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ZHYTOMYR, Ukraine (AP) — Ukraine's Prosecutor General said on Friday that his office is reviewing several cases related to the owner of a gas company where former Vice President Joe Biden's son sat on the board, as part of a review of all the criminal cases closed by his predecessors. U.S. President Donald Trump had pressed for such a review in a phone call with Ukraine's new leader, a "favor" that now has led the U.S. Congress to begin an impeachment inquiry. Ruslan Ryaboshapka's statement shows that Kyiv is under an increasing pressure to r...
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russia and European powers, anxious to end a protracted military conflict in eastern Ukraine, on Wednesday welcomed the new accord between Ukraine and Russia-backed separatists but many in Ukraine dismissed it as a capitulation to Russia. In the deal signed Tuesday with the separatists, Ukraine, Russia and European mediators pledged to hold a local election in Ukraine's rebel-held east, where a grinding five-year conflict between the separatists and Ukrainian troops has killed more than 13,000 people. Ukrainian President V...
MOSCOW (AP) — One evening last summer, Mikhail Khachaturyan decided that his living room wasn't tidy enough, so he summoned his three teenage daughters one by one and doused each with pepper spray. Such violence and abuse was not unusual in the Khachaturyan household, according to court records. But Maria, Angelina and Krestina Khachaturyan decided they couldn't take it anymore. They waited until their father fell asleep in his rocking chair and attacked him with a kitchen knife and a hammer. He put up a fight but died within minutes. The s...
MOSCOW (AP) — An investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller into an elaborate Russian operation that sought to meddle in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and try to help Donald Trump win the White House has cast a spotlight on more than a dozen Russian nationals, including billionaires, an elusive linguist, an ambassador and a pop star. A look at some of the cast of characters: PUTIN'S CHEF Yevgeny Prigozhin, 57, earned the nickname of "Putin's chef" for hosting Russian President Vladimir Putin and his foreign dignitaries at his r...
MOSCOW (AP) — A Russian military court convicted a former senior counterintelligence officer and a cybersecurity firm executive of treason Tuesday, concluding a case that initially aroused speculation of a manufactured effort to punish the source of leaks about Russian campaign hacking. Moscow's District Military Court heard several months of evidence and arguments behind closed doors before delivering guilty verdicts against Col. Sergei Mikhailov, an ex-officer at Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB), and Kaspersky Lab executive Ruslan S...
MOSCOW (AP) — Sitting in her living room, 65-year-old Tatyana Rybalchenko goes through a stack of black-and-white photos from more than 30 years ago. In one of them, she is dressed in a nurse's coat and smiles sheepishly at the camera; in another, she shares a laugh with soldiers on a road with a mountain ridge behind them. The pictures don't show the hardships that Rybalchenko and 20,000 Soviet women like her went through as civilian support staff during the Soviet Union's 1979-1989 invasion of Afghanistan. Although they did not serve in c...
JERUSALEM (AP) — An Israeli security official on Wednesday confirmed responsibility for overnight airstrikes in Syria, saying the air force had hit a series of targets involved in Iranian arms transfers to the Hezbollah militant group. Russia had criticized the airstrike, saying it endangered civilian flights. The comments highlighted the increasingly tense relations between Israel and Russia, which have grown strained since the September downing of a Russian plane by Syrian forces responding to another Israeli raid. The Israeli official s...
MOSCOW (AP) — Syria's warring sides and the mediators meeting in Kazakhstan failed to agree on the formation of a committee meant to draft a new constitution which is key to ending the seven-year civil war, the U.N. special envoy to Syria said Thursday, calling it a "missed opportunity." Staffan de Mistura was in the Kazakh capital of Astana where Russia, Turkey and Iran are holding talks with the Syrian government and the opposition on steps to bring peace to the country. The committee had been expected to be formed before the end of the year....
