Category Archives: Russia

States lift Covid restrictions as US passes 600,000 deaths – live

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– Joan E Greve and Maanvi Singh

The chief executive of Morgan Stanley has become the latest US banking boss to call for an end to remote working, telling his New York staff that anyone who feels safe going out to a restaurant should return to the office.

James Gorman admitted that the bank would take a different approach in countries such as India or the UK – where fewer than 25% of its 5,000 London staff have been going to work in person – due to stricter Covid restrictions.

Related: Morgan Stanley boss tells US staff to be back in office in September

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Biden meeting marks rare trip out of ‘bunker’ for Covid-cautious Putin

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Rare sit-down talks come after Russian leader shut himself away for months to escape outbreak

For more than a year, people who have wanted to get within breathing distance of Vladimir Putin have performed a ritual, two-week quarantine in Russian hotels and sanatoriums to protect the 68-year-old president from falling ill with coronavirus.

Since March 2020, powerful business people, regional governors, his pilots and medical staff, volunteers at an economic conference, and even second world war veterans have shut themselves away to meet the Kremlin leader or even stand in his general vicinity.

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Putin refuses to give guarantee Navalny will survive prison – video

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Vladimir Putin has refused to give any guarantee that the opposition leader Alexei Navalny will get out of prison alive, saying nobody imprisoned in Russia should be given exclusive treatment.

In an extended and testy interview with NBC News before his Geneva summit with Joe Biden, the Russian president refused to use Navalny's name, leaving journalist Keir Simmons to say 'his name is Alexei Navalny'. 

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No sign of thaw between Russia and US ahead of Geneva summit

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Analysts say event will be ‘boring’ as both sides attempt a reboot following catastrophic meeting between Trump and Putin in 2017

On the 24-hour Russian state news channel, Thursday began as any other might: with a segment about the ageing president of the United States battling back cicadas and then giving a “confused” speech about his upcoming summit in Geneva with Vladimir Putin.

“I’ll let [Putin] know what I want him to know,’” said Biden after a cutaway shot of him swatting his neck before boarding Air Force One this week.

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Biden says Putin a ‘worthy adversary’ ahead of talks – video

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Joe Biden said meeting with Vladimir Putin would be ‘critical’ and that he would offer to cooperate on areas of common interest if the Kremlin so choses. Biden warned that if Russia chose not to cooperate in areas like cybersecurity ‘then we will respond’. The US president also characterised Putin as ‘bright’, ‘tough’ and ‘a worthy adversary’. When questioned by reporters, Biden said the potential death of the opposition leader Alexei Navalny, now jailed in Russia, would be a tragedy and would hurt Russian relations with the rest of the world and with the United States. The two men are meeting in Geneva on 16 June for the first time as presidents

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Expect China to be furious at being cast as a threat to the west

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Analysis: Beijing may well seek to undermine Nato unity in response to being accused of posing a systemic challenge to western values

When the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (Nato) was established on 4 April 1949, its mission was to counterbalance armies from the Soviet Union that were stationed in central and eastern Europe after the conclusion of the second world war.

After Emmanuel Macron, the current leader of one of its founding members, France, called it “brain-dead” in 2019, some analysts said the alliance will have to look for a new unifying mission to keep itself relevant in the new age of great power competition between the United States and China.

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Nato summit: leaders to agree that China presents security risk

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Communique will be first time alliance will have asserted it needs to respond to China’s growing power

Nato leaders are expected to agree that China presents a security risk at their annual summit in Brussels, the first time that the traditionally Russia-focused military alliance will have asserted it needs to respond to Beijing’s growing power.

Jake Sullivan, the US national security adviser, promised ahead of a meeting that will be attended by Joe Biden that China “will feature in the communique in a more robust way than we’ve ever seen before”.

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Biden says US-Russia relations at low point but ‘we’re not looking for conflict’

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Speaking at G7, president addresses autocracy and democracy, climate crisis and Donald Trump’s legacy

Joe Biden agreed on Sunday with Vladimir Putin’s latest assessment that US-Russia relations are at their lowest point in years but insisted that while the two countries may have fundamental disagreements, “we are not looking for conflict”.

The US president also addressed the issues of autocracy versus democracy, the climate crisis, future pandemics and problems caused by his predecessor Donald Trump, while holding a press conference to mark the end of the G7 summit in the English county of Cornwall.

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No joint news conference after Biden-Putin summit: White House

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  • Biden will speak to press alone after Geneva meeting
  • Trump caused outcry by accepting Putin denials at Helsinki

Joe Biden will give a solo news conference after his meeting next week with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, the White House has said.

Putin and Biden will meet in Geneva on Wednesday. The White House has said Biden will bring up ransomware attacks emanating from Russia, Moscow’s aggression against Ukraine, the jailing of dissidents and other issues that have irritated the relationship.

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Vladimir Putin says Biden ‘radically different’ after impulsive Trump

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Russian ruler says relations with US at their lowest point in years as the two presidents prepare to meet in Geneva

The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, has said US-Russia relations are at their lowest point in years, in an interview before his meeting with the US president, Joe Biden, next week.

