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After three and a half years, President Vladimir Putin is having to lean more and more on ordinary Russians to pay for his war in Ukraine. The Russian Finance Ministry on Wednesday said it intends to raise value added tax by two percentage points to 22 percent, part of a three-year plan that aims to plug a rapidly expanding hole in public finances. VAT accounted for more than 15 percent of total government revenue last year. After raising personal income taxes sharply at the start of the year, Putin had pledged there would be no more big changes to the...

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in an interview published on Thursday that he would be ready to step down after the war with Russia is over. “If we finish the war with the Russians, yes, I am ready not to go [for elections] because it’s not my goal, elections,” Zelensky told the Axios website in a video interview. “I wanted very much, in a very difficult period of time, to be with my country, help my country. My goal is to finish the war.” Zelensky said he would ask Ukraine’s parliament to organise elections if a ceasefire was reached. A...

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio will visit Ukraine, APA reports. The announcement was made by Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba on his Facebook page. During their meeting, Rubio confirmed his agreement to travel to Ukraine. It should be noted that since assuming office, Secretary Rubio has not yet visited Ukraine.

Sergei Aksyonov, the head of Russia-controlled Crimea, said on Thursday that disruptions in fuel supplies were related to the closure of some oil refineries as a gasoline crisis widened across Russia. Several Russian regions were seeing shortages of certain fuel grades as Ukrainian drone attacks have reduced refinery runs, while high borrowing costs mean private filling stations can't afford to stockpile fuel, traders and retailers said. "Due to the fact that some of the plants are physically not working, we have experienced problems and interruptions with fuel," Aksyonov said on a video posted on his Telegram channel, without saying the...

The Armed Forces of Ukraine have destroyed two Russian An-26 transport aircraft in Crimea and an SU-34 fighter jet in the Zaporizhzhia direction, APA reports, citing UNIAN. In addition, a Russian radar station and a coastal radar were also hit.

The Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs has recommended that its citizens immediately leave Belarus and refrain from traveling to the country, the Polish embassy in Minsk reported. “The Ministry of Foreign Affairs recommends refraining from any travel to the Republic of Belarus and calls on Polish citizens currently in the Republic of Belarus to immediately leave its territory, using available commercial and private means“, the embassy's press service said.

Russia and China asked the United Nations Security Council to vote on Friday on a draft resolution to delay by six months the reimposition of sanctions on Iran, diplomats said. All U.N. sanctions on Iran are due to be reimposed at 8 p.m. EDT on Friday (0000 GMT on Saturday) after Britain, France and Germany triggered a 30-day process accusing Tehran of violating a 2015 deal with world powers aimed at preventing it from developing a nuclear weapon. A resolution in the 15-member U.N. Security Council needs at least nine votes in favor and no vetoes by either Britain, France...

"Quite a few planes violate Russia's airspace, accidentally and not accidentally. No one shoots them down," Alexey Meshkov emphasizedPARIS, September 25. /TASS/. Russia’s ambassador to France Alexey Meshkov has warned that if NATO were shooting down Russian planes allegedly violating the airspace of the alliance's member countries, that would mean war. "There would be war. What else could there be?" Meshkov said on RTL radio, responding to a question about Russia's possible response. "Quite a few planes violate our airspace, accidentally and not accidentally. No one shoots them down," the ambassador added. Meshkov also stated that Europe has not provided...

If you read the latest Trump Truth (that is what he calls his posts on Truth Social) that is posted above, you will come to the reasonable conclusion that Trump has either changed his position on the war in Ukraine and accepted the delusional beliefs of General Kellogg or he is engaged in some massive sarcasm. Well, based on what happened subsequently at the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), it looks like Trump was doing sarcasm. Following Trump’s meeting with Zelensky, France, Germany, the UK, and Ukraine proposed a resolution to the UNSC that called for an immediate ceasefire in...

The head of Iran's atomic energy organisation, Mohammad Eslami, has arrived in Moscow for talks, Russia's state-run RIA news agency quoted the Iranian embassy as saying on Monday. The 15-member UN Security Council earlier opted not to permanently lift sanctions on Tehran, after three European countries launched a 30-day process last month to reimpose them, accusing Tehran of failing to abide by a 2015 deal with world powers aimed at preventing it from developing a nuclear weapon. Iran denies having any such intention, and Russia says it supports Tehran's right to peaceful nuclear energy. Eslami is also Iran's vice president....

