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A fire raged near the Kremlin yesterday as Vladimir Putin carried out secret talks with Belarus president Alexander Lukashenko. As the two leaders met, emergency services swarmed to the blaze at a defence ministry building at 19 Znamenka Street, Moscow. Dramatic footage shows smoke gushing from windows and rising into the sky. Around 50 people were evacuated, with the cause of the fire currently unconfirmed. Some reports said the section of the building on fire was a department of military property dealing with facilities across the country. No injuries were reported. As firefighters battle to extinguish the flames, Putin was...

Russia has suffered around 200,000 casualties since its invasion of Ukraine The Ministry of Defence claims a 'minority' are due to non-combat causes A high number of deaths are linked to Russian soldier's alcohol consumption The UK Ministry of Defence said an 'extremely high' number of Russian troop deaths as a part of the Ukraine war are linked to alcohol abuse. Russian military forces are injuring themselves as a result of poor handling of weapons and heavy drinking, according to the ministry's morning intelligence update. Although Russia has suffered around 200,000 casualties since the beginning of its full-scale invasion of...

Vladimir Putin's commanders are forcing his conscript soldiers at gunpoint to remain at the frontline. They are using a brutal Stalin tactic to prevent Russian reservist troops leaving their positions, say men who have seen the horror of the cannon-fodder killing fields. 'People are abandoned in the trenches as if homeless and littered with corpses,' complained Russian reservist draftees in a new video appealing directly to Vladimir Putin. 'Retreat-blocking detachments were set up against us and they did not let us out of positions.' They are forced at gunpoint to remain in position, a tactic used by Stalin's cruel SMERSH...

Belarus’s authoritarian president has signed a bill introducing capital punishment for state officials and military personnel convicted of high treason. The amendments to the country’s criminal code endorsed by President Alexander Lukashenko envisage death sentences for officials and service personnel who cause “irreparable damage” to Belarus’s national security through acts of treason. Belarus is the only country in Europe that has not banned capital punishment, which has been applied to those convicted of murder or terrorism. Executions are carried out with a shot to the back of the head. Lukashenko has ruled Belarus with an iron fist for nearly three...

Vladimir Putin has been accused of using 'deeply irresponsible' nuclear rhetoric Though Chief of the Defence Staff Tony Radakin said 'it is a sign of weakness' Russian president Vladimir Putin has been criticised for 'deeply irresponsible' nuclear rhetoric, as fears grow that he may make a show of force using a nuke over the Black Sea. Last month Putin said he was ready to use nuclear weapons if necessary to defend Russia's 'territorial integrity' and yesterday Russia said seized Ukrainian lands are under its nuclear protection. The threatening statements are believed to have increased in frequency due to Putin having...

Russia's parliament on Tuesday approved a bill to toughen punishments for a host of crimes such as desertion, damage to military property and insubordination if they are committed during military mobilisation or combat situations. The bill, passed in its second and third readings on Tuesday by the lower house of parliament, the Duma, comes amid debate inside Russia about a possible mobilisation

Humiliation for Putin's troops is continuing as they begin to abandon the major city of Melitopol in the face of Kyiv's lightning counter-offensive. The city's pre-occupation mayor said that Russian troops were pulling out of the area in Ukraine's southern Zaporizhzhia region. Mayor Ivan Fedorov wrote on Telegram that Russian troops were heading towards Moscow-annexed Crimea. He said columns of military equipment were reported at a checkpoint in Chonhar, a village marking the boundary between the Crimean peninsula and the Ukrainian mainland.

Russian soldiers are refusing to fight in Ukraine it was claimed last night A video on social media showed Moscow's soldiers surrendering en masse Kyiv's forces said they 'understand the hopelessness of their situation' Russian soldiers are refusing to fight in Ukraine amid Moscow’s rising losses, it was claimed last night. A lightning counter-offensive by Kyiv last week has pushed Vladimir Putin’s invaders right back to the border in parts of the north-east of the country, reclaiming huge swatches of territory lost in the early days of the war. The blitz forced Russian troops to either flee or surrender en...

Ilya Ponomarev, a former member of the State Duma of the Russian Federation (the Russian parliament), said that the so-called National Republican Army (NRA) has claimed responsibility for the murder of Darya Dugina, the daughter of "Putin’s ideologue" Aleksandr Dugin. Source: Ponomarev on air on Utro Fevralya (February Morning), his opposition TV channel, and in a commentary for Ukrainska Pravda Details: Ponomarev said that Darya Dugina had called for the murder of Ukrainians and was one of the voices inciting violence and calling for murders in the occupied territories [of Ukraine]. Among other things, she had offered a justification for...

