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Russia on Thursday wrapped itself in patriotic pageantry for Victory Day, as President Vladimir Putin celebrated the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II by hailing his forces fighting in Ukraine and blasting the West for fueling conflicts around the world. Even though few veterans of what Russia calls the Great Patriotic War are still alive 79 years after Berlin fell to the Red Army, the victory remains the most important and widely revered symbol of Russia’s prowess and a key element of national identity. Even though few veterans of what Russia calls the Great Patriotic War are still...

Synopsis: The diminutive Russian dictator is inaugurated for the fifth term of his permanent presidency. Russia 1 state television covers the event. State media has also anointed Putin as "Vladimir the Terrible", an imperial title.

Russia said on Wednesday that sending NATO troops into Ukraine would potentially be extremely dangerous, and Moscow was closely watching a Ukrainian petition that called for such an intervention. The petition, posted on the Ukrainian president's website, says Ukraine should ask the United States, Britain and other countries to send troops to help it repel Russia's invasion. "We have repeatedly said that direct intervention on the ground in this conflict by the military of NATO countries potentially carries enormous danger, so we consider this an extremely challenging provocation, nothing less, and, of course, we are watching this very carefully."

Ukraine has detained two security officials allegedly involved in a Russian plot to assassinate President Volodymyr Zelensky, which Kyiv’s state security service (SBU) said it foiled.Two colonels in Ukraine’s government protection unit were accused of carrying out “subversive activities against Ukraine in exchange for financial compensation,” Ukraine’s Prosecutor General’s office said Tuesday.Both colonels were charged with treason; one was also charged with preparing a terrorist act.

Russia has likely been recruiting Cuban nationals to fight in its army in Ukraine, research by the BBC has shown. In September and October 2023, passport details belonging to over 200 Cubans who allegedly joined the Russian army were leaked online by a pro-Ukrainian platform called InformNapalm. The passport details were obtained, the site said, by hacking the emails of a Russian military recruitment officer in Tula, south of Moscow. A Facebook search has shown that 31 of the names mentioned in the Ukrainian leak match accounts whose owners appear to be in Russia or linked to the Russian army....

Russia warned Britain on Monday that if British weapons were used by Ukraine to strike Russian territory then Moscow could hit back at British military installations and equipment both inside Ukraine and elsewhere. Russia said British Ambassador Nigel Casey was summoned to the foreign ministry for a formal protest after Foreign Secretary David Cameron said last week that Ukraine had the right to use British weapons to strike Russia. Russia's foreign ministry said the Cameron remarks recognised that Britain was now de facto a part of the conflict and contradicted an earlier assurance that long-range weapons given to Ukraine would...

President Xi Jinping of China, on a two-day visit to France, spoke out firmly against criticism of his country for its close relationship with Russia during the war in Ukraine, saying that “we oppose the crisis being used to cast responsibility on a third country, sully its image and incite a new cold war.” Flanked by the French president, Emmanuel Macron, with whom he held several rounds of talk on Monday, Mr. Xi stiffened as he defended China’s role, recalling it was “not at the origin of this crisis, nor a party to it, nor a participant.” The bristling remark...

VLADIMIR Putin paraded nuclear missile launchers, tanks and thousands of war-ready troops this morning ahead of his triumphant Victory Day event. The Russian tyrant, 71, has already had to axe most of the May 9 celebrations - the most sacred day in the Russian calendar - but Moscow's will go ahead. Ahead of the patriotic event, Russia's fearsome intercontinental nuclear missiles were pulled through the capital's streets in a show of force to the West. Huge columns of troops marched towards the Red Square and even children in oversized battledress joined in the military festivities. The real events will be...

The soldier, who was stationed in Korea and traveled to Russia on his own, is accused of stealing from a woman. A U.S. soldier was detained in Russia last week, a U.S. Army spokesperson said in a statement. He had been stationed in South Korea and traveled to Russia on his own and not on official business, according to four U.S. officials. The soldier is accused of stealing from a woman, the officials said. The soldier was detained on May. 2, U.S. Army spokesperson Cynthia O. Smith, said in a statement. In a statement, Smith said that the soldier was...

Russia plans to hold drills simulating the use of tactical nuclear weapons, the Defense Ministry announced Monday, days after the Kremlin reacted angrily to comments by senior Western officials about the war in Ukraine. The drills are in response to “provocative statements and threats of certain Western officials regarding the Russian Federation,” the Defense Ministry said in a statement. It was the first time that Russia has publicly announced drills involving tactical nuclear weapons, though its strategic nuclear forces regularly hold exercises. Tactical nuclear weapons have a lower yield compared to massive warheads that arm intercontinental ballistic missiles intended to...

