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The inauguration of Russian President Vladimir Putin will take place on May 7, Andrey Klishas, chairman of the Committee on Constitutional Legislation and Statehood in the upper house Federation Council, said, APA reports citing TASS. "The inauguration will be held on [May] 7. There will be additional information about the [PCR] tests for [senators attending the inauguration]. This is a standard procedure, it will take place once, on [May] 6," Klishas said at a committee meeting.

Ukraine's armed forces have shot down six Russian fighter jets in just three days, according to the country's Ministry of Defense. The ministry said in a statement on X, formerly Twitter, that Ukraine on Monday destroyed two Russian jets—an Su-34 fighter-bomber and an Su-35S fighter jet. "Russian planes continue to fall! This morning, defenders of the sky shot down two russian planes in the eastern direction—a Su-34 fighter-bomber and a Su-35 fighter," it said. "In 3 days, Ukraine destroyed 6 russian jets." The news comes after the Commander of the Air Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Lieutenant General...

Tucker Carlson aired a video of him at a Russian grocery store, appearing to fawn over everything from the shopping cart mechanism to the price of groceries - skipping over the part where US dollars stretch a lot farther than the ruble. In the video, Carlson was amazed to see that the shopping carts in front of the supermarket required people to put in a ruble coin, which they'd then get back when the cart was returned. Carlson acted like he'd never seen this feature before - despite it being pretty common across the US and most of Europe. He...

Russians have been told to grow their own bananas as a shortage looms, days after President Vladimir Putin issued a ban on imports from Ecuador, its largest supplier of the fruit, seemingly over an arms shipment spat. Oleg Knyazkov, the head of the industry expertise center at Rosselkhoznadzor, the Russian consumer watchdog, told local news outlet Gazeta that he predicts there will be a nationwide shortage of bananas in a month. He advised Russians to start growing them domestically. His comments come after Putin suspended banana imports from five Ecuadorian companies on February 2, saying the decision was made due...

At the World Government Summit, Tucker Carlson told a gathering of world leaders that Moscow “was so much nicer than any city” in the United States. “It’s radicalizing for an American to go to Moscow,” Tucker went on. “I didn’t know that. I’ve learned it this week, to Singapore, to Tokyo, to Dubai and Abu Dhabi, because these cities, no matter how we’re told they’re run and on what principles they’re run, are wonderful places to live -snip- If you’re wealthy, I imagine, Moscow is pretty great. This is true of most European cities. When you’re an American tourist, you...

Tucker Carlson defended on Monday his decision not to question Russian President Vladimir Putin about allegations that the Kremlin has ordered assassinations of political dissidents. "Every leader kills people. Some kill more than others," the former Fox News host said. His comments came during a discussion at the World Government Summit in Dubai that touched upon his interview last week with the Russian leader. The interview, taped on February 6 and aired two nights later, has made international headlines for numerous statements made by Putin, including his supposed rationale for invading Ukraine. During the Dubai summit, Egyptian journalist Emad el-Din...

Russian police have put Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas, Lithuania's culture minister and members of the previous Latvian parliament on a wanted list, according to the Russian Interior Ministry's database. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Kallas was wanted for the "desecration of historical memory". Russian state agency TASS said the Baltic officials were accused of "destroying monuments to Soviet soldiers", acts that are punishable by a 5-year prison term under the Russian criminal code. -snip- Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said: "This is only the beginning." "Crimes against the memory of the world's liberators from Nazism and fascism must...

Kremlin-controlled media corrected a mistake that Vladimir Putin made about World War II in his interview with Tucker Carlson. Interjections by the former Fox News anchor during his interview released on Thursday were also cut, it was reported, and a version viewed online omitted a controversial segment in which the Russian president spoke about Adolf Hitler. The fallout from the interview continues as the American anchor faced criticism that he did little to challenge the Russian president, especially during monologues about Russian history that he used to justify his full-scale invasion of Ukraine. In one part of the interview, Putin...

Over the past few months, a Russian political scientist named Valery Solovei has stoked a global frenzy with a sensational claim: that Vladmir Putin died last year and today is represented in public by a body double. The Kremlin’s elite, Solovei tells his half-million online followers, controls the double and has stuffed Putin’s body in a freezer. Then on Thursday, journalist Tucker Carlson aired a two-hour interview with Putin. Solovei shrugged it off as a sham. Carlson, he said, interviewed Putin’s doppelgänger, who will now be passed off as real to millions of viewers in the West. “Putin is dead,...

“Are we having a talkshow or a serious conversation?” Vladimir Putin asked Tucker Carlson at the start of their interview on Thursday. By the end of the two-hour conversation, the answer was clear: neither. Instead, viewers got a lesson in Russian history, going all the way back to Prince Rurik – a Scandinavian who came and dished out a good kicking in the region in 862 – and taking in the reign of Yaroslav the Wise, the circa-1300 threat of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and Russia going to war with Poland in the mid-1600s. -snip- “So that you don’t...

