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-At least 20 dead, including three children, and 90 hurt after three Russian rockets struck city of Vinnytsya -Office block was badly damaged in Thursday morning attack, which also torched vehicles in nearby car park -Zelensky called strike 'terrorism', saying there are no military targets in city which is 450 mm the miles from the front -It is the sixth Russian strike in a little over two weeks to hit a purely civilian target, with scores of people killed At least 20 people - including three children - are dead and 90 wounded after Russian rockets hit another Ukrainian city...

North Korea on Wednesday recognised two Russian-backed breakaway "people's republics" in eastern Ukraine as independent states, a separatist leader and a Russian state news agency said. The move makes North Korea only the third country after Russia and Syria to recognise the two breakaway entities, the Donetsk (DPR) and Luhansk People's Republics (LPR), in Ukraine's Donbas region.

The lower house of the Russian parliament will gather on July 15 for an extraordinary session, its council decided on Monday, just days after President Vladimir Putin warned that he had not even started to get serious in the war in Ukraine. Putin used a meeting with parliamentary leaders on Thursday to dare the United States and its allies to try to defeat Russia in Ukraine, which Russia invaded on Feb. 24. Parliamentary leaders all thanked Putin for his decisions.

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko might be bracing for a revolt from his own military officers after they recently expressed their opposition to the Russian war in Ukraine. Senior officers from the fifth brigade of the Special Forces warned in an open letter to Lukashenko, who is a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, against sending troops to fight in Ukraine, describing that such decision is "pure suicide," the Express reported Saturday. "By entering the war against Ukraine, Belarus will be evicted from the community of civilized states and will be an international outcast for many years to come," the...

Vladimir Putin has lost at least 60 colonels in the war in Ukraine, it was revealed today. Lieutenant Colonel Sergei Moskvichev, 45, was buried with full military honours. A paratrooper, it took Russia three months to retrieve his body from the war zone and conduct his funeral, it was revealed. He was the 60th known colonel to have died in the bloody war, which has seen a crushing toll of high-ranking officers in Putin's forces, including at least 11 generals. The revelation of his death came as Putin declared he had hardly begun his military campaign in Ukraine. 'We haven't...

Puffy-faced Vladimir Putin is facing more health issues after he was spotted struggling to stay awake. The deranged dictator could barely hold his head up during a meeting with his Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu on Tuesday. He is rumoured to have thyroid cancer and health experts say that drugs used to treat the condition could explain the despot’s puffy face. The 69-year-old is known for working hard to maintain a masculine, hardman appearance – but his steady decline has unfolded in front of the world’s media. He mumbled a half-hearted congratulations to his soldiers before making the deluded claim they...

A top Russian official warned the US Wednesday that it could face the “wrath of God” if it pursues efforts to help establish an international tribunal to investigate Russia’s action in Ukraine. Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy secretary of Russia’s Security Council chaired by President Vladimir Putin, denounced the US for what he described as its efforts to “spread chaos and destruction across the world for the sake of ‘true democracy.’” “The entire US history since the times of subjugation of the native Indian population represents a series of bloody wars,” Medvedev charged in a long diatribe on his Telegram channel,...

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday declared victory in the eastern Ukrainian region of Luhansk, one day after Ukrainian forces withdrew from their last remaining bulwark of resistance in the province. Russia’s Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu reported to Putin in a televised meeting Monday that Russian forces had taken control of Luhansk, which together with the neighboring Donetsk province makes up Ukraine’s industrial heartland of Donbas. Shoigu told Putin that “the operation” was completed on Sunday after Russian troops overran the city of Lysychansk, the last stronghold of Ukrainian forces in Luhansk.

Alexander Lukashenko said on Saturday that if Belarus were to come under “attack”, its army would respond immediately. The West has speculated over the level of involvement of Belarus in Russia’s ongoing “special military operation” in Ukraine since late February. Lukashenko said his state stood fully behind Russia in its invasion as part of its commitment to a “union state” with Moscow. But he has previously suggested his own armed forces will not themselves enter Ukraine, pointing to Minsk’s potential role of helping to create a peace deal instead. The Belarusian President was, however, clear that his country would not...

The Russian navy appears to have accidentally blown up one of its own ships in the black sea in the latest blunder for Putin's forces. A landing craft is reported to have exploded when it hit a Russian sea mine near Mariupol. The crew is said to have survived the friendly-fire incident, but the reputation of Russia's naval commanders is not so unscathed. 'Near Mariupol, a landing craft of the Black Sea Fleet D-106 blew up on a mine,' said a Telegram channel related to the Russian navy. 'Waiting for a confirmation of this suicidal goodwill gesture,' said the Twitter...

A 'gesture of goodwill': That was how the Kremlin tried to play off its retreat from Ukraine's Snake Island on Thursday, after commanders gave up hope of holding the strategic spit of land under withering artillery fire. It is the same phrase that Putin's lackeys used to try and cover up their ignominious retreat from Kyiv, Chernihiv and Sumy back in early April, as the first phase of their war in Ukraine spectacularly failed. But those are far from the only battlefield blunders to have left Russia's red army red-faced: From an early defeat trying to take Hostomel airfield to...

Russian President Vladimir Putin met with fellow heads of state on Wednesday at a massive table in Turkmenistan that dwarfed a comically long table at the Kremlin that previously captured global attention. Meeting with the leaders of Turkmenistan, Iran, Kazakhstan, and Azerbaijan, Putin sat far from other leaders at a massive rectangular table as they discussed cooperation in the Caspian Sea region, the Kremlin said. According to the Turkmenistan government, the 6th Caspian Summit was held at the "luxurious Arkadag Hotel."

Russia was poised to default on its foreign debt for the first time since 1918, pushed into delinquency not for lack of money but because of punishing Western sanctions over its invasion of Ukraine. Russia was likely to miss payments on two foreign-currency bonds late Sunday, according to holders of the bonds who had yet to see funds deposited. The day marks the elapse of a 30-day grace period since the country was due to pay the equivalent of $100 million in dollars and euros to bondholders.