Category Archives: Vladimir Putin

Russia will act if Nato countries cross Ukraine ‘red lines’, Putin says

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Deployment of weapons or troops in Ukraine by Nato would trigger strong response, Russian president says

Vladimir Putin has warned Nato countries that deploying weapons or soldiers to Ukraine would cross a “red line” for Russia and trigger a strong response, including a potential deployment of Russian missiles targeting Europe.

Nato countries have warned Putin against further aggression against Ukraine as foreign ministers gathered in Latvia to discuss the military alliance’s contingencies for a potential Russian invasion.

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Turkey accused of using Interpol summit to crack down on critics

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Campaigners claim Ankara is abusing its position as host, by pressuring the police body to harass dissidents living abroad

Human rights activists have accused Turkey of using its role as host of Interpol’s general assembly to push for a crackdown on critics and political opponents who have fled the country.

The alert came after the Turkish interior minister, Süleyman Soylu, said his government would use the three-day event in Istanbul to persuade the international criminal police organisation’s officials and delegates to find, arrest and extradite Turkish dissident citizens – particularly those it labels terrorists – abroad.

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All options fraught with risk as Biden confronts Putin over Ukraine

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Analysis: Moscow presents Washington with a no-win situation: capitulate on Ukrainian sovereignty or risk all-out war

Joe Biden is preparing for a virtual summit with Vladimir Putin with the aim of fending off the threat of another Russian invasion of Ukraine.

The summit has been previewed by the Kremlin. The White House has not confirmed it, but Biden’s press secretary, Jen Psaki, said that “high-level diplomacy is a priority of the president” and pointed to the teleconference meeting with Xi Jinping earlier in November.

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Roman Abramovich wins first round of libel battle over Putin’s People book

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UK judge rules some passages convey a defamatory meaning, including claim Putin told him to buy Chelsea

A judge has ruled that a number of passages in the bestselling book Putin’s People convey a defamatory meaning against Roman Abramovich, including a claim that he bought Chelsea football club on Vladimir Putin’s orders.

The Russian oligarch said he was defamed by 26 specific passages in the book by the journalist Catherine Belton, all of which he says convey untrue meanings about him.

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Court cases threatening human rights group Memorial start in Russia

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Cases under ‘foreign agents’ law mark attack on civil society and attempt to recast Soviet history

Russia may dissolve Memorial, the country’s premier human rights group, in an attack on civil society and symbolic reversal of the freedoms won by dissidents at the fall of the Soviet Union.

A supreme court case, to be heard on Thursday, may mark a watershed in Vladimir Putin’s campaign to recast Soviet history by banning International Memorial, which began meeting in the late 1980s to shed light on atrocities and political repression under Joseph Stalin and other Soviet leaders.

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Russia accuses west of building up forces on its borders

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Moscow, which has nearly 100,000 troops near Ukraine border, also criticises ‘provocative policy’ of US and EU towards Kyiv

Russia has accused the west of building up forces on its borders as well as those of Belarus in remarks that appeared tailored to mirror recent US warnings about Moscow’s aggressive positioning towards Ukraine.

The Kremlin, as well as Russian intelligence, security, and diplomatic officials, have all gone on the offensive in the past 48 hours after Vladimir Putin publicly instructed his diplomats that tensions should be maintained with the west as a form of aggressive deterrence.

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Far from the border forest, Minsk and Moscow dictate refugees’ fate

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President Lukashenko is using a humanitarian crisis to further his own ends – but his success depends on which path Putin follows

Gunshots echo through the forest as Belarusian soldiers fire warning shots to drive back terrified asylum-seekers from Iraq and Syria seeking aid. Along the border, Polish and Belarusian troops eye each other warily through razor wire fence. At night, Polish guards say they’ve been blinded by Belarusians wielding strobe lights and lasers as migrants sneak across.

Asylum seekers have described hellish conditions in the forests and at improvised campsites, where they chop branches for firewood and ration water to survive. The body of a young Syrian man was found in the forest in Poland on Friday, at least the ninth person to have died this year. Others have been beaten by attackers and thieves waiting in the forest.

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Polish PM blames Vladimir Putin for Belarus border crisis

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Mateusz Morawiecki says Russian president is mastermind behind flow of migrants towards EU borders

Poland’s prime minister has accused Vladimir Putin of “masterminding” the migrant crisis on Belarus’s border with the EU, while Minsk’s key ally in the Kremlin pointed the blame at Europe.

The escalating rhetoric, including claims from the Belarusian leader, Alexander Lukashenko, that Russia could join a potential conflict at the border, has underlined the role that regional alliances are playing in the standoff and ensuing humanitarian crisis.

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Ukraine has legal right to Crimean artefacts, Dutch court rules

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Russia had sought to take control of ‘Scythian gold’ on loan to museum in Amsterdam

An appeals court in the Netherlands has ruled that Ukraine has legal control over a trove of artefacts from Crimea that was on loan to a Dutch museum when Russia annexed the peninsula in 2014.

Russia had sought to take control of the historical treasures, often called the “Scythian gold”, which includes gold and ceremonial daggers used by the nomadic tribe, a golden helmet from the 4th century BC, amulets, jewellery, and other treasures, including a Chinese lacquered box that made its way to Crimea along the Silk Road.

