President vladimir putin
Putin says Valieva could not have won skating gold 'dishonestly'
At February's Games Valieva became the first woman to land a quadruple jump in Olympic competition, helping the Russian team secure gold in the team event.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said ongoing talks to halt two weeks of fighting with Russia were progressing with difficulty but raised hopes a breakthrough.
Russia missed the boat after World War 2 to form strong alliances and define the new world order and has been chasing the tail of Nato since 1949.
If one man is going to decide to go to war, then he must go to war with the man he declares war against and not the whole country, writes Haji Mohamed Dawjee.
News of the drills come as Russia announces the pullback of troops from around Ukraine, a force that had driven concerns in the West -- particularly Washington -- that Moscow was planning an imminent attack.
As Merkel prepares to bow out of politics following an election in Germany on 26 September, the crisis in Afghanistan could be the latest subject to drive a wedge between herself and Russia's Vladimir Putin.
Critics say the moves are aimed at ensuring that Navalny, who was jailed earlier this year for two-and-a-half years on old fraud charges he says are politically motivated, does not spoil the vote for the 68-year-old Kremlin chief and his deeply unpopular party.
Though he described relations with the United States as having "deteriorated to its lowest point in recent years," Vladimir Putin said he expects he can work with Joe Biden.
The team of jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny on Sunday called for massive protests across Russia next week to help save the life of the hunger-striking opposition leader.
In March, President Vladimir Putin's most prominent opponent went on hunger strike to demand proper medical treatment for back pain and numbness in his legs and hands.
The 44-year-old was arrested on his return to Russia in January from Germany, where he spent months recovering from a near-fatal nerve agent poisoning in August that he blames on the Kremlin.
Putin suggested that the wave of protests recently held across Russia in the wake of Navalny's arrest and imprisonment had also been fed from abroad.
The Russian vaccine is called "Sputnik V" after the Soviet-era satellite that was the first launched into space in 1957.
Russia has been pushing hard to quickly develop a coronavirus vaccine and said earlier this month it hoped to launch mass production within weeks and turn out 'several million' doses per month by next year.
The protests in Khabarovsk, a city of some 600,000 people, began a week ago following the sudden arrest of popular governor Sergei Furgal in a murder probe.
Russia was expelled from what was then the G8 in 2014 when Trump’s predecessor, Barack Obama, was US president, after Moscow annexed the Crimea region from Ukraine.
Putin (67) stunned the country on Tuesday when he backed a last-minute proposal to add a condition to the reform package for his possible return to the Kremlin after 2024.
The Russian opposition leader is serving a 30-day jail sentence for calling Saturday's rally after authorities blocked prominent independent candidates from taking part in Moscow parliament elections in September.
The outcome led to a rare statement following the meeting by the UN's humanitarian chief, Mark Lowcock.