Category Archives: Russia

‘The game continues’: evacuating casualties and bombing bridges in Kursk

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Drone operators and a volunteer medic on the ever-changing dynamics on the frontline of the Ukraine incursion

Deep into one recent night, at a Ukrainian mobile drone command point hidden amid the fields and forests close to the border with Russia, the largest of six screens flashed with images of the wiggling course of the River Seym, deep inside Russia on the other side of the border. Straddling the river, a thin band was visible, rendered in white by the night vision imaging: a pontoon bridge.

Inside the command point, Anna, Pavlo and Ivan watched the display intently. “Move in closer,” murmured Ivan, the team’s 48-year-old commander. Pavlo pushed a button and the camera zoomed in. “Yesterday, we destroyed this crossing, but they’ve repaired it again, probably in the last few hours,” he said, picking up his phone to send the information to an encrypted group chat of Ukrainian commanders in the area.

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‘Usually just rhetoric’: European policy leaders downplay Putin’s war threats

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International reaction muted over Russia’s warning about allowing Kyiv to strike it with western-made missiles

European leaders have dismissed Vladimir Putin’s warning that the west would be directly fighting Russia if it allowed Kyiv to strike Russian territory with western-made long-range missiles.

The US and UK are discussing, in conjunction with other allies, allowing Kyiv to strike military targets inside Russia with Storm Shadow missiles, which can hit targets up to 155 miles (250km) from their launch site.

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Starmer tells Putin he started Ukraine war and can end it any time

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UK PM responds to Putin’s threat that use of long-range British missiles inside Russia would put it at war with Nato

Keir Starmer has told Vladimir Putin that he started the war in Ukraine and could end it at any time after the Russian leader warned that any use of long-range British missiles into Russian territory would put Nato at war with his country.

The prime minister spoke en route to Washington to see US president Joe Biden as he sought to justify a western decision made behind closed doors that would allow Ukraine to attack inside Russia with partly British-made Storm Shadow missiles.

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Russia says 10 settlements recaptured in Kursk counteroffensive

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Ukrainian president says his country’s incursion still going to ‘plan’, as Russian forces make rapid advances

Russia says its forces have recaptured 10 settlements after it launched a counteroffensive in the Kursk region to push out Ukrainian troops who stormed across the border five weeks ago.

With fierce fighting continuing, Russia’s defence ministry listed the names of 10 settlements it said it had retaken, in a significant blow to Kyiv. Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, acknowledged a Russian counteroffensive had begun.

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Moscow importing western aircraft tyres despite ban, says Ukraine agency

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Exclusive: Michelin, Dunlop, Goodyear and Bridgestone products have found way to Russia via intermediaries

More than $30m (£23m) worth of aircraft tyres made by western manufacturers including the French firm Michelin and Britain’s Dunlop were imported into Russia last year via intermediaries despite attempts to ban the trade, according to a Ukrainian government agency.

Russian aviation is critically dependent on foreign-made tyres and, according to the available customs records, the vast majority imported into the country in 2023 were produced by companies headquartered in France, Britain, the US and Japan.

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Donald Trump a de facto Russian asset, FBI official he fired suggests

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Andrew McCabe says Trump-Putin interactions ‘raise questions’, as Harris says Putin would eat Trump ‘for lunch’

Donald Trump can be seen as a Russian asset, though not in the traditional sense of an active agent or a recruited resource, an ex-FBI deputy director who worked under the former US president said.

Asked on a podcast if he thought it possible Trump was a Russian asset, Andrew McCabe, who Trump fired as FBI deputy director in 2018, said: “I do, I do.”

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Blinken hints US will lift restrictions on Ukraine using long-range arms in Russia

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Decision understood to have already been made in private as secretary of state says in Kyiv that US will continue to adapt policy

The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, gave his strongest hint yet that the White House is about to lift its restrictions on Ukraine using long-range weapons supplied by the west on key military targets inside Russia, with a decision understood to have already been made in private.

