Category: Entertainment

On this episode of The Cost of Everything, we take a closer look at the surprising cost of global infertility. While many so-called experts complain about overpopulation, more and more countries are falling below replacement fertility rates. Host Christy Ai discusses the high costs of fertility aids like surrogacy and IVF cycles, as well as which countries are suffering the most with fertility issues, with the co-founder of BabyQuest, Pamela Hirsch.

SOURCE: RUSSIA TODAY

Wall Street Journal (WSJ) correspondent Evan Gershkovich was caught “red-handed” trying to obtain Russian state secrets, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has claimed. The Federal Security Service (FSB) announced on Thursday that the reporter had been detained in the city of Ekaterinburg on suspicion of espionage.

Speaking to journalists via conference call, Peskov was asked to comment on the arrest of the American citizen and whether Russia will cooperate with US security services on the issue. The spokesperson stated that he does not know the full details of the case and that the matter remains in the hands of the FSB.

However, Peskov claimed that as far as he was aware, Gershkovich had been caught in the act of trying to collect intelligence about a defense facility, in violation of Russian laws on state secrets. The correspondent, who covers news from Russia, Ukraine, and the former USSR, could face between 10 and 20 years in prison if charged with espionage.

Although Gershkovich had obtained the necessary journalistic credentials from the Foreign Ministry to work in Russia, the FSB alleges that he “acted in the interest of the US government” when he was caught during “an attempt to receive” classified intelligence.

Asked if the incident could provoke a response from US authorities regarding Russian journalists working in America, Peskov said that Moscow hopes no such retaliation will follow because “we are not talking about allegations here. He was caught in the act.”

The WSJ has reacted to the incident by stating that it is “deeply concerned for the safety of Mr Gershkovich.”

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov has said that the issue of potentially exchanging the WSJ journalist in a swap deal has not been raised.

Meanwhile, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has claimed that whatever Gershkovich was doing when he was detained by the FSB, it had “nothing to do with journalism.” She argued that the status of correspondent had previously been used as cover by other Western nationals attempting to obtain classified Russian intelligence.

SOURCE: RUSSIA TODAY

A counteroffensive by Ukraine that has been much-anticipated should not be considered as a make-or-break moment in its conflict with Russia, Kiev’s Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba has said, urging his country’s foreign backers to maintain their support regardless of the outcome of this expected operation.

“We should counter by all means the perception of the counteroffensive as the decisive battle of the war,” he told the Financial Times, as quoted on Wednesday.

He said Kiev was concerned that the operation would not result in Ukrainian troops pushing Russia “100%” out of the territory it wishes to reclaim. However, in this scenario of underachievement, he feared, “some people may say this was the last decisive battle and now we have to think of an alternative scenario.”

The Ukrainian leadership has insisted that the only option it is considering is retaking all land lost by Kiev, including Crimea, before any peace talks can start. The government has also prohibited by law any negotiations with Russia for as long as President Vladimir Putin remains in office.

Kuleba suggested that following a counter-offensive operation like the one anticipated, minority voices “in Washington, in Berlin, in Paris, in London” will try to push for a ceasefire “along the lines of a Minsk III.” He was referring to the two Minsk agreements that were supposed to guide Kiev and its then-breakaway regions to co-operate in a stable peace.

The Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics rejected the authorities that came to power in 2014 after an armed coup in Kiev and fought for independence, following which Kiev sent troops to quash them.

Last year, amid the hostilities with Russia, former leaders of Ukraine, France and Germany – the latter two had mediated the Minsk deals – acknowledged that the agreements were really intended to give Kiev time to beef up its military. Moscow said this confirmed that the three parties had negotiated in bad faith, adding that it proved once again that Western politicians were not to be trusted.

During the anticipated counteroffensive, Ukraine is expected to capitalize on freshly-delivered Western weapons, including main battle tanks. Last week, however, Zelensky said his country was not ready to launch one, citing a shortage of armaments.

SOURCE: RUSSIA TODAY

Mark Zuckerberg’s flagship social network has deleted the page for RT Arabic, rejecting all appeals and handing the address to another user, the channel’s head Maya Manna said on Thursday.

“Two weeks we fought with Facebook to restore the suspended page of RT Arabic, with 17 million subscribers,” Manna said on her Telegram channel. “We tried to get an explanation of what triggered the shutdown, because we never got any strikes or comments.”

