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Russian President Vladimir Putin threatened to “finish off” Ukrainian troops on Friday — after the warmonger ordered strikes on a Ukrainian energy facility in a bold violation of the US-backed partial cease-fire. Russian forces this week attacked a Ukrainian energy facility in Kherson, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky warned, accusing Putin of breaching the precarious deal halting military action in the Black Sea and pausing long-range attacks on energy infrastructure. Putin, who had said that Moscow would end its strikes on Ukrainian energy targets, called on his troops to continue pushing forward into Ukraine and even step up their attacks.

Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov says that currently only Biden is authorised to engage with Russia on behalf of the United States. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said that Moscow is not satisfied with the proposals of US president-elect Donald Trump’s team to postpone Ukraine’s membership in NATO for 20 years and to deploy a contingent of EU and UK peacekeepers in Ukraine. Russian President Vladimir Putin has already rejected the “peace proposals” of Trump’s team, according to TASS news agency. Although there have been no official initiatives from the United States yet. In an interview with TASS, Lavrov said,...

Russian President Vladimir Putin apologizes to Ilham Aliyev, the president of Azerbaijan, for what the Kremlin said was a “tragic incident” in Russian airspace involving the Azerbaijan Airlines plane that crashed in Kazakhstan on December 25. Putin tells Aliyev that Russian air defense was active when an Azerbaijani Airlines plane tried to land in Grozny before it crashed in a phone call, the Kremlin says. “During this time, Grozny, (the town of) Mozdok and Vladikavkaz were being attacked by Ukrainian combat drones and Russian air defense was repelling these attacks,” the Kremlin says Putin told Aliyev, without explicitly acknowledging that...

Vladimir Putin has been dealt a significant geopolitical blow with the downfall of Bashar al-Assad, whose regime in Syria the Russian president had committed considerable funding and military resources to propping up. Assad fled Syria and has claimed political asylum in Russia, Kremlin-backed media reported, his now exiled status depriving Moscow of a key regional ally. Russia's military assets in Syria are now under threat, such as its naval base in the port city of Tartus, which gave the Kremlin a presence near NATO's southern flank in the Mediterranean Sea. -snip- Pro-Moscow military bloggers have expressed concern over the future...

-snip- "Putin has to be convinced that it's going to be too costly for Russia to continue because he wants to overthrow the government, take over the whole country, and no one has been willing to stop him until now," Kurt Volker, former U.S. ambassador to NATO, told Newsweek. "It's a matter of putting some credible capability on the table to convince Putin that he has to stop," said Volker, who was Trump's special representative for Ukraine until September 2019. "Therefore, I'm not sure it's a matter of meeting any Russian demands, nor do I think that Zelensky's desire the...

Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree on Monday to shelve the planned hosting of the "Friendship Games", a big multi-sports event that the International Olympic Committee had condemned as a purely political project. Russia announced last year that it planned to relaunch the competition first staged in 1984 as a Soviet-led alternative to the Los Angeles Olympics, which the USSR had boycotted in retaliation for a U.S. boycott of the 1980 Moscow Games. -snip- Putin's decree, published on an official website, left open the possibility of staging the games at some point in the future pending a "special decision...

PUTIN is said to have ordered the deadly 16,000mph Satan 2 to be battle-ready sparking fears of a major escalation in the war. The threatening move sees the killer nuclear capable RS-28 Sarmat - dubbed "the world’s deadliest weapon" - being on "combat duty." It was announced by Russian state news agency Tass despite testing failures and delays. Head of Russia's Strategic Missile Forces, Col-Gen Sergei Karakayev said that work continues to place the missile on “combat duty,” Tass reported. He said: "As of today, fifth-generation Yars and Avangard missile systems have been introduced in the strategic missile forces. "Work...

The former US Army General tapped to be Donald Trump's special envoy to Ukraine and Russia warned last week 'we're on the precipice of World War III' as he outlined a plan to end the war by forcing both sides to the negotiating table. Lieutenant General Keith Kellogg, 80, told Fox News of the precarious geopolitical circumstances after Vladimir Putin launched a never-before-seen hypersonic missile on the Ukrainian city of Dnipro. - snip- 'When you look at what's happening... with an alliance that President Trump kept apart. You know, he had North Korea over here, he had China over here,...

In the event of massive use of Oreshnik missiles, the strike will be comparable to the use of nuclear arms, Russian President Vladimir Putin said at a CSTO limited-circle session, APA reports citing TASS. "In the opinion of military and technical experts, in the event of a massive, group strike of these missiles, that is, several missiles at once, in a cluster, their single strike will be comparable to the use of nuclear weapons. Even though, certainly, Oreshnik is not a weapon of mass destruction," the Russian leader said.

A half-dozen U.S. ballistic missiles, fired by Ukraine, slammed into an ammunition depot some 75 miles across the Russian border early Tuesday, setting off further detonations that turned the sky red. The following morning, 10 British-provided cruise missiles pounded the vicinity of a Kremlin-run sanatorium that was apparently used as a military headquarters, smashing one after another in the town of Marino, located in Russia’s Kursk region about 20 miles from the front line there. These two strikes, the first Kyiv launched with Western-supplied missiles after receiving authorization from the U.S. and allies, show the range of military targets now...

