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Tens of thousands of residents in the Russian city of Orenburg and neighbouring Kazakhstan have been told to evacuate immediately as flood waters inundate homes. -snip- Orenburg is home to half a million people, and the city's mayor Sergei Salmin said the situation was extremely dangerous. "Over the last 10 hours, the water level in the Ural River has risen by 40cm … these levels are dangerous," he wrote on the Telegram messenger app. He called on residents to gather essential items and to abandon their homes. Emergency workers said water levels in the Ural River were more than two...

Russians left homeless following floods have directed their frustration towards President Vladimir Putin and local officials. Over a hundred individuals sought aid from Putin on Monday after the city or Orsk was struck with the worst flooding ever recorded, expressing their discontent with local authorities whom they accuse of insufficient assistance. An emergency was declared in the Orenburg region near Kazakhstan, as the Ural River, Europe’s third longest, surged several meters in mere hours last Friday, breaching a dam embankment in the city. Large portions of Orsk, situated 1,800 km east of Moscow with a population of 230,000, now lie...

President Vladimir Putin on Thursday hinted at higher taxes for wealthy individuals and companies, saying that a fairer distribution of the tax burden was needed as he urged Russian businessmen to invest in Russia. "I propose thinking about approaches to modernising our fiscal system, to a fairer distribution of the tax burden towards those with higher personal and corporate incomes," Putin said in a speech to lawmakers and other members of Russia's elite. "Conversely, lowering the tax burden on families through deductions is needed, stimulating businesses that invest funds in development, in the implementation of infrastructure and social projects." Putin...

Kremlin-controlled media corrected a mistake that Vladimir Putin made about World War II in his interview with Tucker Carlson. Interjections by the former Fox News anchor during his interview released on Thursday were also cut, it was reported, and a version viewed online omitted a controversial segment in which the Russian president spoke about Adolf Hitler. The fallout from the interview continues as the American anchor faced criticism that he did little to challenge the Russian president, especially during monologues about Russian history that he used to justify his full-scale invasion of Ukraine. In one part of the interview, Putin...

Over the past few months, a Russian political scientist named Valery Solovei has stoked a global frenzy with a sensational claim: that Vladmir Putin died last year and today is represented in public by a body double. The Kremlin’s elite, Solovei tells his half-million online followers, controls the double and has stuffed Putin’s body in a freezer. Then on Thursday, journalist Tucker Carlson aired a two-hour interview with Putin. Solovei shrugged it off as a sham. Carlson, he said, interviewed Putin’s doppelgänger, who will now be passed off as real to millions of viewers in the West. “Putin is dead,...

Russian President Vladimir Putin castigated Europe on Saturday for "Russophobia" and criticized the Baltic States over human rights at the unveiling of a World War Two memorial. -snip- In his speech, Putin also lambasted the Baltic States over human rights. Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania - ruled from Moscow during the Cold War but now members of the European Union and NATO military alliance - have been among the strongest critics of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Vladimir Putin is allegedly putting out feelers to see if America is ready for talks on ending the war in Ukraine. The Russian president is also 'prepared to drop opposition to Kyiv joining Nato', according to a new Bloomberg report.

Russian forces are contending with Ukrainian "gamers" using first-person-view (FPV) drones across the front line against Russian strongholds, a top Russian official has said, as uncrewed vehicles gain an ever higher profile in the 23 month-old war. Ukrainian unmanned vehicle operators carried out a "continuous raid" on Russian positions for several days at an undisclosed location along the front line, said Dmitry Rogozin, former head of the Russian Space agency, who is now a Moscow-installed official in the annexed Zaporizhzhia region of southern Ukraine. "In four hours, 24 FPV drones flew to the stronghold of only one of our volunteer...

STREAMING VIDEO - live 1-23-2024 🔴 RUSSIAN ARMY TAKES RECORD LOSSES! Breaking Ukraine War Footage And News With The Enforcer (Day 699) The Enforcer 157K subscribers 1-23-2024 10:00 p.m https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zTd1ibsa1cU The Russian army has taken the highest losses in one day over the course of the war as offensive battles in Avdiivka and Kherson prove catastrpohic. The Russian army is currently seeming to prepare to move towards more defensive battles, but the high losses carry on. Russian is setting up massive air defense sites in St. Petersburg after the attack on Ust-Luga

Russian President Vladimir Putin is expected to visit Egypt on Tuesday, 23 January, to join his Egyptian counterpart Abdel Fattah El-Sisi in laying the foundation of El-Dabaa, Egypt's first-ever nuclear power plant (NPP). Both Putin and Sisi will take part in an official ceremony of the final stage of pouring the concrete of the fourth reactor of Dabaa developed by the Russian state atomic energy corporation ROSATOM in Dabaa city, located in the Mediterranean Marsa Matrouh province, about 320 kilometres northwest of the capital Cairo, Egyptian news outlets reported. The long-awaited NPP, which will operate with a 120-megawatt capacity for...

