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Vladimir Putin is feeling the stress from Russia's invasion of Ukraine - as he is seen wringing his hands in a meeting with his top officials after Volodymyr Zelenskyy's troops bit back and made a counter-incursion into the country. The dictator, 71, was in a security council session on the crisis he faces due to Ukraine's dramatic invasion of the border areas of Kursk region. His very public hand-wringing and fidgeting came as he was told earlier this week about how Russia had lost territory to Kyiv troops and - at the time - more than two dozen settlements, a...

Secretive peace talks between Ukraine and Russia collapsed before they even started following Kyiv's incursion into the Kursk region last week. The two countries were set to hold indirect talks in Qatar on a deal to halt strikes on energy and power infrastructure, in a first step towards a partial-ceasefire. However, Russian officials were said to be furious at Ukraine’s surprise incursion, according to the Washington Post, which revealed the secret Doha talks. Moscow’s delegation described it as “an escalation" and immediately pulled out of the talks this week. A Qatari diplomat said that Russia “didn’t call off the talks,...

The head of a Russian private militia has called on the army to overthrow Vladimir Putin in what is potentially shaping up to be the biggest threat of revolt the Kremlin has faced since the Wagner mutiny last year. Georgy Zakrevsky is the founder of the Paladin PMC, one of many shadowy military groups like the former Wagner militia, that are loosely linked to the Kremlin. The private military company (PMC) has around 300 members and has fought in wars around the world, including in Syria and Africa. Zakrevsky launched a blistering attack on the Russian president during a video...

-snip- After my first trip to Ukraine, a few readers wrote in or left comments urging me to check out the assessments of retired colonel Douglas Macgregor, contending he had the real scoop. I wasn’t familiar with Macgregor, but a bit of digging illuminated the retired colonel’s very consistent assessment of how the war is going: March 4, 2022: “The first five days Russian forces I think frankly were too gentle. They’ve now corrected that. So, I would say, another ten days, this should be completely over.” March 15, 2022: “The Ukrainians are being crushed. Even the Washington Post and...

Terrified dictator Alexander Lukashenko has urged Russia and Ukraine to agree a peace deal to avoid the war spilling over into Belarus. President Lukashenko, a key ally of Vladimir Putin, said he fears Kyiv's troops are now planning an incursion into his nation after they launched a cross-border offensive in Russia. Thousands of Ukrainian soldiers smashed through Russia's western border on August 6 in a major embarrassment for Putin's top military brass. Now in an interview with Russia state television, Lukashenko has said that only 'high-ranking people of American origin' wanted the Ukraine-Russia war to continue. The West, he said,...

North Korea's supreme leader has reiterated his country's support for Russia's ongoing invasion of Ukraine, and expressed his intention to foster closer ties between the two regimes. "I express firm belief that the strong and brave Russian people will firmly defend the sovereign right and security interests of the state and surely win victory in the sacred war for regional peace and international justice," Kim Jong Un said on Thursday, according state news agency KNCA.

While Belarus’s Lukashenko has commented on the cross-border attacks, Central Asian nations stay mum. Almost two years ago, a dozen Uzbek youngsters pleaded with their president to save them from the horrors of the Russian-Ukrainian war. Uzbek nationals enrolled in western Russia’s Kursk Medical University recorded a video address to Shavkat Mirziyoyev in October 2022 saying their studies had been affected by Kyiv’s shelling of nearby towns and the hostilities in the neighbouring Ukrainian region of Sumy. “Please transfer us to medical schools in Uzbekistan,” one of the students said. Uzbek diplomats pledged to assess the situation. There have been...

Ukraine has offered to help Russians evacuating from the country's embattled border regions, which have been embroiled in armed hostilities since Kyiv's surprise incursion onto Russian soil began last week. In a Telegram post on Wednesday evening, Ukraine's Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said: "Due to the possible deterioration of the humanitarian situation in the adjacent territories of the Kursk region of the Russian Federation, Ukraine must be ready to receive Russian refugees." Vereshchuk, who also serves as minister of reintegration for the areas under Russian occupation, announced that her ministry had opened a "24-hour hotline" for residents of Kursk...

Ukraine's top commander said on Thursday Kyiv had set up a military commandant's office in the occupied part of Russia's Kursk region where he said his forces were still advancing, even as Moscow's troops stepped up its offensives in Ukraine's east. The remarks by Colonel General Oleksandr Syrskyi were the strongest sign yet that Kyiv's forces plan to dig in after launching a lightning cross-border assault on Russia last week that has opened a new front in the 2-1/2 year-old all-out war. "We are moving forward in Kursk region. A military commandant's office has been created which must ensure order...

THIS is the moment Vladimir Putin's $40 million nuclear-capable Tu-22 bomber jet crashed in Siberia today in a humiliating blow to the despot. The valuable Russian aircraft came down in a fiery blaze after takeoff, marking another embarrassment for Vlad as Ukraine continues its successful invasion of Russia. Witnesses said the Tu-22M3 nuclear bomber - planes used by Putin as a key part of his nuclear arsenal - broke apart in the sky before crashing amid fierce explosions. Dramatic footage showed the moment an enormous fireball filled the sky as the aircraft came down. The crew of four ejected safely...

