Russia

It’s a rough winter down Russia way

Russia's energy woes -- and, by extension, Europe's -- continue as the country scrambles to deal with the coldest recorded weather since 1927.

As one story reports, cuts in exports "hit supplies across Eastern Europe and sparked criticism from both the European Union and the United States that Moscow was 'politicising' energy."

Um, takes one to know one?

Catch a Taiga By the Toe

No one needs to tell the Amur tiger that species worldwide are endangered. A resident of Russia’s far-eastern taiga forests, the tigers are severely threatened by insatiable and generally illegal logging in the region. In theory, Russia has some of the world’s strictest logging laws, but the taiga’s old-growth trees (such as Manchurian oak and […]

Glow With the Flow

Artificial lakes containing 50 years of radioactive waste could leak into the rivers of the Ural Mountains within a few years, according to a letter sent by the governor of Russia’s Chelyabinsk region to Russia’s prime minister last month. The area near the Mayak nuclear reprocessing plant is known as one of the most radioactive […]

Putin on the Fritz

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday abolished the nation’s environmental protection agency, the State Committee on the Environment, ostensibly to help save money and cut bureaucracy. The agency’s functions will be turned over to the Ministry on Natural Resources, which oversees oil and gas development, logging, and mining. Putin has made it clear that he […]