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One of Moscow's fighter jets has been shot down by Ukrainian forces, according to a military blogger with links to the Russian air force. Another pro-Moscow milblogger said that the Sukhoi Su-34 aircraft had been downed by a Western-supplied F-16. Neither report has been confirmed and Newsweek has contacted the Russian and Ukrainian defense ministries for comment over the unverified claims which have sparked much speculation on social media. The Telegram channel Fighterbomber posted on Saturday a message which looked like a tribute to a lost Su-34 fighter jet. Next to an image of the supersonic medium-range fighter bomber, which...

Investigators fear the shooting is part of a surge in inter-ethnic tensions between Chechens and the Ingush. Vladimir Putin is facing a potentially serious outbreak of inter-ethnic violence, after a former Chechen and Ingush politician was seriously wounded by a gunman at his home just outside Moscow. Sherip Alikhadzhiev, an aide to Russian State Duma Deputy Vladimir Shamanov, was rushed to hospital with two bullet wounds and is recovering in intensive care. Russia's Investigative Committee said the gunman fired at least four times at the victim’s house in the village of Lapino near Odintsovo, before fleeing the scene. Mr Alikhadzhiev...

The Kremlin is reported to have lost control of the situation and is preparing for a war between the two republics. Chechnya's leader Ramzan Kadyrov has announced a blood feud against three politicians from Russia's volatile North Caucasus region, sparking fears of a major interethnic conflict. The North Caucasus is populated by a variety of different ethnic groups, the majority of whom are Muslim and who live in several republics - these include Chechnya, Dagestan and Ingushetia. Relations between Chechnya and Dagestan have been tense for years over a land and border dispute, that is threatening to explode. Chechnya's brutal...

The head of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, has criticized tightening of the migration policy in Russia. "There's a sense that someone is deliberately trying to pit Russia against its neighboring brotherly regions. If migration policy is to be changed, it shouldn’t be done in such a repulsive manner, where people are fiercely attacking anyone who looks foreign. Detentions are carried out without any ceremony, and recently, these actions have become very harsh," Kadyrov wrote in a post on his Telegram channel. In his view, migration issues cannot be resolved through "mass deportations of foreign citizens," and the problems did not arise...

Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov has accused Russian lawmakers from neighbouring regions of attempting to commission his assassination, and threatened them with a "blood feud" unless they prove otherwise, state news agency TASS reported. TASS cited Chechen-language comments by Kadyrov, a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, to a meeting of Chechen security officials. Video of the meeting was published on Kadyrov's personal Telegram channel on Wednesday. The news agency translated Kadyrov's comments as: "There are witnesses, there are people from whom they tried to commission, whom they asked how much they would take for the order." TASS cited Kadyrov...

Russell Bentley, a self-described “Donbass Cowboy,” joined Russian forces soon after they created a proxy state in eastern Ukraine in 2014. He quickly became one of Russian propaganda’s favorite Americans, receiving a Russian passport and a gig with state-run Sputnik TV. On April 8, the 64-year-old Austin native better known under his call sign “Texas” was detained by Russian soldiers in the city of Donetsk, occupied by Russia for the past decade, according to his wife. Eleven days later, he turned up dead. He is the latest in a string of figures involved in Russia’s 2014 takeover of parts of...

New edict affects all of Moscow's historic holdings across three continents, including former imperial colonies in the US. Russia has laid the groundwork for expanding its soft power across North America and Asia with a new decree Vladimir Putin signed last week. The new order provides funds to search, register and provide legal protection to Russian properties abroad – including land and buildings located in former Russian Empire and Soviet Union territories. Among the areas affected by the new decree is Alaska, which was sold to the United States in 1867 and still hosts communities with close links to Russia....

Yevgeny Prigozhin, the Kremlin-connected businessman who controls the notorious Wagner mercenary group, has accused “decision-makers” in Russia of treason for not providing his troops and military units of Russia's regular armed forces with ammunition needed to fight in Ukraine. "A criminal group did not give us ammunition,” Prigozhin said in a five-minute audio statement posted on Telegram on April 26 in which he reiterated his claim that ammunition is being stockpiled in depots but not delivered to the battlefield. Prigozhin claimed his troops have no ammunition to fight against Ukrainian artillery because of "treason" by unspecified top Russian officials, pledging...

The head of Russia's mercenary Wagner Group threatened to withdraw his troops from the embattled city of Bakhmut in Ukraine amid heavy casualties. Yevgeny Prigozhin told military blogger Semyon Pegov losses were five times higher than necessary because of the lack of artillery ammunition. "Every day, we have stacks of thousands of bodies that we put in coffins and send home," Prigozhin said in the interview published on Saturday. He had written to Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu asking for supplies. "If the ammunition deficit is not replenished, we are forced, in order not to run like cowardly rats afterwards,...

