Category Archives: Vladimir Putin

Trump views US troops as disposable – the Russian bounty scandal makes that clear | Simon Tisdall

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Time and again, the president has failed to protect military personnel. For Trump, he always comes first, no matter who dies

Donald Trump likes to suggest he has got the back of US soldiers battling America’s foes around the world. It was a big theme of his 2016 campaign and his West Point speech earlier this month. So great was his boundless care for America’s fighting men and women, he said, that he would halt the endless, costly foreign wars prosecuted by his predecessors – and bring them home.

Related: Trump's ties to Putin under fresh scrutiny in wake of Russia bounty reports

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Joe Biden: Donald Trump presidency has been ‘a gift to Putin’ – video

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The Democrats' presidential nominee criticises Trump after reports the US president failed to act on intelligence briefings that Russia was offering bounties to Taliban-linked militants for killing US troops. The story was first reported in the New York Times. 'If the Times report is true ... Donald Trump has continued his embarrassing campaign of deference and debasing himself before Vladimir Putin,' Biden said.

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Russia offered bounty to kill UK soldiers

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Moscow accused of trying to give money to the Taliban as part of its campaign to destabilise America and its allies

The Russian intelligence unit behind the attempted murder in Salisbury of the former double agent Sergei Skripal secretly offered to pay Taliban-linked fighters to kill British and American soldiers in Afghanistan, according to US reports.

The revelation piles pressure on the UK to take robust action against the Kremlin amid continuing anger over the government’s delay in publishing a key report on Russian attempts to destabilise the UK.

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Putin is up to no good. But Johnson needs little help in creating chaos | Nick Cohen

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The ‘gobocracy’ that surrounds the PM is capable of doing Russia’s work for it

As Boris Johnson is leading Britain’s first government of pundits, “a gobocracy”, if you like, it is worth repeating Humbert Wolfe’s scathing poem on the press: “You cannot hope to bribe or twist,/ thank God! the British journalist./ But, seeing what the man will do/ unbribed, there’s no occasion to.”

In a gobocracy, there’s no need to become too conspiratorial about why a prime minister betrays his country. Put a Telegraph columnist in charge, throw in Michael Gove from the Times and Dominic Cummings from Vote Leave’s propaganda arm, and their bottomless cynicism and instinctive charlatanism will bring ruin with or without foreign assistance.

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Outrage mounts over report Russia offered bounties to Afghanistan militants for killing US soldiers

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Fierce response from top Democrats after US intelligence finding was reportedly briefed to Trump in March, but the White House has yet to act

Outrage has greeted media reports that say American intelligence officials believe a Russian military intelligence unit offered bounties to Taliban-linked militants for killing foreign soldiers in Afghanistan, including targeting Americans.

The story first appeared in the New York Times, citing its sources as unnamed officials briefed on the matter, and followed up by the Washington Post. The reports said that the US had come to the conclusion about the operation several months ago and offered rewards for successful attacks last year.

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‘It looks like a gameshow’: Russia’s pseudo-vote on Putin’s term limits

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Get-out-the-vote effort includes prize giveaways while campaign avoids focus on president

The people of Moscow received text messages this week telling them they had been registered to win “millions of prizes”.

The catch? They have to vote on constitutional amendments that include allowing Vladimir Putin to remain in the Kremlin potentially until 2036.

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Johnson and May ignored claims Russia had ‘likely hold’ over Trump, ex-spy alleges

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Exclusive: Christopher Steele claims May government turned blind eye to Trump allegations

Boris Johnson and Theresa May ignored claims the Kremlin had a “likely hold” over Donald Trump and may have covertly funded Brexit, the former spy Christopher Steele alleges in secret evidence given to MPs who drew up the Russia report.

In testimony to MPs, the MI6 veteran accused the government led by May and in which Johnson was foreign secretary for two years of turning a blind eye to allegations about Trump because they were afraid of offending the US president.

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Secret services thwarted plot to kill TV host who attacked Putin, Georgia says

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Chechen leader and Moscow deny sending hitman after journalist’s expletive-laden TV tirade

Georgia has thwarted a plot to assassinate a journalist who made an expletive-laden attack on Vladimir Putin on live television last year, the Georgian prime minister said.

“Georgian secret services have foiled a very serious crime,” Giorgi Gakharia told journalists on Tuesday.

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‘Disinfection tunnel’ set up to protect Vladimir Putin from coronavirus

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Anyone visiting the Russian president at his official residence must pass through a special disinfection chamber, state TV says

The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, has been protected from the coronavirus by a special disinfection tunnel that anyone visiting his residence outside Moscow must pass through, according to state television.

The special tunnel, manufactured by a Russian company based in the town of Penza, has been installed at his official Novo-Ogaryovo residence outside Moscow where he receives visitors, RIA news agency reported on Tuesday.

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‘Trump thought I was a secretary’: Fiona Hill on the president, Putin and populism

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She was the White House’s top Russia expert catapulted to fame by Trump’s impeachment. She reflects on her journey from County Durham to Washington

In the last days before Washington was locked down, Fiona Hill was standing on the street on her phone dealing with a domestic crisis.

Hill’s daughter had become ill, it was unclear whether it was coronavirus (it later turned out to be regular flu) and the family had relatives flying in that weekend for a visit. As she paced up and down making contingency plans, passersby on Connecticut Avenue looked and looked again on recognising her. The British-born White House adviser had temporarily become one of the most famous faces in America after testifying in Donald Trump’s impeachment hearings in November.

