Category Archives: Vladimir Putin

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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Alexei Navalny: Russian opposition leader may have been poisoned, says doctor

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Politician was taken to hospital from jail where he was detained over call for protests

The Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny remains in hospital after being rushed there on Sunday morning with symptoms that one of his doctors said could indicate poisoning.

Navalny was taken to hospital from jail, where he was serving a 30-day sentence after being arrested last week for calling people to attend an anti-government protest.

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Russian opposition calls for more protests after mass arrests

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Further action planned to press authorities to let candidates stand in Moscow city elections

Russian opposition politicians have called on their supporters to keep up with street rallies, the day after the most forceful police response to protests in the country for years.

More than 1,300 people were detained by police on Saturday, at a protest called in response to the refusal of electoral authorities to register independent candidates for the Moscow city council elections in September.

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Moscow police detain hundreds over election protests – video

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Russian police arrested more than 600 people, including prominent activists, around a political protest in Moscow to demand that members of the opposition be allowed to run in a local election later this year. The protest, which authorities declared illegal beforehand, did not represent a significant challenge to Vladimir Putin and his allies, who have the resources to break up such demonstrations and jail people. Chants of 'Russia without Putin' and 'Putin resign' echoed through central Moscow as guardsmen clad in riot gear beat back protesters with batons and roughly detained people. Jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny had called for the protest

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Vladimir Putin’s Russia is rehabilitating Stalin. We must not let it happen | Irina Sherbakova

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An archive of artefacts from Stalin’s brutal reign should stand as evidence against Putin’s vision of a ‘heroic’ Soviet past

• Irina Sherbakova was a founding member of the human rights organisation Memorial

Great expectations characterised 1989. In Russia, the rock band Kino sang “We are waiting for changes!” In huge public rallies on the streets of Moscow, millions demanded freedom and democracy. The Gorbachev era brought about a frenzy of change, and people witnessed incredible events on a weekly basis: they snatched up newspapers, hung on every word broadcast on TV, and with every passing day they felt more alive and free.

Related: 'Homage to evil': Russian activists detained over Stalin protest

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Submersible on which 14 sailors died is state secret, says Kremlin

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Russia refuses to release details about vessel or its mission ‘to protect national security’

The Kremlin has said it will not reveal the vessel type or mission of the 14 sailors who died onboard a top-secret submersible on Monday because the information is a closely guarded state secret.

The remarks came as information has trickled out about the vessel, reported to be an advanced “spy submersible”, and its highly decorated crew, which served in a secretive unit under Russia’s main directorate of deep-sea research and represented some of the navy’s best and brightest.

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Russia and Saudi Arabia agree to extend deal with Opec to curb oil output

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Vladimir Putin says deal due to expire on Sunday will be extended by six to nine months

Russia has agreed with Saudi Arabia to extend by six to nine months a deal with Opec on reducing oil output, the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, said, as oil prices come under renewed pressure from rising US supplies and a slowing global economy.

The Saudi energy minister, Khalid al-Falih, said on Sunday that the deal would most likely be extended by nine months and no deeper reductions were needed.

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Jimmy Carter: ‘illegitimate’ Trump only president because of Russian meddling

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  • Trump ‘put into office because Russians interfered on his behalf’
  • Carter says investigation would show Trump didn’t win in 2016

Jimmy Carter has called Donald Trump an “illegitimate president” who was helped into office by Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Related: Jimmy Carter calls Donald Trump an 'illegitimate president' – live

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‘Despicable act’: May confronts Putin over Salisbury poisoning

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PM addresses Russian leader at G20 over ‘wider pattern of unacceptable behaviour’


Theresa May has upbraided Vladimir Putin for the Salisbury poisoning, calling it a “truly despicable act”, during a frosty one-to-one meeting at the G20 summit in Osaka that is likely to be their last encounter.

After exchanging a handshake, during which May appeared stern, the pair held the first half of their 80-minute meeting alone, with only translators in the room.

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Smirking Trump jokes to Putin: don’t meddle in US election

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US president appears to make light of 2016 scandal before meeting at G20 summit

Donald Trump has sardonically asked Vladimir Putin not to meddle in the 2020 US election, smirking and pointing his finger as he did so and appearing to make light of a scandal that led to an investigation of his campaign’s contact with the Kremlin during the 2016 election.

The US president and his Russian counterpart were heading into talks on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Japan’s western city of Osaka, their first formal face-to-face meeting since a high-profile summit in Helsinki last July.

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