Russia - Page 68

Russian strongman Vladimir Putin marked the illegal annexation of a territory representing 15 percent of Ukraine on Friday with a rambling speech lamenting the fall of the Soviet Union, condemning gender transitions for children, and proclaiming, “the destruction of this Western hegemony is irreversible.”

Swedish officials do not yet know if an undersea power cable that runs between southern Sweden and Poland was damaged.

The former head of the German Federal Intelligence Service claims Russia stood “to gain the most” from sabotaging Russian gas pipelines to Germany bypassing Ukraine and Poland.

The Swedish Defence Research Agency (FOI) has warned about the vulnerability of the Nord Stream pipeline to attack for well over a decade.

Congress is sending another $12 billion in military gear and aid to Ukraine, pushing the total transfer up to $65 billion in 2022. 

The Chinese government newspaper Global Times, citing Communist Party-approved “experts,” predicted on Wednesday that the world may never know the cause of the “unusual leaks” of the two Nord Stream pipelines previously used to send natural gas from Russia to Europe – but cast its suspicion towards the United States.

The Russian government under strongman Vladimir Putin is planning a concert in Moscow’s Red Square on Friday evening to welcome the annexation of four regions of Ukraine – Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, and the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk “People’s Republics” – that represent about 15 percent of Ukrainian territory.

Tens of thousands of protesters took to the streets in the Czech capital of Prague to demand an end to sanctions against Russia on Wednesday,

Finland´s future NATO membership will make the Nordic country a more interesting target for Russian intelligence and influencing operations.

Swedish authorities have reported a new fourth alleged leak as some fear that the damage to the pipelines may be beyond repair.

The Finnish government said Thursday it would significantly limit passenger traffic on Finland´s border with Russia.

The EU suspects sabotage in the Nord Stream case and is warning of retaliation for any attack on Europe’s energy networks.

European governments have claimed the damage to Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 pipelines was likely caused by deliberate sabotage.

Concerts planned by former Pink Floyd front man Roger Waters were canceled in Poland this month after the left-wing rocker insisted that Ukraine was to blame for Russia’s brutal invasion of its neighbor.

The U.S Coast Guard has revealed it spotted warships from a joint Russian Navy – Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy Surface Action group sailing approximately 75 nautical miles north of Kiska Island, Alaska.

The Italy result marks a new high point for the broader right, which has been in a back-and-forth battle with the lib-left since 2016.

The White House is converting asylum laws into another weapon in its proxy war against Vladimir Putin’s Russia.

The Kremlin said on Tuesday that it cannot rule out “sabotage” as the cause of significant damage to the Nord Stream pipeline network that carries gas from Russia to Germany.

Tens of thousands of Russians fleeing Vladimir Putin’s military conscription to fuel the Ukraine invasion have flooded neighboring central Asian countries in the past week, leaving governments such as Kazakhstan and Mongolia with few resources to process the sudden and growing migrant wave.

A man upset at being conscripted into Russia’s war on Ukraine opened fire at a recruiting office in Irkutsk on Monday, gunning down a recruiter at point-blank range.

Russian leader Vladimir Putin on Monday granted Russian citizenship to Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor who fled to Russia in 2013 after leaking classified documents about NSA surveillance programs.

Fifteen people were killed and 24 wounded during a school shooting in Russia on Monday despite that country’s “restrictive” gun control policies. 

Syrian Foreign Minister Fayssal Mekdad’s address to the U.N. General Assembly on Monday was a funhouse-mirror view of the world from the vantage point of a brutal dictatorship.

China’s Global Times state propaganda newspaper on Sunday applauded that nation’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, for allegedly bringing “confidence for peace” to the United Nations, while leftist American President Joe Biden made the world “nervous and anxious” with his address.

A gunman killed 13 people, including seven children, and wounded 21 other people in a school in central Russia on Monday, authorities said.

For Ukrainian and Russian military planners, the clock is ticking, with the approach of winter expected to make fighting more complicated.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Sunday on CBS’s “Face The Nation”  that there can be no stability in Europe until Russian president Vladimir Putin is removed from power.

BELGRADE, Serbia (AP) – Serbia’s foreign minister on Sunday sought to play down the importance of an agreement with Russia after the Balkan state that is seeking European Union membership faced criticism for signing it.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi lectured the United Nations on Saturday to oppose the use of human rights as a “weapon to achieve political ends” and proclaimed Taliban-ruled Afghanistan as transitioning “from chaos to order.”

Indian Minister of External Affairs Subrahmanyam Jaishankar said at the United Nations on Saturday that his nation would not take sides in the Ukraine conflict following months of criticism for purchasing large amounts of Russian oil.

Invoking history ranging from the U.S. war in Iraq in the early 2000s to the 20th-century Cold War to a 19th-century U.S. policy that essentially proclaimed American influence over the Western Hemisphere, Lavrov portrayed the U.S. as a bully that tries to afford itself “the sacred right to act with impunity wherever and wherever they want” and can’t accept a world where others also advance their national interests.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov unleashed a torrent of invective against the American “hegemon” and the free world generally during his address to the U.N. General Assembly, also condemning “Russophobia.”

Former President Donald Trump said during a Save America rally in North Carolina on Friday that President Joe Biden is “cognitively impaired” and warned that his leadership might lead the United States into World War III.

(AFP) – Russia on Saturday toughened penalties for voluntary surrender and refusal to fight with up to 10 years imprisonment and replaced its top logistics general after a series of setbacks to its seven-month war in Ukraine.

The German government has scrambled to wean Europe’s biggest economy off Russian oil, coal, and gas since coming to office last December.

Russian forces launched new strikes on Ukrainian cities Saturday as Kremlin-orchestrated votes continued in occupied regions of Ukraine to pave the way for their annexation by Moscow.