Tag Archives: Vladimir Putin

The Times of London reports: Russia’s beleaguered enlistment officers were given a new way to entice men to join up this week: plying their families with fresh fish. The local chief of President Putin’s ruling party, Mikhail Shuvalov, promised islanders in the far-eastern Sakhalin island 5kg of flounder, pollock and salmon in exchange for sending their men to a war …

Reuters reports: President Vladimir Putin formally incorporated four Ukrainian regions into Russia on Wednesday even as his forces retreated within them, while Moscow stepped up its energy war with Europe by further cutting gas supplies. Pushing ahead with Europe’s biggest annexation since World War Two, Putin signed off on a law annexing the new territory, which represents up to 18% …

Reuters reports: Pope Francis for the first time directly begged Russian President Vladimir Putin to stop the “spiral of violence and death” in Ukraine, saying on Sunday that the crisis was risking a nuclear escalation with uncontrollable global consequences. In an address dedicated to Ukraine and made to thousands of people in St. Peter’s Square, Francis also condemned Putin’s latest …

The Associated Press reports: Russian President Vladimir Putin has opened a Kremlin ceremony to start the process of absorbing parts of Ukraine into Russia, defying international law. The annexation ceremony in the Kremlin’s opulent white-and-gold St. George’s Hall will feature Putin and the heads of the four regions of Ukraine signing treaties for them to join Russia, in a sharp …

The New York Times reports: The Kremlin has dispatched still more forces to shore up its faltering war effort, but the units are headed not to Ukraine but to Russia’s borders with other countries, where on Tuesday they were confronting young Russian men trying to join an exodus out of the country. As the avenues for Russians to escape a …

The Associated Press reports: The Kremlin paved the way Tuesday to annex more of Ukraine and escalate the war by claiming that residents of a large swath overwhelmingly supported joining with Russia in stage-managed referendums the U.S. and its Western allies have dismissed as illegitimate. Pro-Moscow officials said all four occupied regions of Ukraine voted to join Russia. According to …

The Associated Press reports: President Vladimir Putin has granted Russian citizenship to former U.S. security contractor Edward Snowden, according to a decree signed by the Russian leader on Monday. Snowden is one of 75 foreign nationals listed by the decree as being granted Russian citizenship. The decree was published on an official government website. Snowden, a former contractor with the …

The Associated Press reports: Military-aged men fled Russia in droves Friday, filling planes and causing traffic jams at border crossings to avoid being rounded up to fight in Ukraine following the Kremlin’s partial military mobilization. Queues stretching for 10 kilometers (6 miles) formed on a road leading to the southern border with Georgia, according to Yandex Maps, a Russian online …

Yahoo News reports: The former head of a Kremlin-linked engineering institute died Wednesday in an apparent accident, according to CNN — adding to the long list of Russian CEOs and officials who have met a mysterious end this year. Russian news outlet Izvestia reported that Anatoly Gerashchenko “fell from a great height” down numerous flights of stairs inside the Moscow …

The Associated Press reports: Voting began Friday in Moscow-held regions of Ukraine on referendums to become part of Russia, Russian-backed officials there said. The Kremlin-orchestrated referendums, which have been widely denounced by Ukraine and the West as shams without any legal force, are seen as a step toward annexing the territories by Russia. The vote, which asks residents if they …

Reuters reports: Some draft-age Russians headed abroad on Thursday to escape their country’s biggest conscription drive since World War Two, while explosions shook southeastern Ukraine on the eve of referendums planned there by pro-Moscow separatists. President Vladimir Putin’s new mobilisation campaign escalates a war that has already killed thousands, displaced millions, pulverised cities, damaged the global economy and revived Cold …

Air Live reports: Russian airlines have stopped selling tickets to Russian men aged 18 to 65 unless they can provide evidence of approval to travel from the Ministry of Defense. All flights from Russia to available foreign destinations were sold out Wednesday after President Vladimir Putin declared a “partial” mobilization of the country’s 25 million reservists. Flights from Moscow to …

Bloomberg News reports: As Russia moves to annex occupied Ukrainian territory, Putin also renewed his warnings of a nuclear threat. “When the territorial integrity of our country is threatened, we will certainly use all the means at our disposal to protect Russia and our people,” he said in a televised national address Wednesday. “This is not a bluff.” “Those who …

Reuters reports: Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday called up 300,000 reservists to fight in Ukraine and said Moscow would respond with the might of all its vast arsenal if the West pursued what he called its “nuclear blackmail” over the conflict there. It was Russia’s first such mobilisation since World War Two and signified a major escalation of the …

The Associated Press reports: The separatist leaders of four Russian-controlled areas of Ukraine said Tuesday they were planning to hold votes starting later this week for the territories to become part of Russia as Moscow loses ground in the war it launched. The four regions are Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia. The announcements of referendums starting Friday came after a …

The New York Times reports: More than 4,000 miles away, organizations linked to the Russian government had assigned teams to the Women’s March. At desks in bland offices in St. Petersburg, using models derived from advertising and public relations, copywriters were testing out social media messages critical of the Women’s March movement, adopting the personas of fictional Americans. They posted …

Yahoo News reports: Another top ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin has died this week, this time of an alleged “stroke” while on a business trip in the village of Roshchino in Russia’s far east region. Vladimir Nikolayevich Sungorkin, 68, was editor-in-chief of the Russian state newspaper, Komsomolskaya Pravda. According to the newspaper, Sungorkin died “suddenly” after showing signs of …

NBC News reports: Russia has spent more than $300 million in a global campaign to influence foreign political events, according to a newly declassified U.S. intelligence review. Moscow has covertly funded political parties, officials and politicians in at least two dozen nations across four continents since 2014, the U.S. said Tuesday, as the Kremlin’s role in other countries’ affairs comes …

Reuters reports: Vladimir Putin’s chief envoy on Ukraine told the Russian leader as the war began that he had struck a provisional deal with Kyiv that would satisfy Russia’s demand that Ukraine stay out of NATO, but Putin rejected it and pressed ahead with his military campaign, according to three people close to the Russian leadership. The Ukrainian-born envoy, Dmitry …

The Associated Press reports: Ukrainian troops expanded their territorial gains Monday by pushing all the way to the country’s northeastern border in places and claimed to have captured many Russian soldiers as part of the lightning advance that forced Moscow to make a hasty retreat. A spokesman for Ukrainian military intelligence said Russian troops were surrendering en masse as “they …