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Draft documents say defence and security will make up 40% of government spending as Putin continues war against Ukraine. Russia is to increase its spending on defence by 25% to its highest on record, as Vladimir Putin vows to continue his war efforts in Ukraine and further escalate his standoff with the west. The latest planned increase in spending will take Russia’s defence budget to a record 13.5tn rubles (£109bn) in 2025, according to draft budget documents published on Monday on the parliament’s website. That is about 3tn rubles more than was set aside for defence this year, which was...

MOSCOW – Iran intends to seriously strengthen relations with Russia, and resolve controversial issues in cooperation with each other, Iranian First Vice President of Iran Mohammad Reza Aref said on Monday. “I am very pleased with the good pace at which our relations are developing at all levels. I would like to emphasize that the new Iranian government is serious about strengthening our relations,” Mohammad Reza Aref said during talks with Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin. -snip- “Relations between Russia and Iran have a centuries-old history, based on the principles of friendship, good neighborliness and mutual respect. And Russia is...

The Kremlin on Monday condemned the killing of Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah in an Israeli air attack last week and said it assessed the risk of a major Middle East war as "extremely high". "The Russian side condemns such actions, we believe that they have led to a significant destabilisation of the situation in the region," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters. "The main thing is that such indiscriminate bombing of residential areas in Lebanon leads to a huge number of human casualties, which will inevitably bring on a humanitarian catastrophe like the one we are seeing in Gaza,"...

Russians are furious with Vladimir Putin's regime after Ukraine destroyed an important ammunition depot in Russia on Wednesday. Ukraine fired around 100 drones at the depot in Toropets, in the Tver Oblast of Russia. Kyiv says that Iskander and Tochka-U missiles were stored there alongside bombs and artillery shells. Video footage shared online showed the depot up in flames after the attack. Now, Russians have raged at the authorities for allowing the attack to happen. Posting on a Toropets chatroom on the social media site VK, one woman said: “Why wasn’t the ammunition underground?! What are you doing???? In Kudino,...

Vladimir Putin has awoken to one of the largest bombardments on Moscow and other parts of Russia after 30 months of bloodshed. Ukraine unleashed 144 drones, targeting three airports in the capital and lighting up residential buildings in the region of Moscow, during what the Kremlin called a ‘terrorist attack supported by the UK and US’. Debris from aircraft damaged at least two high-rise buildings in the Ramenskoye district in the early hours of Tuesday, setting several flats on fire. A 46-year-old woman was killed and three people were injured, governor Andrei Vorobyov said on Telegram. He added that 43...

A rattled Vladimir Putin has admitted that Russia is ready for peace talks with Kyiv as Ukraine continues its blistering offensive in Kursk. The Russian despot said at the 2024 Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok today: 'Are we ready to negotiate with them? 'We have never refused to do so, but not on the basis of some ephemeral demands, but on the basis of those documents that were agreed and actually initialled in Istanbul,' referring to a failed peace deal from talks in the Turkish city early on in the war. Although the Kremlin says these conditions for peace talks...

Ukraine on Sunday called on Belarus to pull back what it described as significant levels of Belarusian forces and equipment deployed at their common border. The Ukrainian foreign ministry warned Belarus against making "tragic mistakes" while under pressure from Moscow. A ministry statement urged the Belarus armed forces "to stop unfriendly actions" and withdraw their troops out of range of the border. The ministry said Belarus special forces and former Wagner mercenary fighters were among the troops at the border. Their equipment included tanks, artillery, air defence systems and engineering equipment, located in the Gomel region near Ukraine's northern border.

This is the moment Ukrainian troops destroyed a pontoon bridge in the Kursk region with a HIMARS strike, which could leave thousands of Russian troops stranded. The pontoon crossing in the border region was built by Putin's army after Ukrainian forces destroyed at least three permanent bridges over western Russia's Seim River in recent attacks. Video footage showed drones chasing down trucks and blowing them up. Drones can also be seen crashing into stationary military vehicles, while aerial footage showed the pontoon bridge being decimated. The footage came as Vladimir Putin accused Ukraine of trying to strike a nuclear power...

Vladimir Putin is feeling the stress from Russia's invasion of Ukraine - as he is seen wringing his hands in a meeting with his top officials after Volodymyr Zelenskyy's troops bit back and made a counter-incursion into the country. The dictator, 71, was in a security council session on the crisis he faces due to Ukraine's dramatic invasion of the border areas of Kursk region. His very public hand-wringing and fidgeting came as he was told earlier this week about how Russia had lost territory to Kyiv troops and - at the time - more than two dozen settlements, a...

The surprise Ukrainian invasion of Russia's Kursk region is intended to create a "buffer zone" between the two countries and further complicate Moscow's cross-border offensive, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Sunday. "It is now our primary task in defensive operations overall to destroy as much Russian war potential as possible and conduct maximum counteroffensive actions," Zelenskyy said in his nightly address, the first public acknowledgment of the offensive's true intent. "This includes creating a buffer zone on the aggressor’s territory – our operation in the Kursk region," Zelenskyy continued. Ukrainian forces destroyed one bridge in the region this weekend and...

