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The Ukraine war won't end until NATO withdraws troops from the Baltics, a top Russian official has warned. Sergei Ryabkov, Russia's deputy foreign minister responsible for U.S. relations, nonproliferation and arms control, made the remarks in an interview with state-run news agency Tass.

Ukrainian drones struck two major facilities supplying Russia's military on Monday, dealing a double blow to President Vladimir Putin's war machine. The facilities struck in early morning attacks were a plant in the Chuvash Republic, which produces navigation systems for Russian drones and missiles, and a gunpowder factory in Kazan, according to local reports.

Russian President Vladimir Putin sent rival teams to Washington for talks with the Trump administration as ceasefire negotiations for the war in Ukraine are underway, according to an independent investigative Russian news outlet. On Thursday, Kirill Dmitriev, a businessman and Putin's investment envoy, announced that he is in Washington this week to hold talks with U.S. officials. The official, who runs Russia's sovereign wealth fund, is meeting Trump ally Steve Witkoff at Putin's request, he said. Putin also gave the go-ahead for another rival team to engage in talks with Washington, news site Agentstvo reported on Thursday. The two teams...

A fire erupted at one of Russia's largest oil refineries in the city of Ufa in Bashkortostan, approximately 900 miles from the Ukrainian border, following a reported drone attack. -snip- Videos circulating on social media showed a huge fire engulf the Bashneft-owned refinery, which is situated about 932 miles east of the Ukrainian border, and processes up to 168,000 barrels per day, according to Reuters. The Bashkortostan Ministry of Emergency Situations said the fire erupted "in the area of the incinerator." "There is no threat to residents of nearby areas. A laboratory is operating on site to monitor the air...

Russia is demanding control of cities in Ukraine that its forces don't currently occupy as part of a deal with President Donald Trump to potentially bring an end to the war, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) has said. -snip- Trump has suggested that both Russia and Ukraine must make concessions in the war. Kyiv has rejected any idea of ceding territory to Moscow, while Putin has demanded that Ukraine give up its aspirations of joining the NATO military alliance, and cede its Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions. The ISW think tank, based in Washington D.C., noted...

President Donald Trump gave Europe three weeks to sign off on terms for Ukraine's "surrender" to Russia, a member of the European Parliament (MEP) claimed. Observers of the 3-year-old war have worried that Trump may strike a deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin that pressures Ukraine to abandon its aspirations to join NATO and cede its currently occupied territories, effectively capitulating to Moscow's demands. Ukraine says it has been excluded from high-stakes negotiations that will shape its future. In a post on X, formerly Twitter, Finland's Mika Aaltola of the European People's Party claimed that the U.S. "has given us...

U.S. President Donald Trump is proving to be somewhat popular within Russia, leaving the Kremlin to grapple with how to counter Russians' love of a leader who isn't President Vladimir Putin, recent media reports suggest. -snip- Alexander Baunov, the editor-in-chief of Carnegie Politika and a senior fellow at Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, said in an analysis published on January 31 that in Russia, Trump is a new "anti-elitist president" who, "like a beloved Hollywood lone hero, is closer and more understandable to the generation of the Russian elite that lived through the 1990s or grew up watching American movies than...

Two Russian colonels are reported to have fallen out of windows in the space of two days, adding to a growing list of high-ranking officials who have died in mysterious circumstances since Vladimir Putin's war in Ukraine began. Artur Pryakhin, 56, the head of a regional branch of Russia's Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) in the Republic of Karelia, died after falling from a fifth floor window of an office building at around noon on February 4. Local authorities said he left a suicide note in his office in which he apologized to his wife, asked his loved ones for forgiveness,...

Russian President Vladimir Putin has already begun initial preparations for his annual Victory Day military parade in May, and he is expecting a special guest from the U.S. for the big day, a Kremlin insider has said. -snip- Putin held a meeting on Wednesday to kickstart preparations for Victory Day, asking the heads of Russian regions and public organizations to "approach the upcoming events with conscience." One Kremlin source said it's clear that Russia must trumpet victory of some sort regarding the ongoing war in Ukraine, but officials are uncertain of the details.

Ukraine targeted five of Russia's air defense systems worth an estimated $350 million in a single day, serving a blow to Russian President Vladimir Putin's exhausted military in the nearly three-year-old war. Russia lost two Pantsir-S1 anti-aircraft missile and gun systems and one OSA air defense system, as well as two S-300 air defense systems, according to Ukraine's military and a war reporter. Newsweek has reached out to the Russian government for comment via email. Ukraine has frequently zeroed-in on Russia's advanced air-defense systems, and Monday's reported loss marks a success for Kyiv's military as both sides continue to sustain...

Vladimir Putin's new 'wonder-weapon' caused little damage when he unleashed it on Ukraine, satellite pictures show, despite Russian claims that a defence plant in Dnipro was 'erased to dust'. Furious Russian pro-war military pundits are questioning if they have been misled by Putin's boastful claims over the 'unstoppable' Oreshnik.

