A day before the U.S. embassy in Moscow put out a rare public alert this month about a possible extremist attack at a Russian concert venue, the local C.I.A. station delivered a private warning to Russian officials that included at least one additional detail: The plot in question involved an offshoot of the Islamic State […]
Read MoreTag: Moscow (Russia)
Kremlin Treads Carefully After Moscow Attack Over Fears of Ethnic Strife
At a memorial service this week outside the concert hall where Islamist extremists are suspected of carrying out a deadly terrorist attack, one of Russia’s most popular pro-Kremlin rappers warned “right-wing and far-right groups” that they must not “incite ethnic hatred.” At a televised meeting about the attack, Russia’s top prosecutor, Igor Krasnov, pledged that […]
Read MoreISIS Claimed the Moscow Concert Hall Attack. Russian Officials Blame Others.
Even before the deadly toll of the attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday became clear, officials in Russia linked it to the war against Ukraine and a broader conflict with the West. Ninety minutes after first reports of the attack, Dmitri A. Medvedev, the former president and the deputy chairman of the Kremlin’s […]
Read MoreTurkey Details Visits by Accused Moscow Attackers to Istanbul
Two men accused in the terrorist attack on a Moscow concert hall spent time in Istanbul just weeks before the assault, a senior Turkish security official said on Tuesday, adding that the shortness of the men’s visits suggested that they had not been radicalized in Turkey. The information came on the same day that the […]
Read MoreRussia Digs In on Claim Ukraine and West Were Behind Terrorist Attack
Russia on Tuesday deepened its accusations against Ukraine and its Western allies, claiming again, without evidence, that they were most likely involved in the terrorist attack on a concert hall near Moscow that killed at least 139 people. Aleksandr Bortnikov, the director of the Federal Security Service, the top security agency in Russia, said that […]
Read MoreMoscow Attack Suspects Are Linked by Video and Online Profiles
When four men were detained by the Russian authorities in connection with the massacre at a concert hall outside Moscow last week, they were dressed in the same attire as the assailants seen in videos of the attack, according to a New York Times analysis of footage from the hall, social media profiles and images […]
Read MoreRussian Media Intensifies Blame of Ukraine in Moscow Concert Hall Attack
As Russians grieved Monday for victims of the bloody assault on a concert hall near Moscow that killed at least 137 people, President Vladimir V. Putin was scheduled to meet with government officials to discuss the tragedy, the worst such attack in the capital in two decades. The government appears to be stepping up efforts […]
Read MoreTrump Is Back in Court, and an ISIS Group Looks Beyond Russia Attack
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Read MoreISIS Affiliate Linked to Moscow Attack Has Global Ambitions
Five years ago this month, an American-backed Kurdish and Arab militia ousted Islamic State fighters from a village in eastern Syria, the group’s last sliver of territory. Since then, the organization that once staked out a self-proclaimed caliphate across Iraq and Syria has metastasized into a more traditional terrorist group — a clandestine network of […]
Read MoreRussians Mourn People Killed in Terrorist Concert Hall Attack
Bodies were recovered, flowers were laid and fingers were pointed on Sunday as competing narratives took shape over who was behind the terrorist attack on a Russian concert hall where at least 137 people out to enjoy an evening of music were killed. President Vladimir V. Putin has hinted that Ukraine was behind the Friday […]
Read MoreScreams and Blank Stares of Shock: Horror at a Russian Concert
Once they heard the shots ring out on Friday night at Crocus City Hall, Efim Fidrya and his wife ran down to the building’s basement and hid with three others in a bathroom. They listened as shots rang out and thousands of people who had come to a sold-out rock concert on Moscow’s outskirts began […]
Read MoreRussia’s Battle With Extremists Has Simmered for Years
In the past few months, deep in the forbidding deserts of central Syria, Russian forces have quietly joined the Syrian military in intensifying attacks against Islamic State strongholds, including bombing what local news reports called the dens and caves where the extremist fighters hide. While the world was focused on the conflicts in Ukraine and […]
Read MorePutin Tries to Link Moscow Attackers to Ukraine
President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia laid the groundwork on Saturday for blaming Ukraine for the Moscow concert hall attack. And in making his first remarks on the assault more than 19 hours after it began, he pledged to punish the perpetrators, “whoever they may be, whoever may have sent them.” Mr. Putin, in a […]
Read MoreU.S. Says ISIS Was Responsible for Deadly Moscow Concert Hall Attack
A branch of the Islamic State claimed responsibility on Friday for the attack in Moscow that killed at least 40 people and injured about 100 others, and U.S. officials confirmed the claim shortly afterward. The United States collected intelligence in March that Islamic State-Khorasan, known as ISIS-K, the branch of the group based in Afghanistan, […]
Read MoreU.S. Warned About Possible Moscow Attack Before Concert Hall Shooting
The U.S. Embassy in Moscow issued a security alert on March 7, warning that its personnel were “monitoring reports that extremists have imminent plans to target large gatherings in Moscow, to include concerts.” The statement warned Americans that an attack could take place in the next 48 hours. The warning was related to the attack […]
Read MoreGunmen Open Fire at Arena Outside Moscow, Russian News Agencies Report