Russia Waited for NATO Cargo Planes to Land—Then 3000Kg Warhead Destroyed Ukraine's Air Base….

Russia’s gasoline sales hit a two-year low on Tuesday as Ukrainian drone strikes and surging harvest-season demand intensify the country’s fuel shortage. Data from the St. Petersburg Exchange, reported by Kommersant on Wednesday, shows that sales of A-92 petrol dropped 21.7 percent to 15,600 metric tons on Tuesday, the lowest level since 2023. Sales of A-95 petrol fell 15.5 percent to 12,060 tons compared with the previous day, bringing total gasoline sales on the exchange down 19.1 percent to 27,700 tons. The sharp decline comes amid unscheduled shutdowns at several large Russian refineries, as Kyiv reportedly escalated its campaign against...

President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that Russia is deliberately slowing its economic growth in order to suppress inflation. "As for the decline from more than 4% GDP growth: this is not a decline, it is a deliberate action. It is a slowdown in growth in exchange for curbing inflation and maintaining macroeconomic stability," Putin said during a televised meeting with top lawmakers. A graph published in Russian central bank's report earlier in September showed two consecutive quarters of gross domestic product (GDP) decline in quarter-on-quarter terms, aligning with the common definition of a technical recession.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has announced the number of Russian servicemen currently in the war zone in Ukraine, APA's Moscow bureau reports. He noted at a meeting with the leaders of the State Duma factions that more than 700,000 Russian servicemen are currently on the line of contact.

Vladimir Putin’s blundering chief TV propagandist has given away the top secret location of Russia’s most elite drone unit. An unburied toilet sign in a report by Vladimir Solovyov led to the Rubicon HQ being geolocated. The trail leads to Hall D and part of Hall C at the Patriot Exhibition Centre, near Moscow. The site has been already targeted by Ukrainian attack drones, and could be again. Solovyov is a highly-paid state TV propagandist for Putin and the war - and the careless blunder failing to mask the toilet signs in a report about Rubicon is a huge embarrassment....

Russia's state oil and gas sales in September are set to fall by around 23% from a year earlier on lower prices and a stronger rouble, Reuters calculations show, hitting Moscow's biggest source of revenue. The projected decline comes as President Vladimir Putin and his economic officials are preparing Russia's 2026 budget while funding its highest military spending since the Cold War.

Ukraine has carried out a drone attack on a Gazprom-owned oil refinery in Bashkortostan, APA reports, citing Unian. The strike targeted the ELOU-AVT-4 unit of the facility No further details have been provided regarding the incident.

Ukraine expects there will be around $3.5 billion by next month in a fund to buy weapons from the United States and help sustain its more than three-year fight against Russia’s all-out invasion, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Wednesday. The financial arrangement known as the Prioritized Ukraine Requirements List, or PURL, pools contributions from NATO members, except the United States, to purchase American weapons, munitions and equipment. “We received more than $2 billion from our partners specifically for the PURL program," Zelenskyy said at a joint news conference in Kyiv with visiting European Parliament President Roberta Metsola. "We will receive...

He finally accepts the impossibility of restoring Ukraine’s pre-2014 borders. Zelensky recently told ABC News that “Victory, to my mind, Putin's goal is to occupy Ukraine, this is to destroy us, occupy, and did he occupy it?...He didn't occupy us, we win, and I think so, because we have our country.” This is a far cry from the mantra that he’s chanted almost daily for the past 3,5 years since the special operation began about restoring his country’s pre-2014 borders. Quite clearly, he’s hinting that he’ll accept an end to the conflict that doesn’t achieve that aim, thus going with...

Ukrainian forces launched an overnight strike on Sept. 16 targeting the Saratov oil refinery in southwestern Russia, causing explosions and a major fire, the General Staff of Ukraine’s Armed Forces reported. The refinery, operated by Rosneft, produces more than 20 petroleum products—including gasoline, diesel, fuel oil, and bitumen—and processed 4.8 million metric tons in 2023. Ukrainian authorities said the facility supports the Russian military, making it a strategic target, News.Az reports, citing foreign media. The strike was reportedly carried out in coordination between Ukraine’s Special Operations Forces and other military branches. Officials are still assessing the full extent of the...