Category Archives: Vladimir Putin

Central African Republic considers hosting Russian military base

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Kremlin denies discussion at Russia-Africa summit but CAR president says countries’ defence ministries were reviewing idea

The president of Central African Republic has said his country would consider hosting a Russian military base, as Vladimir Putin woos dozens of African leaders in an effort to spread Moscow’s influence at an investment summit in southern Russia.

In an interview with Russian state media, President Faustin-Archange Touadéra said he had also asked Russia for new weapons shipments for CAR’s soldiers, who have fought a civil war against rebel forces in the country since 2012. Asked about a potential military base, Russia’s first in Africa, he said that his government was “considering the possibilities”.

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Turkey and Russia agree deal over buffer zone in northern Syria

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Erdoğan hails agreement with Putin in which Kurdish fighters will be moved from border area

The Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, have agreed on the parameters of a proposed Turkish “safe zone” in Syria, a development that could bring an end to Ankara’s offensive against Kurdish forces over the border by severely curtailing their control of the area.

The two leaders were locked in marathon talks for more than six hours in the Russian Black Sea city of Sochi, emerging just two hours before a five-day ceasefire brokered by the US expired at 10pm local time.

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Erdoğan threatens to ‘crush the heads’ of Kurdish fighters refusing to withdraw

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Turkey-US deal asks Kurdish forces to vacate designated ‘safe zone’ in northern Syria during five-day ceasefire

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the Turkish president, has said his country would “crush the heads” of Kurdish militants if they did not withdraw from a planned “safe zone” in northern Syria.

On Thursday following an intervention from the US, Turkey agreed to pause its military offensive in north-eastern Syria for five days while Kurdish fighters withdrew from the safe zone.

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Russian shadow falls over Syria as Kurds open door for Assad

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With the US gone, the implications of their departure is beginning to sink in across the Middle East

The moment that changed the Middle East arrived with a sudden silence. Just before 7pm on Sunday, the internet was cut across north-eastern Syria where, for half an hour, the Kurds of the region had been digesting a news flash. The Syrian government was returning to two towns, Manbij and Kobane. The implication quickly sunk in.

The regional capital, Qamishli, soon emptied; streets that had bustled with minibuses and shoppers became eerie and still. With the internet down phones were no help and nor were officials who had vanished along with the traffic. Air seemed to be suddenly vacuumed from the city, and the few people still around knew exactly what it meant: this was the moment power changed hands. It was a time to be scared.

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Erdoğan has managed the unthinkable: uniting all the other Middle East rivals

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Turkey’s Syria invasion following US withdrawal of its troops means that all bets are now off in the Middle East

By invading northern Syria last week, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan achieved what many thought impossible – uniting all the regional countries and rival powers with a stake in the country in furious opposition to what they see as a reckless, destabilising move.

A truculent nationalist-populist with dictatorial tendencies, Erdoğan has often cast himself as one man against the world during 16 consecutive years as Turkey’s prime minister and president. Now he really is on his own.

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Syria: Erdoğan’s eyes more likely to be on Putin than Trump

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Russia and Iran have troops in Syria and will see opportunities amid chaos of US impulsiveness

Donald Trump’s decision to give the green light – now seemingly turning amber – for Turkey to enter northern Syria has produced a torrent of criticism from European capitals to Washington Republicans, all pointing out that Ankara’s move will revive Islamic State, cause untold civilian deaths and land the US with an indelible reputation across the Middle East as an unreliable ally.

But the west has been losing traction in Syria over the past two years, and it may be the reaction of Russia and Iran, who have forces on the ground in Syria, that will most concern the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Their reaction may also reveal more about the long-term future of Syria’s eight-year civil war.

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Russia is helping China build a missile defence system, Putin says

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Days after Beijing unveils state-of-the-art missiles, Moscow reveals plan that would ‘radically enhance China’s defence capability’

Russian president Vladimir Putin has said that Moscow is helping China build a system to warn of ballistic missile launches.

Since the cold war, only the United States and Russia have had such systems, which involve an array of ground-based radars and space satellites. The systems allow for early spotting of intercontinental ballistic missiles.

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Russian alcohol consumption down 40% since 2003 – WHO

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Reputation for heavy drinking on the slide since Putin measures including curbs on alcohol sales

Russia may still have a reputation as a nation of heavy drinkers, but a report by the World Health Organization shows alcohol consumption has dropped by 43% since 2003.

The WHO put the decrease down to a series of measures brought in under the sport-loving president, Vladimir Putin, including restrictions on alcohol sales and the promotion of healthy lifestyles.

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Russia asks Interpol for help over alleged CIA mole’s whereabouts

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  • Oleg Smolenkov reportedly taken to safety by US agents in 2017
  • ‘Interpol was presented with questions about his disappearance’

Russia has asked the United States via Interpol to provide information on the whereabouts of a former member of Vladimir Putin’s administration who is believed to have been a CIA informant.

The alleged CIA mole, named this week by Russian media as Oleg Smolenkov, was whisked to safety by US intelligence agents during a family holiday in Montenegro in June 2017, CNN reported earlier this week.

