EMMA BURROWS

Parts of downed Shahed drones launched by Russia are piled in a storage room of a research laboratory in Kyiv, Ukraine, on Aug. 28, 2024. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
Africans recruited to work in Russia say they were duped into building drones for use in Ukraine
Russia is recruiting young African women to work at a factory producing drones for use in Ukraine amid a labor shortage.
October 10, 2024
Russian President Vladimir Putin applauds during the plenary session of the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, Russia, Thursday, Sept. 5, 2024. (Vyacheslav Prokofyev, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP)
Russians mock US election allegations as Putin teasingly says he supports Harris
Russian commentators are mocking allegations that Moscow is meddling again in the U.S. presidential election, while President Vladimir Putin appeared to bolster the teasing tone by wryly claiming he supported Vice President Kamala Harris.
September 5, 2024
FILE - Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba speaks during joint press conference with German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock in Kyiv, Ukraine, May 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky, File)
Ukrainian foreign minister resigns ahead of expected reshuffling of government leaders
Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, one of Ukraine’s most recognizable faces on the international stage, has submitted his resignation ahead of an expected reshuffling of government leaders.
September 4, 2024
This photo taken by Russian Defense Ministry on Saturday, Jan. 17, 2015, shows Former Deputy Defense Minister Pavel Popov posing for the official photo in Moscow, Russia. Popov was detained on fraud charges Thursday, Russian state news agencies said in the latest high-profile arrest of a senior military official in Russia. (Russian Defense Ministry via AP)
A former Russian defense official is detained in a fraud case, part of an ongoing military probe
Russian news reports say a former Defense Ministry official has been detained in a fraud case, the latest high-profile arrest of a senior military official.
August 30, 2024
FILE - Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks during an event to mark the 80th anniversary of the Battle of Kursk in World War II at a memorial in the village of Ponyri, near Kursk, Russia, on Aug. 23, 2023. (Gavriil Grigorov/Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP, File)
Putin’s slow response to the Kursk attack could test the patience of some of his backers in Russia
Ukraine’s rapid military offensive into Russia’s Kursk region seems to have caught Moscow unprepared.
August 21, 2024
In this photo taken from video released by the Russian Defense Ministry on Wednesday, Aug. 14, 2024, Russian soldiers fire Giatsint-S self-propelled gun towards Ukrainian positions at an undisclosed location. (Russian Defense Ministry Press Service photo via AP)
Ukraine says it has taken more ground and prisoners during its advance into Russia border region
Ukrainian forces are pushing on with their major cross-border incursion into Russia’s Kursk region for a second week. On Wednesday, they claimed to have taken more ground, captured more Russian prisoners and destroyed a jet bomber.
August 15, 2024
FILE - Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich is escorted from court after a pre-trial hearing in Moscow, Russia, Friday, Jan. 26, 2024. Gershkovich was arrested on espionage charges during a reporting trip to the Ural Mountains city of Yekaterinburg. He, his employer and the U.S. government have vehemently denied the charges, and Washington has declared him wrongfully detained. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko, File)
Long before his arrest, US reporter lamented that many friends in Russia were being locked up
In early 2022, Evan Gershkovich, a reporter for the Wall Street Journal wrote on social media that “reporting on Russia is now also a regular practice of watching people you know get locked away for years.”
July 19, 2024
Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich stands in a glass cage in a courtroom in Yekaterinburg, Russia, Wednesday, June 26, 2024. Fifteen months after he was arrested in the city of Yekaterinburg on espionage charges, Gershkovich returns there for his trial starting Wednesday, June 26, 2024, behind closed doors. Gershkovich, his employer and the U.S. government deny the charges. (AP Photo)
Closing arguments in espionage trial of Wall Street Journal reporter will be Friday, court says
July 18, 2024
Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, shakes hands with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi after awarding him with the Order of St. Andrew the Apostle the First-Called at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, Tuesday, July 9, 2024. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko)
Putin hosts India’s prime minister to deepen ties, but Ukraine looms over their relationship
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has met President Vladimir Putin in Moscow, seeking to deepen the two nuclear powers’ relationship as NATO leaders gathered in Washington and Russia and launched deadly missile strikes in Ukraine that destroyed a children’s hospital.
