Imprisoned Russian Opposition Leader Navalny Located In Penal Colony 3 Weeks After Contact Lost

MOSCOW (AP) — Associates of imprisoned Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny said Monday that he has been located at a prison colony above the Arctic Circle nearly three weeks after contact with him was lost.

Navalny, the most prominent foe of Russian President Vladimir Putin, is serving a 19-year sentence on charges of extremism. He had been imprisoned in the Vladimir region of central Russia, about 230 kilometers (140 miles) east of Moscow, but his lawyers said they had not been able to reach him since Dec. 6.

Russia warns US and Europe over reports Ukraine may get its seized assets

The Kremlin has threatened Europe and the US with “serious consequences”, including tit-for-tat financial seizures or even a break in diplomatic relations, if Russian assets held abroad are given to aid the Ukrainian budget and war effort.

A spokesperson for Vladimir Putin told reporters on Friday that if the Biden administration and European leaders planned to seize Russian central bank assets believed to be in excess of $300bn (£236bn) that were frozen after Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, they should “realise that Russia will never leave those who do it alone”.

Putin ‘has Trump’s number’ and still sees him ‘as an asset’, says Fiona Hill

Vladimir Putin has had Donald Trump’s “number for some time … knows how to manipulate him” and still sees him “as an asset”, the former White House Russia expert Fiona Hill said, discussing the Russian leader and the Republican presidential frontrunner.

“That’s literally [Putin’s] trump card,” Hill told the One Decision Podcast, hosted by Jane Ferguson, a reporter, and Sir Richard Dearlove, a former head of MI6, when asked if she thought the Russian president, bogged down in war in Ukraine, was betting on Trump beating Joe Biden next year and returning to power.

Putin Says There Will Be No Peace In Ukraine Until Goals Are Achieved

MOSCOW (AP) — Russian President Vladimir Putin vowed that there would be no peace in Ukraine until his goals are achieved and said those objectives remain unchanged at a year-end news conference.

Offering rare detail on Moscow’s operation, Putin dismissed the need for a second wave of mobilization of reservists, saying there are some 617,000 Russian soldiers currently in Ukraine, including around 244,000 troops who were called up to fight alongside professional Russian military forces.

As Ukraine struggles with fickle allies, Vladimir Putin is on a roll

Eternally long lines of stalled transport trucks at Ukraine's border with Poland may be an apt metaphor for broader frustrations and challenges facing the war-weary nation as 2023 winds down.

A blockade by Polish truckers is just one in a series of cascading issues that have combined to thwart Ukraine's ability to support its military and resist Russia's almost two-year-old invasion.

"Increasingly, domestic politics [among] Ukraine's allies is interfering with Ukraine's security," said Orysia Lutsevych, an analyst with Chatham House in London who has paid special attention to the war in Ukraine.

Biden calls on Congress to pass Ukraine aid: ‘We can’t let Putin win’

President Joe Biden on Wednesday said he is willing to make “significant compromises” on border policy in exchange for funding for Ukraine and Israel.

“We need to fix the broken border system — it is broken,” Biden said from the White House ahead of a Senate procedural vote on his national security supplemental that Republicans plan to filibuster over a dispute on immigration policy. “Thus far, I’ve got no response.”

Putin loyalist Valery Gergiev installed as director of Bolshoi theatre

Valery Gergiev, the star Russian conductor and prominent supporter of Vladimir Putin, has been installed as general director of Moscow’s Bolshoi theatre, in the latest appointment of a Kremlin loyalist to a leading cultural institution.

The appointment means that Gergiev, who also heads the rival Mariinsky theatre in St Petersburg, will have artistic control over the two crown jewels of the Russian ballet and opera.

Putin’s buddy Orbán pushes EU to the brink over Ukraine

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán regularly pushes the EU to the cliff edge, but diplomats are panicking that his hostility to Ukraine is now about to finally kick the bloc over the precipice.

A brewing political crisis is set to boil over at a summit in mid-December when EU leaders are due to make a historic decision on bringing Ukraine into the 27-nation club and seal a key budget deal to throw a €50 billion lifeline to Kyiv’s flailing war economy. The meeting is supposed to signal to the U.S. that, despite the political distraction over the war in the Middle East, the EU is fully committed to Ukraine. 

Putin hijacks Israel-Gaza war to fuel tensions in the West

The Israeli-Hamas war has given Russia a golden opportunity to sow division among its Western enemies. It's a chance Vladimir Putin's disinformation machine was never going to miss.

Since the outbreak of hostilities on October 7, Kremlin-linked Facebook accounts have ramped up their output by almost 400 percent, with the Middle East crisis now dominating posts from Russian diplomats, state-backed outlets and Putin supporters in the West. 

The lies spread by Moscow's digital propagandists now include claims that Hamas terrorists are using NATO weapons to attack Israel and that British instructors trained Hamas attackers.

Ukraine to Putin: You cut our power, we kneecap your biggest economic driver

Ukraine is open to the possibility of attacking Russia’s oil and gas infrastructure if Moscow ramps up its targeting of Ukraine’s electric system this winter, Ukraine Energy Minister German Galushchenko said in an interview.

