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(Reuters) - Ukrainian troops appeared on the point of losing their hard-won foothold inside Russia's Kursk region on Wednesday as Moscow claimed further advances there and military bloggers on both sides said Kyiv's forces were withdrawing.Ukraine sprang one of the biggest shocks of the war on August 6 last year by storming across the border and grabbing a chunk of land inside Russia, boosting citizens' morale and gaining a potential bargaining chip. But after clinging for more than seven months to a gradually shrinking area, Ukraine has seen its position worsen sharply in the past week.Russia's defence ministry on Wednesday...

China's President Xi Jinping affirmed his "no limits" partnership in a phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday, China's state media reported, on the third anniversary of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The leaders held the talks as U.S. President Donald Trump has pushed for a quick deal to end the Ukraine war, raising the prospect that Washington could draw a wedge between Xi and Putin to focus on competing with the world's second largest economy. The call appeared aimed at dispelling any such prospects - the two leaders underscored the durability and the "long-term" nature of their...

(Reuters) -The cut-off of Russian gas supplies to Moldova's breakaway Transdniestria region has forced the closure of all industrial companies except food producers, an official said on Thursday....The local energy company cut heating and hot water to households on Wednesday, and urged families to keep warm by gathering in a single room... Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has described the end of Russian gas transit as "one of Moscow's biggest defeats" and urged the United States to supply more gas to Europe.... Maria Zakharova said the loss of Russian gas was hurting Europe economically, and the U.S. was the beneficiary. "Responsibility...

President Vladimir Putin told Russians in a New Year address that the country would move forward with confidence in 2025, though he offered no specific promises on the economy or the war in Ukraine. At a time when many ordinary people are worried about rising prices and the central bank's 21% interest rate is squeezing businesses and homebuyers, Putin reassured Russians that their wellbeing was his top priority. He framed Russia's challenges as part of a wider historic mission, evoking past victories including its role in the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War Two. Russia, he said, had overcome...

Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Friday that Moscow could deploy its Oreshnik intermediate-range ballistic missiles system in Belarus in the second half of 2025, Russian state media said. Putin was responding to a request by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko during a summit in Minsk. He said Belarus would determine the targets for Oreshniks deployed on its territory.

MOSCOW - Discussion in the West about arming Ukraine with nuclear weapons is "absolutely irresponsible", Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Tuesday, in response to a report in the New York Times citing unidentified officials who suggested such a possibility.The New York Times reported last week that some unidentified Western officials had suggested U.S. President Joe Biden could give Ukraine nuclear weapons before he leaves office."Several officials even suggested that Mr. Biden could return nuclear weapons to Ukraine that were taken from it after the fall of the Soviet Union. That would be an instant and enormous deterrent. But such...

President Vladimir Putin is ready to discuss Ukraine with Donald Trump but that does not mean he is willing to alter Moscow's demands, the Kremlin said on Friday. Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov made the remarks after being asked at his daily news briefing if Putin's readiness to talk to the Republican president-elect reflected a willingness to change those demands. "The president has never said that the goals of the special military operation are changing. On the contrary, he has repeatedly said that they remain the same," Peskov said. -snip- Putin on June 14 set out his terms for an end...

Russian President Vladimir Putin met North Korea's foreign minister in the Kremlin on Monday at a time of mounting concern in the West that North Korean soldiers are about to enter the Ukraine war on Moscow's side. Video of the meeting showed the pair shaking hands for a full minute as Putin greeted Choe Son Hui. Putin noted that they were meeting on Russia's National Unity Day, a public holiday, and Choe conveyed "sincere, warm, comradely greetings" from North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

A Russian RS-28 Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missile likely failed during a test earlier this month, according to arms experts and satellite imagery from the launch site. Maxar satellite images from Sept. 21 show a crater about 60 meters (200 feet) wide at the launch silo at the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in northern Russia and damage around the area that was not visible in imagery from earlier in the month. It was not clear from the imagery if the liquid-fueled Sarmat failed during a launch or if there was an accident during defueling. “By all indications, it was a failed test. It’s...

