Category Archives: Russia

Trump reportedly tells Putin he is prepared to help end war in Ukraine

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Trump also says in ‘friendly and frank’ phone call that US is nearing peace deal with Iran, according to Putin adviser

Donald Trump told Vladimir Putin that ending Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine was critical and that he was prepared to help, reported Russia’s TASS news agency.

During a phone call on Sunday, Trump also informed the Russian president that the US was nearing a peace deal with Iran as the US-Israel war against the country continues, according to Yuri Ushakov, a Putin adviser. The call between Trump and Putin, which lasted about an hour, was described as “friendly and frank” by Ushakov.

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Police stop Tommy Robinson on his way back to London from Russian trip

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Met seizes far-right activist’s phones after he disembarks flight at Heathrow under counter-terrorism provisions

British police say they stopped the far-right activist Tommy Robinson and seized his phones as he returned from a trip to Russia.

Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, met Elon Musk’s father in Moscow during his trip.

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Ukraine and Moldova to enter first phase of EU membership negotiations

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Election of new Hungarian government in April has paved way for EU member states to agree to open talks

Ukraine and Moldova will take a decisive step towards joining the EU on Monday, as they embark on the first phase of membership negotiations.

The start of substantive negotiations, launched by senior EU officials and ministers from both countries in Luxembourg on Monday, will be a highly symbolic moment for the two countries that were both part of the former Soviet Union. It comes after Russia has intensified its bombardment of Ukrainian towns and cities, while sustaining huge losses for little territorial gain.

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UK defence funding crisis has been a long time coming

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John Healey’s complaint is that Starmer sat on this problem for months before making a derisory offer

John Healey’s resignation as defence secretary on Thursday was a long time brewing, though in the end the denouement was swift. It leaves an already weak Keir Starmer without a defence strategy less than a month before a Nato summit and an unresolved row about spending as Donald Trump threatens to restart the bombing of Iran.

On Monday, No 10 finally told Healey how much more money it was prepared to give the Ministry of Defence to fund major projects as part of the defence investment plan (Dip).

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EU plans to ban Russian soldiers from bloc in fresh sanctions on Moscow

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Banks, crypto firms and Kremlin oil reserves also targeted in 21st set of measures since full-scale invasion of Ukraine

The EU hopes to ban Russian soldiers from entering its territory as part of further sanctions against Moscow that also target banks, crypto firms and the Kremlin’s oil revenues.

Announcing the proposals on Tuesday, the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, said: “We propose for the first time to ban from entry into the European Union anyone who has served in the Russian armed forces since the beginning of the war. So Europe stays off limit for anyone who has participated in the invasion of Ukraine, as simple as that.”

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Armenia’s pro-Europe party wins election and cements shift away from Russia

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Result strengthens PM Nikol Pashinyan’s drive for deeper integration with Europe despite warnings from Moscow

Armenia’s ruling pro-Europe party has won parliamentary elections, confirming the country’s pivot towards Europe and away from its traditional ally, Russia.

Final results in the small South Caucasus country showed the prime minister Nikol Pashinyan’s Civil Contract party securing a slim majority, while the Strong Armenia alliance, led by the Russian-Armenian billionaire Samvel Karapetyan, won 25% of the seats in parliament.

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Russian drone hits building storing spent nuclear fuel near Chornobyl

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Attack was ‘extremely vile’ and deliberate, says Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy

A Russian Shahed drone has substantially damaged a building used to store spent nuclear fuel close to the disused Chornobyl nuclear power plant, in what Ukraine’s president described as a deliberate and “extremely vile” attack.

While the structure – the reception building of the spent fuel storage facility – was empty of containers at the time, the targeting of the sensitive site appeared to be direct messaging from Moscow amid an intensifying battle of long-range aerial strikes in which high-profile locations on both sides have been hit.

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Women accusing Andrew Tate criticise UK extradition delay as influencer appears in Russia

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Lawyer for British women attacks ‘extraordinary spectacle’ of Tate’s arrival in Moscow

British women who have accused Andrew Tate of rape, assault and coercive control have questioned why the self-professed misogynistic influencer has appeared in Russia as UK authorities continue to hold off on seeking his extradition.

Tate admires Vladimir Putin and amplifies Kremlin propaganda online. He arrived in the same week that Russian authorities welcomed US rightwing figures at an annual conference described as Russia’s answer to Davos.

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Armenia heads to polls amid Russian pressure and threat of ‘Ukrainian scenario’

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Relationship between Vladimir Putin and traditional ally has slowly unravelled under current PM Nikol Pashinyan

The bottling line at the Abovyan cognac factory in Armenia is running at full tilt.

Women in white coats and hairnets work the conveyor with practised speed – labelling, stacking, loading pallets – racing to fill a truck.

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Putin rejects Zelenskyy’s offer to meet and reaffirms Ukraine war aims

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Russian president describes Ukrainian counterpart’s letter as rude and says he sees no point in face-to-face talks

Vladimir Putin has rejected an offer from Volodymyr Zelenskyy to hold a face-to-face meeting, insisting instead that Russia will achieve its war goals in Ukraine, including seizing all of the eastern Donbas region.

Speaking at the St Petersburg economic forum, the Russian president described the open letter from his Ukrainian counterpart containing the offer as rude. He refused to use Zelenskyy’s name, referring to him only as its author. Asked if they could meet to discuss an end to the conflict, Putin replied: “So far I see no point.”