MOSCOW (AP) — Authorities on the Crimean Peninsula were searching for a possible accomplice of the student who carried out a shooting and bomb attack on a vocational school, killing 20 people and wounding more than 50 others, an official said Thursday. An 18-year-old student, who later killed himself, was initially believed to be the only one to have been involved in the carnage at the Kerch Polytechnic College on Wednesday. Authorities haven't provided a motive for the shooting, and teachers and classmates described the attacker as a shy m...
MOSCOW (AP) — An 18-year-old student strode into his vocational school in Crimea, a hoodie covering his blond hair, then pulled out a shotgun and opened fire on Wednesday, killing 19 students and wounding more than 50 others before killing himself. It wasn't clear what prompted Vladislav Roslyakov, described as a shy loner, to go on the rampage. A security camera image carried by Russian media showed him calmly walking down the stairs of the school in the Black Sea city of Kerch, the shotgun in his gloved hand. "He was walking around and s...
LOYGA, Russia (AP) — As the recipient of Russia's highest award, Alexander Mishkin is the pride of his home village, his photo even decorating a local school. Several residents of this remote village located amid marshlands and deep forests in the northwestern Arkhangelsk region easily recognized him in photos Wednesday as one of two men accused by British officials of poisoning a former Russian spy. But, to them he is just a warm-hearted local boy, a "Hero of Russia" who has made a successful career as a military doctor thanks to his hard w...
KIEV, Ukraine (AP) — To mimic gore, they used makeup and pig's blood. They shot bullet holes in one of his sweatshirts. And to top off Arkady Babchenko's staged murder, they even took him to the morgue. The journalist revealed Thursday how Ukrainian security services faked his murder to thwart a contract hit allegedly arranged by Babchenko's native Russia. Police said Tuesday night that Babchenko had been shot and killed in his apartment building. The next day, he showed up alive in front of journalists and authorities revealed that it all h...
MOSCOW (AP) — Russian authorities are freezing up vast swathes of the country's online world in what critics call a heavy-handed — and so far unsuccessful — attempt to block a popular messaging app, Telegram. The head of the communications watchdog acknowledged Wednesday that millions of IP addresses unrelated to Telegram have been blocked since a court ordered last week that the app be taken offline. The move has created trouble for millions of companies and consumers, and was described by some as "carpet bombing" the internet to get after one...
MOSCOW (AP) — When the U.S. fired Tomahawk missiles at a Syrian airfield a year ago after a chemical weapons attack, the Pentagon gave Moscow advance warning to get its personnel out of harm's way. Since then, U.S.-Russian relations have soured, and the two nuclear powers have raised the ante, getting dangerously close to a potential military clash in Syria. U.S. President Donald Trump has taunted Moscow to "get ready" for "nice and new and 'smart'" missiles coming to punish Syria for a purported chemical attack on Saturday that killed at l...
LONDON (AP) — The former Russian spy who was left fighting for his life after exposure to a rare nerve agent is no longer in critical condition, a British health official said Friday, a month after the mysterious poisoning in a quiet English city triggered a diplomatic crisis between Moscow and the West. Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, were found unconscious on a bench March 4 in Salisbury and were hospitalized for weeks in critical condition. British authorities blame Russia for what they say was poisoning with a military-grade S...
MOSCOW (AP) — Fuming with anger, thousands of Russians rallied for more than 10 hours Tuesday in a Siberian city, demanding the ouster of regional officials for a shopping mall fire that killed at least 64 people. President Vladimir Putin, on a trip to the city of Kemerovo, scolded officials for neglecting safety rules that could have prevented the tragedy. The blaze engulfed the Winter Cherry mall in Kemerovo on Sunday, the first weekend of the school recess, trapping dozens of parents and children inside. Witnesses reported that fire a...
YEKATERINBURG, Russia (AP) — Vladimir Putin's victory in Russia's presidential election Sunday isn't in doubt. The only real question is whether voters will turn out in big enough numbers to hand him a convincing mandate for his fourth term — and many Russian workers are facing intense pressure to do so. Polls opened at 8 a.m. Sunday in Russia's Far East regions of Chukotka and Kamchatka. Voting will conclude at 8 p.m. (1800 GMT; 2 p.m. EDT) in Kaliningrad, the Baltic exclave that is Russia's westernmost region. Putin is so certain of win...
