All posts tagged: Putins

Trump Gets a Taste of Putin’s Tactics

Trump Gets a Taste of Putin’s Tactics

Published by José

Vladimir Putin isn’t going to make this easy for Donald Trump. For weeks, Trump has bragged about his close relationship with his Russian counterpart and declared that Putin wanted to bring a quick end to the war that he, of course, started more than three years ago. Trump’s national-security team worked with Ukraine to come up with a 30-day cease-fire proposal in hopes of persuading Moscow to accept it. And his press secretary declared yesterday that Ukraine and Russia were on the “10th yard line of peace.” But when the two men spoke today, Putin had his own ideas. Putin did agree during the more-than-two-hour call to halt strikes on Ukrainian energy infrastructure, and he pledged to continue negotiations. But that limited deal fell far short of what the White House had forecast in recent days, and it now confronts Trump with a dilemma. In order to secure the peace he has promised, he might have to engage in something he has yet to do: get tough with Putin. Trump, predictably, dressed up his call …

Putin’s youngest daughter ‘living in Paris under a pseudonym’

Putin’s youngest daughter ‘living in Paris under a pseudonym’

Published by Sam

Vladimir Putin has an illegitimate daughter living under a pseudonym in Paris, where she works as a DJ, Ukrainian media has reported. The 21-year-old, who goes by the name of either Luiza Rozova or Elizaveta Olegovna Rudnova, was tracked down by a Ukrainian TV channel using leaked airline manifests. She is said to be a love child from a brief affair between Putin and Svetlana Krivonogikh, a former cleaner who is now one of Russia’s richest women. Ms Krivonogikh has previously been referred to in the media as “Putin’s acquaintance”. Reporters said that they had tracked down the birth certificate of Ms Rozova, who was born on March 3 2003. The father’s name was not given on the birth certificate, but her patronymic name was indicated as Vladimirovna. Under Russian naming convention, Putin’s daughters would take this patronymic. Luiza Rozova also goes under the name Elizaveta Krivonogikh – East 2 West The journalists explained that her alleged false names are also linked to Putin. Oleg Rudnov, who died in 2015, had been a close friend …

Beaten and conscripted into Putin’s army: a Somali refugee attempts to reach Europe | Somalia

Beaten and conscripted into Putin’s army: a Somali refugee attempts to reach Europe | Somalia

Published by skeptic

A year ago, the Somali journalist Ilyas Ahmad Elmi set out for Europe. He had been repeatedly threatened by jihadi extremists at home, and hoped to make it to Germany, where he planned to seek asylum and be with his eight-year-old son. “I left because I wanted to see my son, who I’ve never met … and because I had received threats,” said Elmi, in a telephone interview. Elmi flew to Russia and then travelled over land to Belarus, from where he aimed to cross the border into Poland, often considered a safer route to Europe than the Mediterranean. But instead of a secure route into the EU, Elmi instead suffered months of hardship. He recounts being beaten up by border guards, forced to spend weeks living in a forest and watching a young Somali woman in his group die from lack of medical attention. lyas Ahmad Elmi. In desperation, he says, he went back to Russia, with the hope of crossing into Finland. But before he could reach the border area, he was arrested …

Ukraine in mass drone attack on targets in Russia as Putin’s forces launch intense assaults in east

Ukraine in mass drone attack on targets in Russia as Putin’s forces launch intense assaults in east

Published by Sam

Ukraine has launched dozens of drones in a mass strike across targets in Russia and around the Black Sea, including a major oil refinery. It comes as the country’s top commander said that Russian forces were staging relentless assaults to try to advance towards the town of Pokrovsk, a logistics hub in eastern Ukraine, and that there was active fighting taking place along the entire front line. “The enemy pays no attention to their fairly high level of losses and continues to push through towards Pokrovsk,” Colonel General Oleksandr Syrskyi said in a statement from the eastern front. The oil refinery in Tuapse was damaged in an overnight assault, officials from the Krasnodar region confirmed on Monday. Debris from a drone that was shot down by Russia sparked a fire at the refinery, which is located in the Black Sea and owned by Kremlin-controlled oil company Rosneft. The blaze has since been contained and there were no deaths following the attack, the regional administration said on the Telegram messaging app. It was not immediately clear …

‘We’re in 1938 now’: Putin’s war in Ukraine and lessons from history | Ukraine

‘We’re in 1938 now’: Putin’s war in Ukraine and lessons from history | Ukraine

Published by skeptic

When big history is self-evidently being written, and leaders face momentous choices, the urge to find inspiration in instructive historical parallels is overwhelming and natural. “The only clue to what man can do is what man has done,” the Oxford historian RG Collingwood once wrote. One of the contemporary politicians most influenced by the past is the Estonian prime minister, Kaja Kallas, and not just because of her country’s occupation by Russia or her personal family history of exile. She lugs books on Nato-Russian relations, such as Not One Inch, with her on beach holidays. And in her hi-tech office at the top of the old town in Tallinn, she argued this was a 1938 moment – a moment when a wider war was imminent but the west had not yet joined the dots. She said the same mistake was made in 1938 when tensions in Abyssinia, Japan and Germany were treated as isolated events. The proximate causes of the current conflicts in Ukraine, the Middle East, the South China Sea and even Armenia might …

