Tag: Russian politics
With a return of Trump looming, Ukrainians ramp up homegrown arms industry – POLITICO
KYIV — Ukraine’s long-range Beaver drones seem to be making successful kamikaze strikes in the heart of Moscow, but Serhiy Prytula is coy about how much he knows.
“We are not sure whether we are involved in this,” he says with a charming but inscrutable smile, when asked about these mysterious new weapons.
Prytula rose to fame — just like President Volodymyr Zelenskyy — as an actor, TV star and comedian, but is now best known for his contribution to
Putin’s world is shrinking – POLITICO
Fredrik Wesslau is a distinguished policy fellow at the Swedish Institute of International Affairs and a board member of The Reckoning Project.
BRICS leaders will be meeting in South Africa for their annual summit later this month. Absent, however, will be Russia’s Vladimir Putin.
After months of insisting he would attend the annual gathering for the member countries of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, Putin finally decided against traveling, as the South African government couldn’t guarantee he wouldn’t
Drone attack on tanker shows Kyiv’s intent to hit Russian energy shipments – POLITICO
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KYIV — An overnight naval drone attack against a Russian tanker in the Black Sea signals a potential new front in the Ukraine war, with Kyiv delivering its strongest message to date that it is willing to target Moscow’s all-important shipments of oil and fuel.
The battle for supremacy in the Black Sea is ramping up fast, with massive implications for global energy and food security. The attack on
8,500+ Russian paratroopers wounded in Ukraine, admits Moscow commander – POLITICO
More than 8,500 Russian paratroopers have been wounded while fighting in Ukraine, a Russian general said Wednesday in a rare official admission about the number of casualties suffered by Moscow’s troops in Ukraine.
“More than five thousand wounded paratroopers returned to the front after treatment, and over three and a half thousand of our wounded refused to leave the front line at all,” Mikhail Teplinsky, commander of Russia’s Airborne Forces, said Wednesday in a video message posted on state-run broadcaster
Russia blames Ukraine as drone hits Moscow skyscraper – POLITICO
A drone struck a business district in downtown Moscow overnight, the Russian defense ministry said Tuesday.
The drone “was suppressed by electronic warfare equipment and, having lost control, crashed on the territory of a complex of nonresidential buildings in Moscow city,” the ministry said in a statement.
Two other drones “were destroyed in the air by air defense means over the territory of the Odintsovo and Narofominsk districts of the Moscow region,” the ministry added, saying it held Ukraine responsible
Medical convoys from Nagorno-Karabakh suspended after Armenian detained by Azerbaijan – POLITICO
The transfer of critically ill patients from Nagorno-Karabakh to Armenia has been halted, local Armenian leaders said, after a man traveling with the Red Cross to seek treatment was arrested by Azerbaijani forces on war crimes charges.
Gurgen Nersisyan, the state minister of the breakaway region’s unrecognized government, announced on Saturday that Vagif Khachatryan was “taken from the checkpoint” installed by Baku on the border with Armenia and that his whereabouts are unknown. Speaking to POLITICO, one of his advisers,
It’s wishful to think Putin’s system is falling apart – POLITICO
Jamie Dettmer is opinion editor at POLITICO Europe.
There was understandable glee in Kyiv when news broke that the Kremlin was turning on the self-styled Club of Angry Patriots — the ultranationalists who, for months, have been decrying Russia’s war effort as too soft and castigating the country’s top generals for ineptness.
But given the bigger picture, the excitement may prove premature.
Among the ultranationalists, the sinister Igor Girkin was the first to be targeted. A former Federal Security Service
What’s next for Wagner chief Prigozhin’s hydra-headed media empire? – POLITICO
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MOSCOW — On a Friday evening after work, Vladimir Yagudayev was halfway through his dinner when he almost choked on his macaroni.
His de facto boss, Yevgeny Prigozhin, had just published an audio message on Telegram threatening to advance on Moscow if Russia’s top military brass was not booted out.
“We’d been expecting something to happen, but nothing this brash,” said Yagudayev, a 25-year-old social media manager with blue
12 Germans who got played by Putin – POLITICO
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BERLIN — Russia’s war against Ukraine has thrust Germany’s establishment into the throes of a tortured process of introspection, self-doubt and recrimination.
After years of lecturing the West that a bit of Ostpolitik was all that was needed to keep Russia in check, Germany’s political, media and academic elites are now obsessing over a new question: How could we have been so wrong?
Rarely has a country’s confidence about itself and its place
How Germany Inc. played Russian roulette — and lost – POLITICO
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The country’s complicated commercial ties to
Russia involve a lot more than just natural gas.
Illustration by Ricardo Tomás for POLITICO
BERLIN — Until just before the bombs began to fall, it was the most coveted ticket on corporate Germany’s calendar: tea with Vladimir Putin.
The annual gathering — at the president’s Sochi residence or in the Kremlin — offered Germany’s blue-chip CEOs a rare opportunity to speak to the Russian leader, listen