Russian companies that do business with China have encountered more headwinds in recent days as Chinese banks raised the yuan-ruble exchange rate to capitalize on their neighbor's weakened currency. While the yuan currently buys 12.07 rubles at the Russian central bank's exchange rate, Chinese banks are selling the currency at 13 rubles per yuan, charging a premium over the Russian central bank rate of 12.07 rubles, the Moscow Times reported on Thursday. -snip- Chinese banks are not the first to profit from the ruble's plight. Mongolia and Turkey have for some time converted rubles into yuan several percentage points above...

Ukraine’s surprise invasion of the Russian Kursk region has not left the latter’s rail untouched. The attack led to rail congestion in the area, and now Kursk and surrounding areas are no longer accepting freight trains coming in from Belarus. The Ukrainian incursion into the Kursk region has prompted Russia to move soldiers from all over the country to contain the Ukrainian advance, says the Belarusian Railway Workers Association (BelZhD). The inflow of soldiers to the new front by train has overcrowded stations in the region. For that reason, Russian Railways (RZD) says it can no longer accept freight trains...

Footage of Prigozhin shows how the slain leader predicted Ukraine's shock offensive. THE slain chief of the notorious Wagner mercenary group predicted Russia would come under siege from Ukraine before Vlad had him killed. Warlord Yevgeny Prigozhin died when his plane was blown out of the sky in August 2023, allegedly on Putin's orders. He led the private Russian military unit that was called in to assist the Kremlin's quest to illegally conquer Ukraine and became increasingly frustrated with how war efforts were organised. Fed up with the Ministry of Defence, Prigozhin eventually threatened a coup against Moscow - a...

Putin has appointed his ex-bodyguard, who is considered a likely successor for the Russian leader, as an 'angel of vengeance' tasked with trying to reclaim the territory seized by Ukraine. Former bodyguard Alexei Dyumin, who once single-handedly scared off a bear from the president's mountain residence, will lead the charge on 'Operation Revenge' to reclaim the 386 square miles of Russian soil now under Ukrainian control. Dyumin, 51, grew up in the Kursk region, where a state of emergency was implemented almost immediately after thousands of Kyiv's troops surged across the border and began seizing territory. Putin has now chosen...

Ukraine’s strike on Russia, the biggest by a foreign force since World War Two, has dramatically changed the narrative around the war. Ukraine claimed to have shot down a Russian fighter jet on Wednesday as Kyiv’s forces escalated the biggest foreign incursion suffered by Russia since the Second World War. Kyiv’s military said its forces destroyed the Russian Su-34 aircraft overnight in the Kursk region while carrying out a combat mission.

UKRAINE has blitzed Putin's forces with massive kamikaze drone and missile strikes overnight as Zelensky has vowed to go "even deeper" into Russia. Some 117 drones targeted at least nine regions across Russia, also hitting two crucial airfields in Mad Vlad's territory. One of them includes the Savasleyka military base in the Nizhny Novgorod, home to lethal hypersonic Kinzhal missiles and MiG-31K aircraft used to bomb Ukraine. An aircraft-type drone was seen in the sky ahead of the strike with a total of ten “arrivals” reported. A video from ASTRA media outlet suggests that there was a direct hit. Footage...

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday reiterated his support for a "full-fledged Palestinian state" amid Israel's ongoing war with Hamas militants in Gaza. On Tuesday, the independent Russian news site The Moscow Times, as well as the Kremlin-operated outlet Tass, reported that Putin had a meeting with Palestinian National Authority President Mahmoud Abbas where he said, "We believe that in order to ensure lasting, reliable and stable peace in the region, it's necessary to...create a full-fledged Palestinian state."

Ukraine has claimed a major victory that could turn the tide of the war with Russia. Fighters loyal to the infamous Chechen warlord Ramzan Kadyrov have been captured by Ukrainian forces in the Kursk region during a stunning incursion on Vladimir Putin’s territory. Footage shows dozens of men blindfolded, with their hands tied, sitting in lines. Some appear bloodied, with bandages around their wounds. Two of them can be heard telling a Ukrainian soldier they are from Grozny, the capital of Chechnya. The video was released by the I Want to Live (Hochu Zhit) project run by Ukraine’s Defence Intelligence...

VLADIMIR Putin has reportedly called in his ex-bodyguard to lead the desperate defence of Kursk as Russian casualties pile up on their own turf. Ukraine last week stormed into Russia and is said to have taken out so many enemy troops that they can't even be taken to morgues and identified. In response, a shocked Vlad has given the reins to his trusted old bodyguard, who once claimed he saved him from a rampaging brown bear. Alexei Dyumin, 51, is now coordinating the defence ministry, security agencies and regional authorities in the rush to save Russian regions from Kyiv's forces....

The meeting between the President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin and the President of the State of Palestine Mahmoud Abbas, who is on a visit to this country, has started, APA reports citing TASS. The negotiations are being held at the Kremlin head's residence in Novo-Ogaryovo.