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YEKATERINBURG, Russia (AP) — Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich went on trial behind closed doors in Yekaterinburg on Wednesday, 15 months after his arrest in the Russian city on espionage charges that he, his employer and the U.S. government vehemently deny. The 32-year-old journalist appeared in the court in a glass defendants' cage, his head shaved and wearing a black-and-blue plaid shirt. A yellow padlock latched the cage. Authorities arrested Gershkovich on March 29, 2023, while on a reporting trip to Yekaterinburg, in the U...
Ukrainian long-range drones smashed into two oil facilities deep inside Russia on Tuesday, officials said, while an armed incursion claimed by Ukraine-based Russian opponents of the Kremlin unnerved a border region just days before Russia's presidential election. The attack by waves of drones across eight regions of Russia displayed Kyiv's expanding technological capacity as the war extends into its third year. The cross-border ground assault also weakened President Vladimir Putin's argument that life in Russia has been unaffected by the war, t...
Alexei Navalny, who crusaded against official corruption and staged massive anti-Kremlin protests as President Vladimir Putin's fiercest foe, died Friday in the Arctic penal colony where he was serving a 19-year sentence, Russia's prison agency said. He was 47. The stunning news — less than a month before an election that will give Putin another six years in power — brought renewed criticism and outrage from world leaders toward at the Russian president who has suppressed opposition at home. After initially allowing people to lay flowers at...
KHIMKI, Russia (AP) — The drug trial of American basketball star Brittney Griner in a Russian court focused Tuesday on testimony that cannabis, while illegal in Russia, is regarded in other countries as having legitimate medicinal use. Griner has acknowledged that she was carrying vape canisters containing cannabis oil when she was arrested in February at a Moscow airport, but she contends that she had no criminal intent and that the canisters ended up in her luggage inadvertently because of hasty packing. "We are not arguing that Brittney t...
MOSCOW (AP) — Jailed American basketball star Brittney Griner returned to a Russian court Thursday to face her trial on drug charges as a senior Russian diplomat warned that U.S. criticism of how Russia's handling the case wouldn't help her release prospects. Griner's trial began last week amid a growing chorus of calls for Washington to do more to secure her freedom nearly five months after her arrest. The athlete was detained in February at Moscow's Sheremetyevo Airport after vape canisters with cannabis oil allegedly were found in her l...
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russian forces escalated their attacks on crowded urban areas Tuesday, bombarding the central square in Ukraine's second-biggest city and Kyiv's main TV tower in what the country's president called a blatant campaign of terror. "Nobody will forgive. Nobody will forget," President Volodymyr Zelenskyy vowed after the bloodshed on the square in Kharkiv. Ukrainian authorities said five people were killed in the attack on the TV tower, which is a couple of miles from central Kyiv and a short walk from numerous apartment b...
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russia unleashed a wave of attacks on Ukraine targeting airfields and fuel facilities in what appeared to be the next phase of an invasion that has been slowed by fierce resistance. The U.S. and EU responded with weapons and ammunition for the outnumbered Ukrainians and powerful sanctions intended to further isolate Moscow. Huge explosions lit up the sky early Sunday south of the capital, Kyiv, where people hunkered down in homes, underground garages and subway stations in anticipation of a full-scale assault by Russian f...
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — The first talks aimed at stopping the fighting between Ukraine and Russia ended Monday with no agreement except to keep talking, while an increasingly isolated Moscow ran into unexpectedly fierce resistance on the ground and economic havoc at home. Five days into Russia's invasion, the Kremlin again raised the specter of nuclear war, while an embattled Ukraine moved to solidify its ties to the West by applying to join the European Union — a largely symbolic move unlikely to sit well with Russian President Vladimir Put...
MOSCOW (AP) — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, facing a sharp spike in violence in and around territory held by Russia-backed rebels and increasingly dire warnings that Russia plans to invade, on Saturday called for Russian President Vladimir Putin to meet him and seek resolution to the crisis. "I don't know what the president of the Russian Federation wants, so I am proposing a meeting," Zelenskyy said at the Munich Security Conference, where he also met with U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris. Zelenskyy said Russia could pick the l...
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden told Russia's Vladimir Putin that invading Ukraine would cause "widespread human suffering" and that the West was committed to diplomacy to end the crisis but "equally prepared for other scenarios," the White House said Saturday. It offered no suggestion that the hourlong call diminished the threat of an imminent war in Europe. Biden also said the United States and its allies would respond "decisively and impose swift and severe costs" if the Kremlin attacked its neighbor, according to the White House. T...
MOSCOW (AP) — Russia says it will relocate naval exercises off the coast of Ireland after Dublin raised concerns about them amid a tense dispute with the West over expansion of the NATO alliance and fears that Russia is preparing to invade Ukraine. The Feb. 3-8 exercises were to be held 240 kilometers (150 miles) off southwestern Ireland — in international waters but within Ireland's exclusive economic zone. Ireland is a member of the 27-nation European Union but not a member of NATO. Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney this week objected to...
MOSCOW (AP) — A Russia-led military alliance said Thursday that it will dispatch peacekeeping forces to Kazakhstan after the country's president asked for help in controlling protests that escalated into violence, including the seizure and setting afire of government buildings. Protesters in Kazakhstan's largest city stormed the presidential residence and the mayor's office Wednesday and set both on fire, according to news reports, as demonstrations sparked by a rise in fuel prices escalated sharply in the Central Asian nation. Police r...
