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Russia’s foreign minister on Wednesday said Moscow cannot recognize Israel’s methods against the Palestinian group Hamas as "acceptable." -snip- “Neighborhoods are being razed to the ground, more than 18,000 civilians have already died, this figure is increasing every day, two-thirds of them are women and children. The situation is terrible," Lavrov said. His remarks come days after a conversation between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Vladimir Putin, in which the former criticized the cooperation between Russia and Iran, and expressed his dissatisfaction with the positions taken “against Israel by Russian representatives at the UN and in other forums.”

The Kremlin is unable to track individual prisoners, a spokesperson said. The Kremlin has claimed it does not know where the Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny is currently held and it has no intention of looking into his status. -snip- Navalny's team on Monday said he had disappeared from the prison camp where he is held and accused authorities of refusing to say where he had been moved. Peskov on Tuesday claimed the Kremlin is unable to track individual prisoners. "We have neither the intention nor the ability to track the fate of prisoners and the process of their stay...

President Vladimir Putin will hold his annual press conference and field questions from the public on Dec. 14 -snip- "On the 14th December, Vladimir Putin will sum up the results of the year," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters. "It will be a programme, a project of the TV channels as before, and it will be a combined format of the Direct Line (live question and answer session with the public) and the President's end of year press conference," said Peskov. -snip- Only Josef Stalin, who ruled the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953, has been in...

This is the moment Vladimir Putin warns that Ukraine 'has no future' while sipping champagne at a Kremlin awards ceremony for troops as fears are growing that Western support for Kyiv is fading. In footage posted to X, the Russian president assured attendees Russia's defence plans were 'working more and more competently', with the country's arms industry allegedly producing 'several times more'. He claimed that meanwhile Ukraine was running out of weapons. 'They don't have their own foundations,' Putin added.

Russian President Vladimir Putin bizarrely refused to stand within 70ft of Britain's new ambassador to Moscow at a diplomatic ceremony yesterday - blaming 'sanitary reasons'. In awkward scenes that resembled the height of the Covid pandemic, Putin insisted on keeping a huge distance between himself and other diplomats at the Kremlin event which saw him accept the diplomatic credentials of several new ambassadors to Russia, including Britain's new man in Moscow Nigel Casey.

A Putin army general has been 'killed by an exploding Russian mine', according to reports. Major-General Vladimir Zavadsky, 45, was deputy commander of Russia's 14th Army Corps. He perished 'as a result of a mine explosion in the rear area, and not a military clash with the enemy' on the frontline, reported Telegram channel VChK-OGPU. The report states that the incident occurred during a 'senseless' redeployment of his group away from the frontline, The channel alleged the Russian armed forces were making an attempt to cover-up the circumstances of his death and blame it on a Ukrainian artillery strike. An...

Russia's upper house of parliament will on Dec. 13 officially announce the date of the March presidential election, Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov said on Tuesday - a step that marks the start of overt campaigning. According to Russian law, the upper house of parliament must announce the exact date at least 100 days before the vote. Election day is widely assumed to be March 17. President Vladimir Putin has not yet said whether he plans to run again

Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov said on Monday that another 3,000 of his fighters were ready to go to fight in Ukraine as part of new units of the Russian defence ministry and the Russian National Guard forces. -snip- "They (the fighters) have the best equipment and modern weapons," Kadyrov said on the Telegram messaging app. "In addition, the guys are highly combative and very motivated to achieve results." In May, Kadyrov said that Chechnya, which is a federal republic of Russia, had sent more than 26,000 fighters to Ukraine from the start of the war, including 12,000 volunteers and that...

Russia and Iran on Monday denounced recent Israeli airstrikes on Syria’s Damascus International Airport, warning that such actions could further aggravate tensions in the Middle East. “We regard the ongoing attacks on the territory of the Syrian Republic as a gross violation of the sovereignty of this state and the basic norms of international law. We strongly condemn Israel’s latest provocative attack on an important Syrian civilian infrastructure facility,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said in a statement. -snip- Separately, Iran’s Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Nasser Kanaani accused Israel of deliberately escalating tensions in the West Asia region through attacks...

Fierce storms killed three people on the Russian and Crimean Black Sea coast on Monday, with hundreds evacuated. -snip- Video published online showed large waves sweeping over the seafront in Sochi, and carrying away cars. In the Crimean town of Yevpatoriya, streets were flooded. The Russian-installed governors of Crimea and Sevastopol, both of which Moscow seized and unilaterally annexed from Ukraine in 2014, declared states of emergency. And the Energy Ministry said bad weather had left about 1.9 million people without electricity on Monday morning in the southern Russian regions of Dagestan, Krasnodar and Rostov, as well as Crimea and...

