Tag Archives: dictators

The Associated Press reports: Syrians poured into streets in celebration on Sunday after a stunning rebel advance reached the capital, ending the Assad family’s 50 years of iron rule. Russian state news agencies were reporting that President Bashar Assad and his family had arrived in Moscow and were given asylum. Russia said Assad left the country after negotiations with rebel …

The New York Times reports: President Bashar al-Assad has resigned and left Syria, Russia’s foreign ministry said on Sunday, hours after rebels stormed the Syrian capital without encountering any significant resistance from government forces. It did not offer details on Mr. al-Assad’s exact whereabouts, saying only that he had held talks with “several parties of the armed conflict.” There was …

Bloomberg News reports: Venezuela ordered the arrest of presidential candidate Edmundo González, an escalation of the government’s crackdown on dissent in the wake of a disputed election. The move is likely to draw further outcry from the US and other countries that have concluded González was the winner of the July 28 vote. Venezuelan authorities have declared instead, without evidence, …

Bloomberg News reports: Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban traveled to Florida to meet Donald Trump in the latest stop on his self-styled “peace mission” to resolve the war in Ukraine, which has angered Western allies. Orban posted a photo with the Republican nominee and former US president at his Mar-a-Lago resort, showing the pair giving a thumbs up, in a …

The Guardian reports: Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, will fly to Mar-a-Lago on Thursday to meet with Donald Trump, according to two sources with knowledge of the meeting. Orbán has enraged his Nato allies by meeting with Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping en route to the alliance’s summit in Washington DC. He has also met with Volodymyr Zelenskiy in Kyiv, …

CNN reports: To Donald Trump, Hungarian strongman Viktor Orbán is “fantastic,” Chinese leader Xi Jinping is “brilliant,” North Korea’s Kim Jong Un is “an OK guy,” and, most alarmingly, he allegedly said Adolf Hitler “did some good things,” a worldview that would reverse decades-old US foreign policy in a second term should he win November’s presidential election, multiple former senior …

Bloomberg News reports: Donald Trump plans to host Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida next week, a move that’s likely to fuel anxiety among US allies about the prospect of the former president returning to power. The Hungarian Embassy in Washington and the US State Department didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment on Wednesday …

The New York Times reports: For the second day in a row, mourners walked purposefully along Moscow’s snow-heaped Garden Ring on Saturday carrying bouquets to lay at one of the improvised memorials to Aleksei A. Navalny, the Russian opposition figure who perished in a prison colony the day before. The flowers, wrapped in paper to shield them from the icy …

The Guardian reports: The Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny has died in jail, the country’s prison service has said, in what is likely to be seen as a political assassination attributable to Vladimir Putin. Navalny, 47, one of Putin’s most visible and persistent critics, was being held in a jail about 40 miles north of the Arctic Circle where he …

Reuters reports: Russia’s registration of candidates for the March presidential election has closed, TASS reported on Sunday, with a list including President Vladimir Putin, who is expected to win, and three politicians who all support Moscow’s war in Ukraine. The list did not include the Russian anti-war candidate Boris Nadezhdin after the Central Election Commission (CEC) barred him on Thursday …

“Anyone who gets things done in Washington has to be a dictator. We’re so used to empty promises that the idea that a politician could get elected and deliver the policies that people voted for quickly and efficiently is so foreign that anyone who promises real change on day one has to be a strong man. They sound terrified that …

Posted last night to Trump’s Truth Social account: Kim Jung Un of North Korea, who I got to know and got along with very well during my years as President, is not happy with the U.S. and South Korea doing big training and air exercises together. He feels threatened. Even I would constantly complain that South Korea pays us very …

Reuters reports: The son of the disgraced late Philippines dictator Ferdinand Marcos vowed on Tuesday to work for all people after his stunning election victory, and told the world to judge him by his presidency, not his family’s past. Ferdinand Marcos Jr, better known as “Bongbong”, become the first candidate in recent history to win an outright majority in a …

Reuters reports: Russian President Vladimir Putin justified the invasion of Ukraine before a packed soccer stadium on Friday but coverage of his speech on state television was unexpectedly interrupted by what the Kremlin said was a technical problem with a server. Speaking on a stage at the centre of Moscow’s Luzhniki Stadium, Putin promised to tens of thousands of people …

Reuters reports: Everyone in North Korea is heartbroken over leader Kim Jong Un’s apparent weight loss, said an unidentified resident of Pyongyang quoted on the country’s tightly controlled state media, after watching recent video footage of Kim. The rare public comment on Kim’s health come after foreign analysts noted in early June that the autocratic leader, who is believed to …

Deutsche Welle reports: Belarus’ border security agency on Monday announced a severe tightening of already strict rules limiting citizens’ ability to exit the country. Citizens have fled the country since Alexander Lukashenko was declared the winner of a disputed presidential election last August and mass protests over election rigging were met with a severe crackdown. Faced with the prospect of …

Reuters reports: Turkey pushed NATO allies into watering down an official reaction to the forced landing by Belarus of a passenger plane and the detention of a dissident journalist on Sunday, two diplomats familiar with the matter told Reuters. NATO‘s 30 allies released a two-paragraph statement on Wednesday condemning the forcing down of a Ryanair flight to arrest journalist Roman …

The Associated Press reports: Belarus’ authoritarian president defended Wednesday his decision to tell a passenger jet to land in his country and accused European leaders of waging a “hybrid war” to “strangle” his nation by ordering up new sanctions for diverting the flight and arresting an opposition journalist who was aboard. Speaking before lawmakers and top officials, President Alexander Lukashenko …

The Washington Post reports: European leaders on Monday agreed to impose sectoral sanctions on Belarus and to bar E.U. airlines from flying over the country’s airspace, dealing a potentially crushing blow to the economy, a day after Belarusian authorities forced down a civilian jet and pulled off a dissident journalist. The measures, backed by all 27 E.U. leaders, were an …

Raw Story reports: On Monday’s edition of CNN’s “The Situation Room,” former National Security Adviser John Bolton agreed with the assessment of Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman that the president was a “useful idiot” for Russian President Vladimit Putin, and other foreign strongmen. “I think his behavior, almost across the board in international affairs, betrays lack of analysis, lack of consideration …