July 10, 2024
Russian President Vladimir Putin, left, listens to Kazakhstan's President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev during their meeting on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit in Astana, Kazakhstan, Wednesday, July 3, 2024. (Sergei Guneyev, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP)
Leaders of Russia and China meet at a Central Asian summit in a show of deepening cooperation
Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping have met for the second time in as many months as they visit Kazakhstan for a session of an international group founded to counter Western alliances.
July 4, 2024
National Security Council spokesman John Kirby speaks during the daily briefing at the White House in Washington, Tuesday, May 28, 2024. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)
US widens sanctions on Russia to discourage countries such as China from doing business with Moscow
The United States has widened its sanctions against Russia as G7 leaders prepare to gather in Italy for a summit where top priorities will be boosting support for Ukraine and grinding down Russia’s war machine.
June 12, 2024
FILE - Former President Donald Trump sits in the courtroom for his trial at the Manhattan criminal court, Tuesday, May 21, 2024, in New York. As Trump attacked the U.S. criminal justice system following his guilty verdict, analysts say that his allegations could be useful to Russian President Vladimir Putin and other autocrats. (Michael M. Santiago/Pool Photo via AP, File)
Trump’s attacks on US justice system after his conviction could be used by autocrats, say experts
Donald Trump attacked the U.S. criminal justice system after his historic guilty verdict. He made unfounded claims of a “rigged” trial that echoed remarks from the Kremlin.
June 2, 2024
FILE - This photo taken and released by Basmanny District Court press service on Wednesday, April 24, 2024, shows Deputy Defense Minister Timur Ivanov standing in a defendants' cage in court in Moscow, Russia. Ivanov was arrested on suspicion of accepting a bribe. (Basmanny District Court press service via AP, File)
Top Russian military officials are being arrested. Why is it happening?
The arrests began last month when a Russian deputy defense minister was detained. Then the head of the ministry’s personnel directorate was hauled into court. This week, two more senior military officials were detained. All face corruption charges.
May 24, 2024
Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas, center, speaks to Brig. Giles Harris, commander of British forces in Estonia, left, and Ross Allen, British ambassador to Estonia, at an undisclosed location in Estonia on Wednesday, May 15, 2024. Kallas was visiting the country's largest defense exercises. (AP Photo/Hendrik Osula)
Russia is waging a shadow war on the West that needs a collective response, Estonian leader says
Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas says Russia is waging a “shadow war” against the West. As battles in Ukraine takes a turn in Russia’s favor, borders are being bolstered in the front-line Baltic nations of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, as well as in Finland and Poland.
May 22, 2024
FILE - This file photo shows a portrait of Bolshevik revolutionary Leon Trotsky, founder of the Red Army, taken on Aug. 9, 1940, shortly before he was fatally attacked, Aug. 20, 1940, at his home in Mexico City. Once seen as the most likely successor to Vladimir Lenin as the leader of the Soviet Union, Trotsky lost a power struggle with Josef Stalin and fled abroad. A Soviet agent attacked Trotsky in 1940 with an ice axe, mortally wounding him. (AP Photo/File)
For decades, Moscow has sought to silence its critics abroad
From its earliest days, the Soviet Union’s intelligence services — whether known as the Cheka or the names of any of its successor agencies like the KGB — kept the government in power by pursuing its opponents no matter where they lived.
May 3, 2024
FILE - Russian defector Maksim Kuzminov attends a news conference in Kyiv, Ukraine, on Tuesday, Sept. 5, 2023. Spanish police say the bullet-riddled body of a man found in a Spanish town was that of Kuzminov, 33, who flew a Russian military helicopter across the front lines into Ukraine last year. Sergei Naryshkin, head of Russia's foreign intelligence service, said Kuzminov became a "moral corpse" from the moment he planned his "dirty and terrible crime." (AP Photo/Vladyslav Musiienko, File)
Kremlin critics say Russia is targeting its foes abroad with killings, poisonings and harassment
Since President Vladimir Putin launched his invasion of Ukraine, attacks and harassment of Russians abroad have been blamed on Moscow’s intelligence operatives across Europe and elsewhere.