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Russia denounces Netanyahu’s West Bank annexation plan

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Moscow says proposal could increase regional tensions, as Israeli PM meets Putin

The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, flies into Sochi on Thursday for talks with the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, that come after Moscow added its voice to criticism of his pre-election pledge to annex occupied Palestinian territories.

Netanyahu said on Tuesday that he would annex up to a third of the West Bank if he is re-elected in next week’s parliamentary polls. His announcement was condemned by the Palestinians, Arab countries, the UN and the EU.

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Pro-Putin candidates suffer losses in Moscow elections

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Opposition figure Alexei Navalny hails success of tactical voting campaign

Pro-Kremlin candidates have suffered losses in local elections in Moscow as Vladimir Putin’s biggest critic hailed the success of his campaign to encourage strategic voting.

The election was closely watched by both sides following a summer of protests in the Russian capital against the Kremlin’s refusal to allow candidates allied with opposition leader Alexei Navalny on to the ballot.

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Russians go to polls in local elections after crackdown on dissent

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Attention is on Moscow vote after arrests of would-be opposition candidates

Russians have gone to the polls in local elections after weeks of opposition protests that led to the biggest police crackdown on dissent in nearly a decade.

Although municipal and regional polls were held across the vast country, most attention has been focused on the vote in Moscow, where independent would-be candidates and their supporters have been arrested and jailed and large protests were held over the summer.

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Ukraine releases MH17 plane crash ‘suspect’

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Vladimir Tsemakh, who was arrested in June, may be part of prisoner swap deal with Russia

A Ukrainian court has released a potential suspect and key witness in the shooting down of MH17, as Russia’s president said the two countries were working on a deal to swap prisoners.

Vladimir Tsemakh had bragged on video of commanding an anti-air brigade in separatist-held east Ukraine and indicated he hid evidence of a Buk missile system, the kind Dutch investigators say shot down the Malaysia Airlines jet with 298 people on board.

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‘Will you pay for me too?’: Putin buys an ice cream for Erdoğan – video

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The Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and Vladimir Putin have underscored their close links with ice cream as they opened a major Russian air show. Erdoğan was the Russian president's guest of honour at the opening of the MAKS aviation show outside Moscow. The two leaders stopped at an ice cream stand for refreshments and Erdoğan was heard asking Putin, 'Will you pay for me?', to which Putin responded: 'Of course, you're my guest.'

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G7: Trump’s demands for Russia’s readmission cause row in Biarritz

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US president argues Putin should be included in discussions on Iran, Syria and North Korea

Donald Trump has rowed with his fellow G7 leaders over his demand that Russia be readmitted to the group, rejecting arguments that it should remain an association of liberal democracies, according to diplomats at the summit in Biarritz.

The disagreement led to heated exchanges at a dinner on Saturday night inside the seaside resort’s 19th-century lighthouse. According to diplomatic sources, Trump argued strenuously that Vladimir Putin should be invited back, five years after Russia was ejected from the then G8) for its annexation of Crimea.

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Putin’s 20 years in power producing new generation of protesters

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New wave of protest leaders were children when Russian president first came to power in 1999

The young face of Moscow’s protests, a 21-year-old libertarian with 123,000 followers on YouTube, appeared in court on a television screen this week.

Yegor Zhukov, a political science student at Russia’s prestigious Higher School of Economics, faces eight years in prison over controversial “mass unrest” charges. The Kremlin’s critics think the charges are a scare tactic to crush Russia’s largest protests in years, set to continue for their fourth weekend on Saturday.

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Vladimir Putin: 20 years in power – in pictures

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Twenty years ago the Russian president Boris Yeltsin appointed his fourth prime minister in less than 18 months: Vladimir Putin, then a relatively unknown security services chief with scant experience of politics. Few could have predicted that two decades later Putin would still be ruling Russia, having taken on a dominant role in world affairs. But the anniversary comes at a time of uncertainty in the leader’s reign. Putin’s approval ratings remain at a level most western leaders would envy, but they have taken a hit from a stalling economy and declining living standards

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Don’t call them Syria’s child casualties. This is the slaughter of the innocents

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As violence escalates, more children have died in rebel-held areas in the past month than in all of 2018. But does anybody care?

Murdered children are no longer news. International media coverage of the war in Afghanistan, where child deaths reached an all-time high last year, is sporadic at best. In Yemen it is estimated that at least 85,000 under-fives have died of starvation since 2015, a figure that numbs the mind. In Syria, especially, it is hard to keep count because children are being killed almost every day – and who is really counting?

Harrowing images briefly capture public attention. One of the more recent showed five-year-old Riham struggling amid the rubble of her bombed home in Ariha, in Syria’s north-western Idlib province, to save her baby sister, Tuqa. Riham died later in hospital along with her mother and another sister. Thanks to her efforts, and White Helmet rescuers, Tuqa survived.

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Russian protesters threatened with jail on eve of planned rally

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Move follows police violence during last week’s protests over forthcoming Moscow elections

Russian authorities have threatened protesters in Moscow with lengthy jail sentences in an attempt to dampen an unexpected surge in protest mood before a planned rally on Saturday.

Last weekend police detained a record number of people, some of them violently, for taking part in a peaceful protest in central Moscow over access for opposition candidates to local elections in September.

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