Moscow, Russia | AFP | Russia’s nuclear agency said Saturday an explosion during missile testing in the Arctic left five of its staff dead and involved radioactive isotopes after a nearby city reported a spike in radiation levels. Rosatom said the force of explosion on Thursday threw several of its staff …
Read More »From reformer to hardliner: Putin’s 20 years on the global stage
Moscow, Russia | AFP | Twenty years ago on Friday, Russian president Boris Yeltsin appointed his fourth prime minister in less than 18 months: Vladimir Putin, then a relatively unknown security services chief with scant experience of politics. The departing Yeltsin was casting around for a successor and few could have …
Read More »Murder, ‘gay-hunters’ strike terror in Russia’s LGBT community
Saint Petersburg, Russia | AFP | When LGBT activist Yelena Grigoryeva found her name on a hit list of a “gay-hunting” group, she did not appear to take the threat seriously. The group called itself “Pila”, meaning “saw”, after the series of Hollywood horror films of the same name, in which …
Read More »Beijing warns of ‘countermeasures’ over US missile plans
Beijing, China | AFP | China warned Tuesday it would take unspecified countermeasures if the United States goes ahead with plans to deploy ground-based intermediate-range missiles in the Asia-Pacific region. The comments come days after US Defense Secretary Mark Esper said Washington was now free to deploy the weapons following its …
Read More »Buzz kill: mass bee deaths sting Russian beekeepers
Bobrovka, Russia | AFP | Anatoly Rubtsov looked despondently at the beehives lining his property. “The farm used to be loud, it sang,” he said. Today just a faint buzz is audible but an overpowering rotting stench hung in the air after his bees were likely poisoned by a pesticide. Rubtsov, …
Read More »Russia donates 53 food delivery trucks to WFP in Uganda
Kampala, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT | The World Food Programme-WFP has received 53 light and 10 heavy-duty KAMAZ trucks to add to its delivery fleet, thanks to a donation by the Government of Russia. The vehicles worth USD 10.2 Million (38 billion Shillings) will be used to respond to emergencies in …
Read More »Behind Russia’s growing influence in Africa
Why the new development could be bad news for the US, Europe and India Kampala, Uganda | ISAAC KHISA | As Russia’s President, Vladimir Putin, hosts more than 50 African presidents for the first-ever Russia-Africa Summit in Sochi on Oct. 24, top on the agenda will be how to sustain …
Read More »US slaps sanctions over Russia rights despite revived ties
Washington, United States | AFP | The United States on Thursday imposed sanctions on five Russians over abuses including the killing of a prominent opposition leader, days after top-level talks seemed to ease tensions between the powers. The State Department highlighted the actions against the five people, plus one …
Read More »Trump: Mueller ‘should not testify’ before US Congress
Washington, United States | AFP | US President Donald Trump said Sunday that Special Counsel Robert Mueller “should not testify” before Congress on his Russia election meddling inquiry, setting up a confrontation with Democrats already irate over what they view as increasingly brazen administration stone-walling. Trump’s statement represented a reversal; …
Read More »Battle for space more stealth than Star Wars
Colorado Springs, United States | AFP | At tens of thousands of kilometers above the Earth, a Russian satellite slowly approached the French-Italian satellite Athena-Fidus in October 2017, a move France later denounced as “an act of espionage.” What is less widely known is that just a few days before …
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The Independent Uganda: You get the Truth we Pay the Price