MOSCOW (AP) — Laboring through sub-freezing temperatures, Russian rescue workers were digging into a sprawling heap of jagged rubble from a collapsed apartment building when one heard the faintest sound. It was the sound of life. On Tuesday, to everyone's delight and surprise, they pulled a baby boy out of the rubble alive, nearly 36 hours after the disaster that blew apart his home. His father called it "a New Year's miracle." The building collapse in the Russian city of Magnitogorsk before dawn Monday has killed at least nine people so far, a...
OSLO, Norway (AP) — Raped after being forced into sexual slavery by the Islamic State group, Nadia Murad did not succumb to shame or despair — the young Iraqi woman spoke out. Surgeon Denis Mukwege treated countless victims of sexual violence in war-torn Congo and told the world of their suffering. Together, they were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for their campaigns to end rape and sexual abuse as weapons of war. The award "is partly to highlight the awareness of sexual violence. But the further purpose of this is that nations tak...
STOCKHOLM (AP) — Three scientists won the Nobel Prize in chemistry Wednesday for using a sped-up version of evolution to create new proteins that have led to a best-selling drug and other products. The Royal Swedish Academy of Science said their work has led to the development of medications, biofuels and a reduced environmental impact from some industrial processes. Frances Arnold of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena was awarded half of the 9-million-kronor ($1.01 million) prize, while the other half was shared by George S...
NEW YORK (AP) — Scientists from the United States, Canada and France won the Nobel Prize in physics Tuesday for revolutionizing the use of lasers in research, finding ways to make them deliver more powerful flashes of light and even to act like tiny tweezers. Their work paved the way for laser eye surgery to improve vision and studies that can manipulate cells and their innards. Two winners also made history for other reasons. Arthur Ashkin, the American who developed "optical tweezers," became the oldest Nobel Prize laureate at age 96. And D...
MOSCOW (AP) — GRU isn't as well-known a baleful acronym as KGB or FSB. But Russia's military intelligence service is attracting increasing attention as allegations mount of devious and deadly operations on and off the field of battle. The latest charge came Wednesday, when Britain identified two suspects in this year's nerve-agent poisonings as GRU agents . An overview of the GRU: THE AGENCY Formally named the Main Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces, the agency is almost universally referred to by its former acronym GRU. It is...
MOSCOW (AP) — Russians angered by the impending inauguration of Vladimir Putin to a new term as president protested Saturday in scores of cities across the country — and police responded by reportedly arresting nearly 1,600 of them. Among those arrested was protest organizer Alexei Navalny, the anti-corruption campaigner who is Putin's most prominent foe. Police seized Navalny by the arms and legs and carried the thrashing activist from Moscow's Pushkin Square, where thousands were gathered for an unauthorized protest. Police also used batons a...
MOSCOW (AP) — If Vladimir Putin fulfills the goals he's set for his new six-year term as president, Russia in 2024 will be far advanced in new technologies and artificial intelligence, many of its notoriously poor roads will be improved, and its people will be living significantly longer. There's wide doubt about how much of that he'll achieve, if any of it. Analysts assessing the prospects of his term that begins with Monday's inauguration often use the expression "neo-stagnation." And less than half of the population really trusts him, a...
MOSCOW (AP) — The international chemical weapons watchdog on Wednesday rejected Russia's call for a joint investigation with Britain of the nerve-agent poisonings of an ex-spy and his daughter in England. But Russia said the number of countries that abstained from the vote suggested many have doubts about Britain's allegations that Moscow was behind the attack and now plans to take its denials of involvement to the U.N. Security Council. Britain said Russia's proposal for a joint investigation received only six votes at a special session of the...
MOSCOW (AP) — Russian diplomats and their families climbed aboard buses and left their embassy in Washington on Saturday while across the Atlantic, American envoys took down the flag from outside the U.S. Consulate in St. Petersburg, loaded up boxes, closed the office down and headed home. The moves were the latest in a spy poisoning case that has escalated East-West tensions, with both sides expelling more than 150 of each other's diplomats from two dozen countries. Britain has insisted that the Russian government was behind the nerve agent p...
LONDON (AP) — The Russian ex-spy and his daughter left critically ill in a nerve agent attack three weeks ago were probably poisoned at the front door of their home in southwestern England, British police said Wednesday. It was the first time police have said where they thought Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia might have been poisoned. The highest concentration of nerve agent found so far was on the Skripals' front door in Salisbury, and detectives plan to focus their investigation in the surrounding area, London's Metropolitan Police f...
MOSCOW (AP) — Vladimir Putin rolled to a crushing re-election victory Sunday for six more years as Russia's president, and he told cheering supporters in a triumphant but brief speech that "we are bound for success." There had been no doubt that Putin would win in his fourth electoral contest; he faced seven minor candidates and his most prominent foe was blocked from the ballot. His only real challenge was to run up the tally so high that he could claim an indisputable mandate. With ballots from 80 percent of Russia's precincts counted by earl...
MOSCOW (AP) — Vladimir Putin doesn't tweet and he claims he doesn't have a smartphone. At first sight, the Russian president's reluctance to adopt the hyperconnected world's technology might seem at odds with the widespread belief that he signed off on a campaign to undermine the United States via social media. But he has something likely more important than gadgets — long experience in the KGB and its post-Soviet successor. From the czarist secret police to the present, Russian operatives have adroitly exploited humans' biases and their cap...
MOSCOW (AP) — The chief editor of a Kremlin-funded satellite TV channel says the network will accede to a U.S. demand to register as a foreign agent but also intends to challenge the order in court. The broadcaster, RT, reported Thursday that the U.S. Department of Justice has demanded the registration be done by Monday. The Justice Department declined to comment to The Associated Press. Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Russia would retaliate, but did not elaborate. "There is an understanding that the practical phase of p...
