Contents tagged with FSB

  • Putin approves temporary travel ban for former Russian Federal Security Service employees

    Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed a law that bans former Federal Security Service (FSB) officers from leaving the country for up to five years. Such restriction can be established from the date of dismissal. The document is published on the official Internet website of legal information.

    Earlier, the co-author of the bill, Chairman of the Committee on Security and Corruption Control Vasilii Piskarev, said that the amendments are the result of " frequent cases of openly hostile …

  • Hackers uncover Russia’s secret cyber projects

    Hackers have successfully breached the server of the Moscow-based company SyTech, a major IT contractor for Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB), BBC reports.

    The hack took place on 13 July 2019. SyTech’s website was replaced by a “Yoba Face”, a meme of a large yellow face with a broad smile that is widely used by hackers as a sign that they have gained access to the victim’s data.

    A screenshot of the Yoba Face appeared on the Twitter account Ov1ru$, which was registered on the day of the …

  • Russia presses final charges against Ukrainian sailors

    Russia has announced the final version of its charges against the 13 Ukrainian sailors who are being held as prisoners of war, attorney Nikolai Polozov reported.

    “Today there were investigative proceedings concerning another four prisoner-of-war Ukrainian sailors: Vladislav Kostyshin, Oleh Melnychuk, Serhiy Chuliba and Vasyl Soroka. The prisoner-of-war sailors and their attorneys were briefed on the conclusion of the commission’s situational forensic inquiry and charges were filed in their …

  • Body of Putin’s bunker financier found in Moscow

    The body of Alexey Kudryashov, who was fired on 31 May from his position as the head of the financing department that oversees command bunkers for Russia’s high-ranking political and military leaders, has been found in Moscow. The 55 year-old financier’s corpse was discovered in the yard of a 15-story house, RBC reports, citing its own sources. The cause of death appears to be a fall from a great height.

    A source in the Interior Ministry said that on the day he died, Kudryashov had been at his …

  • Russian Special Forces ambushed in Syria

    Russian Special Forces were ambushed by Syrian rebels near the village of Khirbet al-Arus in the northwest of the Syrian Hama province, reported the Conflict Intelligence Team on Telegram.

    According to the news agency Nors for Studies, a group of up to 23 Russian soldiers was ambushed. Several commandos were injured. However, on their official page, the militants reported that the Russians suffered casualties.

    Nors for Studies also published photographs of items belonging to the Russian …

  • Ukrainian general: in 2018 Ukrainian navy boats came very close to Russian port of Yeysk

    In the autumn of 2018, armored boats from the Ukrainian Navy were able to secretly advance to within a mile and a half of the Russian port in Yeysk, said former commander of the Ukrainian Joint Forces Operation (JFO) in the Donbas, Lieutenant-General Serhiy Nayev, in an interview with TSN.

    “At one point, the naval ships approached within a mile and a half of a Russian port,” he said, adding that the Russian military was caught off guard and was late to respond. One international nautical mile …

  • Russia offers to resume all air traffic with Ukraine

    Russia’s Federal Air Transport Agency (Rosaviatsia) offered to engage in talks with Ukrainian authorities on resuming all air traffic, reported RBC news agency.

    “In response to the prohibition of direct charter air traffic between our countries imposed by Ukraine’s leadership, we propose to hold talks and resume all flights on a regular and charter basis between Russia and Ukraine,” the agency’s press service reported.

    Representatives of Rosaviatsia stressed that the citizens of the two …

  • UN monitoring mission finds human rights violations in the Crimea

    On Wednesday, at the international Forum in Kyiv, Fiona Frazer, the Head of the UN Human Rights Mission to Ukraine stated that efforts are being made to suppress dissent or critical views on the peninsula, Interfax-Ukraine reports.

    "The trend that we have seen over the last few years shows that there are actions aimed at suppressing any dissent and critical views on the peninsula,” Frazer said. She noted that the right to worship is restricted in the Crimea, especially concerning Crimean …

  • Ukraine initiates criminal cases against Russian military after the incident in the Kerch Strait

    Commanders of the Southern Military District and the Black Sea Fleet of the Russian Federation, as well as five employees of the FSB Border Service are suspected of "conducting an aggressive war" against Ukraine. 

    The Prosecutor General’s Office and the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) announced that seven more Russian servicemen and the FSB border guard officers will be investigated in connection with the incident in the Kerch Strait. They are suspected of planning, preparing, initiating and …

  • Former US ambassador urges American businessmen to leave Russia immediately

     The arrest of the US citizen Michael Calvey, founder of Baring Vostok, the largest direct investment firm in Russia, should be perceived as a signal for all American businesses that continue to operate in Russia, believes Michael McFaul, former US ambassador to Moscow. 

    According to McFaul, the incident with Calvey, who has been sent to a pre-trial detention center for 2 months due to a corporate conflict surrounding Vostochny bank, shows that it’s time for Americans to close up shop in …