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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...

On July 21, members of the Ukrainian parliament decided to increase their salaries by 70 percent raise. After the bill for this decision had only been submitted on July 18, the parliamentarians were able to carry out the vote unusually quickly, reported the Overton magazine. According to the magazine, this decision, which was unanimously approved by all the remaining parties, would have been possible so quickly in the absence of a lack of opposition. Instead of 28,800 hryvnia as before, the “servants of the people”, as Vladimir Zelensky’s party is called, now earn 49,600 hryvnia per month. Since July 15,...

According to Ponomarev, the anti-Putin group authorized him to issue their "manifesto" via his Telegram channel "Rospartisan." The group describes itself as consisting of Russian activists, military members, politicians who are "now fighters and partisans." Ponomarev said he was approached by the NRA. The group allegedly told him that it was engaged in a fight against Putin's regime. "We have established contact with NRA fighters via our Rospartisan [Telegram] channel, which covers the rising tide of resistance in Russia. Today the NRA fighters authorized me to read their manifesto." In their purported statement, the NRA said its members oppose the...

Army members have been told that they "must be prepared" for the possibility of being deployed to Ukraine to fight in the war against Russia. Warrant Officer Paul Carney issued the warning six months on from Vladimir Putin's invasion of the country in February, saying that British troops “must be prepared for new realities” as the UK military was now “shaping itself to meet the threat from Russia”. WO1 Carney, the Army’s highest-ranking Warrant Officer, instructed soldiers to check that they were physically fit enough for operations, as well as taking the time to have conversations with family members, The...

Throughout his 20-plus year rule, Vladimir Putin has consolidated power through graft, intimidation, manipulation of the Russian legal system, and forcefully silencing critics. Putin’s ability to sustain subservience and loyalty to his authority is no small feat, especially in a political culture of ruthless power politics. His reputation as a master tactician abroad has also been carefully cultivated, if not exaggerated.

Temperatures would plunge in a bigger shift than the last Ice Age and crops would fail around the world after nuclear war erupted, a study has shown. The after-effects would be long-lasting with oceans taking hundreds of years to recover, and fishing devastated, the researchers warn. Professor Cheryl Harrison, of Louisiana State University, said: "It doesn't matter who is bombing whom. It can be India and Pakistan or NATO and Russia. Once the smoke is released into the upper atmosphere, it spreads globally and affects everyone." In all the simulated scenarios, nuclear firestorms would release soot and smoke into the...

Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar said Wednesday that a breakthrough had been reached in the agreements and a coordination center would be established in Turkey that will oversee the comings and goings of merchant vessels. Officials from Russia, Ukraine, Turkey and the U.N. will be involved in the coordinating efforts, the minister said. According to the preliminary plan, Russia would agree to a cease-fire to allow three Ukrainian ports to be opened in the Black Sea to allow for safe passage, first reported by the Wall Street Journal. The merchant ships would be escorted by Ukrainian naval vessels which would...

Russian forces are reportedly relying on Soviet-era munitions for certain tasks as the invasion of Ukraine labors on. The Russian government has, in recent weeks, increasingly ordered its forces in Ukraine to repurpose outdated anti-aircraft and anti-ship missiles for use on land-based targets, according to a Tuesday report from iNews. In Mykolaiv, a city in Southern Ukraine, six strikes over the last weekend have been attributed to Russian S-300 missiles, anti-aircraft munitions introduced roughly 40 years ago with a range of 75 miles. Two Kh-32 missiles, originally designed to sink aircraft carriers, were also credited with the strike on a...

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov stormed off and headed home early after being snubbed by other diplomats at the G20 summit — who refused to take a group photo with him over his nation’s invasion of Ukraine. Foreign ministers who gathered in Bali, Indonesia, this week, did not pose for a traditional “family”-style group photo, after several of them reportedly refused to be pictured with Vladimir Putin’s chief envoy. The Japanese news agency Kyodo reported that US Secretary of State Antony Blinken led the photo-op boycott.

Consider the Buryats, one of Siberia’s largest Indigenous groups. Closely related to Mongolians, they were subjugated, annexed, and subsequently colonized by Russia in the 1600s. Russian independent news outlets Mediazona and iStories found that by mid-May, Buryatia had the second-highest number of soldiers killed in Ukraine since the start of the invasion—just after Dagestan, another conquest of the Russian Empire. By May 18, Buryatia had lost 117 soldiers (the actual number is likely higher), whereas the city of Moscow, with a population around 15 times Buryatia’s, lost only three. Relative to the population, Buryatia’s rate of battle deaths was the...

Vladimir Putin has vowed to defeat the West on the 'battlefield' and suggested he could escalate the war in Ukraine. The Russian leader announced at a televised meeting with MPs this afternoon: 'Today we hear that they want to defeat us on the battlefield. 'Well, what can I say - let them try.

Puffy-faced Vladimir Putin is facing more health issues after he was spotted struggling to stay awake. The deranged dictator could barely hold his head up during a meeting with his Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu on Tuesday. He is rumoured to have thyroid cancer and health experts say that drugs used to treat the condition could explain the despot’s puffy face. The 69-year-old is known for working hard to maintain a masculine, hardman appearance – but his steady decline has unfolded in front of the world’s media. He mumbled a half-hearted congratulations to his soldiers before making the deluded claim they...

MOSCOW (AP) — With Russia’s military action in Ukraine in its fifth month, Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday warned Kyiv that it should quickly accept Moscow’s terms or brace for the worst, adding ominously that Russia has barely started its action. Speaking at a meeting with leaders of the Kremlin-controlled parliament, Putin accused Western allies of fueling the hostilities, charging that “the West wants to fight us until the last Ukrainian.” “It’s a tragedy for the Ukrainian people, but it looks like it’s heading in that direction,” he added. “Everybody should know that largely speaking, we haven’t even yet...