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Ankara supports Ukraine's territorial integrity and rejects the illegal annexation of Crimea, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Tuesday. "The return of Crimea to Ukraine, of which it is an inseparable part, is essentially a requirement of international law," Erdogan said in a video message to the Second Crimea Platform Summit. The Crimea Platform is an international coordination mechanism of Ukraine to draw more global attention to Russia's illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014. Erdogan said Ankara will continue to support the Crimean Platform that was established to resolve the Crimean issue through peaceful means. "Türkiye does not recognize...

Russia is preparing to hold "sham" referendums in occupied Ukrainian territories within a matter of days or weeks, the US warned on Wednesday. Moscow has instructed officials to begin preparations in areas that have fallen under its control during its war on Ukraine, including Kharkiv, Kherson, Zaporizhia, parts of Donetsk and Luhansk, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters. The first referenda could be announced as soon as this week's end, he added, noting the US and international community will not view any such elections as legitimate. "We expect Russia to try to manipulate the results of these referenda...

An ailing Vladimir Putin is flailing over his war strategy, torn between using nuclear weapons and accepting defeat and handing back Ukrainian regions invaded by his forces, a Telegram channel claims. Amid fresh concerns over his health, his security officials have bluntly told the warmonger president that he has run out of 'good' options. This comes as the death toll in the Russian armed forces plus separatist fighters and pro-Putin private armies has reached almost 65,000, said General SVR Telegram channel, an opposition source offering 'insider' information which the Kremlin is 'seeking to shut down'. There is 'despondency' among Putin’s...

Plumes of black smoke were seen on Tuesday at a Russian military airbase near the settlement of Gvardeyskoye in the centre of Russian-controlled Crimea, Russia’s Kommersant newspaper reported. Earlier on Tuesday, Russia’s Defence Ministry separately blamed a series of explosions around Dzhankoi in northern Crimea on “sabotage”, state-owned news agency RIA reported. Ukraine has neither confirmed nor denied its involvement in a recent series of blasts in Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014.

Explosions shook an ammunition depot in Russian-annexed Crimea on Tuesday, the latest such incident in a region used by Moscow as a staging post for its war in Ukraine.