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Russian President Vladimir Putin on Sunday spoke in defense of Hunter Biden after U.S. President Donald Trump accused him of engaging in business with Ukraine. In a broadcast on Russian state TV, Putin responded to Trump's comments during the second presidential debate and said he "does not see anything criminal" about Hunter's dealings with Ukrainian companies, Reuters reported. "Yes, in Ukraine he (Hunter Biden) had or maybe still has a business, I don't know. It doesn't concern us. It concerns the Americans and the Ukrainians," Putin said. "But well yes he had at least one company, which he practically headed...

PORTLAND, OR—Local 5-year-old progressive child Hunter Gaiden was caught with his hand in the cookie jar today. There were clearly crumbs all over his face, as well as a trail of crumbs leading right to the cookie jar. But Gaiden employed a brilliant defense, claiming all the hard evidence that he had participated in illicit household activity was actually part of a Russian disinformation campaign. "This is clearly part of a Russian disinformation campaign," he said as his parents caught him eating a cookie. "If you spread this information, you're spreading Russian disinfo. They're trying to influence this household! They're...

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky says those who allowed Russia to illegally annex Crimea in early 2014 must be held responsible. In an annual address to parliament on October 20, Zelenskiy did not name anyone in particular, but appeared to be taking clear aim at officials who assumed power after mass anti-government protests toppled Russia-friendly President Viktor Yanukovych in late February 2014. "Those who gave up on Crimea without a fight must be held responsible," Zelenskiy said, adding that his government is doing "everything possible" to return Crimea to Ukraine's control. "We are building a Ukrainian Army that will be capable...

Russian President Vladimir Putin recently compared the Democratic Party’s platform with communism and said the shared values could form the “ideological basis” for developing ties between Russia and the U.S. if Joe Biden becomes president. Putin, sitting for an interview with Russia’s state-owned Rossiya TV on Oct. 7, compared the two main presidential candidates in the U.S. and evaluated each candidate in terms of how Russia could work with them as president. He said despite some criticism of Russia, the Democratic Party holds values he identifies with as a former member of the Soviet Communist Party for 18 years. “As...

It will be of unending comfort to some that Joe Biden now enjoys the support of both China and Russia. The president said the Kremlin would be open to working with whoever sits in the Oval Office in 2021, despite U.S. intelligence reports indicating that Russia is trying to undermine Biden in the same way it did Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton in 2016. But more than that, Putin made clear that Biden and Russia share similar values: "The Democratic Party is traditionally closer to the so-called liberal values, closer to social democratic ideas," Putin said. "And it was from the social democratic environment that...

Before the first Trump-Biden debate, moderator Chris Wallace listed the six subjects that would be covered: The Trump and Biden records, the Supreme Court, COVID-19, the economy, race and violence in our cities, and the integrity of the election. According to a recent Gallup survey, Wallace's topics tracked the public's concerns -- the top seven of which were the coronavirus, government leadership, race relations, the economy, crime and violence, the judicial system, morality and family decline. As an issue, national security did not even break Gallup's Top 10. It ranked below education and homelessness, just above climate change. Which raises...

Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday he had noted what he called “sharp anti-Russian rhetoric” from U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, but that he had been encouraged by Biden’s comments on arms control. Putin, in comments on state television ahead of the U.S. presidential election on Nov. 3, said Russia would work with any U.S. leader, but praised Republican incumbent Donald Trump for saying he wanted better ties with Moscow. “Of course we value this,” said Putin, who also denied once again Washington’s charge of Russian meddling in U.S. elections. He said that a bipartisan U.S. consensus on...

ussian President Vladimir Putin said Wednesday that he could work with Joe Biden in a new administration, citing common ground he shared with the Democrats over a shared embrace of Soviet ideology. Bloomberg News reported that while Putin praised President Donald Trump for improving relations, he was prepared to work with Biden if he won the U.S. election. He cited Biden’s support for new arms reduction treaties — such as the lopsided New START under President Barack Obama.

With President Donald Trump having been diagnosed with the coronavirus, it appears the Democrats’ Russian collusion narrative has returned again … Responding to the president’s diagnosis Friday, Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy claimed on CNN (a network known for its love of conspiracy theories) that the president’s temporary inability to campaign means he’ll have “to rely on his surrogates.” And by “his surrogates,” Murphy of course meant Russian President Vladimir Putin, despite there not being a shred of evidence to back this long-touted conspiracy theory. “If President Trump can’t be out there on the campaign trail for the next two weeks,...

Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) said on Friday’s broadcast of “CNN Newsroom” that Russian President Vladimir Putin is one of the “surrogates” of President Donald Trump’s campaign. Anchor Jim Sciutto asked, “I want to talk about Russia because yesterday we’re days away from the U.S. election. You tweeted this public comment, and you were briefed on the intelligence here, that there is evidence of a giant, according to you, a multi-year effort to help Trump in 2020 by Russia. What can you tell us about that?”