May 3, 2024
FILE - Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich is escorted from a court hearing in Moscow, Russia, on Friday, Jan. 26, 2024. Gershkovich was detained on espionage charges in March 2023 – an accusation that he, his employer and the U.S. government denies. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko, File)
US journalist marks a year in a Russian prison as courts keep extending his time behind bars
Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich marks a year behind bars on Friday following his arrest by Russian authorities who accuse him of espionage but have offered no supporting evidence.
March 28, 2024
A woman lights candles at the fence next to the Crocus City Hall, on the western edge of Moscow, Russia, Saturday, March 23, 2024. Russia's top state investigative agency says the death toll in the Moscow concert hall attack has risen to over 133. The attack Friday on Crocus City Hall, a sprawling mall and concert venue on Moscow's western edge, also left many wounded and left the building a smoldering ruin. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko)
Deadly attack on Moscow concert hall shakes Russian capital and sows doubts about security
Shocked Russians are bringing flowers and teddy bears to the Crocus City concert hall on the outskirts of Moscow to pay their respects to more than 100 people who died in a grisly attack claimed by the Islamic State group.
March 23, 2024
Firefighters tackle a blaze at the site of a Russian attack in Kharkiv, Ukraine, Wednesday, March 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)
A Russian border region reels from sustained Ukrainian artillery and drone strikes
A Russian border region being pounded by Ukrainian shelling and drones is expanding its closure of schools and colleges amid a major evacuation plan.
March 20, 2024
Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks on a visit to his campaign headquarters after a presidential election in Moscow, early Monday, March 18, 2024. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko)
Putin extends rule in preordained Russian election after harshest crackdown since Soviet era
President Vladimir Putin has extended his reign over Russia in a landslide election whose outcome was never in doubt, declaring his determination to advance deeper into Ukraine and dangling new threats against the West.
March 19, 2024
A woman casts a ballot as a police officer guards at a polling station during the presidential election in St. Petersburg, Russia, Sunday, March 17, 2024. Voters in Russia are going to the polls for the last day of a presidential election that is all but certain to extend President Vladimir Putin's rule after he clamped down on dissent. (AP Photo/Dmitri Lovetsky)
Putin basks in electoral victory that was never in doubt even as Russians quietly protest
Russian President Vladimir Putin is basking in a victory that was never in doubt, as partial election results showed him easily securing a fifth term after facing only token challengers and harshly suppressing opposition voices.
March 18, 2024
An elderly woman casts a ballot during a presidential election via a mobile election committee, who visit people who cannot physically attend a polling station, in Nikolayevka village outside Siberian city of Omsk, 2236 km (1397 miles) east of Moscow, Russia, on Saturday, March 16, 2024. Voters in Russia are heading to the polls for a presidential election that is all but certain to extend President Vladimir Putin's rule after he clamped down on dissent. (AP Photo)
Russians cast ballots in an election preordained to extend President Vladimir Putin’s rule
Voters across Russia have cast ballots on the second day of an election set to formalize six more years of power for Vladimir Putin.
March 16, 2024
A couple walk past billboards which promote the upcoming presidential election with words in Russian: "Your voice is important" in a street in Luhansk, the capital of Russian-controlled Luhansk region, eastern Ukraine, on Thursday, March 14, 2024. Russian President Vladimir Putin Thursday called on people in Ukraine's occupied regions to vote, telling them and Russians that participation in the elections is "manifestation of patriotic feeling," Presidential elections are scheduled in Russia for March 17. (AP Photo)
Ukrainians living under Russian occupation are coerced to vote for Putin
Ukrainians living in regions illegally annexed by Russia are being coerced to vote in the presidential election of their wartime occupier, Vladimir Putin, an exercise denounced by Ukraine as an illegitimate effort by Moscow to tighten control over its neighbor.
