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PARIS/MOSCOW, Aug 25 (Reuters) - Pavel Durov, the Russian-born billionaire founder and owner of the Telegram messaging app, was arrested at Le Bourget airport outside Paris shortly after landing on a private jet late on Saturday and placed in custody, three sources told Reuters. The arrest of the 39-year-old technology billionaire prompted on Sunday a warning from Moscow to Paris that he should be accorded his rights and criticism from X owner Elon Musk who said that free speech in Europe was under attack. There was no official confirmation from France of the arrest, but two French police sources and...

MOSCOW, Aug 12 (Reuters) - Russia on Monday evacuated civilians from parts of a second region next to Ukraine after Kyiv increased military activity near the border just days after its biggest incursion into sovereign Russian territory since the start of the 2022 war. Ukrainian forces rammed through the Russian border last Tuesday and swept across some Western parts of Russia's Kursk region, a surprise attack that may be aimed at gaining leverage in possible ceasefire talks after the U.S. election. Apparently caught by surprise, Russia by Sunday had stabilised the front in the Kursk region, though Ukraine had carved...

Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday that a Ukrainian incursion into Russia's Kursk region was a major provocation. "The Kyiv regime has launched another major provocation," Putin told members of the Russian government about the Kursk attack.

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday congratulated Nicolas Maduro on winning the disputed Venezuelan election, and the Kremlin said it was deepening cooperation in all areas - including sensitive ones - with Caracas. -snip- "Russian-Venezuelan relations have the character of a strategic partnership," Putin said in a message to Maduro, the Kremlin said. "I am confident that your activities at the head of state will continue to contribute to their progressive development in all directions." -snip- Putin ended his message to Maduro: "Remember that you are always a welcome guest on Russian soil."

The Kremlin said that any peace plan for Ukraine proposed by a possible future U.S. administration of Donald Trump would have to reflect the reality on the ground but that Russian President Vladimir Putin remained open to talks. Reuters reported on Tuesday that two key advisers to Trump have presented him with a plan to end the war in Ukraine -- if he wins the presidential election -- that involves telling Ukraine it will only get more U.S. weapons if it enters into peace talks. "The value of any plan lies in the nuances and in taking into account the...

- Russia says US is responsible for strike on Crimea. - Ukraine struck Crimea with U.S.-supplied ATACMS. - Russia says U.S. personnel input flight coordinates. - Russia says at least three people killed, 124 injured. MOSCOW, June 23 (Reuters) - Russia said on Sunday that the United States was responsible for a Ukrainian attack on the Russian-annexed Crimean peninsula with five U.S.-supplied missiles that killed at least five people including three children and injured 124 more. The Russian Defence Ministry said four of the U.S.-delivered Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) missiles, equipped with cluster warheads, were shot down by...

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 phoned Iran's new interim president on Monday as Moscow made clear its desire to preserve and build on its deepening relationship with Tehran despite the sudden death of President Ebrahim Raisi. The Kremlin said Putin expressed his condolences to interim president Mohammad Mokhber and to the whole Iranian people over Raisi's death in a helicopter crash, describing Raisi as a "reliable partner who made an invaluable personal contribution" to bilateral relations. "Both sides emphasised their mutual desire to further consistently strengthen comprehensive Russian-Iranian interaction for the benefit of the peoples of the two countries," the Kremlin...

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....

Can Russia's main task is to achieve victory on the battlefield in Ukraine with the minimal loss of troops, incoming defence minister Andrei Belousov said on Tuesday. -snip- Belousov presented himself as a man of integrity, telling parliamentarians: "I have always been, and will be, guided by the reinforced concrete principle 'You can make mistakes (but) you can't lie'." That was a pointed comment, given that he is taking charge of a ministry embroiled in a major corruption investigation that damaged his predecessor Shoigu. The scandal widened on Tuesday with the arrest of another senior official suspected of bribery. -snip-...

Russia will have to increase its entire missile arsenal to deter the West as Moscow is now in an open confrontation with the United States and its allies, a Russian diplomat was quoted as saying on Monday. President Vladimir Putin's 2022 invasion of Ukraine touched off the worst breakdown in relations between Russia and the West since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, according to Russian and U.S. diplomats. Russia has ramped up weapons production and is now forecast by the United States to manufacture this year more artillery than all of NATO's 32 members combined. "We are now at the...

"You can't go anywhere at all, not even to Uzbekistan or Belarus for the May holidays," said one source. -snip- Russia is making overseas travel harder for some officials due to fears that foreign powers may try to gain access to state secrets during the worst crisis in relations with the West for more than 60 years, nine sources told Reuters. The Federal Security Service (FSB) is putting pressure on employees across government ministries not to leave Russia at all, even to visit so-called 'friendly' countries that have not imposed sanctions against Moscow, the sources said. Foreign travel was highly...

MOSCOW, April 7 (Reuters) - Ukraine attacked the Russian-held Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant on Sunday, including a strike on the dome of the plant's sixth power unit that caused no damage, the plant's Russian-installed administration said in a statement. Earlier, the administration reported a drone attack that damaged a truck parked near the station's canteen, Russian state news agency TASS reported, citing the plant authorities.

SUMMARIES: • Ukraine launches mass drone attack • Fire at NORSI refinery, drone downed near Kirishi • NORSI is badly damaged - sources • Russia says it repels cross-border attack by Ukrainian proxies

President Vladimir Putin granted an interview to U.S. television host Tucker Carlson on Tuesday, the Kremlin said, his first to an American journalist since before Russia's invasion of Ukraine nearly two years ago. -snip- The interview is likely to be aired on Thursday, Russia's TASS news agency said, citing reports by the Wall Street Journal

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.

MOSCOW (Reuters) -Kremlin chief Vladimir Putin dismissed as complete nonsense remarks by U.S. President Joe Biden that Russia would attack a NATO country if it won the war in Ukraine, adding that Russia had no interest in fighting the NATO military alliance.The war in Ukraine has triggered the deepest crisis in Moscow's relations with the West since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, and Biden warned last year that a direct confrontation between NATO and Russia would trigger World War Three.In a plea to Republicans not to block further military aid earlier this month, Biden warned that if Putin was victorious...

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in an interview published on Friday that he hoped President Vladimir Putin would run in the March election for another term as Russian president, a move that would keep Putin in power until at least 2030. -snip- Asked by the student television channel of Moscow State Institute for International Relations (MGIMO) what the next president after Putin should be like, Peskov said: "The same." "Or different but the same," Peskov told MGIMO 360 with a smile. "Putin has not yet announced his intention to run but I sincerely want to believe that he will do...

Pro-war Russian nationalist Igor Girkin, who is in custody awaiting trial for inciting extremism, said on Sunday he wanted to run for president even though he understood the March election would be "sham" with the winner already clear. Girkin, who is also known by the alias Igor Strelkov, has repeatedly said Russia faces revolution and even civil war unless President Vladimir Putin's military top brass fight the war in Ukraine more effectively. A former Federal Security Service (FSB) officer who helped Russia to annex Crimea in 2014 and then to organise pro-Russian militias in eastern Ukraine, Girkin said before his...