“All of us have in our minds a cartoon image of an autocratic state. There is a bad man at the top. He controls the army and the police. There are evil collaborators, and maybe some brave dissidents. But in the 21st century, that cartoon bears little resemblance to reality.” These are the opening lines…
A Moscow court on Wednesday sentenced exiled former lawmaker Ilya Ponomaryov to 10 years in prison in absentia for “justifying terrorism” and spreading “fakes” about the Russian military. Ponomaryov, who serves as a member of a Russian shadow parliament based in Poland, was accused of violating Russia’s wartime censorship laws in a March 2022 video interview…
Authorities in southwestern Russia’s Kursk region said Wednesday that more than 150,000 people living in communities near the border with Ukraine have been forced to evacuate their homes in the weeks since Kyiv launched its surprise incursion early last month. Kursk region Governor Alexei Smirnov said those who had been displaced due to cross-border clashes were…
The British government on Wednesday imposed new sanctions on Russia’s “shadow fleet” of tankers, which Moscow uses to export oil in circumvention of a Western embargo imposed after its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The announcement came as Foreign Minister David Lammy traveled to Kyiv in a rare joint trip with U.S. Secretary of State Antony…
The Kremlin said Wednesday it believes Washington has already given Ukraine approval to strike targets inside Russia using U.S.-supplied long-range rockets. “All these decisions have most likely already been made, it can be assumed with a high degree of probability,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters. “At this point, media outlets are simply carrying out…
Military drones targeted northwestern Russia’s Murmansk region for the second time in a month, Russian authorities said Wednesday. “Our region is under attack from enemy drones,” Murmansk region Governor Andrei Chibis said in a video message posted on Telegram, seeming to refer to Ukraine. Civil aviation authorities restricted air traffic at airports in the regional…
In their first and possibly last debate on Tuesday night, former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris faced off in what has shaped up to be one of the most contentious U.S. presidential elections in recent memory. While domestic issues such as the cost of living crisis, immigration and abortion took center stage,…
Russian troops have begun pushing back Ukrainian forces from the southwestern Kursk region in a counteroffensive, a senior-ranking military commander and pro-Russian war bloggers said late Tuesday, a move that, if confirmed, comes more than a month after Kyiv launched its surprise incursion. Major General Apti Alaudinov, who serves as deputy chief of the Russian…
A freight train derailed overnight in southwestern Russia’s Belgorod region near the border with Ukraine, law enforcement authorities said early Wednesday, claiming it was caused by an “act of terrorism.” A locomotive and several wagons derailed in the Novooskolsky district shortly before midnight due to unspecified “interference,” according to the regional branch of state-owned Russian…