While speaking at a United Nations Security Council meeting in New York City on Monday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov accused the United States of providing Ukraine with "old junk" weapons while building up its military complex. In November, The Washington Post reported that of the $68 billion in military aid Congress approved for Ukraine, nearly 90 percent went back to the U.S. to build new weapons or replace ones sent to Ukraine from American stockpiles. The Post wrote that a Ukrainian official said "every single state in the U.S. contributes to this effort," thus creating more American jobs. The...

New edict affects all of Moscow's historic holdings across three continents, including former imperial colonies in the US. Russia has laid the groundwork for expanding its soft power across North America and Asia with a new decree Vladimir Putin signed last week. The new order provides funds to search, register and provide legal protection to Russian properties abroad – including land and buildings located in former Russian Empire and Soviet Union territories. Among the areas affected by the new decree is Alaska, which was sold to the United States in 1867 and still hosts communities with close links to Russia....

Ukraine's successful suppression of the Russian Black Sea fleet has resulted in Kyiv's grain exports rising to their highest levels since the invasion by Moscow began. -snip- Russia's Black Sea fleet flagship Moskva was destroyed by Ukraine in the early days of the war. The losses have continued since then, with British Defence Secretary Grant Shapp saying last month that Russia had lost 20 percent of its Black Sea fleet over the course of four months. Significant recent losses include the December destruction of large Russian landing ship Novocherkassk and last week's revelation that Ukrainian drones sank a Tarantul-class corvette...

For a microcosm of how the war in Ukraine has warped Russia’s economy, look no further than a carton of eggs. The grocery staple has been in short supply in recent months and prices have skyrocketed, prompting Russians from Belgorod to Siberia to form lines reminiscent of Soviet times. President Vladimir Putin has publicly apologized, blaming the egg shock on the government. Last month, a poultry-farm boss known as “the Egg King” survived an assassination attempt shortly after authorities started investigating his farm due to high prices. Behind the soaring price tag—up around 60% in December from a year earlier,...

Sergey Lavrov, Russia's foreign minister, thanked his North Korean counterpart, Choe Son Hui, for supporting the Kremlin's war in Ukraine, South Korean news outlet Yonhap News has reported. Russian President Vladimir Putin and Lavrov hosted Choe on Tuesday to discuss bolstering ties amid reports of an arms cooperation deal between Moscow and Pyongyang. His comments underscore the Kremlin's increasing dependence on North Korea for weaponry.

North Korea's foreign minister lauded comradely ties with Russia on Tuesday and then held rare talks in the Kremlin with President Vladimir Putin, who has been invited by Kim Jong Un to visit the reclusive nuclear-armed country. -snip- Earlier on Tuesday, during her talks with Lavrov, North Korea's Choe hailed progress on implementing agreements struck during Kim's visit to eastern Russia last September. "The fact that now the foreign ministers of the two countries often meet and deepen comradely ties is yet more proof that the Korean-Russian friendly relations, with a long history of friendship and tradition, are energetically moving...

A politician bidding to run against Vladimir Putin in Russia's upcoming presidential election described the decision to go to war in Ukraine as a "big mistake" in comments to the wives of soldiers on Thursday. Boris Nadezhdin, representing a centre-right party called Civic Initiative that has no seats in parliament, is seeking to gather the necessary 100,000 signatures from people across Russia to enable him to stand against Putin. -snip- Nadezhdin has promised to present a plan for ending the conflict. Last week he also aimed sharp criticism at the authorities over heating outages that have struck parts of Russia...

Vladimir Putin has complained that his old friends often no longer recognise him amid rumours he regularly uses body doubles. The Russian dictator, 71, told an audience in the country's remote Chukotka region that school and university classmates do not believe it's really him. 'When I [very occasionally] meet my classmates or fellow university students, they often look at me and say - "I don't believe it, is it actually you, or not you?",' he said. -snip- Solovey - who once taught future Russian spies and diplomats - was challenged by a top Ukrainian TV interviewer Dmitry Gordon over his...

Former American intelligence officer Scott Ritter has visited the Russian republic of Chechnya, offering its leader Ramzan Kadyrov and his fighters "friendship" with the United States. Ritter, a former United Nations Special Commission weapons inspector, U.S. Marine Corps intelligence officer, and a convicted sex offender, made the remarks in an address during his visit to Chechnya's capital, Grozny.

Russian President Vladimir Putin's threats to let Europe "freeze" over winter have come back to bite his country as power outages spread nationwide. Tens of thousands of Russians are reported to have no heating in their homes in the Moscow region alone after a heating main burst at the Klimovsk Specialized Ammunition Plant in the town of Podolsk, which is around 30 miles south of central Moscow, on January 4. Residents in multiple regions including Rostov, St. Petersburg, Volgograd, and Voronezh have also been affected by lengthy power outages, and some have resorted to filming video appeals as they grapple...