Construction workers working on the Moscow metro have gone on strike, citing five months of unpaid wages, the MediaZona news website reported Friday. Several dozen migrant workers gathered near the office of the Ingeocom construction company to protest, according to the Dozhd television channel. Spokesman for the Trade Union of Migrant Workers Renat Karimov told Dozhd that the company informed him that the non-payment of wages was due to lack of funds.

Marie Mendras Europe faces four major challenges today: massive waves of refugees, making conflict-resolution in Syria even more urgent; terrorist threats from Islamic State; Russian military presence and economic pressures on a still fragile Ukraine; and the rise of anti-EU, populist sentiments. The four issues are interrelated, as a key player in all of them is Russia.

Eighth-graders in a secondary school in the Kuban region in southern Russia were shown a 3-minute video which claimed that the West is seeking to destroy Russian society by depraving its women, the Meduza news agency reported Thursday, citing the sister of one of the students. The video accuses the United States of propagating “feminist and gay propaganda” to corrupt Russian children, stating that its influence is the main reason Russians are becoming sexually active at a younger age.

news Russian Girl in Coma After Snowplow Buries Her A ten-year-old girl in the Urals city of Yekaterinburg has been placed in a medically-induced coma after being buried by a snowplow, the RIA Novosti news...

Russia's Investigative Committee has opened an investigation after an illegal surveillance device was found at the home of opposition activist Natalia Pelevina, the committee's website reported Friday. Natalia Pelevina is a member of the PARNAS opposition party. A pen-like video recorder was discovered at Pelevina's apartment during a search, according to the committee.

At the Mercatino Regionale – the regional food market – you’ll be able to taste and buy products from six Italian regions. If you are already tired of blinis or looking for a different kind of entertainment over the weekend, here are some picks that are of an artistic and Italian bent. Food! Glorious Italian Food!

Maslenitsa is a time of blinis and parties galore — the last week of food and drink before the strict Lenten fast begins. It's also time for the slightly bizarre tradition of burning a straw effigy of winter to welcome in spring. Be it in a restaurant, a park or one of Moscow's squares, here's where you can get into the spirit this weekend. VDNKh VDNKh Food fair and an interactive effigy VDNKh's Maslenitsa market will be foodie paradise with waffles, pancakes, mulled wine and more.

A 56-year-old man was hospitalized after a car bomb detonated outside a mosque in Nazran, a city in the republic of Ingushetia in Russia's North Caucasus, Interfax reported Friday, citing an unidentified source in Ingushetia's law enforcement. "It is possible that this incident was an attack on a prolific imam [Khamzat Chumakov]," the source told Interfax. Chumakov's car was reportedly one of six that were damaged by the blast. The source said the imam sustained minor injuries.

Тост: toast Yevgeny Parfyonov Michele A. Berdy On various recent holidays, did you raise your glass and pronounce “на здоровье,” proud in the certainty — buttressed by films, books, your own ears and a number of your Russian friends — that you’ve just made the classic Russian toast “to your health”? If you did, you’re wrong. And once you stop shouting and throwing pointed objects at me, I’ll explain why.

Gyulchekhra Bobokulova Gyulchekhra Bobokulova, a nanny suspected of murdering a four-year-old girl in her care, said she was prompted to kill the girl by online videos of beheadings and “voices” in her head, the Moskovsky Komsomolets news portal reported Thursday. Bobokulova, a native of Uzbekistan who is being held in a prison psychiatric hospital in Moscow, said she had been driven by “hatred,” although she felt “a little bit sorry for the girl,” according to the interview with MK.

Russian medical institutions have the legal right to harvest organs from the deceased without notifying relatives, the Constitutional Court said a statement on the official court website. “Presumed consent to the removal of organs — aimed at developing the country's organ donation and transplantation — does not violate the Constitution,” the statement said, the Novaya Gazeta newspaper reported Wednesday.

NOON AGAINST PUTIN Russians Abroad Take Part in Anti-Putin Election Protest, In Pictures Russians living across the world took part in the anti-Putin protest on the last day of voting in the presidential election. 1 Min read

A former chief of Moscow's media machine, who was found dead in a Washington hotel last November, died of blunt force trauma to the head, the medical examiner's office said in a statement quoted by U.S. and Russian media on Thursday. Mikhail Lesin, 57 — whose resume included heading the Russian Press Ministry and the giant Gazprom Media holding — also suffered blunt force injuries to the neck, torso, legs and arms, the Washington medical examiner's office and police said in a joint statement.

The head of the military police in Russia's far eastern Kamchatka region was arrested and charged with drug possession, the Interfax news agency reported Friday. “Two packets of hashish oil were found on him. He confessed that he has been using drugs for a long time,” said the press secretary for the regional branch of the Federal Service for Drug Control (FSKN). The military police head was arrested in February. He has not been removed from his post and is currently on vacation.

Mikhail Lesin This article was taken from The Moscow Times archive and was first published on Nov. 11, 2015. For a man who once shaped Russia's media sector, remarkably little is known about the last months of Mikhail Lesin's life. A macho, "hell-for-leather guy," who as press minister from 1999-2004 broke the hold of oligarchs on Russia's media and asserted state power over the airwaves, Lesin was found dead on Nov. 5 in a Washington hotel, aged 57.