Vladimir Putin

September 26, 2024 10:12 AM

Putin issues nuclear warning to the West over strikes on Russia from Ukraine

President Vladimir Putin warned the West on Wednesday that Russia could use nuclear weapons if it was struck with conventional missiles, and that Moscow would consider any assault on it supported by a nuclear power to be a joint attack. The decision to change Russia's official nuclear doctrine is the Kremlin's answer to deliberations in the United States and Britain about whether or not to give Ukraine permission to fire conventional Western missiles into Russia. Putin, opening a meeting of Ru...

September 17, 2024 11:30 AM

Putin orders Russian army to become second largest after China’s at 1.5 million-strong

President Vladimir Putin on Monday ordered the regular size of the Russian army to be increased by 180,000 troops to 1.5 million active servicemen in a move that would make it the second largest in the world after China's. In a decree published on the Kremlin's website, Putin ordered the overall size of the armed forces to be increased to 2.38 million people, of which he said 1.5 million should be active servicemen. According to data from the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS...

September 13, 2024 10:48 AM

Putin says West will be fighting directly with Russia if it lets Kyiv use long-range missiles

President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that the West would be directly fighting with Russia if it allowed Ukraine to strike Russian territory with Western-made long-range missiles, a move he said would alter the nature and scope of the conflict. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has been pleading with Kyiv's allies for months to let Ukraine fire Western missiles including long-range U.S. ATACMS and British Storm Shadows deep into Russian territory to limit Moscow's ability to launch at...

September 11, 2024 11:14 AM

Top Russian official reports swift advance in Ukraine, rules out talks for now

Russia said on Tuesday its forces had advanced by 1,000 square kilometres (390 square miles) in eastern Ukraine in August and September despite a Ukrainian incursion into western Russia, which ruled out any ceasefire talks with Kyiv. Since Russia sent armoured forces into Ukraine in February 2022, the war has largely been a story of grinding artillery and drone strikes along a heavily fortified 1,000-km (620-mile) front involving hundreds of thousands of soldiers. Russian Security Council Se...

September 9, 2024 10:36 AM

Russia takes Ukrainian town in advance on Pokrovsk

Russia said on Sunday its forces had taken full control of a town in eastern Ukraine as Moscow's forces advance on the strategically important city of Pokrovsk and seek to pierce the Ukrainian defensive front lines. Russian forces, which control about a fifth of Ukraine since invading in February 2022, are advancing in eastern Ukraine in an attempt to take the whole of the Donbas, which is about half the size of the U.S. state of Ohio. Russia's defence ministry said its forces had taken the t...

August 29, 2024 10:01 AM

Russia faces “difficult fight” to retake Ukraine-held area, says top US spy

Russian President Vladimir Putin will mount a counteroffensive to try to retake territory in the Kursk region captured by Ukrainian troops, but Russian forces will encounter "a difficult fight," Deputy CIA Director David Cohen said on Wednesday. Cohen told a national security industry conference that the significance of the Ukrainian incursion, which has overrun some 300 square miles (777 square km) of the Russian province, remained to be seen. Ukrainian forces crashed through Russia's western...

August 28, 2024 10:08 AM

Ukraine’s Zelenskiy to present plan to Biden to end war with Russia

Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Tuesday that the war with Russia would eventually end in dialogue, but that Kyiv had to be in a strong position and that he would present a plan to U.S. President Joe Biden and his two potential successors. The Ukrainian leader, addressing a news conference, said Kyiv's three-week-old incursion into Russia's Kursk region was part of that plan, but that it also comprised other steps on the economic and diplomatic fronts. "The main point of this ...

August 16, 2024 11:43 AM

Ukraine opens military office in occupied Kursk region, says it is still advancing

Ukraine's top commander said on Thursday Kyiv had set up a military commandant's office in the occupied part of Russia's Kursk region where he said his forces were still advancing, even as Moscow's troops stepped up its offensives in Ukraine's east. The remarks by Colonel General Oleksandr Syrskyi were the strongest sign yet that Kyiv's forces plan to dig in after launching a lightning cross-border assault on Russia last week that has opened a new front in the 2-1/2 year-old all-out war. "W...

August 14, 2024 11:17 AM

Ukraine advances in Russia’s Kursk region; Biden calls incursion ‘a real dilemma for Putin’

Ukraine kept pounding the Russian border region of Kursk with missiles and drones on Wednesday, as Kyiv said it had made further territorial gains in an incursion that U.S. President Joe Biden called a "real dilemma" for the Kremlin's leader. Four Ukraine-launched missiles were destroyed over Kursk and the whole region was under air raid alerts on and off most of the night, its regional acting governor said early Wednesday. Kyiv said on Tuesday it had taken control of 74 settlements in Kursk...

September 16, 2024 6:00 PM

US urges India to use its relationship with Russia, tell Putin to end his illegal war in Ukraine

Amid the ongoing conflict between Moscow and Kyiv, the US has urged India to "utilize" its longstanding relationship with Russia and tell President Vladimir Putin to end his "illegal war" in Ukraine. The spokesperson of the US State Department, Matthew Miller, in a press briefing on Monday not only noted the strong Delhi-Moscow ties but also urged India to tell Putin to respect the UN Charter. "So India has a longstanding relationship with Russia. I think that's well-known. And we have - speaki...