Galushchenko, speaking with POLITICO in Washington, D.C., after meeting with Biden administration officials and lawmakers, said Russia has regularly perpetrated cyberattacks against Ukraine’s electric grid and is expected to ramp up physical attacks as temperatures fall and people depend more on energy to heat their homes. 

Keep your bedbugs, Putin tells the EU

Russian President Vladimir Putin is not worried about Western sanctions — quite the opposite, in fact.

Faced with the prospect of a 12th round of EU sanctions — which could include trade in anything from diamonds to needles — the Russian leader brushed off the plan as ridiculous and took a jab at Europe and its crawling bedbug problem.

Putin revokes Russia’s ratification of nuclear test ban treaty

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has revoked his country’s ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), a move he says is designed to bring Moscow in line with the United States.

The new law to abandon the landmark agreement outlawing nuclear weapons tests was signed on Thursday, a week after Russia’s upper house Federation Council unanimously approved it.

The lower house State Duma had already passed the bill in an accelerated vote. With Putin’s signature, the legislation came into effect on Thursday.

US dismisses Putin’s claim that west was behind Dagestan antisemitic riots

The United States has dismissed Russia’s attempt to blame Ukraine and the west for an antisemitic riot at an airport in Muslim-majority Dagestan.

President Vladimir Putin accused Ukraine and “agents of western special services” after a mob descended on Makhachkala airport in Russia’s North Caucasus on Sunday evening in search of Jewish passengers on a plane that arrived from Israel.

European leaders seethe over Putin-Orbán meeting

European leaders must not “fall” for the tactics of Vladimir Putin, the Czech president, Petr Pavel, has said, two days after Hungary’s prime minister shook hands with Russia’s leader.

Viktor Orbán, in a rare move for the leader of a country that belongs to the EU and Nato, met Putin in Beijing on Tuesday for what the Hungarian leader’s office described as a discussion on energy cooperation and peace.

Xi hails ‘deepening trust’ between China and Russia as he meets Putin

Chinese leader Xi Jinping has told Russian President Vladimir Putin the “political mutual trust” between their countries was “continuously deepening” as the two men met for bilateral talks in Beijing.

State news agency Xinhua reported on Wednesday that Xi also called for joint efforts by China and Russia to “safeguard international fairness” and “justice” as he hailed “close and effective strategic coordination” between their two countries.

Xi noted that he and Putin had met “42 times in the past 10 years and [had] developed a good working relationship and a deep friendship”.

Mutual praise, buzzwords plus a few walkouts: Xi and Putin meet in Beijing

Xi Jinping met his internationally isolated Russian counterpart in Beijing on Wednesday against the backdrop of China’s biggest diplomatic event of the year, underlining the close relationship between two leaders amid the war in Ukraine.

The Chinese president, addressing delegates at the belt and road initiative (BRI) forum, spoke out against international sanctions during his opening speech.

“Ideological confrontation, geopolitical rivalry and bloc politics are not the choice for us, but we stand against economic sanctions, economic coercions, and decoupling and supply chain disruptions,” Xi said. The US Commerce Department on Tuesday had expanded controls on chip and technology exports to China amid tensions with Beijing.

Russia’s Putin, Hungary’s Orban reaffirm bond ahead of Beijing summit

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban have underscored their countries’ strong ties ahead of an international forum in Beijing, saying that continuing “geopolitical tensions” due to the war in Ukraine do not affect their relationship.

“Despite the fact that in the current geopolitical conditions, the possibilities for keeping contact and developing relations are very limited, it cannot but cause satisfaction that our ties with many European countries are maintained and developed,” Putin said, according to Russian news agencies.

“One of those countries is Hungary.”

China woos global south and embraces Putin at belt and road Beijing summit

World leaders are gathering in Beijing for China’s belt and road initiative (BRI) forum, the third such event since the trademark global development drive was launched by President Xi Jinping 10 years ago.

The BRI was originally envisioned as a vast physical and digital infrastructure project to connect China with central Asia, south-east Asia, Europe and the rest of the world. It later broadened into a mammoth infrastructure financing vehicle for Chinese lenders to support projects in nearly every corner of the world, particularly in the global south. With that support came China’s mounting influence on the world stage, even as western countries became increasingly sceptical of the BRI.

Putin to meet Xi in China this week

Russian President Vladimir Putin will meet Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping in Beijing this week — a rare international visit by the Russian leader.

During the October 17-18 visit to Beijing, Putin will attend a forum marking 10 years of the Belt and Road Initiative, China’s global infrastructure program that has helped boost its influence worldwide. 

Rosenberg: Putin ready to benefit from Israel-Gaza war

It's tempting to view Vladimir Putin as a James Bond-style villain sitting at a giant control panel, in a mountain hideout, sowing chaos around the world.

He presses one button and there's unrest in the Balkans.

He presses another and the Middle East explodes.

It's tempting… but probably inaccurate. It exaggerates the Kremlin leader's global influence.