Russia accused Ukraine on Tuesday of mounting an attack on its southern border and said it had moved in reserves to help repel hundreds of fighters backed by tanks. Hours after a Russian regional governor said the attackers had been pushed back, the defence ministry issued a statement saying that fighting was still going on. "Troops covering the state border, together with units of the border troops of the FSB (security service) of Russia, are repelling attacks and inflicting fire on the enemy in the area of ​​the state border and on (Ukrainian) reserves in the Sumy region," the statement...

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...

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-...

The wife of a Russian soldier delivered an emotional appeal for his return from Ukraine on Saturday at the election headquarters of President Vladimir Putin, a defiant gesture in a country where open criticism of the war is banned. "Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin has issued a decree that my husband has to be there (in Ukraine). I'm interested to know when he will issue a decree that my husband has to be home," Maria Andreyeva said. She became involved in a heated exchange with a woman who told her that Russian soldiers in Ukraine were defending the motherland and she should...

A prominent liberal priest faces expulsion from the Russian Orthodox church for refusing to read out a prayer asking God to guide Russia to victory over Ukraine. In a verdict published on Saturday, a church court said Aleksiy Uminsky should be “expelled from holy orders” for violating his priestly oath. The decision was forwarded for approval to Patriarch Kirill, the head of the Russian church who strongly backs President Vladimir Putin. The case shows how the church is clamping down on internal dissent as it throws its support behind Putin and his “special military operation” in Ukraine, which is now...

A politician bidding to run against Vladimir Putin in Russia's upcoming presidential election described the decision to go to war in Ukraine as a "big mistake" in comments to the wives of soldiers on Thursday. Boris Nadezhdin, representing a centre-right party called Civic Initiative that has no seats in parliament, is seeking to gather the necessary 100,000 signatures from people across Russia to enable him to stand against Putin. -snip- Nadezhdin has promised to present a plan for ending the conflict. Last week he also aimed sharp criticism at the authorities over heating outages that have struck parts of Russia...

Russian investigators said on Tuesday they had arrested three people over heating outages south of Moscow that have sent regional officials scrambling to restore services and drawn scrutiny from the Kremlin. Authorities blamed the breakdown on failures at a boiler plant owned by a private ammunition factory. The heads of the heating plant and the factory were arrested on suspicion of providing unsafe services, investigators said in a statement. The deputy head of the local administration was also detained on suspicion of certifying the heating plant as adequate for winter despite allegedly knowing about defects that needed to be fixed....

Russian President Vladimir Putin issued a rare apology on Thursday when a pensioner complained to him about the price of eggs. During Putin's end-of-year question and answer session with the media and with members of the public calling in from across Russia, pensioner Irina Akopova was shown seated at her kitchen table and addressing the president by video link. She complained that prices for eggs, chicken breasts and wings had all skyrocketed. "Vladimir Vladimirovich, take pity on pensioners! We don't get millions in our pensions. Sort this out - we have no one to turn to," she said. "I'm very...

President Vladimir Putin's spokesman refused to comment on Tuesday on the beating of a prisoner by the teenaged son of Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, an incident that drew condemnation even from some pro-Kremlin hardliners. Kadyrov said on Monday he was proud of his son Adam, 15, for the attack on Nikita Zhuravel, a Russian man accused of burning the Koran, and posted a video of the beating. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters at the start of his daily briefing that he would not be commenting on the incident. When asked why, he said: "I don't want to." In the...

A Russian war reporter was killed and three were wounded in Ukraine on Saturday in what the defence ministry said was a Ukrainian attack using cluster munitions, prompting outrage from Moscow. In a separate incident, German broadcaster Deutsche Welle said one of its journalists, Yevgeny Shilko, had been wounded elsewhere in Ukraine in a Russian attack with cluster munitions that killed a Ukrainian soldier. It said his life was not in danger. Cluster bombs are in the spotlight after Ukraine received supplies of them from the United States this month. Many countries ban them because they rain shrapnel over a...

Russian mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin said on Monday that Ukrainian forces had retaken part of the village of Berkhivka, north of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine, calling it a "disgrace". Prigozhin's private Wagner militia captured Bakhmut last month after the longest battle of the war and handed its positions there to regular Russian troops. Ukrainian forces have continued to attack areas north and south of the city including Berkhivka, whose seizure Wagner had claimed on Feb. 24. The village lies about 3 km (1.9 miles) northwest of Bakhmut. "Now part of the settlement of Berkhivka has already been lost, the troops...