Several gunmen opened fire at a popular concert venue on the Moscow outskirts on Friday, Russia’s state news agencies reported. The Russian news agency TASS said eyewitnesses had reported “killed and wounded” at the venue, Crocus City Hall, without specifying a number. Reports on social media said dozens had been wounded and up to 12 […]
Read MoreFive Takeaways From Putin’s Win in Russia
President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia emerged from the three-day, stage-managed presidential vote that ended Sunday declaring that his overwhelming win represented a public mandate to act as needed in the war in Ukraine as well as on various domestic matters, feeding unease among Russians about what comes next. Mr. Putin said the vote represented […]
Read MoreAs Putin Pitches His Vision, Voters Avert Their Gaze From the War
Vladimir V. Putin’s vision of Russia — successful, innovative and borderless — is on display at one of Moscow’s biggest tourist attractions, a Stalin-era exhibition center that currently houses a sleek showcase called Russia 2024. The exhibition promotes what the Kremlin portrays as Russia’s achievements in the past two decades, roughly the period Mr. Putin […]
Read MorePutin Plays Down Threat of Nuclear War in Pre-Election State TV Interview
President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia tried to play down fears of nuclear war in an interview released on Wednesday and denied having considered using weapons of mass destruction in Ukraine, aiming to bolster his domestic image as a guarantor of stability before the Russian presidential election this weekend. In a lengthy interview released by […]
Read MoreRussians Flock to Navalny’s Grave as They Grapple With His Legacy
Marina, a Moscow lawyer, decided to stay home when the Russian opposition leader Aleksei A. Navalny was buried last Friday. She had expected a big crowd and widespread arrests at the Borisovsky Cemetery, given Russia’s current climate of repression, and thought it would be better to pay her respects another day. She wasn’t alone in […]
Read MoreHundreds of Navalny Mourners Detained Across Russia
For the second day in a row, mourners walked purposefully along Moscow’s snow-heaped Garden Ring on Saturday carrying bouquets to lay at one of the improvised memorials to Aleksei A. Navalny, the Russian opposition figure who perished in a prison colony the day before. The flowers, wrapped in paper to shield them from the icy […]
Read MoreNavalny’s Challenge to Putin’s Russia
For most of the 12 or so years in which Alexei Navalny crusaded against the rule of Vladimir Putin, the Russian president tried to avoid mentioning his gadfly by name, even as he and his minions tried every which way, assassination included, to silence him. Yet when the news of Mr. Navalny’s reported death in […]
Read MoreTucker Carlson’s Lesson in the Perils of Giving Airtime to an Autocrat
Tucker Carlson left Moscow more than a week ago, riding high from an interview with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia that returned him to the spotlight after his abrupt cancellation by Fox News last spring. But the interview with the wartime autocrat, mocked in various corners of the political-media world for its soft touch, […]
Read MoreThe Documentary Aleksei Navalny Knew We’d Watch After His Death
In the opening moments of “Navalny,” the Oscar-winning 2022 documentary about the Russian opposition leader Aleksei A. Navalny, the director Daniel Roher asks his subject a dark question. “If you are killed — if this does happen — what message do you leave behind to the Russian people?” the voice asks from behind the camera. […]
Read MoreHaunted by War in Ukraine, a Choreographer Steps Into New York City Ballet
For the choreographer Alexei Ratmansky, the last two years have brought an uncomfortable intermingling of life and art. Known for ballets that combine wit with an almost surrealistic imagination, he has found his thoughts drawn insistently toward the war in Ukraine, the country where he spent his early years and began his dancing career, where […]
Read MoreTucker Carlson Urges Putin to Release American Journalist
In an interview released on Thursday, Tucker Carlson urged President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia to release an American reporter for The Wall Street Journal who has been held in a notorious Moscow prison for nearly a year. Mr. Carlson’s appeal on behalf of the reporter, Evan Gershkovich, was only the second time that Mr. […]
Read MoreNevada’s Weird Election Week, and King Charles’s Cancer
The New York Times Audio app is home to journalism and storytelling, and provides news, depth and serendipity. If you haven’t already, download it here — available to Times news subscribers on iOS — and sign up for our weekly newsletter. The Headlines brings you the biggest stories of the day from the Times journalists […]
Read MoreRussian Celebrities Caught ‘Almost Naked’ Are Now Dressing to Appease
The Russian pop star winced as the black kitten he was cuddling in Russian-occupied Ukraine licked the crook of his neck for about the 15th time. Several weeks earlier, the musician, Dima Bilan, had been in Moscow, mingling in a see-through shirt with celebrities at an “almost naked” theme party that caused an uproar in […]
Read More‘Almost Naked’ Party in Moscow Angers Russian Conservatives
Tearful apologies, revoked sponsorships, canceled performances and two weeks in jail for wearing a sock on the genitals. A widening crackdown on the participants in an erotic celebrity party in Moscow underscores an accelerating conservative shift in a country where hedonism has long been tolerated in return for the acceptance of shrinking political freedoms. The […]
Read MoreRussian Court Extends Detention of Evan Gershkovich
A Moscow court on Tuesday extended the pretrial detention of Evan Gershkovich, an American reporter for The Wall Street Journal who has been held in Russia for nearly eight months on an espionage charge that he, his newspaper and the U.S. government vehemently reject. Mr. Gershkovich, 32, has been held in the notoriously strict Lefortovo […]
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