Free Republic

President Vladimir Putin says that Russia’s war economy is well balanced to supply both guns and butter, but the price of butter itself is now soaring as surging inflation distorts parts of the economy. The price of a block of butter has risen by 25.7% since December, according to the state statistics service. Reuters reporters found shopping bills showed the price of a pack of “Brest-Litovsk” high-grade butter in Moscow has risen by 34% since the start of the year to 239.96 roubles ($2.47). “The Armageddon with butter is escalating; we wouldn’t be surprised if butter repeats last year’s situation...

Russia on Tuesday called on Israel to withdraw troops from Lebanon, warning that the attack would lead to a further escalation of violence in the Middle East. -snip- "Russia strongly condemns the attack on Lebanon and calls on the Israeli authorities to immediately cease hostilities, withdraw their troops from Lebanese territory and engage in a real search for peaceful ways to resolve the Middle East conflict," Russia's foreign ministry said in a statement. "It is obvious that such a step taken by the Israeli military and political leadership following the assassination of a number of Hezbollah leaders will lead to...

Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) said on Friday that Dmitry Bulgakov, a former deputy defense minister, had been arrested and charged with corruption, the Interfax news agency reported. -snip- He served as deputy defense minister until he was replaced in 2022 and is the recipient of several top military and civilian awards, including the Hero of Russia award, the country’s highest honour. -snip- Bulgakov, who was in charge of military logistics until he was dismissed in September 2022, is the latest in a string of high-profile defense ministry figures to have been charged with corruption.

President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that South Korea would be making "a big mistake" if it decides to supply arms to Ukraine and that Moscow would respond to such a move in a way that would be painful for Seoul. Putin, who was speaking at a news conference in Vietnam, was reacting to a report from Yonhap news earlier on Thursday which said South Korea would review the possibility of supplying weapons to Ukraine after Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un signed a mutual defence pact a day earlier. He warned Seoul against moving to supply weapons to...

Russian forces have advanced along the front line in Ukraine, battlefield maps published by a U.S. think tank show, as Ukraine warns that Moscow is preparing for a major offensive in the east. Maps released by the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a U.S.-based think tank, on Sunday, show that Russian forces have made progress in Ukraine's Luhansk and Donetsk regions, which together comprise the Donbas. The Kremlin has been pushing for the total capture of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions since Russia's initial invasion of eastern Ukraine in 2014. Newsweek has contacted the Russian Defense Ministry by...

MOSCOW/LONDON, May 24 (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin is ready to halt the war in Ukraine with a negotiated ceasefire that recognises the current battlefield lines, four Russian sources told Reuters, saying he is prepared to fight on if Kyiv and the West do not respond. Three of the sources, familiar with discussions in Putin's entourage, said the veteran Russian leader had expressed frustration to a small group of advisers about what he views as Western-backed attempts to stymie negotiations and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy's decision to rule out talks.

Russian President Vladimir Putin demoted Nikolai Patrushev, a Cold War warrior who crafted the Kremlin's national security strategy, to a job overseeing the shipbuilding industry while raising two younger lieutenants to senior Kremlin jobs. -snip- Patrushev, a former KGB officer from St Petersburg where Putin was born, was moved from the heart of the modern-day politburo, where he had worked for 16 years as secretary of the Security Council, to oversee shipbuilding as a Kremlin aide. -snip- Patrushev Senior was heavily demoted," a senior Russian source told Reuters on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of such public remarks....

A court on Tuesday sentenced a former senior officer in the National Guard to six years in a prison colony after convicting him of buying equipment unable to protect the bridge which links southern Russia to Crimea, the TASS state news agency reported. TASS said that Colonel Sergei Volkov had purchased two radar-based air defence systems for 395 million roubles ($4.5 million) which were meant to be able to bring down Ukrainian attack drones by suppressing their signal. A military court in Moscow had determined that the equipment - which was also meant to protect a gas pipeline running from...

A senior ally of President Vladimir Putin warned on Thursday that any Ukrainian attacks on missile launch sites inside Russia with arms supplied by the United States and its allies would risk a nuclear response from Moscow. Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, now deputy chairman of Russia's Security Council, said that some Ukrainian military commanders were considering hitting missile launch sites inside Russia with Western-supplied long-range missiles. He did not name the commanders or disclose more details of the alleged plan and there was no immediate reaction from Ukraine to his threat.

Russian patriotic bloggers on Friday poured scorn on President Vladimir Putin's intimation that mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin's plane was blown up with hand grenades while those on board were high on cocaine and alcohol. The private Embraer jet on which Prigozhin was travelling to St Petersburg crashed north of Moscow killing all 10 people on board on Aug. 23, including Dmitry Utkin, co-founder of the mercenary Wagner group, four bodyguards and a crew of three. Putin said on Thursday fragments of hand grenades were found in the bodies of the dead and that investigators had ruled out any external impact...

President Vladimir Putin has ordered Wagner fighters to sign an oath of allegiance to the Russian state after a deadly plane crash believed to have killed Yevgeny Prigozhin, the volatile chief of the mercenary group. Putin signed the decree bringing in the change with immediate effect on Friday after the Kremlin said that Western suggestions that Prigozhin had been killed on its orders were an "absolute lie".

Russia's most senior generals have dropped out of public view after a failed mercenary mutiny aimed at toppling the top military brass, amid a drive by President Vladimir Putin to reassert his authority. Unconfirmed reports say that at least one person has been detained and is being questioned. Armed forces chief of staff General Valery Gerasimov has not appeared in public or on state TV since the aborted mutiny on Saturday when mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin demanded Gerasimov be handed over. Nor has he been mentioned in a defence ministry press release since June 9. Gerasimov, 67, is the commander...

Russia's leading war hawks rallied behind the humiliating decision for Moscow's forces to retreat from the Ukrainian city of Kherson this month, but the commander who argued in favour of the move is now under growing pressure to prove it was worth it. Sergei Surovikin, nicknamed "General Armageddon" by the Russian media for his reputed ruthlessness, on Nov. 9 recommended Moscow's forces quit Kherson and the west bank of the River Dnipro where they were dangerously exposed. Surovikin, a 56-year-old veteran of wars in Chechnya and Syria who has been decorated by President Vladimir Putin, argued the withdrawal, completed two...

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russians opened the door to Vladimir Putin staying in power until 2036 by voting overwhelmingly for constitutional changes that will allow him to run again for president twice, but critics said the outcome was falsified on an industrial scale. Official results published on Thursday, after 100% of ballots had been counted, showed that the former KGB officer who has ruled Russia for more than two decades as president or prime minister had easily won the right to run for two more six-year terms after the current one ends in 2024. That means Putin, 67, could rule until...

The Russian air force grounded its entire fleet of Sukhoi-27 fighter jets on Thursday after a fatal crash near Moscow which aviation sources told Russian agencies looked like the result of some kind of technical failure. Viktor Bondarev, the head of the air force, ordered the country's fleet of the twin-engined fighter jet grounded until the reasons for the crash had been determined, Russian agencies reported. Russia is believed to have over 300 of the fighter jets in service. The United States complained in April that one of them had made aggressive manoeuvres near a U.S. reconnaissance plane over the...