A pro-Russian propaganda channel has issued a story claiming the country's troops have been 'poisoned in a chemical attack in Ukraine'. The information, regarded as suspect, comes amid fears Russia is looking for reasons to justify using chemical weapons in its invasion of its southern neighbor. Russia Today reports traces of Botulinum toxin Type B, which is an 'organic poison of artificial origin,' were found in samples taken from soldiers, according to Russia's defense ministry. The ministry accused Kiev of 'domestic terrorism' and insisted Russian troops were 'hospitalized with signs of severe poisoning' after being stationed near the village of...

Plumes of black smoke were seen on Tuesday at a Russian military airbase near the settlement of Gvardeyskoye in the centre of Russian-controlled Crimea, Russia’s Kommersant newspaper reported. Earlier on Tuesday, Russia’s Defence Ministry separately blamed a series of explosions around Dzhankoi in northern Crimea on “sabotage”, state-owned news agency RIA reported. Ukraine has neither confirmed nor denied its involvement in a recent series of blasts in Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014.

Explosions shook an ammunition depot in Russian-annexed Crimea on Tuesday, the latest such incident in a region used by Moscow as a staging post for its war in Ukraine.

Russia has abandoned 20,000 troops near Kherson in the face of a Ukrainian counter-attack, the regional governor has claimed. Vitaly Kim said Russia is relocating command posts on the west bank of the Dnipro River to the east, leaving 'stupid orcs' - his term for Kremlin soldiers - behind. Ukraine has already blown up all three bridges under Russian control connecting the two banks, meaning its soldiers on the west side have no easy way of resupplying, reinforcing, or retreating as Kyiv's men continue their advance. Kim, the governor of Mykolaiv which sits on the west bank, said Monday that...

Russia's new 100 rouble banknote is impossible to withdraw from ATMs after Western firms that program cash machine quit the country following Ukraine invasion The Association of Russian Banks has asked for a six-month delay to rolling out the new 100 Rouble banknote as a new security feature is needed The Rzhev Memorial to the Soviet Soldier, a memorial to one of the bloodiest battles of the Second World War, is featured on the note to fuel patriotism The Western companies which install and update ATMs have pulled out of Russia Russia’s new 100 rouble banknotes are impossible to withdraw...

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...

RUSSIA's "outdated weapons" have proven to be no match for Ukrainian defences as the latest intelligence report from the Ministry of Defence (MoD) shows 55 percent of Russian-backed forces have been wiped out in the Donbas region. With the focus of the conflict heavily concentrated in the Donbas region in and around the strategic industrial city of Severodonetsk, Ukraine has called on the west to supply extra weapons to defend the territory. Russia has announced it has all but captured the city as heavy shelling continues, however, the cost of the operation has taken its toll on Russian personnel, with...

VLADIMIR Putin was spotted visibly shaking as he stood next to one of the recipients of the State Prize of the Russian Federation he awarded at the Kremlin on Sunday. Speculation about Vladimir Putin's health has been rife since before he was catapulted into the daily news bulletins because of his invasion of Ukraine in February. The Russian leader has sparked questions about his status as reports began to emerge about him suffering from cancer. Putin appeared quite shaky on his legs as he listened to Russian filmmaker Nikita Mikhalkov accept a prize rewarding his work in the arts. Footage...

Russia has stolen around 600,000 tonnes of grain from occupied Ukrainian territory and exported some of it, the deputy head of Ukraine’s agricultural producers’ union said on Wednesday. Ukraine will demand Russia provide compensation for both the theft of the grain and the destruction of the property of farmers, Denys Marchuk, the head of the UAC. "To date, about 600,000 tonnes have been stolen from agricultural companies and taken to the temporarily occupied territory of the Crimean Peninsula and from there it moves to ports, in particular to Sevastopol, and from there, ships go to the Middle East," Marchuk said....

Russian troops were battling into a major Donbas city today as a confidential UK report revealed the Kremlin’s army could collapse amid massive losses. A secretive analysis of the invasion says Russian President Vladimir Putin believes losses of 30,350 troops so far are a “price worth paying” for a small victory in Ukraine. But the new report - seen by senior UK government officials and written by a top UK analyst on Russia warns Putin’s blood sacrifice may be a step too far for his troops. Today Moscow’s troops entered the city of Sievierodonetsk sparking fierce fighting in the ruins...

Russia's army could collapse amid huge losses of more than 30,000 troops in Ukraine, according to a confidential UK report that emerged on Monday. While Moscow's latest estimated troop losses make grim reading for President Vladimir Putin, the report claims he sees them as a 'price worth paying' for victory. However, the new report - a secretive analysis of Putin's brutal invasion seen by The Mirror - claims that the losses could be too great for his soldiers, amid other reports that Russian morale is low. Latest estimates from the Ukraine's Armed Forces suggest as many as 30,350 Russian soldiers...