BEIRUT (AP) — A Russian military cargo plane crashed near an air base in Syria on Tuesday, killing all 39 Russian servicemen on board in a blow to Russian operations in Syria. The Russian military quickly insisted the plane was not shot down and blamed the crash on a technical error. Meanwhile, shelling near the rebel-held eastern suburbs of Damascus killed dozens of people over the past 24 hours as President Bashar Assad's government, supported by the Russian military, pushed its assault on the capital's rebel-held suburbs. International a...
MOSCOW (AP) — Thirty years ago, he was in prison. A decade ago, he was serving fancy meals to President Vladimir Putin. A week ago, he was among 13 Russians indicted in Washington on charges of meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. The journey of Yevgeny Prigozhin from troubled youth to ex-con entrepreneur with companies worth hundreds of millions of dollars reflects what one expert says is a typical pathway to riches in post-Soviet Russia: the willingness to do favors and "dirty tasks" for Putin that others would find too risky. O...
MOSCOW (AP) — A Clinton-Obama sex tape using body doubles. A Facebook page promoting Texas independence riddled with grammatical mistakes. Islamic State anthems blasting out during the nightshift. The U.S. indictment centered on a Russian troll farm only scratches the surface of the St. Petersburg agency that allegedly produced online content to sway the 2016 presidential election — and glosses over how unconvincing some of its stunts could be. Many of the more eye-popping accounts of the Internet Research Agency's activities have come fro...
KEDROVOYE, Russia (AP) — For Russian mother Farkhanur Gavrilova, the blow came a week ago when an acquaintance called her to say that her son was killed in a U.S. airstrike in Syria that pitted Russian and U.S. combatants against each other for the first time in the Syrian war. Gavrilova's son, 37-year-old Ruslan Gavrilov, was one of seven men in this central Russian village of 2,300 who are believed to have joined a private military company called Wagner. The company reportedly was involved in a Feb. 7 attack on U.S.-backed Kurdish fighters i...
MOSCOW (AP) — An underwear dance video filmed in a college dormitory nearly got some Russian cadet pilots expelled and sparked a discussion among Russia's political elite. The mock striptease recorded by cadets at the Ulyanovsk Civil Aviation Institute went viral earlier this week. Some Russian politicians called on the public training school located in Lenin's birthplace to expel the students. The Federal Agency for Air Transportation decried the video as an "immoral incident" and an "insult to civil aviation professionals." The students' a...
MOSCOW (AP) — Russian election officials on Monday formally barred Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny from running for president, prompting calls from him for a boycott of next year's vote. The Central Election Commission decided unanimously that the anti-corruption crusader isn't eligible to run. Navalny is implicitly barred from running for office because of a conviction in a fraud case which has been viewed as political retribution. He could have run if he was given a special dispensation or if his conviction was cancelled. I...
MOSCOW (AP) — Before he was killed by a sniper in Syria at age 23, Ivan Slyshkin wrote a poignant message on social media to his fiancee: "We will see each other soon — and I will hold you as tight as I possibly can." But Slyshkin's name won't be found among the Russian Defense Ministry's official casualties in the fight against Islamic State extremists. That's because the young man who left his hometown of Ozyorsk in the Ural mountains was one of thousands of Russians deployed to Syria by a shadowy, private military contractor known as Wag...
MOSCOW (AP) — On a surprise trip to Russia, Syria's Bashar Assad discussed potential new peace initiatives for post-war Syria with Russian President Vladimir Putin who declared that Russia's two-year military campaign in Syria is wrapping up, the Kremlin said Tuesday. Moscow released footage of Assad warmly embracing Putin, who hosted him in the Black Sea resort of Sochi on Monday, ahead of a summit between Russia, Turkey and Iran and a new round of Syria peace talks in Geneva later this month. The meeting was unannounced and the Kremlin did n...