After several awkward non-explanations, Facebook’s customer service “simply wished us luck, closed our case, and turned over the URL to another user,” Manna wrote. “Internet democracy in all its glory!”

Facebook blocked the page on March 15, without any explanation or advance warning. Attempts to access the page resulted in the message, “this content isn’t available right now.”

Manna protested the move, calling it proof that the West doesn’t believe in free speech, only “total censorship and blocking.” By way of example, she brought up the EU ban on all “Russian state media” after the military operation in Ukraine began in February 2022, including all of RT’s channels.

“Apparently, this is not enough – the very fact that we exist does not allow them to sleep peacefully,” Manna added.

YouTube was quick to apply the EU ban globally, but continued operating in Russia, its CEO at the time, Susan Wojcicki, told the World Economic Forum in Davos last May. The Ukraine conflict showed that information had “a key role” and “can be weaponized,” said Wojcicki, so YouTube wanted to “help [Russian] citizens know what’s going on and have perspectives from the outside world.”

In November last year, after Facebook’s parent company Meta amended its “violent speech” rules to allow calls of “death to Russians” in the West, the Russian Justice Ministry added it to the register of extremist organizations. The decision affected Facebook and Instagram, but not the messaging platform WhatsApp, because it fell under a different legal category.

SOURCE: RUSSIA TODAY

Ukrainian-speaking children in Russia should be provided with opportunities to study their native language, Russian Human Rights Commissioner Tatyana Moskalkova has said.

In an interview with RIA Novosti published on Thursday, Moskalkova touched on the issue of displaced children and their education, as well as young people from the four former Ukrainian territories – Kherson and Zaporozhye Regions, and the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics – which were incorporated into Russia after referendums last year.

“There were kids who said: ‘We want to be in Russia, but we would like to continue learning the Ukrainian language.’ If it’s their native language, then, of course, why not,” Moskalkova said.

She stressed that it is important for Russian authorities to provide the necessary conditions “so that a family that has grown up in a certain system can preserve its traditions and its language.”

Moskalkova also discussed allegations that Russia had carried out the “unlawful deportation” of children from Ukraine. The claims prompted the International Criminal Court (ICC) to issue arrest warrants for Russian President Vladimir Putin and his children’s rights commissioner, Maria Lvova-Belova, earlier this month.

Moskalkova said she had repeatedly raised the issue with officials in Ukraine, requesting that they provide lists of children deemed to have been “forcibly deported.” However, the human rights commissioner said that she had not received a response, and that discussions with UN representatives had likewise not yielded any evidence to back up the claims.

“I contacted a representative of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees on this issue. According to the charter, they can talk with refugees one-on-one to receive information,” Moskalkova explained. She claimed that the representative “said that he did not meet a single person who would be forcibly kept [by Russia] in temporary accommodation centers or anywhere else.”

SOURCE: RUSSIA TODAY

Ukraine has made great progress on its EU-accession path and now the bloc has to reform itself to incorporate the country into its membership, Kiev’s top diplomat Dmitry Kuleba has said.

The foreign minister made the remarks on Thursday as he spoke at an online event hosted by Chatham House, a leading British think tank on foreign policy. Ukraine is seeking to launch accession talks with the EU next year, Kuleba revealed.

“Our goal is to open accession talks in 2023. I’m not going to give you a year when Ukraine will become a full member, I will only say that this is going to happen,” the diplomat stated.

While abstaining from giving any more precise estimates on accession, Kuleba insisted it would happen “much sooner than many expect,” especially if “the European Union does not come up with any artificial new conditions, demands [and] procedures to slow this process down.”

The bloc now has to reform itself to have Ukraine in its ranks, Kuleba asserted, adding that Kiev has already proved “that it’s ready to do its homework much faster than anyone expects.”

“What is really funny about the European integration of Ukraine is that, for 20 years, the EU was saying to Ukraine ‘You have to reform yourself, and we will decide then whether you will become a member.’ That was kind-of the premise,” he said.

Joining the EU has been among the top talking points for pro-Western Ukrainian politicians for decades already, yet little-to-no actual progress had been made until the ongoing hostilities between Kiev and Moscow broke out last year. The conflict greatly sped up the joining process, with Ukraine receiving EU-candidate status last June.