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Moscow announces one-week lockdown as Russia Covid deaths rise

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Mayor’s plan follows Putin announcing a weeklong nationwide paid holiday to stop spread of virus

Moscow authorities have announced a weeklong closure of most non-essential services from 28 October, as Russia registered its highest daily number of coronavirus deaths and infections since the start of the pandemic.

“The situation in Moscow continues to develop in the worst scenario … In the coming days, we will reach a historic peak in coronavirus battle,” the Moscow mayor, Sergei Sobyanin, said in a statement on Thursday explaining his decision to introduce the measure.

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FBI raids Washington mansion linked to Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska

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  • US agents conduct search at property in capital’s north-west
  • Putin associate sanctioned by US treasury department in 2018

The FBI on Tuesday raided a Washington mansion linked to the billionaire Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, as part of what media reports described as a “court-authorised search”.

Agents could be seen entering the neoclassical property located in the north-west of the US capital and standing guard outside. They sealed off the driveway with yellow tape. It said: “Crime scene – do not enter.”

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Claims that Russia is using energy as a weapon is nonsense, says Putin – video

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President Vladimir Putin says Russia is ready to provide more gas to Europe if requested, emphatically rejecting the suggestion that Moscow is squeezing supplies for political motives. European gas prices have hit record levels this month, but the Kremlin has repeatedly denied that Russia is deliberately withholding supplies in order to exert pressure for quick regulatory approval of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline across the Baltic Sea to Germany

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Europe’s soaring gas prices: does Russia hold solution to crisis?

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Some believe Kremlin sees gas prices as chance for Gazprom to pressure west to speed up Nord Stream 2 approval

The natural gas market has entered uncharted territory. The movements in the price of gas on Wednesday had been, in the words of one analyst, “unprecedented since the year dot of gas liberalisation in Europe”. In record swings, Dutch wholesale gas, a European benchmark, soared by 30% within one period of three or four hours from an already eye-watering level.

These are chilling numbers for European governments with winter stretching ahead, and when the EU sneezes, the UK, heavily reliant on imports from across the Channel, also catches a cold.

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Nord Stream 2 approval may cool gas prices in Europe, says Russia

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Deputy PM calls for rapid clearance from German regulator after prices reach an all-time high

Russia’s deputy prime minister has said certification of the Nord Stream 2 undersea gas pipeline, which is awaiting clearance from Germany’s regulator, could cool soaring European gas prices.

Prices have risen sharply in response to a recovery in demand, particularly from Asia, with storage levels low.

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Pro-Putin party wins majority in Russian elections despite declining support

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Partial results show ruling United Russia party will retain power in parliament after winning over 45% of the vote

Russia’s ruling United Russia party, which supports president Vladimir Putin, retained its majority in parliament after a three-day election and a sweeping crackdown on its critics, despite losing around one fifth of its support, partial results on Monday showed.

With 50% of votes counted, United Russia was ahead with 46.11% of the vote, the election commission said, followed by the Communist party with 21.4%.

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Vladimir Putin says dozens in Kremlin inner circle have Covid

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Russian president, 68, self-isolating after announcing outbreak among members of his entourage

The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, has said dozens of people in his inner circle at the Kremlin have tested positive for coronavirus, which has affected more than 7 million people in the badly-hit country.

Earlier this week, the 68-year-old Putin said he was self-isolating after announcing an outbreak among members of his entourage.

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Putin self-isolates after coronavirus found in entourage

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Russian president is not sick but will no longer hold in-person meetings this week, says Kremlin

Vladimir Putin has gone into self-isolation because of an outbreak of coronavirus in his entourage, the Kremlin has announced.

Although the Russian president was not sick, a Kremlin spokesperson told journalists, he would cease holding in-person meetings and would not travel to Dushanbe this week for summits of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) and Collective Security Treaty Organization.

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Putin’s crackdown: how Russia’s journalists became ‘foreign agents’

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Will an oppressive new law stifle independent media outlets – or lead to a weakening of the president’s authoritarian regime?

Usually the bad news is dumped late on Friday when most Muscovites are heading out for the evening: a new list of names of journalists and outlets declared “foreign agents”, a label that for some Russians evokes such Soviet-era terms as “enemy of the people” and has sent a chill through newsrooms under threat.

“We are being told that we are the enemy,” said Tikhon Dzyadko, the editor of Dozhd, Russia’s main independent television station and a recent addition to the list. “And I am not an enemy and I am not an agent. It’s a spit in the face.”

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Russian minister complains to US about role of ‘digital giants’ in election

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Sergei Ryabkov’s claim of interference in Duma vote believed to be reference to anti-Putin apps on Apple and Google

The Russian foreign ministry has summoned the US ambassador, John Sullivan, to complain about alleged interference by “American digital giants” in Russia’s upcoming parliamentary election.

According to a ministry statement on Friday, the deputy foreign minister, Sergei Ryabkov, claimed Russia “possesses irrefutable evidence of the violation of Russian legislation by American digital giants in the context of the preparation and conduct of elections to the state Duma”.

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