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/ 5 November 2007
Fire tore through a retirement home in central Russia, killing 30 people while two others are still missing, a senior local official was quoted as saying on Monday. The home near the city of Tula did not have basic safety equipment and police have started a criminal investigation into the latest in a series of fire disasters in Russia.
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/ 31 October 2007
A bomb on a bus in the Russian car-making city of Togliatti killed at least eight people and injured 50 on Wednesday in what authorities called a terrorist attack. The blast, which came as people travelled to work in the early-morning rush hour, was probably caused by a bomb hidden under the floor of the bus, police sources said.
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/ 29 October 2007
Britain’s relations with Russia faced another downturn last week following fresh reports that the missing billionaire oligarch Mikhail Gutseriyev had fled to the United Kingdom. Gutseriyev — the former head of Russneft, a Russian private oil firm — disappeared in August shortly before a Moscow court issued a warrant for his arrest.
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/ 25 October 2007
Russia’s ”Chessboard Killer” Alexander Pichushkin showed no remorse on Thursday when he addressed a Moscow court for the final time after being found guilty of a series of 48 murders. Instead of asking for lenience, he taunted the court, which on Wednesday found him guilty on all charges.
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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.
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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/ 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.
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.
In a vast wilderness in eastern Russia, scientists and tourism entrepreneurs are anxiously working out how much is left of one of the world’s great natural wonders, Geyser Valley. The far eastern Kamchatka peninsula boasts nature at its most unpredictable, as demonstrated by a recent landslide that obliterated many of its prized geysers.
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.
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”.
Mstislav Rostropovich played the cello with grace and verve — and lived his life offstage the same way. His death at age 80 takes away one of modern Russia’s most compelling figures, admired both for his musical mastery and his defiance of Soviet repression. Rostropovich stirred souls with playing that was both intense and seemingly effortless.
Mstislav Rostropovich played the cello with grace and verve — and lived his life offstage the same way. His death at age 80 takes away one of modern Russia’s most compelling figures, admired both for his musical mastery and his defiance of Soviet repression. Rostropovich stirred souls with playing that was both intense and seemingly effortless.
Every spring, the cranes in the Arctic port of Dudinka are shifted several hundred metres away from the banks of the Yenisei River — with good reason. The river rises 8m when it thaws, tossing chunks of ice into anything blocking its path. Annual repairs cost more than -million.
Life isn’t bad in the North Caucasus mountain town of Kubachi. The air is pure, the view is magnificent and the centuries-old tradition of silver handiwork guarantees jobs for all. There is one downside for its 2Â 000 residents, however. Their neighbours a short donkey ride down the road can’t understand a word they say.
Hopes of saving three missing miners dwindled on Wednesday as rescuers said it could take days to reach them in a coal mine where 107 died in the Russian Federation’s worst mine disaster since the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union. On President Vladimir Putin’s orders, flags were flying at half-mast across Russia.
A Russian airliner crash-landed in the central Russian city of Samara on Saturday, killing seven people and injuring 23, emergency officials said. Authorities gave conflicting accounts about what caused the incident. An Emergency Situations Ministry spokesperson said the plane grazed the runway with a wing as it tried to land in heavy fog.
With their hammers and sickles, cosmonauts and red stars, the decorations on many Russian Christmas trees still reflect the ebb and flow of a bygone atheist age as they grace the country’s homes from New Year’s Eve to Orthodox Christmas on January 7. Today, Moscow market stalls are helping to revive traditional Soviet decorations.
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/ 8 December 2006
Andrei Lugovoy, a contact of poisoned Russian ex-spy Alexander Litvinenko, is suffering from radiation poisoning, Interfax news agency said on Friday, quoting medical sources. ”Disruption in the functioning of some organs affected by radiation nuclides has been found,” the agency quoted a source as saying.
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/ 20 November 2006
Pioneering sociologist Yuri Levada, who was shut out of his profession in Soviet times but came back to track public opinion as Russia made the transition from communism, died on November 16 at his institute in Moscow. The cause of the 76-year-old Levada’s death was a heart attack, said a colleague at the Levada Analytical Centre.
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/ 15 November 2006
United States President George Bush and Russia’s Vladimir Putin confirmed at an airport meeting on Wednesday they plan to sign a bilateral deal next week for Russia’s accession to the World Trade Organisation (WTO). Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said the presidents confirmed that they would sign a protocol paving the way for Russia to join the WTO. Bush and Putin also discussed Iran and its nuclear programme.
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/ 20 October 2006
On Thursday scores of foreign humanitarian aid groups and charities that failed to meet a deadline for registration under a controversial new law had to suspend their work in Russia. Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the Danish Refugee Council are among those obliged to cease their activities.
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/ 3 September 2006
Russian President Vladimir Putin, a vocal advocate of a ”multipolar” world, will expand his diplomatic horizons this week with his first visits to South Africa and Morocco, looking to expand economic ties with the two African countries. Putin will be in South Africa on Tuesday and Wednesday, followed by Morocco on Wednesday and Thursday.
In a youth-crazed country that cranks out new musical stars in an endless series of televised competitions, it was only a matter of time before Russia’s political world caught up. The Kremlin and United Russia, the country’s party of power, have poured millions of dollars into political youth movements over the past few years, organising lavish summer camps and massive rallies.