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Russian President Vladimir Putin has reportedly floated a three-way summit between himself, U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping to negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine, without Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the table. The meeting was mentioned in a phone call to Trump on Oct. 9, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday, citing a former Russian intelligence officer briefed on the matter. Such a summit may take place at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in November in the Chinese city of Shenzhen, according to the report. The call also produced a deal for Moscow...

Pope Leo spoke by phone Oct. 16 from Rome’s Gemelli Hospital with Russian President Vladimir Putin, highlighting concern for communities in a Russian-occupied Ukrainian city suffering from worsening food scarcity. “During the conversation, the Holy Father expressed his deep concern about the grave humanitarian situation in the city of Oleshky, in the Kherson region, and called for a ceasefire to allow the delivery of food and medical assistance, and the voluntary and safe evacuation of the civilian population,” the Holy See Press Office stated Oct. 16. While speaking with Putin, Pope Leo also “reaffirmed the Holy See’s commitment to promoting...

Former Vice President Mike Pence called on President Donald Trump to “rescind” his agreement to lift sanctions on Russian diesel fuel and stand up to “Russian aggression,” as Pence believes he did in his first term. “For our National Security, for the security of our Allies in Europe including Ukraine, President Trump should rescind this deal immediately and return to the strong policies of our four years in the White House; impose harsh sanctions on any nation purchasing Russian energy and work with our allies to ensure Ukraine has the military support it needs to repel and defeat this Russian...

Substantial sums of hard currency provided to Saddam Hussein from the sale of Iraqi oil allowed under United Nations sanctions have been laundered through banks around the world by a Russian Mafiya boss described in an MI5 report as "one of the world's top criminals." Despite that, Israel continues to allow Semyon Yukovich Mogilevich to travel openly on one of its passports. Even more remarkable, the MI5 description was reinforced by an investigation by Mossad. Its report concluded that Mogilevich is a "major criminal - but has taken great care to commit no crime against Israel." His supply of arms...

Filed at 1:35 p.m. ET MOSCOW (AP) -- A criminal complaint from a youth group that backs President Vladimir Putin has prompted an inquiry into an iconoclastic author over a novel that depicts sexual contact between Josef Stalin and Nikita Khrushchev. Police opened the investigation after prosecutors found that parts of Vladimir Sorokin's 1999 book ``Goluboye Salo'' -- which can be translated as ``Blue Lard'' or ``Gay Lard'' -- are pornographic, Svetlana Petrenko, an aide to the chief Moscow prosecutor, said Thursday. The investigation alarmed advocates of freedom of expression, who have long been concerned about the possibility of a...

Every August, the anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Georgia is accompanied by familiar reflections about missed warning signs, intelligence failures, and a supposedly unexpected turning point in European security. The language has become so standardized that it obscures a far more uncomfortable reality. Georgia did not reveal a new Russia. It exposed a Russia that had been behaving consistently for nearly two decades while much of the West continued searching for evidence that Moscow had fundamentally changed after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Describing the failure to recognize this trajectory as a collection of mistakes understates what actually occurred....

President Donald Trump said Friday that Russia will supply millions of tons of diesel to the global market under a deal he struck with President Vladimir Putin. Russia will immediately supply more than 300,000 tons of diesel, followed by 500,000 tons in November, and 1 million tons immediately thereafter, Trump said in a post on Truth Social. Moscow will then deliver another 3 million tons of diesel based on the condition of Russia’s refineries, Trump said. Diesel prices have surged around the world as Ukraine has pounded Russian refineries, forcing Moscow to ban diesel exports to the global market. Iran...

The Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin, has repeatedly said that the fall of the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine is inevitable and will happen faster than Kyiv thinks. Recent trends on the battlefield paint a different picture. A monthslong Ukrainian counteroffensive in the northern part of the Donbas has thwarted Russian efforts to encircle the remaining Ukrainian-controlled cities in the region. Russia, Western analysts say, has lost dozens of square miles of territory during the Ukrainian campaign, which Kyiv is calling Operation Vivaldi. In the southern Donbas, Russia continues to mount furious assaults to break through Ukrainian lines. But Kyiv...

Former President Donald Trump did not hold back his praises to some of the world's authoritarian leaders in a new media appearance. In his interview with Fox News host Tucker Carlson, Trump shared his admiration for the leadership styles of Chinese President Xi Jinping, Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un. "They're all top of the line," Trump said. The former president described Xi as a "brilliant man" and recalled meeting with him in his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida in 2017. "President Xi is a brilliant man... The look, the brain, the whole thing. We had a...

A Moscow drone slammed into Kyiv’s key Northern Bridge on Sunday, leading to a fiery explosion during a visit from Germany’s top official — as Russian President Vladimir Putin is reportedly preparing a mass military mobilization. Dramatic footage from the Ukrainian capital showed a Russian drone crashing into the busy span during morning traffic, with a large fireball erupting from the explosion. Cars could be seen rushing through the blast area to get to the other side as fire and black smoke overtook one side of the bridge. Miraculously, only two people were injured in the incident, Kyiv Mayor Vitaliy...