Other Russian Telegram channels said the attack resulted in about 50 Russian casualties. Ukrainian forces have used the Washington-supplied HIMARS on several occasions throughout the war, including in its Donetsk and Luhansk regions which are largely occupied by Russian forces. The Kremlin has been pushing for the total capture of the two regions—which together comprise the Donbas—since Russia's initial invasion of eastern Ukraine in 2014. HIMARS has allowed Ukraine to destroy Russia's most advanced anti-aircraft missile systems. Washington has supplied the Ukrainians with at least 39 HIMARS since the war began on February 24, 2022. In February, Serhiy Bratchuk, a...

"The return of Crimea to Ukraine is a requirement of international law." Erdoğan said in his video address that Turkey has always been opposed to Russia's annexation of Crimea. He decried the persecution of Crimea's ethnic Tatars since 2014. Erdoğan added: "Our sincere wish is for the war to end with a fair and lasting peace based on Ukraine's territorial integrity, sovereignty and independence." In October 2020, the Turkish leader said during a joint press briefing with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that his country would never recognize the annexation of Crimea. "We have and always will support Ukraine's sovereignty and...

Vladimir Putin has sought to shift blame for Ukraine's surprise incursion into the Kursk region, as evidence emerged that his country's handling of the offensive was damaging the Russian leader's image. At a virtual meeting held by Putin Thursday on the situation in Russia's Belgorod, Bryansk and Kursk regions, which border Ukraine, the president told regional officials that the "security issues" in Kursk "are problems that are the responsibility of the security agencies." -snip- "I hope that, as was reported today, interaction between local and regional authorities, the government, and security agencies has been established, and this will also play...

"The complete collapse of the entire railroad network in the country could happen in days," the channel said. "[Russian Railways] chiefs have been ordered to work to the point of exhaustion. Those who fail to cope are threatened with dismissal and 'execution.' This is the motivation." Russian Railways in 2023 reported that the number of trains suspended due to issues with its trains more than doubled to 42,600 amid a shortage of critical parts. This was due to "insufficient maintenance of the locomotive fleet," Kommersant reported in March. A Russian Railways spokesperson told Vedomosti in February that the issue "became...

A staunch ally of Vladimir Putin lamented the destruction of the Black Sea Fleet, dealing the Russian president a double blow as his Navy was forced to hold a muted annual parade on Sunday. In a rare admission of Russia's military failures, Yevgeny Fyodorov from the ruling United Russia party complained that Ukraine has disabled such a large proportion of Putin's prized Black Sea Fleet that it is essentially "gone." -snip- "The Russian fleet as an operational mechanism in the Black Sea does not exist! Not physically, but in terms of its actual combat presence. This is a fact," the...

Valentina Bondarenko, a top Russian economist, has died at the age of 82 after falling out of her apartment window in Moscow, Russian state-run media reported on Tuesday. Bondarenko, a leading research fellow at the Institute of Economics of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow, fell out of her apartment window on Monday evening, emergency services told news agency Tass. "She fell out of the window of her apartment, unfortunately, it was not possible to save her, the injuries she received were incompatible with life," the source said.

Russia has refuted social media rumors of a nuclear emergency after speculation spread on Friday that a radiation incident had occurred at the Rostov nuclear power plant. "The Rostov nuclear power plant is operating normally, the background radiation is normal, the messages that have appeared about the emergency are fake," Russian state nuclear company Rosenergoatom told state-run news agency RIA Novosti. Rosenergoatom also responded to the rumors on the social media platform VKontakte, asking internet users to "be vigilant." "The units are operating normally, the radiation background is at the natural level!" it said.

Millions of Russians in the south of the country were left without electricity on Tuesday after a power unit at the Rostov nuclear power plant was shut down due to a malfunction. The Rostov nuclear power plant supplies power to the Russia's entire Southern Federal District, and rolling power outages affected residents of Russia's Krasnodar Territory, Rostov region, Sevastopol, and Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula illegally annexed by President Vladimir Putin from Ukraine in 2014. Russia's state-owned energy group Rosatom said one of the nuclear power plant's four power units was shut down due to a malfunction of the turbine...

Russian President Vladimir Putin is losing the Global South, a new Pew Research Center poll showed. The poll—which was published on July 2 ahead of the NATO military alliance's summit in Washington, D.C., on July 9 to 11—surveyed global public confidence in the Russian leader, asking respondents if they had confidence in Putin "to do the right thing regarding world affairs." The poll was conducted between January 5 and May 21 and includes respondents in 35 countries across the Asia-Pacific region, Europe, Latin America, the Middle East, North America and sub-Saharan Africa. Newsweek has contacted Russia's Foreign Ministry for comment...