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukraine has destroyed a key bridge in Russia's Kursk region and struck a second one nearby, less than two weeks into its stunning cross-border incursion, disrupting Russian supply routes and possibly signaling that its troops are planning to dig in. Russia’s pro-Kremlin military bloggers have acknowledged that the destruction of the first bridge, which spanned the Seim River near the town of Glushkovo, will impede deliveries of supplies to Russian forces repelling Ukraine’s incursion, although Moscow could still use pontoons and smaller bridges in the area. Ukraine’s air force chief, Lt. Mykola Oleshchuk, on Friday released...

Russell Bentley, the so-called "Donbass Cowboy" from Texas who fought for the 'Donetsk People's Republic' (DPR), is reported to have been tortured to death in an abandoned mine being used as a concentration camp for 'remotivating' Russian soldiers who refuse to fight. On 8 April 2024, Bentley was kidnapped by DPR soldiers outside the administration building of the Petrovsky district of Donetsk. He was driven away in an unknown direction. On 19 April, his former unit, the Vostok Battalion, confirmed his death. His body has not been found. ASTRA reports that he was electrocuted during torture by men from the...

Russian companies that do business with China have encountered more headwinds in recent days as Chinese banks raised the yuan-ruble exchange rate to capitalize on their neighbor's weakened currency. While the yuan currently buys 12.07 rubles at the Russian central bank's exchange rate, Chinese banks are selling the currency at 13 rubles per yuan, charging a premium over the Russian central bank rate of 12.07 rubles, the Moscow Times reported on Thursday. -snip- Chinese banks are not the first to profit from the ruble's plight. Mongolia and Turkey have for some time converted rubles into yuan several percentage points above...

Many reports coming in this morning - but interesting to start with the Al Jazeera version of the story.

SUMY, Ukraine—Russia is withdrawing some of its military forces from Ukraine to respond to a Ukrainian offensive into Russian territory, U.S. officials said, the first sign that Kyiv’s incursion is forcing Moscow to rejigger its invasion force. The officials said the U.S. is still seeking to determine the significance of Russia’s move and didn’t say how many troops the U.S. assesses Russia is shifting. But the new U.S. assessment bolsters claims by Ukrainian officials who said last week’s surprise invasion of Kursk province had drawn Russian forces away from Ukraine, where Moscow’s advantage in manpower and equipment is allowing them...

Putin has appointed his ex-bodyguard, who is considered a likely successor for the Russian leader, as an 'angel of vengeance' tasked with trying to reclaim the territory seized by Ukraine. Former bodyguard Alexei Dyumin, who once single-handedly scared off a bear from the president's mountain residence, will lead the charge on 'Operation Revenge' to reclaim the 386 square miles of Russian soil now under Ukrainian control. Dyumin, 51, grew up in the Kursk region, where a state of emergency was implemented almost immediately after thousands of Kyiv's troops surged across the border and began seizing territory. Putin has now chosen...

Ukraine’s strike on Russia, the biggest by a foreign force since World War Two, has dramatically changed the narrative around the war. Ukraine claimed to have shot down a Russian fighter jet on Wednesday as Kyiv’s forces escalated the biggest foreign incursion suffered by Russia since the Second World War. Kyiv’s military said its forces destroyed the Russian Su-34 aircraft overnight in the Kursk region while carrying out a combat mission.

Dozens of systems used by government bodies and IT companies in Russia have reportedly become the targets of Chinese hackers. Moscow-based cybersecurity provider Kaspersky Lab, revealed that the backdoor malware used to gain access to the systems was "GrewApacha," a Trojan used since at least 2021 by the Chinese cyber-espionage group known as APT31 (Advanced Peristent Threat 31). APT31 is believed to have ties to China's civilian spy agency, the Ministry of State Security (MSS). Earlier this year, the United States Justice department indicted several Chinese nationals and one company for allegedly carrying out APT31 operations. "During these attacks, attackers...

Whether it could prove a tactical masterstroke MailOnline examines the invasion so far and assesses what may come next On Tuesday, August 6, around 1,000 brave Ukrainian soldiers supported by a few tanks launched what seemed like a reckless at best - and catastrophic at worst - incursion into Russia's Kursk region. Within 48 hours of the first reports of the border breach, Russia's stonefaced army chief Valery Gerasimov - who reportedly dismissed intelligence reports indicating a Ukrainian troop buildup along the border two weeks prior - declared the invasion had been stopped in its tracks. Now, one week later,...

“Why did all these RVC [Russian Volunteer Corps] and the Legion [Freedom of Russia Legion] conduct their raids? To carry out additional reconnaissance [of the area]. They weren’t just walking around and posting all these videos; [PR] for the media was an afterthought. Initially, any military shit is done for military purposes. We did the same thing back in the day [since 2014]. We went in, observed the reaction — how quickly they respond to your arrival, how many forces are there, where, what, how — and then we left. Then again and again. So, eventually, [the AFU] already had...