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Zelenskyy calls for face-to-face Ukraine war negotiations in letter to Putin

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Ukrainian president proposes meeting in neutral third country as Trump says both sides have to ‘make compromises’

The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, has called for face-to-face negotiations in a public letter addressed directly to the Russian president, Vladimir Putin.

The letter, the first Zelenskyy has publicly written directly to Putin since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in 2022, was a sweeping criticism of the Russian leader’s 26 years in power.

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‘You can stop your war’: Zelenskyy’s open letter to Putin – in full

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Russians are increasingly tired of the conflict and the time to end it is now, Ukraine’s president tells his Russian counterpart in an open letter

Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in an open letter to the Vladimir Putin, has called for a face-to-face meeting with the Russian president to end his war against Ukraine.

The letter sets out Zelenskyy’s view of the four-year-old conflict and says that while Ukrainians’ resilience remains intact, most Russians have grown weary of its effects and are ready for peace.

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In second break with Trump in a week, House passes bill to aid Ukraine

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Legislation would also sanction key segments of Russian economy, overriding objections from Republican leaders

The House passed legislation Thursday that would aid Ukraine and sanction key segments of the Russian economy, overriding objections from Republican leaders who warned the bill would undermine negotiations designed to achieve a comparable but stronger result.

The 226-195 vote is a sign of impatience with Donald Trump’s approach to the war and represents the House’s second major foreign policy break with Trump this week. The day before, the House, for the first time, approved a war powers resolution aimed at halting US military action against Iran.

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Zelenskyy asks Trump to send missiles after Russian strikes across Ukraine

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At least 18 killed, dozens injured and others trapped under collapsed buildings after attacks on five Ukrainian cities

Volodymyr Zelenskyy has asked Donald Trump to send Patriot missiles to Ukraine after a devastating Russian attack killed at least 18 people and injured dozens more.

Russia launched 73 missiles and 656 drones at Ukraine overnight, according to the air force, including eight hypersonic Tsirkon missiles. The main targets were Kyiv, the central cities of Dnipro and Zaporizhzhia, and the eastern cities of Poltava and Kharkiv.

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French navy seizes Russia-linked oil tanker in Atlantic

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President Macron says ship subject to sanctions and posts video of operation that took place with UK support

A suspected Russian oil tanker has been detained in the Atlantic, France has announced, in the latest seizure aimed at combatting Moscow’s “shadow fleet” of vessels contravening international sanctions.

The Tagor was detained on Sunday morning in international waters more than 400 nautical miles (740km) west of Brittany with the help of the UK and other partners, said the French president, Emmanuel Macron.

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Russian drone strike ‘most serious security incident’ in Romania since start of Ukraine war – Europe live

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Romanian president leads outrage after drone hits apartment block near border with Ukraine

The incident comes just days after the Czech president, Petr Pavel, has urged Nato to “show its teeth” in response to Russia’s repeated testing of the alliance’s resolve on its eastern flank, suggesting a range of options including switching off its internet, cutting off its banks from global financial systems and shooting down jets that violate allied airspace.

Speaking to the Guardian in Prague last week, Pavel called for “decisive enough, potentially even asymmetric” responses to counter Moscow’s provocative behaviour against the alliance or risk the Kremlin intensifying its actions.

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Nearly half a million Russians killed in Ukraine war, UK spy chief says

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Anne Keast-Butler says Russian forces are ‘going backwards on the battlefield’ for first time since late 2022

Nearly half a million Russian soldiers have been killed in Ukraine since the start of Vladimir Putin’s invasion more than four years ago, according to a new estimate from the head of the British spy agency GCHQ.

Anne Keast-Butler, the chief of the electronic intelligence agency, said in her first speech in the job that Russian forces were “going backwards on the battlefield” inside Ukraine for the first time since late 2022.

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New Mandelson revelations cast doubt on claim vetting decision was borderline, Thornberry says – as it happened

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This blog is now closed, you can read more on this story here

Zack Polanski, the Green party leader, posted this on social media about Tony Blair’s latest intervention this morning.

Tony Blair.

What the billionaire class have paid for.

Spot the difference between “Tony Blair says” and “Nigel Farage says”

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‘Put an end to this war’: Russian director Andrey Zvyagintsev makes new plea to Putin

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After winning the Grand Prix at Cannes film festival, the exiled auteur sent a direct message to the Russian president urging him to stop the war

Accoladed director Andrey Zvyagintsev has sent a direct message to Vladimir Putin urging him to start listening to the Russian people and end the “senseless” war in Ukraine, continuing a war of words between Russia’s most revered living film-maker and the Kremlin that started at the Cannes film festival awards ceremony over the weekend.

“Except for the limbs torn off from your fellow citizens in the name of an illusory goal, except for the massacre of young people that the country needs to build life and the future – nothing good is on the horizon if we don’t stop,” the exiled auteur said in a message sent to the Russian president’s press secretary through official channels on Tuesday.

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Russia is targeting UK’s infrastructure and democracy, GCHQ head to say

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Anne Keast-Butler will also warn of narrowing window to stay ahead of China in ‘new era of radical uncertainty’

Russia is relentlessly targeting Britain’s infrastructure and democracy while there is only a narrowing technological window to stay ahead of a fast-developing China, the head of the spy agency GCHQ will warn in a lecture on Wednesday.

Anne Keast-Butler, giving an inaugural annual lecture, will say that the UK is caught in a “new era of radical uncertainty” and that “the risk of miscalculation” is as high as she has ever seen it as hacker attacks from the two states continue.

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