‘Putin’s patience snapped’: Insiders marvel at Russia’s military purge | Russia

‘Putin’s patience snapped’: Insiders marvel at Russia’s military purge | Russia

Published by skeptic

In the weeks since Vladimir Putin sacked his longtime defence minister Sergei Shoigu, Russia’s FSB security service has pursued a series of high-level corruption cases against a deputy minister and department heads in what many insiders are now calling a purge in the defence ministry. Andrei Belousov, the technocrat economist appointed to replace Shoigu, has a mandate to reduce corruption in the defence ministry and streamline military production for a long war against Ukraine that could largely be decided by industrial output. But former defence and Kremlin officials, ex-officers and foreign observers have said it was likely the exit of Shoigu and loss of his protection that has allowed the FSB, the Russian security department responsible for internal investigations, to take down powerful officials in a power struggle that could have knock-on effects for how Russia fights the war in Ukraine. “The FSB finally got their teeth in the defence ministry and general staff,” said Capt John Foreman, the UK’s former defence attache to Moscow, who said he believed the arrests could continue after “Putin’s …

For some Russians, Putin’s Victory Day is the darkest of the year – POLITICO

For some Russians, Putin’s Victory Day is the darkest of the year – POLITICO

Published by skeptic

But the unified front hailed by Putin and amplified by Russian state media is only part of the story. For a portion of Russian society, Victory Day is an excruciating annual reminder of the current war in Ukraine, which they see as tarnishing their country’s reputation and distorting its history, as well as that of their families. “For me this is not a celebration but a day of mourning,” said Valeria, 20, whose father has been mobilized. Like others quoted in this article, she declined to give her full name, fearing repercussions for speaking out.  “The essence of this day used to be that there should never be another war — that is what our ancestors gave their lives for. But somehow the exact opposite is happening.”  She and a small group of similar-minded people on Thursday gathered at Moscow’s Poklonnaya Gora war memorial site on the coldest May 9 since 1945, wearing white scarves or carrying white flowers or ribbons, symbols of anti-war protest.  Some were approached by police and asked for their documents, …

4 Not-So-Victorious Moments From Putin’s Victory Day

4 Not-So-Victorious Moments From Putin’s Victory Day

Published by skeptic

Russia had its annual “Victory Day” celebrations today, so president Vladimir Putin obviously used the opportunity to bash the West and talk up his country’s strength. The patriotic event is meant to serve as a reminder of Russia’s victory over Nazi Germany 79 years ago, but it is also used to show off its military prowess and threaten any of Russia’s enemies. However, amid all the pageantry, there were a few less-than-glamorous moments which made it through the cracks… 1. Two officers failed to salute Putin According to a clip shared by Eastern European outlet Nexta, two officers seemed not to salute Putin while he was reviewing a line of people in military uniform. Nexta named the two figures as the deputy head of the Ryazan Airborne Troops School, Colonel Sergei Molochnikov, and head of the Emergencies Ministry Academy, Lieutenant General Viktor Panchenko. The incident was made even more obvious because the president received an individual salute and a handshake from everyone in the line, aside from those two. Two officers did not salute Putin …

Putin’s a ‘Nazi,’ Zelenskyy says as Russia intensifies attacks on energy grid ahead of Victory Day – POLITICO

Putin’s a ‘Nazi,’ Zelenskyy says as Russia intensifies attacks on energy grid ahead of Victory Day – POLITICO

Published by skeptic

For decades, Moscow’s annual May 9 parade has been not so much a memorial to victory over Nazi Germany in World War II, as a carefully choreographed show of might and power. Since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in 2022, the Kremlin has intensified attacks on Ukraine ahead of Victory Day to help its propaganda efforts — seeking to give Putin something to boast about in his annual speech on Red Square. This year, Russia’s forces were ordered to capture Ukraine’s strategic city of Chasiv Yar in the Donetsk region ahead of May 9. While they have yet to succeed in that task, the Russians have taken advantage of Ukraine’s shortage of weapons and troop exhaustion to rapidly gain territory, taking control of several small villages in the Donetsk region. Ukraine’s Energy Minister German Galushchenko said Wednesday’s attacks were aimed mainly at civilian energy infrastructure, targeting power generation and electricity transmission facilities in the Poltava, Kirovohrad, Zaporizhzhia, Lviv, Ivano-Frankivsk and Vinnytsia regions. “The enemy wants to deprive us of the ability to sufficiently generate and …

Vladimir Putin’s ‘nervous’ speech as he’s sworn in as Russian President | World | News

Vladimir Putin’s ‘nervous’ speech as he’s sworn in as Russian President | World | News

Published by skeptic

She says he vacillated through multiple states during the heavily choreographed performance, during which he was pictured in his office looking at his papers before walking along the Kremlin’s long corridors, pausing at one point to look at a painting, on the way to his inauguration. His guard of honor waited in the sleet and rain for hours, in temperatures hovering just above freezing, while Putin made the brief journey to the Grand Kremlin Palace in his Auras limousine. James says the former KGB officer, 71, went “from humble during the religious ceremony to smiling and more buoyant as he walked past the crowds, although the ending of the non-verbal narrative saw him in his most familiar display recently as he made his speech: that of aggressive arousal as he spoke of ‘Our plans will make us stronger’ and that ‘Together we will win.’” Russia continues to gain ground in eastern Ukraine two years in, but President Volodymyr Zelensky has recently avoided a fresh attempt on his life by two Russian operatives who planned to …