A senior Ukrainian intelligence official warned about the threat Moscow poses on other nations in Europe, saying "the Russians will take the Baltics in seven days" if allies don't stand up to Russia now. The comment was made by Major-General Vadym Skibitsky, the deputy head of Ukraine's military intelligence directorate (GUR), during an interview with The Economist published on Thursday. The alarm has been sounded before about the potential of Russian President Vladimir Putin looking to start conflicts in the Baltic states. Earlier this year, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) wrote that the Russian leader appeared to...

France has sent its first troops officially to Ukraine. They have been deployed in support of the Ukrainian 54th Independent Mechanized Brigade in Slavyansk. The French soldiers are drawn from France’s 3rd Infantry Regiment, which is one of the main elements of France’s Foreign Legion (Légion étrangère). In 2022 France had a number of Ukrainians and Russians in the Foreign Legion. They were allowed to leave the Legion and, in the case of the Ukrainians, return to Ukraine to join Ukrainian forces. It isn’t clear if the Russians returned home. The Legion today is run by French officers but the...

Ukraine’s American-backed fight against Russia is being waged not only in the blood-soaked trenches of the Donbas region but also on what military planners call the cognitive battlefield — to win hearts and minds.A sprawling constellation of media outlets organized with substantial funding and direction from the U.S. government has not just worked to counter Russian propaganda but has supported strong censorship laws and shutdowns of dissident outlets, disseminated disinformation of its own, and sought to silence critics of the war, including many American citizens.Economist Jeffrey Sachs, commentator Tucker Carlson, journalist Glenn Greenwald, and University of Chicago Professor John Mearsheimer...

China and Russia are working on a joint invasion of Taiwan, US intelligence officials fear. 'We see China and Russia, for the first time, exercising together in relation to Taiwan and recognising that this is a place where China definitely wants Russia to be working with them, and we see no reason why they wouldn't,' Avril Haines, Director of US National Intelligence, told the US Congress on Thursday. Her warning on the potential cooperation between the countries on Taiwan, which China has long claimed as its own territory to be annexed by force if necessary, was echoed by Lieutenant General...

Russian military personnel have entered an air base in Niger that is hosting U.S. troops, a senior U.S. defense official told Reuters, a move that follows a decision by Niger's junta to expel U.S. forces from the country. The military officers ruling the West African nation have told the U.S. to withdraw its nearly 1,000 military personnel from the country, which until a coup last year had been a key partner for Washington's fight against insurgents who have killed thousands of people and displaced millions more. A senior U.S. defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Russian forces were...

(Kyiv, May 2, 2024) – Russian forces appear to have executed at least 15 Ukrainian soldiers as they attempted to surrender, and possibly six more who were surrendering or who had surrendered, since early December 2023, Human Rights Watch said today. These incidents should be investigated as war crimes. “Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, its forces have committed many heinous war crimes,” said Belkis Wille, associate crisis and conflict director at Human Rights Watch. “The summary execution – or murder – of surrendering and injured Ukrainian soldiers, gunned down in cold blood, expressly forbidden under international humanitarian law, is...

The US military has withdrawn troops from a French military base in Chad after the country demanded they leave last month, a Pentagon spokesperson and other sources familiar with the matter told CNN on Wednesday. More than half of the US troops stationed at the French military base in Chad’s capital, N’Djamena, have now left the country and relocated to Germany. CNN previously reported that fewer than 100 US troops were stationed in Chad, most of them as part of the US’ Special Operations Task Force, an important hub for US Special Operations Forces in the region. The Special Operations...

A State Department official is pushing Thursday for China and Russia to declare that only humans – and not artificial intelligence – will make decisions on deploying nuclear weapons. Paul Dean, an official in the State Department’s Bureau of Arms Control, Deterrence, and Stability, said during a press briefing that the U.S. has already made "a very clear and strong commitment that in cases of nuclear employment, that decision would only be made by a human being. "We would never defer a decision on nuclear employment to AI. We strongly stand by that statement and we’ve made it publicly with...

Politicians and faith leaders have condemned the incident at the Polish capital's Nożyk Synagogue, which follows similar acts across Europe. Warsaw's main synagogue was attacked with firebombs early on Wednesday by an unknown perpetrator, but sustained minimal damage and nobody was hurt, Poland's chief rabbi said. The incident was strongly condemned by political leaders. The attack on the Nożyk Synagogue happened around 1 am, Rabbi Michael Schudrich told The Associated Press.

Just as Russia had started to bring back some refinery capacity damaged by Ukrainian drone attacks earlier this year, a new wave of drone attacks hit a major refinery owned by Rosneft, for a second time.Rosneft’s Ryazan refinery southeast of Moscow caught fire after the overnight drone attack, an anonymous Ukrainian military source with knowledge of the situation told Bloomberg News on Wednesday.The refinery in the region of Ryazan, whose main city of the same name is some 120 miles southeast of Moscow, was first attacked by drones in the middle of March. The first attack also led to a...