TYRANT Vladimir Putin has mysteriously disappeared for 13 days as rumours about his apparent ill-health swirl. Suspicions have risen after the Kremlin was accused of pumping out several pre-recorded meetings with Putin and various Russian leaders since his last public appearance. The tyrant’s last definitive appearance was at the Valdai Forum in Sochi on 7 November. Putin has reportedly disappeared since then for medical reasons, according to the Telegram channel VChK-OGPU, which has security service links. The channel said: “Indeed, Putin has been absent from work recently and receives all reports exclusively via special communications.” “Those close to him are...

Vladimir Putin has mysteriously disappeared from public view as his regime issued apocalyptic World War Three nuclear threats over the use of long-range Western missiles by Ukraine against Russian territory. It is unclear if during the past 12 days of high international tension the Kremlin dictator has been holed up in a hi-tech bunker, unwell, underwent another round of plastic surgery, took a secret holiday or simply chose to remain out of sight. Yet Putin, 72, has not been definitively seen since an appearance at the Valdai Forum in Sochi on November 7 when he congratulated a "courageous" Donald Trump...

Inflationary expectations among Russian households for the year ahead stood at 13.4% in November, unchanged from October, while inflationary pressure remained high, the central bank said on Monday. The central bank raised its benchmark interest rate to 21% last month, the highest level in more than 20 years, citing high inflation and elevated inflationary expectations as the main reasons for the move. -snip- The central bank board will convene for the next rate-setting meeting on Dec. 20, with the officials saying that a further tightening of monetary policy was possible.

Ukraine could develop a rudimentary nuclear bomb within months if Donald Trump withdraws US military assistance, according to a briefing paper prepared for the Ukrainian Ministry of Defence. The country would quickly be able to build a basic device from plutonium with a similar technology to the “Fat Man” bomb dropped on Nagasaki in 1945, the report states. “Creating a simple atomic bomb, as the United States did within the framework of the Manhattan Project, would not be a difficult task 80 years later,” the document reads. With no time to build and run the large facilities required to enrich...

Ukrainian officials expect a counteroffensive in western Russia to begin in the coming days as North Korea’s troops train with Russian forces. -snip- The Russian military has assembled a force of 50,000 soldiers, including North Korean troops, as it prepares to begin an assault aimed at reclaiming territory seized by Ukraine in the Kursk region of Russia, according to U.S. and Ukrainian officials. -snip- North Korea has sent more than 10,000 troops to fight with Russia in Kursk, American officials say. The troops are wearing Russian uniforms and have been equipped by Moscow, but they will probably fight in their...

US President-elect Donald Trump plans to dramatically increase sanctions against Iran due to the Islamic Republic’s support for terrorist militias, the expansion of its nuclear program, and a recently unveiled plot to assassinate him, sources briefed on Trump’s early plans told The Wall Street Journal on Friday. -snip- Sources briefed on the plan said that once he’s in office, Trump would try to recreate the strategy of his first term by quickly cutting off Iran’s oil income, including pursuing any organization that handles Iranian oil. 'Iran is definitely in a position of weakness' “I think you are going to see...

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday signed a treaty on the country's strategic partnership with North Korea which includes a mutual defense provision, enacting it into law. The accord, announced by Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in June after a summit in Pyongyang, calls on each side to come to the other's aid in case of an armed attack.

Russian TV host Vladimir Solovyov, a prominent ally of Vladimir Putin, said that U.S. President-elect Donald Trump is "in no way" a friend of Russia. -snip- "We won't bargain about our constitutional territories, Solovyov said on his program Evening with Vladimir Solovyov. "But [we] can discuss with Trump whether we're going to take Berlin. 'OK, we're not going to take Berlin today,' figuratively speaking. I mean, it's a question of the system of relations. "But Trump will demand something different. He has repeatedly said that the most important thing is that there should be no alliance between Russia and China....

North Korea has confirmed that dictator Kim Jong Un “gave the order” to bail out Vladimir Putin by sending North Korean troops to fight in Putin’s “holy war” against Ukraine. The troop deal was confirmed at a meeting between North Korean foreign minister Choe Son Hui and the Kremlin’s top diplomat Sergei Lavrov in Moscow. More than 10,000 North Korean troops are reported to be deployed to Russia, with some already in the area of operations. The Pyongyang envoy said: “From the very beginning of the special military operation, respected comrade Chairman of State Affairs Kim Jong Un gave the...

A local journalist in Iran publicly criticized Russia on Monday for failing to provide promised defense systems, leaving Iran vulnerable during recent Israeli attacks. According to Iran International, reporter Ali-Akbar Saadati from Kar va Kargar directly questioned the Iranian government on a daily basis on Russia’s unfulfilled commitments to supply S-400 anti-aircraft systems and Su-35 fighters. “Whenever they faced difficulties in Ukraine, suffered misfortune, or got stuck in the quagmire of the Ukraine war, they came running to us, asking for drones, missiles, everything,” Saadati said, expressing frustration over Iran’s isolation during Israeli airstrikes. “On the night Israel attacked us,...