SOURCE: RUSSIA TODAY

Major oil companies have made record profits as a result of the conflict in Ukraine and should pay to rebuild the country’s war-torn infrastructure, Ukrainian Minister of Energy German Galushchenko said on Wednesday in an interview with Politico.

According to Galushchenko, oil and gas majors have generated windfall profits of more than $200 billion due to wild swings in global energy prices, and should transfer some of those funds to Ukraine.

Western sanctions imposed on Russia over the past year in response to Moscow’s military operation in Ukraine have sent energy prices soaring.

In 2022, oil majors Shell, BP, Exxon Mobil, Chevron, and TotalEnergies posted a combined profit of $196.3 billion, marking an all-time high for the industry.

“I think it would be fair to share this money with Ukraine. I mean, to help us to restore, to rebuild the energy sector,” Galushchenko said on a visit to Brussels, adding that the record profits had been achieved purely because of the conflict in his country.

According to the latest assessment by the Ukrainian government, the World Bank, the European Commission, and the UN, the estimated cost of the country’s reconstruction and recovery will be over $400 billion.

The Ukrainian energy minister also called on the West to take further steps to plug sanctions loopholes that allow Russian energy producers to continue exports.

SOURCE: RUSSIA TODAY

A senior bishop in the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) has issued a strongly-worded rebuke to President Vladimir Zelensky over his role in a crackdown that is gripping the country’s largest religious denomination.

“I am telling you, Mr President, and your entire pack, that our tears will not fall to the ground, but on your head,” Metropolitan Pavel said in a video address on Wednesday.

“You think today that after taking power on our backs, [based] on our wishes, you can treat us like that. Our Lord will not forgive this action, neither to you nor to your family,” the bishop warned.

Pavel heads the Kiev Pechersk Lavra, the largest Orthodox monastery in the country, established some 970 years ago. The Ukrainian ministry of culture denied the UOC a renewal of tenancy in the property, meaning that some 220 monks living there would be “kicked out to the streets,” as Pavel described it. The eviction deadline comes this week.

The bishop blasted the president for refusing to meet senior UOC clerics to discuss the situation. This was particularly hypocritical, he remarked, considering that, as a presidential candidate, Zelensky had sought and received the blessing to run for office from Metropolitan Onufry, the Church leader.

“You have failed to stop the culture minister, who is possessed by hateful malice and devilish fury. This means he is acting with your permission; Woe to you, have fear,” the bishop said.

The minister, Aleksandr Tkachenko, has said that UOC monks could stay at Lavra if they agreed to defect to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU), a rival schismatic organization backed by Kiev.

The OCU received recognition as a legitimate church in 2019 from the Constantinople Patriarchate, causing a major schism among the Orthodox faithful of the world. Metropolitan Pavel has also accused Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople of having given impetus to the crackdown with this move.

“Woe and shame on you, so-called patriarch [Bartholomew], because everything done today is done with your ill-fated and evil blessing,” he said.

The bishop also likened the current detractors of the UOC to the Bolshevik and Communist leaders who cracked down on all religions when they were in power. He expressed faith that his church will survive the new period of suppression, just like it did the previous one.

“You’ll disappear like dew in the sun, because all who take up the sword will perish by the sword,” he said, quoting in the same sentence from the Ukrainian national anthem and from the Gospels.

SOURCE: RUSSIA TODAY

The West will not succeed in its attempts to drag Türkiye into a conflict with Russia, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said.

“We’re experiencing a world marked by crises and wars. We’ve been able to build a strong, independent Türkiye in this environment and we need to maintain it,” the Turkish leader said in an interview with A Haber broadcaster on Wednesday.

“Had it not been for our efforts in the past two years, the Western club would’ve dragged Türkiye into a war against Russia. As long as we’re here, we won’t allow this,” Erdogan insisted.

He reiterated Ankara’s eagerness to help settle the conflict between Russia and Ukraine at the negotiating table. Peace can be achieved through “serious, determined mediation,” he said.

Erdogan’s interview comes six weeks before presidential and general elections take place in Türkiye on May 14. The Turkish president and his ruling AK Party are expected to face a tough challenge following a devastating earthquake that killed more than 50,000 people in the country in early February.

Erdogan also spoke about the Ukrainian conflict during a joint press conference with his Hungarian counterpart Katalin Novak in Ankara on Wednesday, stressing that Türkiye wants to secure peace between Russia and Ukraine “as soon as possible.”

