Bashkir Service News Today

Cut off from family, American-Russian RFE/RL journalist Alsu Kurmasheva shares details of her imprisonment with a Tatar news outlet

Six months since being detained in Russia, U.S. journalist Alsu Kurmasheva has insisted she will walk free "as an innocent person." Kurmasheva, who works for RFE/RL's Tatar-Bashkir Service, is charged with failing to register as a foreign agent and spreading misinformation about the Russian military. The charges are widely seen as reprisals for her journalistic work. Her comments were made in a message published by a Tatar-language monthly in Kazan.

Friends of noted Russian blogger Aleksandr Morozov said on February 21 that he committed suicide after citing unnamed sources online saying that Russian troops might have lost up to 16,000 troops while fighting for the Ukrainian city of Avdiyivka. ru

At least 45,123 Russian troops have been killed since the start of Moscow's full-scale invasion of Ukraine almost two years ago, according to research by journalists from Mediazona and the BBC's Russian Service who have established the deceased soldiers' identities.

Strongman Alyaksandr Lukashenka has urged police forces to send out patrols armed "at least with pistols" in Belarusian cities to better protect citizens against "crimes of an extremist nature."

The Russian weekly Sobesednik has dedicated part of its latest issue, including the front page, to Kremlin opponent Aleksei Navalny, whose death in a remote Arctic prison camp was announced on February 16.

The Amsterdam Court of Appeals on February 20 rejected Russia’s appeal against a 2014 order by an arbitration tribunal in The Hague to pay $50 billion, a sum that has risen to more than $60 billion with interest, to shareholders of the defunct Yukos oil group.

Russian President Vladimir Putin promoted the Deputy Director of Russia's Federal Penitentiary Service, Valery Boyarinev, to the rank of colonel general just three days after the death of Kremlin critic Aleksei Navalny in a remote Arctic prison camp, an associate of Navalny said on February 20.

Ukrainian intelligence spokesman Andriy Yusov on February 19 confirmed to RFE/RL that Russian pilot Maksim Kuzminov, who hijacked a Russian military helicopter Mi-8 for Ukraine last year, was found dead in Spain.

A Moscow court on February 20 issued arrest warrants for two self-exiled Kremlin critics -- economist Konstantin Sonin and politician Leonid Gozman -- on a charge of spreading false information about Russian troops involved in Moscow's ongoing invasion of Ukraine.