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You just don't expect the words 'Putin' and 'rap' to appear in the same headline. But here we are, with the Russian president extraordinaire declaring that the Kremlin must "take charge" of rap music. Lookit: Putin wants government to "take charge" of rap music ...and here's what the BBC story said: Russian President Vladimir Putin has asked the government to "take charge" of rap music after a number of concerts were cancelled across the country. Efforts to ban rap were "impossible" and so the state should play a greater role in controlling it, he said. The Ministry of Culture...

Alarmed by the growing popularity of rap among Russian youth, President Vladimir Putin wants cultural leaders to devise a means of controlling, rather than banning, popular music. Putin says “if it is impossible to stop, then we must lead it and direct it.” […] Putin noted that “rap is based on three pillars: sex, drugs and protest.” But he is particularly concerned with drug themes prevalent in rap, saying “this is a path to the degradation of the nation.” …

Russia is deploying nuclear-capable Tu-160 Blackjack bombers to Venezuela this week as part of an increasingly provocative pattern of bomber training flights, according to American defense officials. At least two Blackjacks will fly from a strategic forces air base in Russia to Venezuela as part of a series of training exercises that will include long-range refueling, said officials familiar with Russian plans for the flight. The bomber foray to South America will be Russia's seventh training flight for Blackjack bombers in the past three months. Mark Schneider, a former Pentagon official and specialist on the Russian military, said Tu-160 flights...

Ukrainian Orthodox priests are due to hold a historic council in Kiev to create a new national church - a move condemned as schism by Russian clergy. This comes after the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, the spiritual leader of the world's Orthodoxy, recognised the independence of the Ukrainian Church from Moscow.

President Vladimir Putin said on Tuesday it was unclear to him why a Russian woman, Maria Butina, had been detained in the United States and accused of being a Russian agent because his intelligence chiefs had told him they knew nothing about her. “...she risks 15 years in jail. For what?” asked Putin. “...I asked all the heads of our intelligence services what is going on. Nobody knows anything about her.”

On May 17, I published an article in the Italian newspaper La Verità about pope Benedict’s abdication. A few days before, in a renowned Italian geopolitical magazine called Limes, Professor Germano Dottori had argued that Joseph Ratzinger’s 2013 abdication, and the former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi’s resignation in 2011, after a financial storm sold to public opinion as a “public debt” crisis, were the result of pressures on the part of Obama administration in the United States. According to Dottori, Obama was eager to dethrone Benedict XVI for two reasons. On the one hand, his presidency was close to...

Well, here we go again with President Trump giving more evidence of collusion with the Russians by announcing withdrawal from the INF Treaty that I noted in August 2015 President Obama’s “flexibility” was allowing Vladimir Putin to violate with impunity: Russian officials on Wednesday warned of "retaliation" to the U.S. decision to walk out of a key arms treaty U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced at a NATO meeting Tuesday that Washington will suspend its obligations under the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) in 60 days, citing Russian "cheating."… The U.S. has shared intelligence evidence with its NATO allies...

Russia has completed an elaborate air defense system in Syria that curbs the operational capabilities of both the United States and Israel, according to a report by the Washington- based Institute for the Study of War. The deployments throughout the conflict-ravaged country include variations of the advanced S-300 and S-400 systems in addition to other cutting-edge technologies. Moscow long ago exported such systems to Syria, however, they remained under the control of its own army. Only after the accidental downing in September by Syrian forces of a Russian reconnaissance plane, an incident the Kremlin blamed on Jerusalem which minutes earlier...

The G-20 summit in Argentina was supposed to be part of the carefully choreographed diplomatic dance between two of the world’s most powerful leaders. Instead, Russia’s aggressive action against Ukraine prompted President Donald Trump to cancel a planned meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, leaving Putin filling his summit dance card with other partners, Newsmax reported. Putin met instead with Turkish President Recip Erdogan, who used the time to try to convince Putin to hold a summit on the situation in Syria’s Idlib province, where Russia-based Syrian forces are slowly squeezing the last pockets of resistance, Reuters reported. Putin also...

Even those who accept that unjust laws must be observed until they are repealed say that the actions of Russian officials in Naberezhny Chelny against a Baptist minister are intended not to enforce the law but to intimidate Evangelical Baptists... A week ago, police in that Middle Volga city arrested Baptist minister Leonid Povorov for baptizing believers in public without securing advanced permission from officials even though they had not given him notice, brought the pastor in shackles to the courtroom, and imposed a 20,000-ruble (330 US dollar) fine. Both locally and at the national level, Baptists have protested these...

