Category Archives: Vladimir Putin

Moscow’s war in Ukraine could take years, Stoltenberg says –as it happened

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Rockets hit a southern district of Ukraine’s central city of Kryvyi Rih on Saturday leading to at least two casualties, local authorities said in posts on messaging app Telegram.

The attack came as it was confirmed that the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, had visited the southern city of Mykolaiv during a working trip to the region, Reuters reported.

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Putin calls Ukraine war sanctions ‘insane’ in combative speech

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President claims Russia can ‘cope with any challenge’ in address delayed by cyber-attack, but largely avoids discussing Ukraine

Vladimir Putin has delivered a combative speech repeating his critique of the west and saying the sanctions “blitzkrieg” against Moscow never had any chance of succeeding.

“If they are exceptional, then that means that everyone else is second class,” the Russian president said of the US. “They live in the past on their own under their own delusions.”

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Blacklist Dubai over failure to crack down on Russian oligarchs, say campaigners

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UAE has become haven for superyachts, private jets and ‘dirty money’ since invasion of Ukraine, but has taken no action

Campaigners and politicians are calling for the United Arab Emirates to be blacklisted over its failures to combat the flow of “dirty money” and to enforce sanctions imposed on Russian oligarchs.

The Gulf state has emerged as a key refuge for the Russian super-rich fleeing the impact of global sanctions, with private jets and superyachts linked to oligarchs heading to the UAE after the invasion of Ukraine.

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Russia-Ukraine war: Scholz, Macron and Draghi to visit Kyiv; fierce fighting continues in Sievierodonetsk – live

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German, French and Italian leaders to meet with Zelenskiy ahead of G7 summit in June; Ursula von der Leyen says EU decision to come within days

Returning to Kyiv on Saturday for a meeting with Ukrainian president Zelenskiy, she said they will discuss Ukraine’s reconstruction and progress towards European Union membership.

Russian air defence forces have shot down three Ukrainian war planes, according to the country’s defence ministry.

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Putin compares himself to Peter the Great in quest to take back Russian lands

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President draws parallel with tsar who waged war on Sweden and says campaign in Ukraine stems from Russia’s ‘basic values’

Russian president Vladimir Putin has paid tribute to tsar Peter the Great on the 350th anniversary of his birth, drawing a parallel between what he portrayed as their twin historic quests to win back Russian lands.

“Peter the Great waged the great northern war for 21 years. It would seem that he was at war with Sweden, he took something from them. He did not take anything from them, he returned [what was Russia’s],” Putin said on Thursday after a visiting an exhibition dedicated to the tsar.

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No regrets over handling of Vladimir Putin, says Angela Merkel

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Former German chancellor claims her opposition to Ukraine’s Nato membership helped country

Angela Merkel has said she feels no regrets for her handling of Vladimir Putin during her time in power, arguing that Russia’s president would have perceived a 2008 Nato membership plan for Ukraine that was blocked by her government as a “declaration of war”.

The former German chancellor also claimed that an oligarch-run and democratically immature Ukraine would have been less prepared for an invasion then than it is now.

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Putin warns that Moscow will hit new targets if the west supplies Ukraine with long-range missiles – as it happened

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President Vladimir Putin said Russia would strike new targets if the United States started supplying Ukraine with longer-range missiles, the TASS news agency reported on Sunday.

The TASS news agency reports:

Putin said that if such missiles are supplied, that Russia will strike at those targets which we have not yet been hitting”, in an Rossiya-1 state television channel

Putin did not name the targets Russia planned to pursue if western countries began supplying Ukraine with longer-range missiles.

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Russia claims to have targeted western-supplied tanks in Kyiv airstrikes

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Putin warns of more strikes if deliveries continue, as Ukrainian railways chief says ‘no such tanks’ were at targeted plant

Russia launched airstrikes on Kyiv for the first time in five weeks on Sunday, claiming it had targeted western-supplied tanks – while the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, warned more targets would be struck if weapons deliveries continued.

Several explosions were heard around the eastern Kyiv suburbs of Darnytskyi and Dniprovskyi early on Sunday morning, wounding one person. The strikes represented a change of tack on the part of the invading forces.

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Ukraine counterattack recaptures parts of Sievierodonetsk in Donbas

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Russians ‘suffering huge losses’, region’s governor claims, amid heavy fighting

Ukraine has staged a counterattack on the frontline city of Sievierodonetsk and recaptured a fifth of the city it had previously lost to the Russian invaders, according to the head of the region.

Serhiy Haidai, governor of Luhansk, said Russian forces were giving up recent gains in the city, as reports also emerged of foreign fighters joining the battle for the easternmost city held by Kyiv in the fiercely contested Donbas.

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Alexander Litvinenko assassination suspect dies of Covid

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Dmitry Kovtun was one of two Russian men accused over poisoning death of ex-spy in London in 2006

Dmitry Kovtun, one of the two Russian men accused of assassinating the former spy and Kremlin critic Alexander Litvinenko in London, died of Covid in a Moscow hospital on Saturday.

Litvinenko died in 2006, weeks after drinking tea laced with the radioactive isotope polonium 210 at a London hotel, where he met Kovtun and the other suspect, Andrei Lugovoi. The case has since weighed on relations between Britain and Russia.

