Free Republic

Russian President Vladimir Putin's threats to let Europe "freeze" over winter have come back to bite his country as power outages spread nationwide. Tens of thousands of Russians are reported to have no heating in their homes in the Moscow region alone after a heating main burst at the Klimovsk Specialized Ammunition Plant in the town of Podolsk, which is around 30 miles south of central Moscow, on January 4. Residents in multiple regions including Rostov, St. Petersburg, Volgograd, and Voronezh have also been affected by lengthy power outages, and some have resorted to filming video appeals as they grapple...

Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered the nationalization of an ammunition plant in Moscow after a mechanical failure caused tens of thousands of Muscovites to lose heat and water amid freezing temperatures beginning last week. On January 4, a heating main burst at the Klimovsk Specialized Ammunition Plant in the town of Podolsk, which is around 30 miles south of central Moscow. Since then, tens of thousands of Russians are reported to have no heating in their homes in the Moscow region amid subzero temperatures. Affected areas include the cities of Khimki, Balashikha, Lobnya, Lyubertsy, Podolsk, Chekhov, Naro-Fominsk, and Podolsk,...

Zoya Konovalova, the head of one of Russian President Vladimir Putin's state TV channels, has been found dead after a suspected poisoning incident, officials said. Konovalova, 48, editor-in-chief of the State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company Kuban, was found alongside the body of her ex-husband, 52, at a home in the Krasnodar region on January 5. It is the latest in a series of mysterious deaths involving prominent Russian figures since Putin's forces invaded Ukraine in February 2022.

Zoya Konovalova, the head of one of Russian President Vladimir Putin's state TV channels, has been found dead after a suspected poisoning incident, officials said. Konovalova, 48, editor-in-chief of the State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company Kuban, was found alongside the body of her ex-husband, 52, at a home in the Krasnodar region on January 5... No visible injuries were found on the bodies of Konovalova and her ex-husband, Russia's state-run news agency RIA Novosti reported. "The cause of death is said to be poisoning," the TV channel said, adding that she is survived by a 15-year-old daughter and son....

The same clip was posted on X by pro-Ukrainian user (((Tendar))), who said that it had been distributed by Russian Telegram channels as they believed it showed destruction caused by Ukrainian missiles in the city. "Russian channels like 'Zhest Belgorod' distributed videos and pictures of missile fragments, which damaged civilian properties in Belgorod," wrote (((Tendar))). "However, once they realized that those were the booster sections of 23Ya6 missiles of the Russian Pantsir-S1 air defense system, they deleted them."... The Ukrainian Military Center, a public organization, also reported that "the zero stage motor of a Russian 57E6 guided surface-to-air missile of...

Ukraine's attacks on annexed Crimea are chasing President Vladimir Putin's Black Sea Fleet away from the peninsula, and Kyiv's efforts in the region have been the most successful aspect of its counteroffensive, according to a former commander of U.S. Army Europe. Retired Lieutenant General Ben Hodges spoke with Newsweek after Ukraine's airforce struck the eastern Crimean port of Feodosia on Tuesday with cruise missiles, damaging Russia's Novocherkassk landing ship and leaving large numbers of sailors unaccounted for. It marked the latest strike by Ukraine on Crimea, the peninsula which Putin annexed in 2014 and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has pledged...

Russia's egg crisis spiraled out of control this week after an attempt was made on the life of the head of a poultry farm in the Voronezh region, with prices for the staple food item continuing to climb. Gennady Shiryaev, the 59-year-old head of the Tretyakov Poultry Farm, the largest in the western Voronezh region, was driving home when an unknown person fired two shots at his car. Shiryaev told Russian news outlet Kommersant that he wasn't injured in the assassination attempt. "There were two shots, it didn't hit me," Shiryaev said. Russia has seen an unprecedented surge in egg...

Vladimir Egorov, an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, was found dead on Wednesday, according to Russian state media. Tobolsk City Duma deputy Egorov, 46, a member of Putin's ruling United Russia party, fell from the third-floor window of a house on Kedrovaya Street in Tobolsk in the Tyumen Oblast, Russian Telegram channel Baza, which has links to Russian security services, reported. Russian daily newspaper Izvestia also cited a source as saying that Egorov could have fallen out of a third-floor window. It is the latest in a series of mysterious deaths involving prominent Russian figures since President Vladimir Putin's...

An investigation has been launched after a Russian passenger plane landed on a frozen river near an airport in Russia's far east on Thursday... It's not the first time a Russian plane has landed in an unusual location in recent months. In September, a Ural Airlines Airbus 320 that was flying from the Black Sea resort of Sochi to the city of Omsk in southwestern Siberia attempted to make an emergency landing at the airport in the city of Novosibirsk, but had to land in open countryside. Russia's aviation agency Rosaviatsia said the landing took place "on a site selected...

There have been a vast number of cases in recent months of Russian domestic passenger planes making emergency landings due to technical issues, driven by a lack of spare parts... Data compiled by Newsweek shows that from September 2023 to December 8, 2023, Russia saw a total of 60 commercial aviation incidents that involved emergency landings, engine fires and malfunctions, along with other technical issues forcing the planes to abandon their intended routes... Earlier, Novaya Gazeta Europe found that from January to August 2023, more than 120 air accidents were recorded in Russia involving civil aircraft used by Russian airlines....

