MOSCOW—President Vladimir Putin vowed on Thursday he would not be swayed by Western pressure over the poisoning of his most prominent domestic critic, Alexei Navalny. Nonetheless, a reported mysterious shakeup in a Russian intelligence agency, and other comments by Putin, suggest the Kremlin has been forced to at least try to demonstrate distance between the president and those who might be behind Navalny’s poisoning with the […]
Anna Nemtsova
20 posts
MOSCOW—For the third year in succession, a Russian teenager has done something that Europeans previously believed was the sole preserve of disaffected American students. Danila Monakhov, 18, embarked on a mass shooting in the city of Nizhny Novgorod on Monday, shooting seven people before turning the gun on himself. Handsome but socially awkward, the teen shooter had watched videos of the Columbine massacre linking him to […]
NIZHNY NOVGOROD—A funeral was held Tuesday for Irina Slavina, a celebrated local journalist, who set herself on fire outside the police headquarters in Nizhny Novgorod and died. But this is not a story about a reporter committing suicide. Hundreds of thousands read Slavina’s website, Koza.Press, the bravest media outlet in the city. Her readers knew exactly what she meant in her final Facebook post: “Blame the […]
MOSCOW—The fighting in a mountain enclave in the Caucuses escalated Tuesday when Turkish-backed forces shelled five villages including the capital of Stepanakert, according to Armenian officials. Skirmishes broke out on the border of Azerbaijan and Armenia over the weekend and the official death toll is over 100 as a decades-old dispute over the Nagorno-Karabakh or the Republic of Artsakh erupted into violence. Artsakh is an ethnic […]
MOSCOW—Russia these days may look frightening to Americans, who hear often of election meddling and poisoning among other ill deeds. But consider for a moment the view from the other side of the divide, or at least the view presented to Russians by their television sets. The looming potential for World War III has become a regular topic on Russian state propaganda shows. Night after night, […]
Warning: This article contains distressing scenes. MOSCOW—A teenager in Russia has been forced to strip naked and make a horrific “apology” video after daring to criticize the regime on social media. The 19-year-old was a moderator for an anti-government Telegram channel that targeted the Russian republic of Chechnya, which is governed by Vladimir Putin ally Ramzan Kadyrov. Kadyrov and his militia are famous for brutal, inhuman […]
MOSCOW—Men in civilian clothes with masks covering their faces grabbed the woman inspiring a revolution in Belarus on Monday. They pushed Maria Kolesnikova into a minivan at about 10am local time (3am ET)—the opposition leader hasn’t been seen since. Alexander Lukashenko, Belarus’ brutal leader for the past 26 years, has been cracking down on protests and threatening to arrest members of the opposition Coordination Council for […]
MOSCOW—Yegor Zhukov is the face of a new generation of Putin opponents using social media as well as student rallies to stand up to the regime. On Sunday night, he was beaten up outside his home in Moscow hours after posting a YouTube video criticizing Putin. In a statement to the police, he said: “I have not suffered any property damage, but my face is broken.” […]
From the age of 5, he has rubbed shoulders with the most feted and feared world leaders, from the Obamas and two successive popes to Hugo Chavez and Vladimir Putin. By 7 he had been gifted a handgun made of gold by Dmitry Medvedev, who was Russia’s president at the time. This week, Nikolay Lukashenko, the youngest son of the “last dictator in Europe,” came of […]
MOSCOW— Vladimir Putin has registered the world’s first state-approved vaccine against the coronavirus and probably expected congratulations—at least at home—for winning the global race for a vaccine, but even Russians aren’t so sure this is a good idea. Epidemiologists, pharmacologists, and doctors in Russia have responded to the alleged breakthrough with skepticism, and they certainly aren’t lining up to be injected first. Russian scientists plan to […]
MOSCOW—As Russia’s most prominent opposition figure, Aleksey Navalny, lay in a coma on Friday after a suspected poisoning, a fierce tug-of-war raged between his family and authorities over whether he could be flown to Germany for additional medical treatment. Finally, on Friday night, Russian doctors relented and allowed Navalny to leave the country “on his wife’s responsibility.” All day, while a German air ambulance waited at […]
MOSCOW—From Russia’s cyber-meddling in the U.S. presidential elections to its alleged hacking of coronavirus research, it’s clear the Kremlin is keen to undermine the democratic West. And it’s now looking to a new front to extend its hard and soft power and prop up fellow authoritarian regimes: the continent of Africa. Last week, the German newspaper Bild raised alarms about Russia’s growing influence in Africa, citing […]
ST. PETERSBURG, Russia—Dozens of young people were singing lyrics by a local band on Palace Square: “We’ll be together, like Sid and Nancy, we’ll never live long enough to be pensioners.” The warm July night was young. In spite of the dark context of the song, people looked happy. The wind played with a young woman’s rainbow-dyed hair, while she was kissing her girlfriend. That scene was […]
MOSCOW—The videos were certainly not what Russians have come to expect from their country’s secret warriors abroad; powerful men in unmarked uniforms imposing Russian influence on Syria, Ukraine and Africa. These men were caught on camera by Belarusian security officers totally unprepared. Some were naked except for underwear, with documents, propaganda leaflets and condoms strewn around their hotel rooms. Others wore vaguely marked uniforms, all 33 […]
MOSCOW—When the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) arrested journalist Ivan Safronov on charges of “state treason” this week, many of his friends were quick to remember what happened to his father. Both men covered news about national defense and Russia’s space program and were recognized as authorities in their field. The elder Safronov, who also was named Ivan, wrote for the newspaper Kommersant until one day […]
MOSCOW—When Russia’s leading contemporary theater and film director Kirill Serebrennikov and his three colleagues went on trial, virtually all of Russia’s cultural elite, nearly 4,000 actors, poets, writers, and directors demanded authorities stop the shameful proceedings. Even the most careful celebrities stopped being careful and made public comments condemning the prosecution. “We tried to sit quietly but they continued to open our wounds with this case.” […]
MOSCOW—The crackdown on political opposition took a sinister twist during two months of coronavirus quarantines in the Russian capital. Marches and rallies were banned, so protests were reduced to what were called “solo pickets,” as in a picket line with only one person. “The contrast with the mass protests taking place around the world right now could not be more striking.” The protester would stand all […]
Ukraine’s recently appointed prosecutor general, 41-year-old Iryna Venediktova, is a woman to watch. The president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, expects her to investigate and prosecute his predecessor. She seems more than enthusiastic about that, and it’s a process that’s been set up from the start to (once again) try to smear Donald Trump’s leading challenger for the presidency of the United States, Joe Biden. “The leaked […]
MOSCOW—Russian President Vladimir Putin is suddenly seen to be weaker than he has been in years, and economic pain from COVID-19 is one big reason, but not the only one. “Putin’s approval rating began to decline even before the coronavirus crisis, with oil prices collapsing and the economy deteriorating—and I don’t see what can stop this perfect storm this year,” says Denis Volkov, deputy director of […]
MOSCOW—The babies are adorable, all pink and polished in white t-shirts with their names emblazoned on them, but more than 50 infants arrayed in row upon row of cribs in a Kyiv hotel are at the center of a huge scandal in Ukraine. They were born to surrogate mothers, and the parents who arranged for their births cannot get to them because of the global COVID-19 […]