Free Republic

Kazakhstan has agreed to help Russia alleviate its chronic shortage of chicken eggs only to spark grumbling from domestic consumers in border areas who now say there is not enough for them to buy. The pledge of assistance arrived at a meeting on trade issues between Kazakh Deputy Prime Minister Serik Zhumangarin and his Russian counterpart, Alexei Overchuk, in Astana on January 17. Eggs featured on the agenda. As the Russian state statistics service has reported, the price of the commodity soared by more than 61 percent last year, prompting the government in Moscow to adopt some radical fixes. One...

Parts of Russian-annexed Crimea were left without electricity on Thursday after an emergency shutdown at a power plant, Russian-installed officials said. It was not clear what caused the shutdown.

For a microcosm of how the war in Ukraine has warped Russia’s economy, look no further than a carton of eggs. The grocery staple has been in short supply in recent months and prices have skyrocketed, prompting Russians from Belgorod to Siberia to form lines reminiscent of Soviet times. President Vladimir Putin has publicly apologized, blaming the egg shock on the government. Last month, a poultry-farm boss known as “the Egg King” survived an assassination attempt shortly after authorities started investigating his farm due to high prices. Behind the soaring price tag—up around 60% in December from a year earlier,...

A large explosion was reported to have taken place during the morning of December 5, 2022, at Engels-2, an air base used by Russia for deploying strategic bombers to perform cruise missile attacks on Ukraine. Around the same time, an explosion happened at Dyagilevo, another strategic bomber base in Ryazan region. Reports published to Russian social media channels claim the explosion at Engels was a drone attack and at least two aircraft were damaged. Telegram channel “Mobilizatsiya. Volgogradskaya Oblast,” which reports local news, posted a short video which appears to have been filmed by a CCTV camera. A large explosion...

Explosions have been reported at two airfields in central Russia, hundreds of kilometers to the east of the combat zone in Ukraine. The incidents came as Russia has carried out a massive campaign of air strikes inside Ukraine targeting the country’s power grid and other civilian infrastructure. At least one large explosion occurred at a Russian military air base in the Saratov region, about 600 kilometers east of Ukraine, while another blast was reported by Russian state media at an airfield outside Ryazan, southeast of Moscow. Social-media posts by residents in the cities of Engels and Saratov seemed to show...