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Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Grushko reportedly said that the Kremlin wants an "ironclad" guarantee that Ukraine will be prohibited from joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), as the Trump administration works to broker a deal to end the fighting. "We will demand that ironclad security guarantees become part of this agreement," Grushko was quoted by the Russian newspaper Izvestia as saying, according to Reuters. "Part of these guarantees should be the neutral status of Ukraine, the refusal of NATO countries to accept it into the alliance."

The conversation between US President Donald Trump and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin scheduled for Tuesday is indeed being prepared, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said at a briefing in response to a TASS question, APA reports. "Yes, this is indeed the case," he emphasized. "Such a conversation is being prepared for Tuesday," the spokesman added.

The Trump administration is placing more restrictions on Russia's oil, gas and banking sectors by further restricting Russian access to U.S. payment systems, according to four people familiar with the plans. The Treasury Department on Wednesday let lapse a 60-day exemption put in place by the Biden administration in January that allowed specific energy transactions involving sanctioned Russian banks to continue. By letting the waiver lapse, the banks may no longer access U.S. payment systems to conduct major energy transactions. The Russian financial institutions that had been exempt from sanctions included Vnesheconombank, Bank Financial Corporation Otkritie, Sovcombank, Sberbank, VTB Bank,...

With America’s drone technology a disappointment on the battlefield, defense startups have joined forces with Ukrainian manufacturers to build better, war-proven aircraft for the U.S. military. U.S. startups have spent billions of venture-capital dollars in hopes of developing the small drones that the Pentagon says it needs for future conflicts, but many have produced only expensive aircraft that don’t fly very well. Ukrainian drone makers, meanwhile, have mastered mass-producing drones despite limited resources and are looking for new customers and capital. Now, the two sides are coming together, and the unlikely pairing is getting attention from the Defense Department. Southern...

Contacts between Russia and the United States are now quite intensive, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova was quoted as saying by the RIA news agency. Zakharova was commenting on media reports that Trump's special envoy Steve Witkoff plans to visit Moscow this week to meet President Vladimir Putin.

Fox News is wall to wall with dead-eyed politicians telling you that Iran is a dangerous “sponsor of terror.” Softening up the base for a war. But what exactly does that phrase mean, and how does it apply to the United States? Here’s one measure: over the past twenty years, how many Americans have been killed by Iran on American soil? Try to find that number, and then compare it to the number of Americans killed by drug ODs. Or suicide. Or illegal aliens. Or carjackings, diabetes and the Covid vax. Still think Iran is the greatest threat? How about...

Vladimir Putin 'regrets' triggering a full-scale war costing hundreds of thousands of lives, his closest international ally has claimed. Belarus dictator Alexander Lukashenko said: 'We haven't talked about it, but I know him well. 'Putin didn't expect it would turn into such a war.' The close Putin crony told interviewer Mario Nawfal on X: 'When he saw a huge number of people dying, Putin instantly agreed to the negotiations to stop the conflict.' This was earlier in the war, in 2022, and, Lukashenko claimed, Putin was ready to negotiate 'on NATO, on demilitarisation, on denazification', as he described it, 'on...

Vladimir Putin is facing a fierce backlash from some of his most war-hungry supporters after publicly cosying up to Donald Trump. Russian warmongers are furious over Putin’s plan to seek US investment for rare earth metals and aluminium, with accusations he is giving away precious Russian assets. -snip- Staunch Russian war-backer Maksim Kalashnikov is outraged about Putin’s seeming lack of success in the war, as it plots the supply of rare metals to the West. ‘On the third anniversary of the war, they explained to us what victory would look like,” he said. ‘We get what we occupied – a...

Kyiv has agreed terms with Washington on a minerals deal that Ukrainian officials hope will improve relations with the Trump administration and pave the way for a long-term US security commitment. Ukrainian officials say Kyiv is now ready to sign the agreement on jointly developing its mineral resources, including oil and gas, after the US dropped demands for a right to $500bn in potential revenue from exploiting the resources. Although the text lacks explicit security guarantees, the officials argued that they had negotiated far more favourable terms and depicted the deal as a way of broadening the relationship with the...

-snip- Asked about unconfirmed reports on Telegram and X that U.S. Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff may have flown into Moscow, Peskov said he had no information about the matter and that no meetings with him were on the agenda. Later on Tuesday, Rosaviatsia, Russia's aviation regulator, issued a statement in response to what it said were media questions and reports after flight tracking services showed a private jet landing in Moscow from the United States. The regulator said it was a one-off technical flight from Washington to Moscow related to "humanitarian cooperation" of a medical nature. It did not...