Russia has launched its biggest drone attack on Kyiv since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine began last year, the city's mayor has said. Residents were woken by explosions before dawn on Saturday, and for more than six hours, the booms of Kyiv's air defences echoed through the city. There was wave after wave of attacks from the north and east. Officials said that more than 75 Iranian-made Shahed drones were fired at the capital, and 74 were shot down. With Russia's dwindling missile stocks, Shahed drones are seen as a cheap alternative. They are slower than ballistic missiles and have...

Vladimir Putin will test the world's largest ballistic missile by flying it over the South Pole, a shocking report by state media has revealed before being rapidly censored. The Russian dictator is determined to flex his nuclear muscle to the West and will put his first regiment to be armed with the apocalypse 208-ton intercontinental nuclear weapon - the RS-28 Sarmat, aka 'Satan 2' - on 'combat duty' next month. This is despite an astonishing admission that the 'unstoppable' 15,880mph doomsday missile - as tall as a 14-storey tower block - is not properly tested. Putin's own state news agency...

The Russian and Iranian foreign ministers on Sunday discussed over phone the situation in Gaza as Israel's war rages on. Sergey Lavrov and Hossein Amir-Abdollahian underscored the importance of an immediate cease-fire and aid delivery to the impacted civilian population, according to a Russian Foreign Ministry statement.

The Kremlin said on Monday it deeply regretted Finland's decision to shut crossings on its border with Russia, a move it said reflected Helsinki's adoption of an anti-Russian stance. Finland, a member of the European Union and - starting this year - also of the NATO military alliance, closed four crossings on its border with Russia on Saturday as it seeks to halt a flow of asylum seekers it says was instigated by Moscow. The border crossings it closed were by far the busiest crossing points. -snip- Russia's foreign ministry said later on Monday it had lodged a formal protest...

An outspoken pro-war blogger who has fiercely criticised Russia's military strategy in Ukraine has said he wants to challenge Vladimir Putin in next March's presidential elections. Igor Girkin, 52, led pro-Russian fighters in eastern Ukraine in 2014, following Moscow's annexation of the southern Crimea peninsula. Girkin is in jail awaiting trial for extremism, which he denies. He said he wanted to disrupt the "sham" poll with the winner already known. This comment is widely seen in Russia as a reference to President Putin, who is yet to publicly declare that he will run again. In a letter to supporters published...

The successor of sitting Russian President Vladimir Putin will be very similar to him politically, the Kremlin suggests. -snip- Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told a university student-run channel operated by the Moscow State Institute of International Relations that Putin's eventual successor will be "the same. Or different, but the same," according to the Moscow Times. -snip- Peskov told news outlets in October that there is no competition against Putin ahead of the next presidential election next year. "We have repeatedly said that President Putin is undoubtedly the number-one politician and statesman in our country," said Peskov. "In my personal opinion...

Russia’s agriculture minister says Moscow has begun free shipments of grain totalling up to 200,000 tonnes to six African countries, as promised by President Vladimir Putin. In a statement posted on Telegram on Friday, Dmitry Patrushev said that ships headed for Burkina Faso and Somalia had already left Russian ports, and that additional shipments to Eritrea, Zimbabwe, Mali and Central African Republic would soon follow.

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...

Pro-war Russian nationalist Igor Girkin, who is in custody awaiting trial for inciting extremism, said on Sunday he wanted to run for president even though he understood the March election would be "sham" with the winner already clear. Girkin, who is also known by the alias Igor Strelkov, has repeatedly said Russia faces revolution and even civil war unless President Vladimir Putin's military top brass fight the war in Ukraine more effectively. A former Federal Security Service (FSB) officer who helped Russia to annex Crimea in 2014 and then to organise pro-Russian militias in eastern Ukraine, Girkin said before his...

This week’s “No Shit Analysis” award goes to Eugene B. Rumer for his Wall Street Journal op-ed, It’s Time to End Magical Thinking About Russia’s Defeat. Only took him 22 months to figure this out. He may be a slow learner but give him some credit, he finally awakened from his dream world and is beginning to grasp that the Ukraine project is swirling down the toilet.Eugene B. Rumer is a Senior Fellow at the Institute for National Strategic Studies, National Defense University, Washington DC. Previously, he served at the State Department, on the staff of the National Security Council...