He suggested that the sides could again meet in Istanbul, where talks were previously held shortly after the outbreak of fighting more than a year ago.

Türkiye has maintained contacts with both Moscow and Kiev throughout the conflict. It condemned the use of force by Russia, but at the same time refused to give in to pressure from the US and its allies to join international sanctions against Moscow.

Ankara was also involved in the UN-brokered deal to allow grain exports from Black Sea ports, which was signed between Russia and Ukraine last July. Earlier this month, the agreement was extended for another 60 days.

Russia maintains that it’s ready to resolve the crisis in Ukraine at the negotiating table, but says the proposals set out by Kiev and its Western backers have so far been “unacceptable,” leaving it no other choice but to keep pursuing its goals through military means.

SOURCE: RUSSIA TODAY

Russian athletes have undoubtedly made their mark on sports worldwide – so much so that some moves in their chosen disciplines have been named in their honor because of the way they popularized or introduced them. Here, we look at five sports moves named after Russian stars.

‘The Datsyuk Flip’ – ice hockey

Known as the ‘Magic Man’ for the way he handled his stick to pull off some unfathomable moves, Pavel Datsyuk was one of the biggest names in hockey in the 2000s and enjoyed a 15-year career in the elite NHL with the Detroit Red Wings before returning to his homeland.

Datsyuk will forever be a legend in the Motor City for his contributions to Stanley Cup titles in 2002 and 2008, but his participation on this list came after heroics in 2010.

Taking the first shot of a shootout against the Red Wings’ bitter rivals the Chicago Blackhawks in a January regular season game, Datsyuk made a mockery of opposition goaltender Antti Niemi.

Gliding up to the Finn down the middle, Datsyuk did a slight ‘dirty dangle’ that he was famous for, then quickly flicked his wrist to make it appear as if he would backhand his effort. Instead, the Russian scooped the puck with the inside of his stick into the net.

Datsyuk’s audacity understandably sent the Joe Louis Arena into rapture, as well as his teammates. “They can’t believe it on the Red Wings bench,” said one elated commentator. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a slow-mo play like that.”

While Niemi and the Blackhawks had the last laugh that season as he became the first Finnish goalie to win the Stanley Cup, he is often remembered for being on the wrong end of Datsyuk’s trick shot.

The move became immortalized as the ‘Datsyuk Flip’, with hockey enthusiasts attempting to pull it off on the popular NHL video game to this day.

On a side note, the ‘Datsyuk deke’ wasn’t too shoddy either. Again produced in a shootout, it led one pundit to ask: “How many does he have in his repertoire?”

‘The Khorkina’ – artistic gymnastics (uneven bars)

Svetlana Khorkina burst onto the global stage with a pair of silver medals at the 1994 World Championships in Brisbane, not long after her 15th birthday. Two years later, she enjoyed gold-medal success in the uneven bars at the Atlanta Olympics, bouncing back brilliantly after suffering initial disappointment with a 15th-place finish in the all-around final.

The comeback ushered in one of the most revered artistic gymnastics careers of all time, with further high points including another Olympic gold medal and 20 World Championship medals as Khorkina became the first gymnast in history to win three all-around world titles.

Khorkina’s main specialties were the uneven bars and balance beam, and she left a legacy with at least nine moves named after her mainly in those disciplines, in addition to a few spread across floor exercises and the vault.

The first couple – the Khorkina and the Khorkina 2 – come in the uneven bars and involve half-turn hangs. In the former, Khorkina started with a back uprise and then made a straddle flight over the high bar. In the latter, she had inner front support on the low bar, formed a clear hip circle to handstand, then impressively half-turned in full flight to hang on the high bar. There is another move called the Khorkina-Chow or Chow-Khorkina, which was first performed by Amy Chow and is a Stadler one-and-a-half pirouette.

In the 1, 2 and 3 balance beam moves named after her, Khorkina dismounted the apparatus and performed either a full twist, a gainer two-and-a-half twist, or gainer triple twist. In the Khorkina 1 and 2 moves on the vault, there were also plenty of twists and turns with ‘the Khorkina’ in the floor exercise similarly involving a hop with one and a half turns.

Four of these skills are currently listed in the Code of Points (CoP), with Khorkina previously holding the record for the most eponym moves (nine) before some of them were removed ahead of the 2022-2024 quad as part of a regular CoP update.