The Senate Homeland Security and Finance Committees on Wednesday released an interim report on their monthslong joint investigation into Hunter Biden’s role on the board of Ukrainian natural gas firm Burisma Holdings and his alleged “extensive and complex financial transactions.” Homeland Security Committee Chairman Ron Johnson, R-Wis., and Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said their investigation has “faced many obstacles” from Democrats on their committees and that executive agencies “failed to comply with document requests.” The chairmen added that “there remains much work to be done” in their probe. Hunter Biden is the son of the Democratic presidential nominee...

Russian President Vladimir Putin and his closest associates are quite likely to be leading the campaign against the U.S. ex-Vice President Joe Biden, thus interfering with the presidential election in the States. This is mentioned in the report of the CIA, published by The Washington Post. "We assess that President Vladimir Putin and the senior most Russian officials are aware of and probably directing Russia’s influence operations aimed at denigrating the former U.S. Vice President, supporting the U.S. president and fueling public discord ahead of the U.S. election in November”, reads the document. The report also includes details of analysis...

Former National Security Council Ukraine expert Alexander Vindman called President Trump Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “useful idiot” in a new interview. “President Trump should be considered to be a useful idiot and a fellow traveler, which makes him an unwitting agent of Putin,” Vindman told The Atlantic's editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg. “They may or may not have dirt on him, but they don’t have to use it,” he said when asked if the Kremlin has material to blackmail Trump­­. “They have more effective and less risky ways to employ him. He has aspirations to be the kind of leader that Putin...

Russia has set its sights on the moon as it prepares to send a lunar lander into space next year. "The Luna-25 space project opens a long-term Russian lunar program, which includes missions to study the moon from orbit and surface, the collection and return of lunar soil to Earth, as well as, in the future, the construction of a visited lunar base and full-scale development of our satellite," a statement from Roscosmos officials says, according to Scientific American. The outlet reported that Russia is working in a partnership with the European Space Agency. The launch is slated for October...

The popular blogger, who had previously interviewed dissident Alexei Navalny, was hospitalized with facial lacerations and a possible brain injury. He was allegedly attacked by two unknown men in front of his home. Kremlin critic and blogger Yegor Zhukov, 22, was seriously injured in an attack in Moscow, his spokesperson said Monday. Zhukov, a well-known activist, was hospitalized with facial lacerations and a suspected brain injury. He has been working for the Ekho Moskvy (Echo of Moscow) station since he was banned by the state from having his own video channel online. Zhukov previously interviewed Russian dissident Alexei Navalny, who...

Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who fell into a coma after a suspected poisoning, landed in Germany for treatment Saturday following a day-long standoff over whether he would be allowed to leave a Russian hospital. Navalny remains in a coma but is in stable condition Jaka Bizilj, of the German NGO Cinema For Peace, which arranged the flight out of Russia, told The Associated Press. “Navalny is in Berlin,” Bizilj said. “He survived the flight and he's stable.” He landed around 9 a.m. Berlin time and was taken to the downtown campus of Berlin's Charite hospital. The dissident has promoted...

Svetlana Tikhanovskaya was in the running to become President of Belarus. She was forced to flee the country after Alexander Lukashenko declared a landslide victory, though many believe she won the election instead. In her first interview from exile, the opposition leader told the BBC she does not see herself as a President but as a symbol of freedom and change. She urges protesters to carry on, warning that if they step back now they would become “slaves” to the regime. She spoke to the BBC’s Europe Correspondent Jean Mackenzie, a month after they first met in the run up...

On Tuesday August 18th, I had the opportunity to talk to, be interviewed by and brief, the person described as the “main guy”, the “central investigator”, “the guy who coordinates all investigative aspects” behind the John Durham investigation. His name is William Aldenberg, and before getting to the substance of the conversation some background context is needed. On June 7, 2018, an indictment against Senate Intelligence Committee Security Director James Wolfe was unsealed. Approximately six weeks later, July 21, 2018, the DOJ mysteriously declassified and publicly released the Carter Page FISA application. That’s when I noticed the first two documents...

A plane carrying Russian dissident Alexei Navalny, who is in a coma after a suspected poisoning, touched down early Saturday in Berlin, where he will be treated in the German capital's main hospital. Navalny's spokeswoman and a representative of the NGO that arranged the flight confirmed that the plane had landed. "Navalny is in Berlin," Jaka Bizilj, of the German organization Cinema For Peace, told The Associated Press. Navalny, a 44-year-old politician and corruption investigator who is one of Russian President Vladimir Putin's fiercest critics, was admitted to an intensive care unit in the Siberian city of Omsk on Thursday....

Alexei Navalny, Russia's most outspoken critic of President Vladimir Putin, is fighting for his life in a hospital, and his spokeswoman says she believes Navalny was poisoned as he was flying from Siberia back to Moscow. Navalny is unconscious and on a ventilator, spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh, who had been traveling with the opposition leader, said via Twitter. Navalny drank some tea at the airport in Tomsk, Yarmysh said, and he began feeling unwell shortly after his commercial flight took off. His deteriorating condition prompted the plane's pilots to make an emergency landing at Omsk, some 550 miles away. A doctor...