Speaking in Kyiv alongside the UK foreign secretary, David Lammy, Blinken said the US had “from day one” been willing to adapt its policy as the situation on the battlefield in Ukraine changed. “We will continue to do this,” he emphasised.

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Putin has escalated Ukrainian war with Iranian missiles, suggest Blinken and Lammy – as it happened

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Russia’s deputy foreign minister, Sergei Ryabkov, has said Moscow will destroy any new deliveries of long-range ATACMS missiles to Ukraine by the United States, Reuters reported citing the state TASS news agency.

The State Department spokesperson, Matthew Miller, said “the U.S. and UK stand united with Ukraine as they defend their sovereignty and freedom.”

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Europe watches Harris-Trump debate for clues on direction US may take

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Diplomats most struck by Republican’s refusal to say whether he wanted Ukraine to defeat Vladimir Putin

The TV debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump was as keenly watched by European diplomats and politicians as by US voters, eager to see who may be next in the White House and – crucially – the direction that a vital ally may next take.

One diplomat said they empathised when Harris adopted a series of poses that ranged from pity, bemusement and genuine curiosity about what craziness would emerge from Trump’s mouth next as she listened to his conspiracy-laden theories. However, the diplomat said they still did not underestimate Trump and the hold he had over one part of a divided America, adding: “Never write him off.”

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UK imposes sanctions on 10 ships in crackdown on Russia’s shadow oil fleet

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Tankers believed to be at heart of illicit operation transporting gas and oil to fund Moscow’s war effort

The UK has taken new steps to clamp down on Russia’s shadow fleet exporting oil and funding Moscow’s war machine, with the Foreign Office announcing sanctions on 10 ships that it believes to be at heart of the operation.

Russia has a large fleet of often unseaworthy and ageing tankers that transport Russian gas and oil products around the globe. Oil exports are Vladimir Putin’s most critical revenue source for funding the war in Ukraine, accounting for about a quarter of the Russian budget in 2023.

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Iran’s missile supply to Moscow may reveal true scale of Pezeshkian’s powers

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Despite desire to improve relations with Europe, the president has put Iran back on the sanctions treadmill

Iran’s decision to sell Russia short-range missiles supplementing Moscow’s existing supplies appears, on the surface, to be a political reversal for Masoud Pezeshkian, Iran’s new reformist president.

He was elected on a promise to lift sanctions and develop more balanced relations with the east and west, especially Europe. The bulk of his diplomatic appointments, including the retention of the former foreign minister Javad Zarif as an adviser, underscored that intention, and already a lively debate had started in Tehran about the extent to which Iran and Russia’s interests truly aligned.

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Blinken says Russia has received new ballistic missiles from Iran

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US and Europe impose new sanctions on Iran in response to supply of weapons that US says Russia could use in Ukraine

Russia has received new deadly ballistic missiles from Iran for use in Ukraine and is likely to use them, the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, announced on Tuesday in London as he prepared to travel with the UK foreign secretary, David Lammy, to Kyiv.

The news, confirmed by the US for the first time and seen as of huge significance to the battlefield balance ahead of Ukraine’s difficult winter, led the US and Europe to impose new sanctions on Iran, so apparently slamming the door on the prospect of a rapprochement between the new reformist Iranian government and the west.

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Russia’s shadow oil fleet and Gaza ceasefire plan to top US-UK talks in London

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Antony Blinken to meet David Lammy in precursor to Joe Biden’s talks with Keir Starmer in Washington

Moscow’s use of a shadow fleet transporting western-sanctioned oil, Ukraine’s call to fire to fire UK-supplied missiles into Russia, and the value of publishing a new version of the US ceasefire plan for Gaza will top US-UK talks in London being attended by Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state.

His meeting this week with the British foreign secretary, David Lammy, will make him the most senior US official to visit the UK since Labour’s general election victory in July. It is also a precursor to talks in Washington between Joe Biden and Keir Starmer at the end of the week.

