Kremlin
Russia calls U.S. decision to not rejoin Open Skies arms pact ‘a political mistake’
Russia on Friday called a U.S. decision to not rejoin the Open Skies arms control pact, which allows unarmed surveillance flights over member countries, a political mistake that strikes a sour note ahead of a summit, Russian news agencies reported. The United States told Russia on Thursday it would not rejoin the pact, which Washington left in November, accusing Russia of violating it, something Moscow denied. The original decision to quit the pact was taken by the administration of then U.S. president Donald Trump and Moscow had hoped that Joe Biden would reverse that decision. Sergei Ryabkov, Russia’s deputy foreign minister, was quoted by the RIA news agency on Friday as saying that Moscow was disappointed but not entirely surprised by Biden’s decision. “It certainly does not make us ha...
Amnesty: Russia may be ‘slowly’ killing Alexey Navalny
Alexey Navalny, the prominent opponent of Russian President Vladimir Putin, is imprisoned in conditions that amount to torture and may slowly be killing him, human rights group Amnesty International said on Wednesday. Navalny, who last year was poisoned with a military-grade nerve agent, was now being subjected to sleep deprivation and did not have access to a doctor he could trust in jail, it said. “Russia, the Russian authorities, may be placing him into a situation of a slow death and seeking to hide what is happening to him,” Agnes Callamard, Amnesty International’s secretary general, said ahead of the publication of the group’s annual report. “Clearly the Russian authorities are violating his rights. We have to do more,” she said. “[They] have already attempted to kill him, they are n...
Ukraine denies killing of child in attack on separatists
Ukraine on Monday denied reports that its forces had killed a five-year-old child in an attack on pro-Moscow eastern separatists, after Russia said it would launch an investigation. “This is a gross, cynical, nasty and godless manipulation,” Ukraine’s defence ministry told AFP in a written comment on the claim, denouncing it as “fake news”. Separatist authorities had at the weekend accused Ukrainian forces of killing the child and injuring a woman in a drone attack. On Monday, the Russian Investigative Committee, which probes major crimes, said the Ukrainian army had attacked civilian infrastructure on Friday in the separatist-held Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) using heavy armament and drones. As a result of an explosion, a five-year-old child was killed while his 66-year-old grandmother...
Russia calls U.S. allegations over Putin-directed election meddling ‘baseless’
Russia on Wednesday described U.S. intelligence allegations that President Vladimir Putin had likely directed efforts to try to swing the 2020 U.S. presidential election to Donald Trump as baseless. A 15-page American intelligence report, released on Tuesday, added heft to longstanding allegations that some of Trump’s top lieutenants were playing into Moscow’s hands by amplifying claims made against then-candidate Joe Biden by Russian-linked Ukrainian figures in the run-up to the Nov. 3 election. “The document prepared by the U.S. intelligence community is another set of baseless accusations against our country for interfering in American domestic political processes,” Russia’s embassy in the United States said in a statement on Facebook. “The conclusions of the report on Russia conducting...
Russia issues arrest warrant for Alexei Navalny ally
Russia has issued an arrest warrant for Leonid Volkov, a close ally of poisoned Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny, according to a media report. Mr Volkov had been organising protests from his base in Lithuania to demand the release of the opposition leader, who was detained last month as he entered Russia. A protest was planned for this Sunday, with Mr Volkov urging people to gather near their homes and light candles in heart shapes to flood social media. “You will raise your phone flashlights – and someone, maybe, will bring candles – and form a heart shape with them.. You will take a picture of it from above, from one of the apartments, and post it on Instagram,” he wrote in a Facebook post promoting the demonstration. His actions have angered Russian authorities, who have been granted an ar...
UK worried about Alexei Navalny’s safety after Russia detains him – minister
Britain is worried about the safety of Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny after he was detained on return to Moscow, British Vaccine Deployment Minister Nadhim Zahawi said on Monday. Russian police detained Navalny on arrival in Moscow on Sunday after he flew home to Russia from Germany for the first time since he was poisoned last summer. “The Foreign Secretary will say more about this, but we are very worried about the wellbeing and safety of Alexei Navalny. And of course, we have to make sure that the Russian government answers why a poison was used against Alexei Navalny,” Zahawi told Sky. Reporting by Guy Faulconbridge and Kate Holton, editing by Sarah Young Get more stories like this on Twitter You Deserve to Make Money Even When you are looking for Dates Online. So we reimagined what a d...
Russia: U.S. broke all rules of world politics
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Tuesday that the United States (U.S.) created exceptional havoc in world politics by breaking all possible rules, yet a new global war is off the table as long as there is nuclear parity, “Things show that no more ‘red lines’ remain at all. “In world politics, our colleagues from the U.S. created such havoc that all rules were simply broken. “Everything they teach at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations is no longer relevant. “That’s it, all rules were broken,” Mr. Peskov told the SolovyovLive show on YouTube. At the same time, the Kremlin spokesman denied that a new world war is what should be expected to follow the breakage of old rules. “The war is, thank God, impossible so long as there is nuclear parity. “It saves the world from...
Kremlin slams German medics’ ‘haste’ on Alexei Navalny poisoning
The Kremlin on Tuesday accused German medics of being too hasty after they said tests on Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny indicated he had been poisoned. The 44-year-old Navalny, who is one of the fiercest critics of President Vladimir Putin, is being treated at Berlin’s Charite hospital after falling ill on a flight in Siberia last Thursday. He was treated for two days in a hospital in Siberia before being transferred to Germany. His supporters claim he was poisoned by something in his cup of tea at a Siberian airport before taking a flight to Moscow, pointing the finger of blame at Putin. The German clinic said Monday that clinical tests “indicate poisoning with a substance from the group of cholinesterase inhibitors,” substances that are used in nerve agents as well as some medi...
Tens of thousands in Belarus protest President’s 6th term re-election
Demonstrators massed in central Minsk on Sunday after opposition leaders called for a huge rally to demand the resignation of Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, the latest in a wave of protests against his disputed re-election. The authoritarian leader dispatched his notorious riot police to disperse spontaneous rallies that erupted after he claimed a sixth presidential term in an election two weeks ago that critics say was rigged. Tens of thousands of demonstrators draped in the red-and-white flags of the opposition flooded Independence Square and marched through the capital chanting “freedom” and “we will not forget, we will not forgive” as passing cars honked in support. “We have just two demands: fair elections and stop the violence,” 32-year-old Igor told AFP. Officials issued...