When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, it lost access to many world markets, including much of Europe. Countries like Germany, which for years had relied on Russian gas and oil, now turned sharply away and sought to rid themselves of any vestiges of Russian dependence. (Source) Into the breach stepped China. Always thirsty for new supplies of gas and oil, China quickly notified Russia that it was interested in receiving Russian gas and in developing a pipeline from Siberia for that gas. (Source). Recently, however, that lifeline looks more like a noose, at least for Russia. Beijing is taking...

Vladimir Putin has waged an energy war on Europe. The general running his campaign is ultra-loyalist and Gazprom PJSC boss Alexei Miller. ... Handicapping Gazprom is Mr. Miller’s decision over the past decade not to enter the market for liquefied-natural gas—a choice that left Gazprom, unlike Russian rival Novatek JSC, near totally reliant on pipelines to export fuel. Gazprom has limited options in the short term to redirect its gas to China and other buyers given its traditionally westward-facing infrastructure. One pipeline to China opened in 2019, but it can’t handle much gas. A second is under negotiation but won’t...

Russian President Vladimir Putin has ruled out a ceasefire on long-range strikes with Ukraine as Moscow steps up its campaign of aerial attacks on Kyiv. “We are told: ‘Let them stop striking your refineries, and you will stop striking their ships.’ It is simply ridiculous,” Putin said on Thursday at the Valdai political forum in Moscow. The remarks followed a meeting between United States President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in New York on September 22, when Zelenskyy said Kyiv was ready to cease strikes on Russian oil refineries and other energy facilities if Moscow also stopped its...

Fierce battles have raged in and around the city since May, when Russian forces launched a surprise attack across the border, opening a new front. -snip- The soldier was injured by a sniper and found himself holed up in the basement of a bombed-out building with other men from his unit, sheltering from persistent drone attacks. The only route to safety was along a 50-metre path under the fire control of Ukraine's army. "Fifty metres, no more say those who managed to cross that distance in our direction," he wrote in his blog. "The path is blocked by debris, construction...

President Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin addresses the Germans, particularly Friedrich Merz 🇩🇪 shocked by the results achieved by the AfD. “We don’t want to attack you! Why would we? That era is long gone! Anyone who still has their wits about them and knows how to think understands that. 1) You already have a national debt of 2,500 billion euros, and no serious economist knows how you plan to pay it back. (Alice Weidel declares her country bankrupt.) And now, you want to borrow another 1,000 billion to arm yourselves against us. 2) Your country is teeming with millions of migrants...

US President Donald Trump's top negotiators have met Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow, as efforts to end the war in Ukraine gather pace. Footage released by the Kremlin showed Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner being greeted by Putin, who said the current situation "is not so easy". Witkoff thanked Putin for agreeing with Ukraine to halt strikes on each other's capitals for three days. On Sunday the envoys will travel to Kyiv for more talks - their first such visit to Ukraine's capital. On Friday, Trump said Witkoff and Kushner were "bringing with them a proposal to end the...

Twilight of the Magicians: Aleksandr Dugin and the War Against the West "If the Fourth Political Practice is not able to realize the end of times, then it would be invalid. The end of days should come; but it will not come by itself. This is a task, it is not a certainty. It is active metaphysics. It is a practice.” ALEKSANDR DUGIN, THE FOURTH POLITICAL THEORY [I] The “philosopher” who has done the most to justify Russia’s war against the West is Aleksandr Dugin. He was the first to advocate a Russian invasion of Ukraine. He has also advocated...

Germany’s Foreign and Interior Ministers spoke publicly in Berlin on Sep. 1, 2026, to publicly announce new measures the German government will take against Russia in light of “police investigations” and “intelligence findings” which conclude that a “low-level” Russian agent was behind the drone incidents at Leipzig in August. Security services were first alerted to a potential threat when a quadcopter drone was discovered on the airport tarmac next to a parked Antonov An-124 belonging to the Ukrainian state-owned Antonov Airlines. 800 grams of explosives were attached to the drone, which CCTV footage showed impacting the wing of the aircraft...

The leaders of China, Russia and India gathered with other heads of state in Kyrgyzstan on Monday for the summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a group billed as a counterweight to U.S. global influence. Chinese President Xi Jinping, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi are attending the events in Bishkek, the capital of the Central Asian nation. Putin met separately with Xi and Modi in two of the many bilateral sessions on the sidelines of the summit, Russian state media reported. Putin affirmed to Xi Moscow’s readiness to make the visa-free regime with China permanent,...

Central Intelligence Agency Director John Ratcliffe paid an unannounced visit to Moscow yesterday, spending eight hours in the Russian capital before returning to the US. Though he visited the Kremlin, Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov denied that they had met – though Ratcliffe certainly spoke to his counterpart Sergei Naryshkin, head of Russia’s SVR external intelligence service, and other top Russian security officials. The list of topics urgent enough to prompt the first personal visit of a US cabinet-level official to the Kremlin in six months is short. Ratcliffe could have been responding to reports of a planned Russian escalation...