The West does not realise what it’s like to be a neighbour of Russia...” Meanwhile, in Central Europe, “we know exactly what price one pays for being a neighbour of both Russia and Germany..."

C’mon now. If you can’t bribe Vladimir Putin, who can you bribe? “If true, this story further underscores the need to finish the Committee’s counterintelligence investigation to determine what, if any, financial leverage the Russians may hold over President Trump and the Trump Organization, and what Trump may have hoped to gain by any financial offer to Putin,” Rep. Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the committee, said in a statement to BuzzFeed News Thursday evening…[Dem Rep. Joaquin] Castro also said he believed the plan could have violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. “If this was an attempt to...

BERLIN (Reuters) - The European Union and the United States should consider banning from their ports Russian ships originating from the Sea of Azov after Russia captured three Ukrainian vessels there, German Chancellor Angela Merkel's protege said on Friday. Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, who is leading the race to succeed Merkel as leader of her ruling conservatives, also said Germany must be ready to take more responsibility in foreign policy and to spend more on defense. Russia seized the Ukrainian vessels and their crews on Sunday near Crimea, the Ukrainian region which Moscow annexed in 2014, over what it said was their...

The ambassador, Włodzimierz Marciniak, was called to the foreign ministry in Moscow after Polish public television broadcaster TVP Info used a set design featuring the Nazi symbol in reference to Russia in a current-affairs programme it aired on Wednesday, he design featured the words "Achtung Russia!" and used the infamous Nazi SS symbol in the word “Russia,” the website reported. It cited journalist Tomasz Sakiewicz, editor-in-chief of conservative Polish weekly Gazeta Polska, as saying that a poster on which the set design was based has been "known to the media" in Poland for four years. “So why commotion now?

A Russian Orthodox cathedral set to be built for the country’s armed forces will reportedly train military priests, the head of a foundation in charge of collecting donations for its construction has said. Blueprints for the Armed Forces cathedral were reportedly unveiled at the Venice Bienalle on Thursday, two months after the Russian Defense Ministry began collecting donations to build the megastructure. Reports this year disclosed plans to train priests embedded with the Airborne Troops to drive combat vehicles and operate communication equipment. “A school for military priests is being built and the institute of Sisters of Charity nurses will...

The U.S. power grid is continuing to be targeted and probed by Russian cyber actors, according to a notable cybersecurity firm, as well as other aspects of critical infrastructure (CI). Researched from the threat intelligence firm FireEye said at the CyberwarCon forum in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday that even though the American power grid is relatively well-defended and tough to strike with a full-scale cyber attack, that hasn’t deterred Russian state actors from continuing to probe for weaknesses...

President Donald Trump is canceling his G-20 summit meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin over Russia’s conflict with Ukraine, Trump announced in a tweet on Thursday. Putin and Trump were set to meet on Saturday at the summit of world leaders in Argentina, the Kremlin said this week. Donald J. Trump ✔ @realDonaldTrump Based on the fact that the ships and sailors have not been returned to Ukraine from Russia, I have decided it would be best for all parties concerned to cancel my previously scheduled meeting.... 17.2K 11:34 AM - Nov 29, 2018

In a stunning sequence of events, the Russian military opened fire then seized three Ukrainian navy vessels in an unprovoked attack on the Black Sea last Sunday. In the melee, several Ukrainian sailors were wounded and 24 captured. Moscow followed up this flagrant act of war by parading the sailors on Russian television to give clearly coerced confessions of guilt. This attack is but the latest escalation in the ongoing Russian war against Ukraine that has been churning since 2014. It’s also the first great test for the Trump administration regarding Russia and one that will have lasting consequences on...

President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Mr Erdogan, Mr Abbas, members of the clergy, foreign guests, friends, Let me congratulate you from all my heart on the opening of Moscow’s rebuilt Cathedral Mosque. This is a big event for all Muslims in Russia. One of Moscow’s oldest mosques stood on this historical site and has undergone reconstruction that now makes it the biggest in Europe. It was given a magnificent modern new look worthy of the capital of our united, multi-ethnic and multi-confessional country. This new mosque is worthy of Russia, in which, I want to stress, Islam, under our country’s...

Best Clinic, a small chain of private medical centres in Moscow, said in an advert on its website that it carried out "female circumcision" on girls aged between five and 12, the Russian language online newspaper Meduza said on Tuesday. Meduza published screenshots of the advert, which Best Clinic has since removed from its website...The Prosecutor General's Office was not immediately available to comment. The health ministry declined to comment, saying that female circumcision is not a medical procedure and is not in their competence...The World Health Organization says about 200 million women and girls worldwide have undergone FGM, which...