2 h. ago Russia boasts it is ‘world leader’ in prosthetic limbs due to war in Ukraine

Deputy defence minister Anna Tsivilyov, a relative of Vladimir Putin, said troops returning from the battlefield had helped push Russia’s prosthetic developments

Politics

8 h. ago Western troops in Ukraine would be ‘legitimate targets’, Putin says

Russian president’s threat follows French proposal for postwar support for Kyiv that would include presence of Nato countries’ forcesVladimir Putin has said any western troops placed in Ukraine would be “legitimate targets” for Russian strikes, upping the stakes as Kyiv’s allies scramble to come up with a convincing offer of postwar support to Ukraine.Speaking a day after the French president, Emmanuel Macron, announced still-vague plans for a package of support for Ukraine backed by 26 nations, Putin on Friday said any guarantees that involved boots on the ground would violate Moscow’s longstanding objections to Nato troops in Ukraine. Continue reading...

Politics

11 h. ago Europe is 'preparing for WW3' as Kremlin rhetoric ramps up during wild Putin speech

Talk of World War Three has dominated the war-discourse for months and months, and now Russian President Vladimir Putin has ramped up the rhetoric with a wild speech

Politics

12 h. ago 'Eerie similarities' between China and rise of Nazi Germany, says former minister

Victory day parade was attended by more than 20 world leaders, including Russia's Vladimir Putin and North Korea's Kim Jong-Un

Politics

12 h. ago UN decries crimes including gang rape, murder, torture in Congo conflict over last year

The U.N. human rights office says Congo’s armed forces and Rwanda-backed M23 rebels have committed gang rape, sexual slavery, torture, killings of civilians and other “horrific” atrocities in eastern Congo this year

Events

12 h. ago Expert fact checks Putin and Xi’s hot mic discussion on organ transplants

Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, were caught discussing the possibility of immortality

Politics

13 h. ago ‘People can get younger, perhaps even immortal’: Putin’s pursuit of longevity

Russian leader was caught musing about immortality with Xi Jinping but his fascination with long life is nothing newIt was the stuff of Bond villains. Two ageing autocrats, their younger ally in tow, ambled down a red-carpeted ramp before a military parade in Beijing when a hot mic picked up a question that seemed to be on their minds: how long could they keep going – and, between the lines, might science allow them to rule for ever?With advances in technology, Russia’s Vladimir Putin assured Xi Jinping via his translator that “human organs can be constantly transplanted, to the extent that people can get younger, perhaps even immortal”. Continue reading...

Politics

13 h. ago Vladimir Putin threatens to open fire on NATO troops in Ukraine as WW3 fears grow

Russia would see Western forces as 'legitimate targets' if Europe's 'coalition of the willing' offer security

Events

13 h. ago Putin warns he'll attack UK and other NATO troops if they're deployed to Ukraine

Vladimir Putin says Western troops would be considered a 'legitimate target' to Russia

Events

14 h. ago Putin says western troops in Ukraine would be ‘legitimate targets’ as European countries pledge security support – Europe live

Macron says 26 nations have offered security guarantees for Ukraine as Zelenskyy meets Slovakia’s Fico amid tension over Russian energy suppliesMacron says 26 countries ready to supply postwar military backing for UkraineHere is the full quote from the Kremlin’s spokesperson Dmitry Peskov, via Reuters.“I have no doubt that if the presidents consider it necessary, their meeting can be organised very quickly. Just as the meeting in Alaska was quickly organised,” Peskov told the Russian news outlet Argumenty i Fakty, referring to last month’s Trump-Putin summit. Continue reading...

