Tag Archives: Vladimir Putin

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 …

Reuters reports: President Vladimir Putin on Monday approved a new foreign policy doctrine based around the concept of a “Russian World”, a notion that conservative ideologues have used to justify intervention abroad in support of Russian-speakers. The 31-page “humanitarian policy”, published more than six months into the war in Ukraine, says Russia should “protect, safeguard and advance the traditions and …

Reuters reports: Novaya Gazeta, one of Russia’s last independent news outlets, was stripped of its media licence on Monday, and in effect banned from operating. Russia’s media watchdog Rozkomnadzor had accused the publication of failing to provide documents related to a change of ownership in 2006. Speaking outside court, editor-in-chief Dmitry Muratov, a Nobel Peace laureate for his efforts to …

The Associated Press reports: Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday paid tribute to Mikhail Gorbachev but will not attend the late former Soviet leader’s funeral, a decision reflecting the Kremlin’s ambivalence about Gorbachev’s legacy. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that prior to departing for a working trip to Russia’s westernmost Baltic exclave of Kaliningrad, Putin visited a Moscow hospital where …

Reuters reports: Ravil Maganov, the chairman of Russia’s second-largest oil producer Lukoil died on Thursday after falling from a hospital window in Moscow, two sources familiar with the situation said, becoming the latest in a series of businessmen to meet with sudden unexplained deaths. The sources confirmed reports by several Russian media that the 67-year-old had plunged to his death, …

The Guardian reports: Russia’s defence minister Sergei Shoigu is being “sidelined” due to problems in the war against Ukraine and is likely being ridiculed by soldiers for his “ineffectual” leadership, said British intelligence. The latest update from the Ministry of Defence (MoD) said: “Recent independent Russian media reports have claimed that due to the problems Russia is facing in its …

Bloomberg News reports: President Vladimir Putin ordered his army to boost its troop total by 137,000 to 1.15 million, the highest level in more than a decade, as Russia digs in for its war against Ukrainian forces backed by the US and its allies. Putin’s brief decree, published on the Kremlin’s website, didn’t explain the motivation for the increase or …

Reuters reports: The daughter of an ultra-nationalist Russian ideologue who advocates Russia absorbing Ukraine was killed in a suspected car bomb attack outside Moscow, Russian state investigators said on Sunday. Darya Dugina, daughter of prominent ideologue Alexander Dugin, was killed on Saturday evening after a suspected explosive device blew up the Toyota Land Cruiser she was driving, investigators said. Father …

The Sunday Times reports: Russian students heading back to school in the autumn will be taught about the country’s values amid the Kremlin’s wider campaign to implement “patriotic” education in schools. Starting from September 5, schools across the country will dedicate hours to so-called “conversations about important things”, Sergei Novikov, head of the presidential directorate for social projects, told Tass, …

Axios reports: The versatile Jonathan Lemire — Politico’s White House bureau chief and host of MSNBC’s “Way Too Early” — is out Tuesday with “The Big Lie,” his new book that includes this account of President Trump’s disastrous press conference with Vladimir Putin in Helsinki in 2018: “Fiona Hill, the senior Russia expert on the National Security Council, who was …