March 14, 2024
A woman and child walk behind a "I Love Ukraine" sign in Kyiv, Ukraine, Thursday, March 14, 2024. Ukraine fired at least eight missiles at Russia's Belgorod border region, killing one person and wounding six, local officials said Thursday, as Kyiv's forces apparently kept up their efforts to rattle the Kremlin on the eve of Russia's presidential election, a vote that is taking place amid a ruthless crackdown on dissent. (AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda)
Russia says Ukraine has fired more missiles at a border region on the eve of election favoring Putin
Russian officials say Ukraine has fired at least eight missiles at the Belgorod border region, killing two people and wounding 12.
March 14, 2024
FILE - Vladimir Putin, center, attends a Christmas service in Christ the Savior Cathedral in Moscow, Jan. 8, 2000. Since coming to power almost 25 years ago, Putin has eliminated nearly all independent media and opposition voices in Russia — a process he ramped up after the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. (AP Photo/Misha Japaridze, File)
On Russian TV ahead of the election, there’s only one program: Putin’s
Russian President Vladimir Putin came to power almost 25 years ago and since then he’s eliminated nearly all independent media — a process he ramped up after the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. The Kremlin’s control over media is now absolute.
March 11, 2024
A woman places a piece of paper with words of grief for Alexei Navalny paying the last respect to him at the Memorial to Victims of Political Repression in St. Petersburg, Russia, Saturday, Feb. 24, 2024. Navalny, 47, Russia's most well-known opposition politician, unexpectedly died on Feb. 16 in the penal colony, prompting hundreds of Russians across the country to stream to impromptu memorials with flowers and candles. (AP Photo/Dmitri Lovetsky)
The body of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny has been handed over to his mother, aide says
An aide to Alexei Navalny says the body of the Russian opposition leader has been handed over to his mother.
February 24, 2024
FILE - The Treasury Department is seen near sunset in Washington, Jan. 18, 2023. The Biden administration is rolling out new recordkeeping rules for U.S. investment advisers in its continued effort to clamp down on money laundering, illicit finance and fraud in the American financial system. (AP Photo/Jon Elswick, File)
So many sanctions on Russia. How much impact do they really have?
The United States, United Kingdom and European Union are once again hitting Russia with new waves of sanctions over Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. This time, they also come in response to the death of noted Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny last week.
February 23, 2024
FILE - In this image taken from video released by Navalny Team on Monday, Feb. 19, 2024, Yulia Navalnaya, widow of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, gives a video message. Navalnaya used to largely avoid the cameras, staying in the background while her husband rose to become President Vladimir Putin's greatest challenger. Shortly after his death, that changed as she vowed to continue his work. (Navalny Team via AP, File)
Yulia Navalnaya once avoided the limelight. Now she’s Russia’s newest opposition leader
Yulia Navalnaya used to avoid the cameras, staying in the background while her husband rose to become Russia’s most prominent opposition figure and President Vladimir Putin’s greatest foe.
February 22, 2024
In this grab taken from video provided by the Navalny Team on Tuesday. Feb. 20, 2024, Russian Opposition Leader Alexei Navalny's mother Lyudmila Navalnaya speaks, near the prison colony in the town of Kharp, Russia. The mother of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny appealed to President Vladimir Putin to intervene and turn her son’s body over to her so she can bury him with dignity. Lyudmila Navalnaya, who has been trying to get his body since Saturday, appeared in a video outside the Arctic penal colony where Navalny died on Friday. (Navalny Team via AP)
Navalny’s mother appeals to Putin to release her son’s body so she can bury him with dignity
The mother of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny appealed to President Vladimir Putin to intervene and turn her son’s body over to her so she can bury him with dignity.
February 20, 2024
A flower and a picture are left as a tribute to Russian politician Alexi Navalny, near to the Russian Embassy in London, Sunday, Feb. 18, 2024. Navalny, who crusaded against Russian corruption and staged massive anti-Kremlin protests as President Vladimir Putin's fiercest foe, died Friday in the Arctic penal colony where he was serving a 19-year sentence, Russia's prison agency said. He was 47. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth)
Most of Russia’s opposition is either dead, in exile abroad or in prison at home. What happens now?
The Russian opposition lost its brightest star when politician Alexei Navalny died in an Arctic penal colony. He joined a long list of Kremlin political critics, turncoat spies and investigative journalists who have been killed in a variety of ways.
February 19, 2024
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