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Russian President Vladimir Putin raised eyebrows Thursday when he expressed his support for US Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential bid, flattering the Democratic nominee with some curiously timed remarks. “Our ‘favorite,’ if you can call it that, was the current president, Mr. [Joe] Biden. But he was removed from the race, and he recommended all his supporters to support Ms. Harris. Well, we will do so – we will support her,” Putin said Thursday at the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok. “She laughs so expressively and infectiously that it means that she is doing well.” Putin also criticized former president...

Russia will work with any US president, Russian President Vladimir Putin said during his conversation with the heads of international news agencies on the sidelines of the 27th Saint Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF).Russian President Vladimir Putin said that Russia will work with any US president elected by the American people. On Wednesday, President Putin holds a conversation with the heads of major international news agencies on the sidelines of the 27th Saint Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF), including with representatives of unfriendly countries. "For us, the end result, we believe, does not matter much. Russia will work with any...

Zoya Konovalova, the head of one of Russian President Vladimir Putin's state TV channels, has been found dead after a suspected poisoning incident, officials said. Konovalova, 48, editor-in-chief of the State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company Kuban, was found alongside the body of her ex-husband, 52, at a home in the Krasnodar region on January 5... No visible injuries were found on the bodies of Konovalova and her ex-husband, Russia's state-run news agency RIA Novosti reported. "The cause of death is said to be poisoning," the TV channel said, adding that she is survived by a 15-year-old daughter and son....

Regardless, China-Russia relations grew more strained than outsiders might imagine, with Russia finally taking a big gamble: It would drop an informational bomb on Beijing. The subject of that information was then Foreign Minister Qin, who had been tapped for the post by Xi. It's easy to see what might have motivated Russia. Being China's top diplomat, Qin would have been the person responsible for sending the Chinese delegation to Ukraine. Russia labeled Qin as pro-U.S. as he had served as ambassador to the U.S. for a short period before being tapped as foreign minister. So it "passed on internal...

"Russia lost 360,000 people in the war, according to Putin," Matveev wrote. "244 thousand mobilized. 486 thousand volunteers. And there are only 617 thousand at the front. Entertaining military mathematics from Putin. "The losses were 113 thousand people," he continued. "But there was also the invasion group and those who were recruited before mobilization. And this is around 250 thousand. That is, Putin literally admitted irretrievable losses in the amount of 363 thousand people.".. The figure does come close to the 315,000 claimed Russian troop casualties that were revealed in a leaked declassified U.S. intelligence document this week. The General...

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in an interview published on Friday that he hoped President Vladimir Putin would run in the March election for another term as Russian president, a move that would keep Putin in power until at least 2030. -snip- Asked by the student television channel of Moscow State Institute for International Relations (MGIMO) what the next president after Putin should be like, Peskov said: "The same." "Or different but the same," Peskov told MGIMO 360 with a smile. "Putin has not yet announced his intention to run but I sincerely want to believe that he will do...

Russian authorities have closely monitored the public reaction to fake reports of the death of Vladimir Putin and may punish those who praised the demise of the Russian president, according to Ukrainian intelligence. Andrii Yusov, a representative of Defence Intelligence of Ukraine, was responding to the claims emerging last week that Putin had died after a cardiac arrest and that those in his inner circle were planning a body double to replace him... In what could have a plot line borrowed from the 2017 film The Death of Stalin, which satirizes the indecision among the inner circle of the former...

Vladimir Putin has hit out at Western 'scum' who he accuses of seeking to 'instigate pogroms' in Russia after an anti-Semetic mob rampaged through Dagestan. The Kremlin leader was two hours late for a meeting with his leading military and security henchmen in which the dictator blamed foreign interference for the ugly scenes at a regional airport when the mob hunted for Jews arriving by plane. Citing no evidence, he accused Ukraine and Western intelligence services of being behind the hate-filled uprising in Makhachkala, capital of Dagestan region. In a rambling diatribe, a grim-faced Putin told his subordinates that the...

Russian President Vladimir Putin knocked the criminal cases against former President Trump on Tuesday, calling them a demonstration of the “rottenness” of the American political system. “As for the prosecution of Trump, for us what is happening in today’s conditions, in my opinion, is good because it shows the rottenness of the American political system, which cannot pretend to teach others democracy,” Putin said during a speech at the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, Russia. He argued that “everything that is happening with Trump is the persecution of a political rival for political reasons.” “That’s what it is,” the Putin...

Russian President Vladimir Putin said Tuesday the prosecution of former President Donald Trump was politically motivated and demonstrated the "rottenness" of the U.S. political system.Trump, the front-runner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, is facing a series of criminal cases in which he is charged, among other things, with trying to overturn his 2020 presidential election defeat by Joe Biden.He has pleaded not guilty, while Biden, who is seeking re-election next year, has kept silent about the proceedings against his opponent.Putin said what was happening to Trump was good from Russia's point of view."It shows all the rottenness of the...

Just 38 percent of respondents "definitely" support the actions of Russia's Armed Forces in Ukraine, the survey by independent pollster Levada Center conducted late August found... The results come as Russia's 2024 presidential election looms, scheduled to be held on March 17 next year. Putin is expected to soon announce his bid for a sixth overall presidential term. Per constitutional changes made prior to the war in Ukraine, Putin may remain in power until 2036. Last month, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov was quoted as saying that Russia's presidential election is "not really democracy" and forecasted a 90 percent victory for...

March 20, 2007 Editorial The Disastrous Mr. Mugabe Zimbabwe’s president, Robert Mugabe, has spent much of his 26-plus years in power suppressing all opposition, persecuting defenseless minorities and destroying a once-promising economy. He has shamelessly tried to deflect all blame for the disastrous consequences — including a man-made famine and a catastrophically mishandled H.I.V./AIDS epidemic — onto international scapegoats, chiefly Britain and the United States. Now, the 83-year-old Mr. Mugabe seems to have descended into total power-madness. He has barred opponents from leaving the country, ordered his thugs to literally crack the skulls of opposition leaders, accused his own...