Vladimir Putin joked about Tucker Carlson being rejected by the CIA after he finished college during his interview with the conservative polemist—his first with a western journalist since ordering the full invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The interview was released on Carlson's website and X, formerly Twitter, on Thursday and covered Russian history, the war in Ukraine, NATO, imprisoned American journalist Evan Gershkovich and his relationships with Joe Biden and Donald Trump. During the conversation Putin discussed the 2014 Ukrainian Maidan revolution, which led to the ousting of then pro-Moscow Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, which he claimed took place...

Russian authorities denied an emergency in Russia's Udmurt Republic, as videos show a huge fireball over a weapons plant that produces nuclear weapons components and ballistic missiles. Massive explosion was reported on Wednesday on the grounds of the Votkinsk weapons factory, which produces weapons including the RS-24 Yars intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) & strategic ballistic missiles for the Topol-M and Iskander systems. The factory is located some 30 miles from the capital of the Udmurt Republic, Izhevsk. Videos filmed by residents showed a huge fireball over the area and a massive glow in the sky. Locals reported hearing explosions before...

The Kremlin confirmed on Wednesday that former Fox News host Tucker Carlson interviewed Russian President Vladimir Putin during his visit to Moscow, but disputed a claim he made that Western journalists hadn't attempted to interview the leader throughout the war. -snip- Peskov said Carlson is "wrong" by suggesting that Western journalists haven't attempted to interview Putin—an assertion the former Fox News host made in a lengthy video announcing his interview with the Russian leader. "He, in fact, cannot know this. We receive many requests for interviews with the president," Peskov said. -snip- Many Western journalists have interviewed Ukrainian President Volodymyr...

The disappearance of top Russian generals dating back to September has sparked questions about their whereabouts amid the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war. Russian and Ukrainian forces have presented different public findings since the purported death of Russian Admiral Viktor Sokolov, who Kyiv said was one of 34 Russian officers killed in late September by a missile strike executed against the headquarters of the Russian Navy's Black Sea fleet in annexed Crimea. Sokolov was viewed by Ukrainian forces as a high-value target. The lack of visibility by Russia's top general, Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov, has additionally caused wonderment regarding...

A top Russian air force general was killed in strikes on annexed Crimea on Wednesday, according to local reports. Multiple Russian Telegram channels, including Crimean Wind, reported that Russian Air Force Lieutenant General Alexander Tatarenko was killed during a Ukrainian strike on the Belbek military airfield in Crimea. Telegram channel Public Reserve Stugna, which has more than 73,000 subscribers, said 10 Russian military personnel were "liquidated" in the attack, including Tatarenko, the commander of the aviation unit at the Belbek air base.

Russian President Vladimir Putin castigated Europe on Saturday for "Russophobia" and criticized the Baltic States over human rights at the unveiling of a World War Two memorial. -snip- In his speech, Putin also lambasted the Baltic States over human rights. Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania - ruled from Moscow during the Cold War but now members of the European Union and NATO military alliance - have been among the strongest critics of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

A video circulating on social media shows a huge fire that engulfed a large Rosneft-owned oil refinery in the southern Russian town of Tuapse on the Black Sea coast in the early hours of Thursday morning. The refinery's vacuum unit caught fire, said Sergei Boiko, the head of Tuapse district, adding in a post on his Telegram channel that there were no casualties. He warned local residents not to post videos from the scene "to avoid adverse consequences." Boiko didn't identify the cause of the fire, but numerous Telegram channels said it was the result of a drone strike. Russian...

Russian forces are contending with Ukrainian "gamers" using first-person-view (FPV) drones across the front line against Russian strongholds, a top Russian official has said, as uncrewed vehicles gain an ever higher profile in the 23 month-old war. Ukrainian unmanned vehicle operators carried out a "continuous raid" on Russian positions for several days at an undisclosed location along the front line, said Dmitry Rogozin, former head of the Russian Space agency, who is now a Moscow-installed official in the annexed Zaporizhzhia region of southern Ukraine. "In four hours, 24 FPV drones flew to the stronghold of only one of our volunteer...

Russian President Vladimir Putin is expected to visit Egypt on Tuesday, 23 January, to join his Egyptian counterpart Abdel Fattah El-Sisi in laying the foundation of El-Dabaa, Egypt's first-ever nuclear power plant (NPP). Both Putin and Sisi will take part in an official ceremony of the final stage of pouring the concrete of the fourth reactor of Dabaa developed by the Russian state atomic energy corporation ROSATOM in Dabaa city, located in the Mediterranean Marsa Matrouh province, about 320 kilometres northwest of the capital Cairo, Egyptian news outlets reported. The long-awaited NPP, which will operate with a 120-megawatt capacity for...

Sergey Lavrov, Russia's foreign minister, thanked his North Korean counterpart, Choe Son Hui, for supporting the Kremlin's war in Ukraine, South Korean news outlet Yonhap News has reported. Russian President Vladimir Putin and Lavrov hosted Choe on Tuesday to discuss bolstering ties amid reports of an arms cooperation deal between Moscow and Pyongyang. His comments underscore the Kremlin's increasing dependence on North Korea for weaponry.