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Japan was the first country to break its silence after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine last year. Tokyo said of the Kuril Islands that it was “completely unacceptable that the Northern Territories have yet to be returned since the Soviet Union’s illegal occupation of them 77 years ago”. That annexation saw the expulsion of Japanese people from the southern islands, and since then, the countries have failed to reach a compromise. Talks broke down when Putin showed he was not willing to share lands but only to gain new ones. Then China started drawing maps marking part of Siberia and...

Ancient Deer Tooth Pendant - The pierced deer tooth pendant. (Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology) A pendant made from a deer's tooth has turned out to be a veritable locket of genetic information left by an ancient woman who lived in Siberia some 20,000 years ago. Evolutionary anthropologists at the Max Planck Institute in Germany found a way to safely probe ancient artifacts for environmental DNA without destroying them, and applied it to a piece of jewelery found in the famous Denisova Cave in Russia in 2019. Other than the fragments of her chromosomes, no trace of the woman...

"China, India, Brazil and several other states close to Russia have unexpectedly voted for a UN Resolution which strongly censures Moscow. "On April 26, China unexpectedly voted in favor of a UN resolution that acknowledges Russia's military aggression against Ukraine and emphasizes the need to respect the independence and territorial integrity of all states... "...Recognizing also that the unprecedented challenges now facing Europe following the aggression by the Russian Federation against Ukraine, and against Georgia prior to that, and the cessation of the membership of the Russian Federation in the Council of Europe, call for strengthened cooperation between the United...

Separately at least one preserved carcass of a cave bear cub found on the mainland of Yakutia, with scientists hopeful of obtaining its DNA. More details of the finds are to be announced soon. Until now only the bones of cave bears have been discovered. The new finds are of ‘world importance’, according to one of Russia’s leading experts on extinct Ice Age species. Scientist Lena Grigorieva said of the island discovery of the adult beast: 'Today this is the first and only find of its kind - a whole bear carcass with soft tissues. 'It is completely preserved, with...

Frozen bear mouth The frozen bear came with its teeth well preserved. (NEFU) An adult bear recovered from the Siberian permafrost in the Lyakhovsky Islands in 2020 is not, as originally thought, around 30,000 years old. In fact, its age is more in the region of 3,500 years old. That's the verdict of researchers from the North-Eastern Federal University in Russia, who carried out a new necropsy of the well-preserved specimen. It remains an incredible find, offering an intriguing window into a past that isn't quite as far back as presumed. Initially, the team thought they were dealing with a...

Russian dictator Vladimir Putin’s dreams of resurrecting the Soviet Union could actually be going quite the opposite direction with the majority of inhabitants of five of the Federation’s regions supporting the idea of breaking away and proclaiming independence According to the survey, 72.1 percent of respondees in the Kaliningrad oblast want to break away from the Russian Federation. In Ingria, 66.2 percent of respondees wanted their oblast to gain independence. In Ural, the percentage amounted to 68.2 percent, in Syberia to 63.9 percent, and in the Kuban oblast to 55.7 percent.

‘Moscow takes a lot of resources from Siberia, and spends the money on its own needs and wars of aggression,’ said one secessionist leader February 16, 2023 4:36 pm (Updated February 17, 2023 9:04 am) Russians began voting in unauthorised independence referendums in five regions of the country on Thursday, as part of a campaign to promote secession from Moscow’s rule. The online vote organized by umbrella group the Post-Russia Forum covers Siberia, the Urals, Kaliningrad, Krasnodar and Ingria. The referendums are not binding, and may be illegal under a law against challenging Russia’s “territorial integrity”. But more than 130,000...

Footage captured the shocking moment an angry camel fatally trampled a man who punched it at a children’s camp in Russia. “The animal did not appreciate such treatment,” local media reported regarding the deadly incident, which occurred last month at the Beryozka recreation centre in Omsk, Siberia, per East2West news. The fiasco occurred after a watchman named Yury, 51, struck the dromedary while attempting to move it, causing it to become enraged and attack him, local media reported. In the disturbing footage, the guard can be seen walking up to the double-humped Bactrian camel — which can weigh over 1,100...

Besides a clear, cool stream, a solitary shelter stood. Blackened by weather and time, the structure was piled high on all sides with rubbish. If not for a window the size of a shoe box, it would have been impossible to imagine that people lived inside. But they did. And the arrival of outsiders had been noticed. The year was 1978. The low-hanging door creaked slowly open, and an aged man emerged into the sharp light. To the visitors, he appeared as a character of a Brothers Grimm fairy tale. Barefoot, he wore a patchwork shirt made of sacking with...

A genetic analysis of a 45,000-year-old thigh bone narrows down the time when modern humans and Neanderthals first interbred.A 45,000-year-old leg bone is raising questions about just how close modern-day humans are to our thick-browed Stone Age ancestors. DNA from the femur of a Siberian man is helping to pinpoint when modern humans and Neanderthals first interbred, researchers say. But what does this mean for the human connection to a species that disappeared nearly 30,000 years ago? The thigh bone, spotted six years ago on the banks of the Irtysh River in Siberia by a Russian artist who carves jewelry...

