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Residents in a region hit by the deepest drone strikes within Russian territory since the start of the war in Ukraine have been warned that air defenses may not be able to protect them from future attacks. Since the start of its full-scale invasion, Russia has been hit with drone strikes reaching Moscow as well as ammunition depots and warehouses around the country linked to the war effort. Russian authorities blame Ukraine for the attacks, which Kyiv rarely claims responsibility for. In the latest incident, a drone attack on the Russian republic of Tatarstan on Tuesday reportedly hit industrial areas...

Vladimir Putin's military is unlikely to use its prized T-14 Armata tank in combat in Ukraine because it is "too valuable," an ally of the Russian president said. The comments were made by Sergey Chemezov, the CEO of Rostec, the country's state-owned defense conglomerate, in an interview with Russian state-run news agency RIA Novosti, published Sunday. Moscow is reported to have briefly deployed several of the main battle tanks for combat operations in July 2023, before they were withdrawn from the front line. The tank was once labeled by a senior British army official as "the most revolutionary tank in...

Deliveries of all-new Russian aircraft have been delayed by two years due to safety concerns ... The publication said that, for example, the weight of the new MS-21 passenger aircraft has increased by 5.75 tons, compared to the previous version, which used foreign components and Western engines. This means its flight range and altitude have been significantly reduced. One of Kommersant's sources said that, if Russia is unable to reduce the weight of the aircraft, it will be impossible for authorities to make the plane achieve the desired performance characteristics. "It's impossible to increase engine thrust by 20 percent," the...

Russia has approved a temporary ban on the export of gasoline, a representative for the country's Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak told local media on Tuesday. Beginning May 1, Russia will impose a six-month ban on gasoline exports to allow the country to "offset the booming demand for petroleum products," the official told Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin in an internal letter in January, publication RBC reported. Fuel shortages have been reported nationwide in Russia, which is one of the world's biggest producers of oil and gas. Wholesale fuel prices have soared across the country, and Ukraine has ramped up...

Putin is reportedly on the brink of a new land grab to defy the West by possibly announcing soon that Russia is taking control of a breakaway Moldovan region. There is speculation that unofficial state Transnistria is poised to make an appeal to Putin to join Russia. The landlocked strip along the Dniester River is wedged between Moldova and Ukraine. Putin already has a 'peacekeeping' force of up to 2,000 troops in the territory which Russia says overwhelmingly wishes to be incorporated by Moscow. There are also likely thousands of Russian paramilitaries on the ground. A fear is Putin will...

Vladimir Putin taunted the West by taking a joyride in a modernised supersonic Tu-160M strategic nuclear bomber today - as the Kremlin threatened nuclear war. The despot's stunt - which lasted around 40 minutes - appeared to be intended to enhance his macho ratings as he stands for re-election next month -snip- Putin was seen taking off in Kazan a day after he visited a factory in the city where the Tupolev bombers are manufactured.

Ivan Sechin, the son of Russian state-owned oil giant Rosneft CEO Igor Sechin, died on February 5 at the age of 35, it has been reported. -snip- The VChK-OGPU outlet, which purports to have inside information from Russian security forces, also reported on Sechin's death. Citing an unnamed source, it said that at approximately 4.30 a.m. on February 5, Sechin "complained that he felt bad and was suffocating." "The man fell on the bed and lost consciousness. Those around him carried Ivan to the floor and tried to provide primary resuscitation measures," the Telegram channel said, adding that an ambulance...

Tucker Carlson defended on Monday his decision not to question Russian President Vladimir Putin about allegations that the Kremlin has ordered assassinations of political dissidents. "Every leader kills people. Some kill more than others," the former Fox News host said. His comments came during a discussion at the World Government Summit in Dubai that touched upon his interview last week with the Russian leader. The interview, taped on February 6 and aired two nights later, has made international headlines for numerous statements made by Putin, including his supposed rationale for invading Ukraine. During the Dubai summit, Egyptian journalist Emad el-Din...

Russian police have put Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas, Lithuania's culture minister and members of the previous Latvian parliament on a wanted list, according to the Russian Interior Ministry's database. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Kallas was wanted for the "desecration of historical memory". Russian state agency TASS said the Baltic officials were accused of "destroying monuments to Soviet soldiers", acts that are punishable by a 5-year prison term under the Russian criminal code. -snip- Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said: "This is only the beginning." "Crimes against the memory of the world's liberators from Nazism and fascism must...

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,...

“Are we having a talkshow or a serious conversation?” Vladimir Putin asked Tucker Carlson at the start of their interview on Thursday. By the end of the two-hour conversation, the answer was clear: neither. Instead, viewers got a lesson in Russian history, going all the way back to Prince Rurik – a Scandinavian who came and dished out a good kicking in the region in 862 – and taking in the reign of Yaroslav the Wise, the circa-1300 threat of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and Russia going to war with Poland in the mid-1600s. -snip- “So that you don’t...

Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson interviewed Russian President Vladimir Putin during his visit to Moscow, according to a report online. -snip- "As far as I understand, Tucker Carlson got what he wanted," posted Venediktov on Tuesday in Russian. The post was shared by The Financial Times' Moscow bureau chief, Max Seddon, who wrote: "Russian journalistic gadfly Alexei Venediktov says Tucker Carlson has indeed interviewed Vladimir Putin while in Moscow." -snip- Carlson was the host of Tucker Carlson Tonight from 2016 to 2023 before he was fired by the network in April 2023 with no official explanation given. He had...

A bird flu outbreak is ravaging California’s massive poultry industry, forcing businesses to kill more than one million chickens and causing egg prices to soar. Mike Weber, who owns Sunrise Farms in Sonoma County, learned last month that his chickens had become infected with the highly-contagious virus. Per government rules, he had to slaughter his entire flock of 550,000 egg-laying hens. “It’s a trauma. We’re all going through grief as a result of it,” Weber told the Associated Press inside an empty hen house. “Petaluma is known as the Egg Basket of the World. It’s devastating to see that egg...

Moscow and Tehran will strengthen their security partnership and team up to counter sanctions imposed by the West, a key architect of Vladimir Putin's full-scale invasion of Ukraine has said. Nikolai Patrushev, secretary of Russia's Security Council, announced closer cooperation between the allies after a meeting with the head of Iran's Supreme National Security Council Ali Akbar Ahmadian. Ties between Tehran and Moscow have deepened since the start of the war in Ukraine, with Iran supplying Russian forces with Shahed unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) which have wreaked havoc on Ukrainian infrastructure.

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...

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...