Tag Archives: Russian

WASHINGTON: US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin has said Russian soldiers have been deployed to an airbase in Niger that also houses American troops, after the country’s military rulers decided to expel US forces. Niger’s junta, which seized power last July, said in March it was ending a military cooperation agreement with Wash­ington that has agreed to withdraw its troops and sent a delegation …

MOSCOW: A Nasa astronaut, a Russian cosmonaut and Belarus’s first ever space traveller on Saturday returned to Earth safely after a fortnight aboard the International Space Station, Russia’s Roscosmos agency reported. “Today, at 10:17am Moscow time (0717 GMT), the descent vehicle of Sozuz MS-24 manned spacecraft landed near the Kazakh city of Zhezkazgan,” Roscosmos reported. “The (vessel’s) deorbit and its …

SEOUL: North Korea marked its founding anniversary with a parade attended by leader Kim Jong Un as well as Russian diplomats and a high-ranking Chinese delegation, state media said on Saturday, as Pyongyang deepens ties with Moscow and Beijing. Kim met with the visiting Chinese delegation led by Liu Guozhong, vice-premier of the State Council, the second such visit by …

KYIV: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky met troops in a frontline town Tuesday, a day after Russian leader Vladimir Putin visited occupied zones as Kyiv builds up to an expected counteroffensive. While 45-year-old Zelensky spoke with soldiers in the heavily bombarded town of Avdiivka in eastern Ukraine, the Kremlin’s footage showed Putin, 70, visiting the occupied territory in the south and …

PARIS: Russian and Ukrainian delegations met in Paris for talks on Wednesday in a bid to defuse soaring tensions, with France seeking to usher both sides down a “path to de-escalation”. The high-level meeting, attended by senior diplomats from France and Germany, brings together the four countries in a format that has been used repeatedly since Russia’s 2014 annexation of …

BEIRUT: Syrian government and Russian air strikes killed at least 17 people on Tuesday in rebel-held northwestern Syria in a spike in casualties from relentless daily strikes in recent months, witnesses and rescuers said. The northwest corner of the country, including the Idlib region, is the last significant swathe of Syrian territory still in insurgent hands after eight and a …