Russia's main rail link to China has been left paralyzed after Ukraine's Security Service blew up a tunnel in the Russian republic of Buryatia, it has been reported. The explosions in the Severomuysky Tunnel were masterminded by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), "paralyzing the only serious route of railway communication between the Russian Federation and China," news outlet RBC-Ukraine reported on Thursday, citing sources with knowledge of the matter. Ukraine's SBU told Newsweek that officially, it can "neither confirm nor deny involvement" in the incident, but added that "death is the only prospect we can offer to the occupiers"...

"It's a vast country, but there are not enough people. Not even mentioning the economy...We really need more people, this is obvious, everyone admits it," [Patriarch Kirill] said... Authorities have also started to restrict access to abortion pills and emergency contraception amid a surge in demand that followed the beginning of the war in Ukraine... Russia for decades has been experiencing a population decline, and this appears to have worsened amid the ongoing invasion of Ukraine, with high casualty rates and men fleeing the country to avoid being conscripted to fight... It is estimated that Russia's population will fall to...

The families of Russian men drafted under President Vladimir Putin's partial mobilization last year have planned mass protests demanding their return home, amid reports that soldiers are being prohibited from leaving the military. The soldiers' relatives published a manifesto on the Telegram channel The Way Home on November 12 demanding that their men be allowed home, and inviting Russians nationwide to participate in rallies on November 19. Since 2014, protesters in Russia have faced punishment for holding demonstrations without the permission of the authorities. The RAND Corporation, an American think tank and research institute, said in a report in June...

Svyatoslav Golikov, an instructor of Russia's Storm-Z penal units, took to his Telegram channel on Tuesday to outline the impact the weapons are having on troops in combat. He said ATACMS, which are capable of reaching targets 100 miles or more away, are creating large-scale casualties, and this is disrupting the execution of Russian operations... The U.S. agreed in September to supply Ukraine with ATACMS. Given their long-range, Kyiv's forces are able to strike targets further away than missiles from the U.S.-supplied High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS) and M270 multiple-launch rocket systems... "It is cluster shells that are now...

Russia immediately backtracked on a statement released on Monday that said some of its troops had withdrawn from a key position in Ukraine's southern Kherson region, raising questions about the scale of Moscow's operations in the area. The Russian Ministry of Defense dismissed its own statements about the "regrouping" of the Dnieper Group of Forces published by state-run news agencies Tass and RIA Novosti as a "provocation", without elaboratinThe term "regrouping" has previously been used by the Kremlin in Russian President Vladimir Putin's full-scale invasion of Ukraine to describe a battlefield retreat by its forces. Ukraine has been gradually expanding...

Ukrainian attack on a shipyard in annexed eastern Crimea last week caused "significant" damage, a Ukrainian military spokesperson has said. Ukraine's Southern Command spokesperson Natalia Humeniuk made the remarks on national television on Sunday, commenting on the November 4 strike by Ukraine on the Zaliv shipyard, also referred to as Butoma, in Kerch, which reportedly hit Russian cruise-missile carrier Askold. Schemes, a project by U.S.-funded Radio Liberty, published satellite images by California-based global-imaging company Planet Labs that appear to show the aftermath of the strike on the vessel, which is armed with a Kalibr strike missile system. "As for the...

A handful of tests launches of Russian President Vladimir Putin's newest nuclear-capable missiles have either been canceled or failed since June, according to a report. Independent Russian news outlet Sirena reported on Wednesday, citing a source at a rocket and space industry enterprise in the country, said at least six missile tests have been unsuccessful since June 30. The attempted tests involved Russia's next-generation "Poseidon" nuclear-capable torpedo, its Sarmat weaponry, its Yars intercontinental ballistic missile, and the Bulava, an intercontinental-range, submarine-launched, ballistic missile which is also designed to carry a nuclear warhead. -snip- Sirena reported that its source said the...

"A serious obstacle to achieving technological independence is the shortage of qualified scientific, engineering and labor personnel. The total number of personnel engaged in research and development in Russia has decreased by a quarter over the past 20 years," Patrushev said at a retreat in the city of Tomsk, in Siberia, Russia. A large number of scientists and academic staff are believed to have fled the country after Russian President Vladimir Putin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, and again after he announced a partial mobilization of the population last fall. Hundreds of thousands of Russians fled...

Russia's proposed 2024 budget allocates funding to the families of 102,700 military personnel killed in Ukraine, giving insight into Moscow's likely death toll in Russian President Vladimir Putin's war in Ukraine that began in February 2022. The figures, which have not been independently verified by Newsweek, were reported on Thursday by independent Russian news outlet Mozhem Obyasnit, which analyzed Russia's federal budget draft for 2024 to 2026. The publication notes that in addition to one-time insurance payments for military personnel killed in Ukraine, relatives also receive monthly compensation of 21,922.12 rubles ($225) from the Social Fund of Russia.... According to...

Russian authorities accidentally revealed the addresses of the country's secret military buildings, institutions, and spy homes, in Moscow and in St. Petersburg, an investigative site found. The Dossier Center, a project launched by Russian opposition figure Mikhail Khodorkovsky, found the addresses listed in a 434-page document titled "Special Group", which was published on the Moscow City Hall website. The document listed properties where there must be "no blackouts." The list reportedly included a range of top-secret government facilities, homes belonging to GRU (the Main Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation) officers and President...