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Whale alleged to be Russian ‘spy’ died after stick became lodged in its mouth, say police

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Animal rights groups had claimed beluga named Hvaldimir, which was found dead last month, had been shot

A beluga whale that rose to fame in Norway after its unusual harness prompted suspicions that the creature was trained by Russia as a spy died after a stick became stuck in its mouth, police have said.

The lifeless body of the whale, named Hvaldimir – a combination of the Norwegian word for whale and the first name of the Russian president, Vladimir Putin – was found floating in the sea on 31 August by a father and son fishing in Risavika Bay, southern Norway.

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CIA boss says west should not be intimidated by Russia’s nuclear threats

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Bill Burns calls Vladimir Putin a ‘bully’ whose ‘sabre-rattling’ should not always be taken literally

Western leaders should not be intimidated by Kremlin threats of nuclear escalation, the head of the CIA said on Saturday, amid a debate over whether Anglo-French Storm Shadow missiles should be used inside Russia.

Bill Burns, on a visit to London alongside the head of MI6, said the US had brushed off a previous Russian nuclear scare in autumn 2022, demonstrating that threats from Moscow should not always be taken literally.

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Russian documentary accused of falsely showing invading soldiers as victims

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Anastasia Trofimova’s film Russians at War criticised for ‘distorted picture of reality’ in Ukraine after Venice premiere

A new documentary portraying the lives of Russian soldiers near the Ukrainian frontlines has faced fierce criticism for attempting to whitewash Moscow’s war crimes.

Russians at War, directed by the Russian-Canadian film-maker Anastasia Trofimova, chronicles seven months spent embedded with a Russian army battalion in eastern Ukraine, presenting itself as a unique window into the daily lives of Russian soldiers.

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Zelenskiy claims support waning for strikes against Russian occupiers

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Ukrainian president complains of reduced cooperation from US and UK over use of their missiles in Crimea

Volodymyr Zelenskiy has complained that it has become increasingly difficult to use Storm Shadow missiles against Russian targets in occupied Ukraine because of a lack of supplies and reduced cooperation from the US, UK and France.

The Ukrainian president flew to Germany to lobby western defence leaders amid growing concern in Kyiv that vital support from key allies for long-range missile strikes in Crimea had diminished as the war approaches a third winter.

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Iran warns Russia against siding with Azerbaijan in border dispute

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Row may signal that newly elected Tehran government is willing to take tougher line with Moscow

Iran’s new reformist government has warned Russia against siding with Azerbaijan in a border dispute as concerns in Tehran persist over its relations with Moscow.

The Iranian foreign minister, Sayeed Abbas Araghchi, took the unusual step of upbraiding Russia after Moscow sided with Azerbaijan over its calls for a land corridor along the Armenia-Iran border that Tehran fears could limit its access to Europe and the wider world.

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Russian TV presenter charged with violating US sanctions and money laundering

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Dimitri Simes, who had contacts in Donald Trump’s orbit, charged as White House targets Kremlin influencers before US presidential elections

US investigators have indicted a prominent Russian state television personality and his wife for violating sanctions and money laundering as the White House targets Kremlin influence operations ahead of the US presidential elections.

Dimitri Simes, a television presenter and producer for Russia’s state-owned Channel One, was charged with receiving over $1m (£759,000) in compensation, a personal car and driver, a stipend for a flat in Moscow, Russia, despite the television station’s designation in 2022 by the US’s Office of Foreign Assets Control. He and his wife, Anastasia, were charged with money-laundering to hide the proceeds of his work for Channel One.

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Labour eager for progress on special tribunal to try Russia over Ukraine

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Exclusive: Lord chancellor says she wants to ‘inject energy’ into stalling efforts to set up Nuremberg-style trial

The new Labour government wants to inject renewed energy into the two-year-long international effort to set up a special tribunal with the authority to try Russia’s leadership for the crime of aggression, the lord chancellor, Shabana Mahmood, has said.

Discussions have been dogged by disputes over the appropriate body to set up the special tribunal, and fears in the US that if an organisation were empowered to strip the Russian leadership of immunity from prosecution in a foreign court, western leaders might face the threat of legal action in the future.

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