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EU imposes sanctions on Russian oil boss linked to seized superyachts

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Eduard Khudainatov is blacklisted for ‘benefiting from the government of the Russian Federation’

The European Union has imposed sanctions on a Russian oil boss who is separately alleged by the US authorities to be acting as a “straw owner” of two yachts linked to Vladimir Putin and his inner circle.

Eduard Khudainatov served as chairman and chief executive of the state-controlled oil company Rosneft before setting up his own energy business, Independent Oil and Gas Company, which has grown rapidly to become one of Russia’s top oil producers with interests in extraction, refining and trading.

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Russian troops pound Donbas as Ukraine war enters 100th day

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Moscow has seized about a fifth of Ukrainian territory since its invasion and vows to continue ‘until all goals are achieved’

Ukraine will fight off Russia’s invasion, its president has said, while the Kremlin pledged to persist until “all our goals have been achieved” as Moscow’s war entered its 100th day with Russian troops pounding the Donbas region.

“Victory shall be ours,” Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in a video featuring the same key ministers and advisers who appeared with him in a defiant broadcast on 24 February, the day his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, launched his unprovoked assault.

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Russia-Ukraine war: Moscow warns US over rocket shipments to Kyiv; Ukraine losing up to 100 soldiers a day – live

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US president claims supply of rockets move will enable Ukraine ‘to more precisely strike key targets’; Ukraine’s president says 500 wounded each day

Away from the war in their homeland, Ukraine’s men’s football team are competing for a place in this year’s Fifa World Cup in Qatar. Nick Ames writes for us:

When Ukraine face Scotland at Hampden Park tonight it will be less a rebirth than a reminder that, much as Russia might wish to erase the country’s cultural identity, its football heritage remains truly alive. The act of playing for a World Cup place on Wednesday night, and over the next five days if all goes well, is both one of defiance and of expectation that, despite everything, good things can lie ahead.

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Most of Sievierodonetsk has fallen to Russia, says governor of Luhansk

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Mayor of besieged Ukrainian city tells residents to stay in cellars as Russian forces advance ‘block by block’

Russian forces have taken control of most of the eastern city of Sievierodonetsk but have not surrounded it, the governor of Ukraine’s Luhansk province has said as heavy fighting continued in and around the key city and civilians were told to stay underground.

Serhiy Gaidai said in an online post late on Tuesday that Russian shelling had made it impossible to deliver humanitarian supplies or evacuate people.

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Russia’s Alexei Navalny faces extra 15 years in jail over ‘extremism’ claims

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Political foe of Russian president Vladimir Putin was already sentenced to nine-year term earlier this year

The Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny is facing new criminal accusations that could extend his current prison term by 15 years.

In an Instagram post on Tuesday, Navalny said an investigator had visited him in prison to declare that the authorities had opened a new investigation against him on charges of “creating an extremist group to fan hatred against officials and oligarchs” and trying to stage unsanctioned rallies.

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Russian shelling of Sievierodonetsk has destroyed ‘entire critical infrastructure’ of city Zelenskiy says – as it happened

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This live blog is now closed, you can find our latest coverage of the Russia-Ukraine war here

Ridge asks Rudyk whether she feels safe. She says she does in the UK, where she is currently visiting and meeting with politicians. Rudyk talks about hearing air raid sirens and attacks on cities in Ukraine.

“The threat and the fear is still there ... I will go back home, because this is the fight we have to put up and we have to win. I dream of the day that all Ukrainians will feel safe. They will be able to sit with their hands on their lap and think ‘we are okay now.’

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Ukraine pleads for weapons as Russian onslaught threatens to turn the tide

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As support among some European allies appears to waver, Kyiv calls for advanced rocket systems to hit Russia’s supply lines

Ukraine is in a race against time to save the eastern Donbas region as relentless Russian artillery and air strikes threaten to turn the tide of the war, and support for Kyiv’s continued defiance among some west European allies appears to be slipping.

Ukrainian officials say they urgently need advanced US-made mobile multiple launch rocket systems (MLRS) to halt Russian advances in Luhansk and Donetsk. The rockets would be capable of striking Russian firing positions, military bases, air strips and supply lines at a range of up to 300km (185 miles).

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‘We can’t live with people who support Putin’s war’: the TV chief who fled Russia

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When journalists faced jail for reporting on Ukraine, Viktor Muchnik closed down his Siberian TV station and left for Armenia

On the ninth day of Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine, editor-in-chief Viktor Muchnik gathered the staff of TV2 for a meeting at their small newsroom in the Siberian city of Tomsk.

New wartime laws meant the whole newsroom risked jailtime for reporting on the conflict, Muchnik told them, and TV2 had just been officially blocked by Russia’s communications watchdog, along with many other independent media outlets.

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Russia claims capture of strategic town as fighting rages in east – as it happened

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Russia’s defence ministry says town of Lyman is now under full control of its forces, after days of fighting

Russian forces are now in full control of the town of Lyman in eastern Ukraine, the Russian defence ministry has claimed.

Yesterday, Ukraine reported Russia had captured most of Lyman but that its forces were blocking an advance to Sloviansk, a city a half-hour drive further southwest.

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