Russia's private Wagner militia, which is leading the assault on Bakhmut in Ukraine and has been active in Africa, could soon cease to exist, founder Yevgeny Prigozhin said in video remarks to a blogger that were released on Friday. It was not immediately clear when Prigozhin had spoken and how serious he was being. Earlier this week he withdrew comments about the frontline he said had been a joke. Prigozhin has complained repeatedly about how Russia is conducting the war in Ukraine. He often says the regular armed forces are not giving his men the ammunition they need and sometimes...

The Russia government has ordered that the publication of statistics on oil, gas and condensate production be suspended until April 1, 2024, Tass news agency said on Friday. It did not give any details. Russia's statistics agency Rosstat omitted monthly oil production data from its latest economic report published on Wednesday.

Russia today boasted its missile strikes were 'right on target' in a sickening Telegram post made just hours after Vladimir Putin unleashed a barrage of rockets on Ukrainian homes. More than 20 cruise missiles and two drones were fired at cities and towns across Ukraine that were miles away from the front lines, killing at least 23 civilians including a mother and her two-year-old daughter as they slept inside their homes. Families were blown to pieces, with many victims buried amongst the rubble of their homes, as Russia's missiles thundered through the air and smashed into residential buildings. Five hours...

Vladimir Putin has reportedly fired a top admiral because of his refusal to send his sailors to fight in the war against Ukraine. Admiral Sergei Avakyants, 66, was suddenly stripped of the role of commander of the Russian Pacific Fleet last week during war games involving nuclear bombers ordered by the Kremlin. Avakyants has been seeking to protect his men from deployment - to prevent them from being cannon fodder - according to Volya and Brief Telegram. The admiral had repeatedly resisted or subverted orders to send his men to fight in Ukraine. When forced to do so he allegedly...

The Russian currency has fallen yet again against the dollar and euro. Is it just a cycle, or is something bigger going on? Since the beginning of the year, Russia's currency, the ruble, has lost 16% of its value against the dollar and 13% against the euro. This week, it was trading at around 83 rubles to the former and 91 against the latter. This makes it the third-worst performing global currency so far this year, behind the Egyptian pound and the Argentine peso. Following the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the currency immediately fell to 113 rubles against...

Far from the front line of the war in Ukraine, battle lines of a different kind were drawn when residents of a Moscow district opposed a rumored proposal for a mosque for 60,000 worshippers by a lake cherished by Russian Orthodox believers. In February, people in Kosino-Ukhtomsky started to voice anger at the complex, which would include a Muslim center and educational facilities. President of the predominantly Muslim Russian republic of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, fiercely loyal to Russian President Vladimir Putin, called on anti-mosque demonstrators to "show your patriotism" by going to the trenches in Ukraine. Prominent MMA fighters also...

ONE of Vladimir Putin's war planes dropped a bomb on a Russian city tonight - blowing a massive 65ft crater in the street. Residents said they heard a whistling noise before a blast erupted beside a block of flats in Belgorod, only 25 miles from the border with Ukraine. In a statement, the Russian Ministry of Defence said: "As a Sukhoi Su-34 air force plane was flying over the city of Belgorod there was an accidental discharge of aviation ammunition."

Russia's annual in-person commemoration of its country's World War II fighters is not going to take place this year, according to state authorities. The nixing of the face-to-face "Immortal Regiment" march comes amid reports that the nation's major national event Victory Day event, which is scheduled to take place May 9 and celebrates the Soviet Union's role in defeating Nazi Germany, may be canceled or downsized in certain regions including Crimea, Kursk and Belgorod due to ongoing security concerns resulting from the war with Ukraine. Russian State Duma Deputy Elena Tsunaeva, co-chairperson of the central headquarters of the "Immortal Regiment...

A prominent pro-Kremlin propagandist has been unmasked as a 37-year-old Navy veteran and tropical fish seller from New Jersey. Divorcee Sarah Bils is known to her 100,000 devoted fans online as 'Donbas Devushka', or Donbas Girl. She posed as a Russian Jew from the occupied Ukrainian city of Luhansk and a geopolitics expert. -snip- She left the military in November last year with an honorable discharge but only after being demoted. Bils claims she was 'kicked out' of the Navy due to her 'leftist views.'

A former commander of Russian forces in Ukraine has likely returned to the war-torn country as "intense tensions" develop among Russia's top military figures, according to a new assessment. General Colonel Mikhail Teplinsky, who served as the commander of Russia's VDV, the airborne forces branch of the Russian military, was removed from Moscow's operations in Ukraine in January 2023, which Western analysts noted at the time.

A leading crony of Vladimir Putin has urged him to stop the war now and tell the world Russia has achieved the aims of its 'special military operation', including decimating 'a large part of the active male population of Ukraine'. Yevgeny Prigozhin - head of the Wagner mercenary army deployed by the Kremlin - posted a rambling statement online last night in which he made the surprise call for the war to stop. He claimed Russia had taken a 'fat chunk' of Ukrainian territory, and that the most strategic route for its armed forces - who have suffered severe losses...