Federal Security Service

Ukrainian officials on Friday upped the ante in the growing confrontation with Russia, announcing a travel ban for most Russian males and searching the home of an influential cleric of the Russian Orthodox Church. The long-simmering conflict bubbled over Sunday when Russian border guards rammed into and opened fired on three Ukrainian vessels near the Crimean Peninsula, which Moscow annexed...

Russia on Tuesday began prosecuting the crew of Ukrainian navy vessels captured over the weekend in a confrontation off Crimea, putting some of the seamen on camera, where they confessed to intruding into Russian waters. Ukraine demanded that Russia stop using “psychological and physical pressure” on the sailors, as tensions between the two neighbors escalated. Ukraine’s top diplomat called the...

The Trump administration on Monday slapped sanctions on several Russian companies and businessmen for engaging in cyberattacks and assisting Russia’s military and intelligence services with other malicious activities. The Treasury Department said it was imposing sanctions on five Russian firms and three of their executives under legislation passed last year and an executive order aimed at punishing efforts to hack...

The explosion at a supermarket in Russia’s second-largest city was a terrorist attack, President Vladimir Putin said Thursday, adding that another attack had been thwarted. At least 13 people were injured Wednesday evening when an improvised explosive device went off at a storage area for customers’ bags at the supermarket in St. Petersburg. Investigators said the device contained 200 grams...

An activist from the punk collective Pussy Riot has been sentenced to 40 hours of community service for a protest outside the headquarters of Russia’s top KGB successor agency.

Russian President Vladimir Putin called U.S. President Donald Trump Sunday to thank him for a CIA tip that helped thwart a series of bombings in St. Petersburg, the Kremlin said. Putin expressed gratitude during the call for information provided by the CIA that allowed Russia’s top domestic security agency to track down and arrest a group of suspects that was...

As a kid in a dismal Soviet communal apartment, Vladimir Putin was a scrapper who dreamed of being an operator — diligently training in martial arts and boldly walking into a KGB office to inquire about how to become a spy. As Russia’s leader in the 21st century, he’s been the epitome of both traits — fighting Chechen rebels, directing...

Russia’s Federal Security Service says it has arrested a suspected organizer of the suicide bombing in the St. Petersburg subway that killed 14 passengers. The service, the FSB, said Monday the suspect was arrested in Odintsovo, a city just outside Moscow. It said the suspect was armed with a pistol and was of Central Asian origin, but did not elaborate....