Tag Archives: dictators

Reuters reports: A monument to Soviet dictator Josef Stalin erected in Moscow’s metro is stirring debate, with some Russians welcoming it as a historical tribute, but others saying it’s a mistake to commemorate someone who presided over so much suffering. The life-size wall sculpture in Moscow’s Taganskaya metro station depicts Stalin standing on Moscow’s Red Square surrounded by a crowd …

The Associated Press reports: Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela on Sunday, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the United States his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at President Nicolás Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of …

The New York Times reports: The photos shared by Mr. Van Hollen and others posted by Mr. Bukele were the first public glimpses of Mr. Abrego Garcia since his deportation in March, which the Trump administration admitted in court was an error. The Supreme Court has ordered the administration to “facilitate” his return, but a federal judge overseeing the case …

Reuters reports: Lawyers challenging the incarceration in El Salvador of more than 200 Venezuelans deported by the U.S. said the Salvadoran government is denying the prisoners access to attorneys and contact with the outside world. Under an agreement with the Salvadoran government, President Donald Trump’s administration in March sent 238 Venezuelans to its Terrorism Confinement Center, the largest prison in …

Mother Jones reports: Few media organizations have covered the rise of Bukele, as closely or fearlessly, as El Faro, founded in 1998 as the first digital newspaper in Latin America. In 2020, El Faro began publishing a blockbuster investigation that exposed secret negotiations between the Bukele administration and leaders of the MS-13 gang who were imprisoned in El Salvador. The …

The New York Times reports: President Trump will meet with President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador at the White House on Monday as the administration ramps up its use of a notorious Salvadoran prison for holding migrants deported by the United States. In Mr. Bukele, who has referred to himself as the world’s “coolest dictator,” Mr. Trump has found a …

The Guardian reports: Hungary’s Budapest Pride should be held in a “closed venue” this year rather than on a city centre avenue as in previous years, the prime minister Viktor Orbán’s chief of staff has said, citing child protection. The plan, announced on Wednesday, appeared to be part of Orbán’s restrictions on the activities of the LGBTQ+ community as the …

The New York Times reports: President Trump on Saturday posted on social media a single sentence that appears to encapsulate his attitude as he tests the nation’s legal and constitutional boundaries in the process of upending the federal government and punishing his perceived enemies. “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law,” Mr. Trump wrote, first on his social …

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 …