While bulldozing land for a new burial ground, workers startled to discover an old one, belonging to a newly identified culture.All they meant to do is expand a local cemetery. But as gravediggers in Krasnoyarsk, Siberia, were removing a hill to make room for the newly deceased in 2018, they made an unexpected discovery. That hill turned out to be an ancient burial mound created by a Scythian-type culture over 2,000 years ago.The question is which Scythian-type culture.Our story begins in the 19th century, when a new cemetery called Shinnoye was established on the outskirts of Krasnoyarsk, the second biggest...

Flames rose at the Markovskoye condensate treatment unit in east Siberia At least seven people were injured at the blast in the Ust-Kut district at Angarsk It was in the same region as a blast 3 days earlier with the force of a 'plane crash' A new explosion and inferno has hit a strategic Russian oil and gas field amid suspicions key facilities are being targeted in sabotage attacks linked to Vladimir Putin's war in Ukraine. Armageddon-like flames shot into the sky from the giant blaze at the Markovskoye condensate treatment unit in the biting minus 22C cold. Dramatic footage...

A key construction project of the China-Russia east-route natural gas pipeline was completed on Saturday. It will allow Russian gas to cross the Yangtze River to reach Shanghai, laying the foundation for the full completion of the landmark China-Russia energy cooperation project. The under-river tunnel across the Yangtze River, a key control project of the pipeline, was completed after 28 months of construction, according to PipeChina. The tunnel has a length of 10.226 kilometers and is designed with three natural gas pipelines with a diameter of 1,422 millimeters each, according to media reports. By adopting environmental protection measures such as...

Upon closer inspection, you would find that this is no random collection of bones, but rather is a deliberately constructed roadway delineated by the towering rib bones (some in excess of five metres high and weighing 300 kg), and dotted with huge whale skulls and large square pits dug into the permafrost. It would be a perplexing sight indeed.

For almost 50,000 years, viruses have been waiting, frozen in layers of permafrost that have thawed with the warming of Earth. A recent study of a section of Siberian permafrost by scientists from the French National Centre for Scientific Research found 13 viruses that have survived 48,500 years, according to Canada’s Global News. That’s older than the previous oldest virus found, which was 30,000 years old. One of the new finds has been dubbed a “zombie virus” by the New York Post. “One quarter of the Northern hemisphere is underlain by permanently frozen ground, referred to as permafrost. Due to...

Vladimir Putin's conscripts have been filmed drunkenly battering each other in an alcohol-fuelled brawl at a training barracks ahead of their deployment to the battlefields of Ukraine. An extraordinary leaked video shows the 'drunk' soldiers punching each other, with some ending up unconscious on the floor during the fight at the barracks in Yurga, Siberia. The video shows Putin's army intelligence and military police dragging the unconscious troops, who are from the 74th Guards Motor Rifle Brigade, along the street and away from the bloody brawl. The footage tallies with reports of low morale and drunkenness among Russian recruits and...

Dozens of mobilised soldiers have staged an extraordinary mutiny telling how they have no respect for the authorities in Vladimir Putin’s Russia. A uniformed spokesman for the men is applauded by conscripts after he threatened the people should topple their rulers over the war in Ukraine. He berates an unseen commander or top official over the threats faced by conscripts called to war by the Kremlin dictator. The unnamed reservist mocks a policy in his region - the Tuva republic in Siberia - to gift a ram to each family of those mobilised. He says there are not enough walkie-talkies...

In little over a week, Russia lost its second fighter jet, Su-30, to an uncanny crash when it was carrying out a massive aerial bombardment of Ukrainian cities and battling in the Kherson region. On October 23, an apartment building in Irkutsk, Siberia, was struck by a Russian Sukhoi Su-30SM Flanker multi-role fighter, killing both crew members and starting a massive fire on the ground. Su-30 is a two-seat, twin-engine, highly agile fighter aircraft produced by Sukhoi Aviation Corporation of Russia. The Su-30s are manufactured at the neighboring Irkutsk Aviation Plant, where the jet is reported to have just taken...

...He and his colleagues managed to extract DNA from 15 out of 17 pieces of bone or teeth recovered from the Chagyrskaya cave in the Altai mountains in Siberia, Russia. The DNA showed that some pieces came from the same individuals, so the findings represent 11 individuals in total, including several teenagers and children.Dating of sediments and bison bones at the site suggests the Neanderthals lived in the cave between 51,000 and 59,000 years ago, while the DNA shows that many of the individuals were related...Peter thinks it is possible that these individuals all died around the same time, but...

Mystery of the fat Venus The Dominion Post | Monday, 9 April 2007 WORLD OF SCIENCE - BOB BROCKIE We all know about those hand-sized Ice Age women carved in stone – those plump ladies with huge breasts and behinds, tiny heads, artful hairdos and no faces. They're known as Palaeolithic Venuses and they raise a lot of puzzling questions: How come these almost identical figurines were found all the way from France to Siberia? How come this stylised carving tradition was practised and passed down over 20,000 years? What purpose did they serve? There are as many answers to...