Events

16 h. ago Putin says foreign troops deployed to Ukraine before any peace deal would be 'legitimate targets'

Russian President Vladimir Putin says that any foreign troops deployed to Ukraine before a peace agreement has been signed will be considered “legitimate targets” by Moscow's forces

Politics

19 h. ago Intervision Song Contest: why Russia is reviving its ‘cultural counterweight’ to Eurovision

Conceived in 1960s Czechoslovakia, Vladimir Putin ordered the competition’s return and the US has now confirmed its participation – is this domestic theatre or international outreach?When singer-songwriter B Howard takes to the stage in Moscow this month, he’ll be making history. On 20 September the Los Angeles-born artist will be the first to represent the US at Russia’s revived Intervision Song Contest, a cultural spectacle that manages to be both nostalgic throwback and very modern geopolitical manoeuvre. While Eurovision has famously stretched its geographic boundaries to include Australia, Russia’s alternative contest represents a rather different kind of international outreach.Russia dusting off the Intervision brand, largely dormant since 1980 apart from a brief reprise in 2008, follows the country’s exclusion from Eurovision since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Its expulsion cut off access to a platform that – while often mocked by British audiences – had served...

Culture

28 h. ago Ominous warning to the West: New 'Axis of Evil' between Presidents Xi, Putin and Kim Jong Un poses an even greater threat than the NAZIS, says MARK ALMOND

The master of ceremonies, China's Xi Jinping, flanked by Russia's Vladimir Putin and North Korea's Kim Jong un, presented his vast country as the beating heart of an even more extensive alliance.

Events

33 h. ago As Putin discusses immortality, how Vladimir 'bathes in reindeer blood' and is influenced by friend determined to discover how to 'stop ageing'... as rumours swirl about the tyrant's health problems

Decades of assassinating political enemies, repressing his people, rigging his country's elections and invading other nations appear have caught up to Vladimir Putin. 

Politics

33 h. ago Laser wars: How China's newly revealed weapon that can blind pilots and destroy electronics compares to US and UK's Star Wars technology

Xi Jinping, flanked by Russia's Vladimir Putin and North Korea's Kim Jong Un, took the opportunity to show off the LY-1 shipborne laser weapon.

Events

39 h. ago North Korean leader Kim Jong Un will meet with Chinese leader Xi Jinping

China’s Foreign Ministry says that visiting North Korean leader Kim Jong Un will meet with Chinese leader Xi Jinping

Politics

54 h. ago The Latest: New Polish president endorsed by Trump visits White House

Poland’s new president is visiting the White House hoping to strengthen his relationship with President Donald Trump and make the case that the U.S. needs to maintain its strong military presence in his country

Politics

55 h. ago A summit and parade in China may signal a geopolitical shift. They might also be political jockeying

The pictures from this week’s military parade in Beijing commemorating the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II and the earlier economic gathering would seem to offer a striking, maybe even sinister, message to the United States and its allies — evidence of a possible new reconfiguration of rising power in Eurasia, an “Axis of Upheaval,” as one U.S. analyst has called it

Politics

56 h. ago Trump’s belligerence is pushing Xi, Putin and Kim together – and tearing the old world order apart | Simon Tisdall

The three-way partnership on show in Beijing is united in opposition to US hegemony and a western-dominated financial systemSign up for our new weekly newsletter Matters of Opinion, where our columnists and writers will reflect on what they’ve been debating, thinking about, reading and moreDonald Trump’s first reaction to the disconcerting spectacle of China’s Xi Jinping, Russia’s Vladimir Putin and North Korea’s Kim Jong-un marching side-by-side at a huge military parade in Beijing was, predictably, all about him. This show of solidarity and strength, he complained, was nothing less than an attempt to “conspire” against the United States. Trump likes military parades – his own, that is. Even more, he likes to be on the podium, at the centre of attention. He casts himself as world number one. The images coming out of the Chinese capital this week challenged him on all three counts.This puncturing of Trump’s insecure ego, and the striking feebleness of his response, will greatly grat...

Politics

57 h. ago Putin says 'there is light at the end of the tunnel' and an end to Ukraine conflict is in sight 'if common sense prevails'

Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday that the Ukraine conflict could be ended with a deal if common sense prevailed and that there was light at the end of the tunnel.

Politics