”Russia March”.
About 65 workers were trapped underground at a Siberian coal mine on Thursday after a methane gas explosion ripped through the pit, emergency services said. At the time of the blast at the Yubileynaya mine in Siberia’s Kemerovo region, 217 people were underground.