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Putin orders state of emergency after huge fuel spill inside Arctic Circle

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President lambasts power plant owner ‘for not reporting earlier’ incident bigger than Kerch spill

Vladimir Putin has ordered a state of emergency after 20,000 tonnes of diesel fuel spilled into a river inside the Arctic Circle.

The spill occurred when a fuel reservoir at a power plant near the city of Norilsk collapsed on Friday.

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Donald Trump offers to invite Vladimir Putin to expanded G7 summit

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US president initiated call with Russian leader, according to Kremlin account, where they discussed pandemic, oil and space

Donald Trump has offered to invite Vladimir Putin to an expanded G7 meeting in September, but the invitation has already been adamantly opposed by the UK and Canada.

According to a Kremlin account on Monday, the US president initiated the call, in which the two leaders talked about the coronavirus pandemic, oil prices and cooperation in space, as well as Trump’s postponement of a planned G7 summit at Camp David this month and the inclusion of other countries.

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Russia to hold Victory Day parade on 24 June, says Vladimir Putin

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President announces new date for military showpiece as rate of Covid-19 infections slows

Vladimir Putin has said Russia will hold its postponed Victory Day military parade on 24 June and declared that the country’s coronavirus outbreak has stabilised, on the same day as it posted a record death toll from the virus.

The decision to hold the parade in a month’s time is likely to mean thousands of soldiers being scrambled to begin rehearsals for the complex event, while millions of Russians remain under strict orders to shelter at home.

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Trump, Putin and Bolsonaro have been complacent. Now the pandemic has made them all vulnerable

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The world’s strongmen may well end up paying a political price for their cynicism and incompetence

If Boris Johnson is mishandling the pandemic, he is not alone. Falsely claiming everything is under control, dodging responsibility, hiding from public view, exploiting the crisis for political gain, mounting artificial distractions and blaming the media: these are common behaviour patterns exhibited by some of the world’s most powerful – and shifty – leaders.

Will they pay a price for their lethal incompetence and cynicism? It’s possible some will, though it may take a while. The pandemic is changing political calculations around the globe. Leaders who looked invulnerable suddenly appear less so. That in turn could shift the strategic calculus and alter the balance of power between countries in ways both unexpected and permanent.

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Putin, Johnson, Bolsonaro and Trump: men too macho for masks

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Why leaders who want to be seen as strongmen are afraid to take Covid-19 safety precautions

With the news this week that Vladimir Putin’s press secretary, Dmitry Peskov, is in hospital with Covid-19, the virus has now penetrated the Kremlin, 10 Downing Street, the Palácio do Planalto and the White House.

Putin, Boris Johnson, Jair Bolsonaro and Donald Trump are all very different politicians. But all have had one thing in common in their responses to coronavirus: a belief or suggestion, at least in the early stages, that taking personal protective measures against the virus is somehow unseemly and at odds with their macho political brands.

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‘He is failing’: Putin’s approval rating slides as Covid-19 grips Russia

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Backseat president announces easing of lockdown on day of record high infection numbers

A day of record high coronavirus infection numbers is an odd time to announce a route out of lockdown, but that is what Vladimir Putin did on Monday as he announced that the “non-working days” imposed by the Kremlin at the end of March would come to an end from Tuesday.

“We have a long and difficult process ahead of us with no room for mistakes,” said Putin by video link from his residence outside Moscow on a day when the country registered more than 11,000 new infections. Russia now has the second fastest rate of infections in the world after the US. The prime minister, Mikhail Mishustin, is among those in hospital with the virus.

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Victory Day: Belarus swaggers on parade as Russians leave Red Square deserted

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In a tale of two cities, Moscow keeps its distance while in Minsk, thousands turn out for the traditional military spectacular

In any other year, hundreds of thousands of Russians would have marched with portraits of relatives who fought in the second world war in a memorial called the Immortal Regiment.

But on Saturday, the images of Soviet veterans and their families floated past on Russian television, a public vigil adapted for the era of social isolation.

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Russian newspaper staff rebel against editor accused of censorship

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Journalists at Vedomosti warn paper is in danger of becoming ‘another controlled media outlet’

Journalists at the Russian business newspaper Vedomosti have rebelled against their new management after the paper’s editor was accused of banning criticism of constitutional amendments backed by Vladimir Putin and the use of data from an independent pollster.

In a blistering opinion article published on the newspaper’s website on Thursday, the editorial staff said the new editor had undermined trust by massaging headlines about the Russian state energy company Rosneft and blocking a recent column critical of the same company and its boss, Igor Sechin.

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Russia avoids ‘Boris Nemtsov Square’ address for its Prague embassy

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Embassy denies Czech claims it changed address because it bore murdered politician’s name

The Russian embassy in Prague has said it will not take an address on Boris Nemtsov Square after the plaza in front of the building was renamed to honour the Russian opposition politician who was murdered in 2015.

Czech media reported last week that the embassy had changed its official address in order to avoid the reference to Nemtsov, a critic of Vladimir Putin who was gunned down in sight of the Kremlin.

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US and Russia blocking UN plans for a global ceasefire amid crisis

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Resolution strongly supported by dozens of countries, human rights groups and charities

The Trump administration and Russia are blocking efforts to win binding UN security council backing for a global ceasefire to help fight the coronavirus pandemic, which has claimed more than 150,000 lives worldwide.

Related: Coronavirus world map: which countries have the most cases and deaths?

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