On February 9, the players, coaches and owners of either the Philadelphia Eagles or Kansas City Chiefs will win a coveted Super Bowl ring. The rings, which are understood to cost between $30,000 (£24,000) and $50,000 (£40,000), are widely considered to be one of the most iconic and beautiful awards in sport today. Few people are more familiar with the gleaming pieces of jewellery than New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft, who watched his iconic side win six Super Bowls. Yet, the multi-billionaire only has five rings, as Russian president Vladimir Putin has the other one. Kraft, 83, visited Russia...

This is the dramatic moment a low-flying Vladimir Putin warplane is shot down by Ukrainian troops and explodes into a huge fireball. The £11million Su-25 attack warplane was captured smashing into the ground near the village of Zaitsevo, close to a major battle scene in Toretsk, Donetsk region. The pilot ejected and is “alive and safe”, according to reports. The plane was hit by a shoulder-fired, surface-to-air missile, confirmed the Ukrainians. Footage apparently showed a Russian rescue helicopter plucking the Su-25 pilot to safety after he had hidden in the forest. However, the rescue Mi-8 helicopter was attacked by Ukrainian...

Ukraine is reported to have wiped out the entire command of Russia's 35th Brigade in a deadly missile strike. The attack was carried out using HIMARS missiles on the brigade's headquarters in the eastern town of Selydove. The town was captured by the Russians in October last year and lies just 11 miles northwest of the strategically important city of Pokrovsk. The attack was filmed by Ukrainian drones hovering close to the building, housing the headquarters. In a video posted to social media, a huge ball of flames rises from a building after the impact of the missiles. Thick black...

Russia has got so desperate it has had to go back to one of the most old-fashioned ways to carry bullets and guns during a war. The Soviet army had to start using donkeys and horses to carry ammunition in Ukraine – something that hasn’t been done for over a century. Military blogger Kirill Fedorov wrote on his Telegram channel that Putin and his soldiers have started to send the animals to the front line. He said that an official government transport list says these animals include horses, camels and deer. He wrote: ‘The fighters were given a donkey to...

President Trump is prepared to double down on US sanctions for Russia to bring about an end to its war on Ukraine, retired Gen. Keith Kellogg, his special envoy to the conflict, exclusively told The Post this week — but he knows both Kyiv and Moscow will have to make concessions to end the “industrial-sized” killing in Europe’s largest country. Sanctions enforcement on Russia are “only about a three” on a scale of one to 10 on how painful the economic pressure can be, Kellogg said. The US sanctions themselves — such as those targeting Russia’s lucrative energy sector —...

Vladimir Putin’s Russian Space Agency boss has been fired after a “catastrophic” number of launch failures of missiles, satellites and rockets in recent years. Yury Borisov, 68, an ex-deputy premier and close ally, was replaced at the space agency, known as Roscosmos, by deputy transport minister Dmitry Bakanov, 39 -snip- A key failure for both men was the doomsday Sarmat - aka Satan-2 - missile, Russia's largest weapon. Under Borisov, also a former deputy defence minister, a test in September 2024 exploded on the launch at Plesetsk cosmodrome leaving a 200ft wide crater. A year earlier, Borisov had reported to...

The United States' 'America First' policy has disturbing similarities to the slogan 'Germany above all' used by the Nazis to assert national superiority over others, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has warned. In an op-ed for the magazine 'Russia in Global Affairs' published on Tuesday, Lavrov argued that Washington's approach undermines the UN Charter and the post-war global order built on sovereign equality. He noted that this principle was enshrined in the Yalta-Potsdam agreements signed in 1945 by the USSR, US, and UK, shaping the modern international system. With the administration of US President Donald Trump back in power, Washington's...

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has sharply criticized U.S. President Donald Trump’s proposal to tie future military aid for Ukraine to access to its rare earth resources, calling the move "very egotistic, very self-centered." Scholz said that Ukraine needs its natural resources to finance post-war rebuilding, not to bargain for security assistance. "That's why I think it would be better if Ukraine's resources were used for a good future," he said. However, Ukraine appears more open to the idea — at least the opening up of its critical raw materials to allies, if not explicitly the quid pro quo suggested by...

-snip- Serhiy Dubovik, deputy head of Ukraine's Central Election Commission, said it would take at least four to six months to prepare so that campaigning could start ahead of an election, given the displacement of voters and widespread destruction. Millions of Ukrainians still live abroad, millions more are internally displaced by the war, a fifth of Ukraine is occupied and front-line areas have been devastated. -snip- Zelenskyy's public trust rating is above 50%, according to opinion polls, although it has dropped since Russia's Feb. 24, 2022 invasion, when it rose to over 90% as Ukrainians rallied around the flag. The...

ONE of Mad Vlad's war criminal deputy governors has been blown up by a landmine. Sergey Efremov, 51, has become the highest ranking Russian official to be killed in the conflict. -snip- The 51-year-old reportedly died after his military vehicle was blown up after hitting a mine in the Kursk region of Western Russia. Efremov, and another pro-Putin politician, died after attempting to help wounded Russian soldiers.