‘The Besti Squat’ – figure skating

Natalia Bestemianova was a Soviet figure-skating icon who, while overseen by legendary coach Tatiana Tarasova, made her name in the 1980s alongside her partner Andrei Bukin as a four-time world and five-time European champion.

After suffering silver-medal disappointment at the 1984 Winter Olympics in Sarajevo, she finally struck gold in Calgary four years later.

It was throughout 1988 that ‘the Besti Squat,’ unofficially named after Bestemianova, gained prominence as she used it repeatedly in her free dance with Bukin.

The move resembles the spread eagle, given that the skater who executes it glides along an edge with both skates on the ice.

The toes are turned out to the sides with the heels facing one another, and the knees are then bent outwards to a squatting position with the torso upright and thighs parallel to the ice.

While ‘the Besti Squat’ has become a popular move still used four decades later, not everyone approved of Bestemianova’s performances at the time. Reporting from the 1988 Winter Games, the New York Times claimed that Bestemianova and Bukin’s free dance program “suggested they might take the prize for vulgarity as well,” and that the endless debate as to whether ice dance is sport or art had come to a rest.

“Her aggressiveness did not agree with a submissive image and the pair’s overall harsh style made no sense of the spliced-in moves – especially the spread eagle or plie,” it was stated.

Given that the routine landed her gold, however, it is doubtful that Bestemianova, who later became a TV personality on the Russian equivalent of ‘Dancing on Ice,’ cared too much.

The Moscow native was perhaps ahead of her time, with out-of-touch critics falling wide of the mark.

‘The Karelin Lift’ – wrestling

Known as the ‘Russian Bear’, ‘Russian King Kong’, ‘the Experiment’, and ‘Alexander the Great’, Aleksandr Karelin retired in 2000 widely considered to be the greatest wrestler of all time – and among the most dominant athletes ever seen in any sport.

Karelin scooped gold at three consecutive Olympic Games from 1988-1996 and put together a monstrous 887-2 record. He claimed silver in his last Games in Sydney in 2000.

Such was Karelin’s dominance, there were inevitable claims that he used PEDs – although the athlete himself put his phenomenal record down to something else. “No one can completely believe that I am natural. The most important drug is to train like a madman – really like a madman. The people who accuse me are those who have never trained once in their life like I train every day of my life,” he once said.

Given his undisputed reign at the top of his sport, it should be no surprise that Karelin had a move named after him. Known as the ‘Karelin Lift,’ it saw him hold his hapless opponents in the air with his enormous reach and then body-slam them into the mat.

The reverse body lift frequently saw Karelin awarded five points when executed properly, which was the maximum in the sport. The move started while his foe was lying flat on his back on the mat. Once wrapped up in Karelin’s grasp, opponents found it impossible to wriggle free from a grip described as “anaconda-like.”

While it had long been used, Karelin made the lift his own. He was the first heavyweight to add it to his arsenal and wowed the wrestling world by demonstrating it on opponents weighing up to 130kg (285lbs).

‘The Kabaeva’ – rhythmic gymnastics

One of the most decorated gymnasts in the history of the rhythmic facet of the sport, Alina Kabaeva won Olympic gold in Athens in 2004 after disappointment in Sydney four years earlier, where she had been widely expected to win the all-around event as the reigning world champion but made a costly error.

Kabaeva boasts 14 World Championship medals and 21 at the European Championships from the late 90s and into the 2000s, but her contributions to her discipline go beyond any silverware amassed since becoming European champion as a 15-year-old prodigy.

Kabaeva revolutionized rhythmic gymnastics by introducing new skills and moves. There are no fewer than four named after her, which have been given Roman numerals to distinguish them.

The ‘Kabaeva I’ is a ring leap she performed with both legs, but the ‘Kabaeva II’ is arguably her most famous, involving a backscale pivot from a standing or grounded position.

Kabaeva was the first to perform the backscale pivot, but her other two moves (the ‘Kabaeva III and IV’) saw her balance with support from her chest and split with hand support.

The 39-year-old, who later ventured into politics, is still known as one of the most flexible athletes to ever grace the mats, and it’s not difficult to see why after a recap of the maneuvers she brought to the continental and global stage.

SOURCE: RUSSIA TODAY