Putin and Biden will meet in Geneva on Wednesday. The White House has said Biden will bring up ransomware attacks emanating from Russia, Moscow’s aggression against Ukraine, the jailing of dissidents and other issues that have irritated the relationship.

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Navalny backers see cautionary tale in Russian raids on Jehovah’s Witnesses

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Analysis: members of religious group declared extremist in 2017 have faced arrests, surveillance and prison

The decision by a Moscow court to declare Alexei Navalny’s nationwide political organisation as “extremist” adds the group to a list associated with terrorist organisations such as al-Qaida and Islamic State.

But for a guide to how Russia could treat Navalny’s supporters, a better example is the Jehovah’s Witnesses, a non-violent religious group that has felt the full extent of Russia’s law on extremism.

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Ruben Sergeyev, longtime Guardian fixer in Moscow, dies at 65

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Former colleagues remember ‘intelligent, playful, constantly curious’ news assistant and friend

Ruben Sergeyev, a longtime consultant and friend to Guardian correspondents in Moscow from the Gorbachev era through to the Putin years, has died of Covid-19 at the age of 65.

He died on Wednesday after being admitted to hospital in Moscow. Sergeyev worked from 1988 until 2014 as a news assistant, fixer, and all-round explainer of Russia during a time of rapid change. He helped a succession of bureau chiefs including Jonathan Steele, David Hearst, James Meek and Miriam Elder.

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‘Father of African cinema’ Ousmane Sembène at work – in pictures

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A look back at the career of Senegal-born film director Ousmane Sembène as his 1968 film Mandabi is released in the UK for the first time

•Mandabi is released on 11 June in cinemas, and on 28 June on DVD, Blu-Ray and digital platforms.

•Peter Bradshaw on Mandabi: classic about colonialism resonates today

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Russian court outlaws Alexei Navalny’s organisation

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Court has in effect liquidated the opposition politician’s movement by classifying it as ‘extremist’

A Russian court has outlawed opposition politician Alexei Navalny’s nationwide political organisation on the grounds it is “extremist”, in a landmark step forward for Vladimir Putin’s crackdown on political dissent.

The highly anticipated court decision in effect liquidates Navalny’s non-violent opposition movement and bars his allies from running for office for years, as the Kremlin seeks to erase the jailed opposition leader from Russian political life.

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Multiple sightings of missile launcher before MH17 shot down, court told

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Four men on trial in absentia in the Netherlands over downing of flight with 298 onboard over Ukraine

Multiple witnesses saw an anti-aircraft missile launcher that had secretly crossed into eastern Ukraine from Russia in the hours before it shot down the Malaysia Airlines flight MH17, a trial in the Netherlands has heard.

The Buk system crossed the border in darkness in the early hours of 17 July 2014. It was then loaded on to a trailer and taken to the rebel-held city of Donetsk, the court heard on Wednesday, before it headed east towards the town of Snizhne.

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Biden trumpets democracy abroad in Post op-ed – as threats spread at home

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Joe Biden will use his visit to Europe this week to “rally the world’s democracies” in a reset of US foreign policy after four turbulent years under Donald Trump – all while threats to American democracy, stoked by Trump, proliferate at home.

Related: After Trump: Biden set to outline US policy to Johnson, Putin and more

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White House says Republicans increased offer on Biden infrastructure deal by $50bn – as it happened

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That’s all from me today. Here’s a rundown of the day’s biggest stories:

At least 10 US states have siphoned millions of dollars from federal block grants, meant to provide aid to their neediest families, to pay for the operations of ideological anti-abortion clinics.

These overwhelmingly Republican-led states used money from the federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program (Tanf), better known as welfare or direct cash aid, to fund the activities of anti-abortion clinics associated with the evangelical right. The clinics work to dissuade women from obtaining abortions.

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Ex-Austrian minister who danced with Putin at wedding lands Russian oil job

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Karin Kneissl has been given seat on board of directors at Rosneft, which is controlled by the Russian state

A former Austrian foreign minister who danced with Vladimir Putin at her wedding has been given a seat on the board of directors of the Russian state-controlled oil industry giant Rosneft, the company has annnounced.

Karin Kneissl shot to infamy after she invited Putin to her wedding. Images of her dancing with the Russian leader in Gamlitz in the south-eastern state of Styria near the Slovenian border, went around the world in August 2018.

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Microwave weapons that could cause Havana Syndrome exist, experts say

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Russia and possibly China have developed technology capable of injuring brain and a US company made a prototype in 2004

Portable microwave weapons capable of causing the mysterious spate of “Havana Syndrome” brain injuries in US diplomats and spies have been developed by several countries in recent years, according to leading American experts in the field.

A US company also made the prototype of such a weapon for the marine corps in 2004. The weapon, codenamed Medusa, was intended to be small enough to fit in a car, and cause a “temporarily incapacitating effect” but “with a low probability of fatality or permanent injury”.

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