Vladimir Putin

Last week, the United States unveiled fresh sanctions against 300 targets in and outside Russia.

Putin is scheduled to touch down on Tuesday night for his first trip to the isolated nation in 24 years, with a confrontation between North and South Korean troops on their shared border highlighting regional security tensions.

Washington sees the exercises as a response to American support for Ukraine and larger drills with NATO allies

The warning came as French President Emmanuel Macron said Kyiv should be allowed to "neutralise" Russian military bases from where Kremlin troops are firing missiles into Ukraine, and as President Volodymyr Zelensky urged the world not to tire of the war.

On Thursday, Putin arrived in China on a two-day visit as Moscow is seeking more support from President Xi Jinping for the war effort in Ukraine following multiple rounds of Western sanctions.

Putin's war in Ukraine, which began with the February 2022 invasion, is believed to have killed hundreds of thousands of people and has made the Russian president a pariah in much of the world.

However, his handling of the assault against Ukraine was criticized by many in Russia and his reputation was further hit by recent corruption accusations against one of his deputies.

Russian President Vladimir Putin will address the annual Victory Day parade in Moscow on Thursday, an event he hopes will rally patriotism as his forces advance in Ukraine.

Russia's troops are advancing in the eastern Donetsk region as Kyiv awaits the arrival of much-needed US weapons that it hopes will stabilise the fragile front lines.

Russia and China have in recent years ramped up contacts, and their strategic partnership has only grown closer since the invasion of Ukraine.

All four gunmen in the deadly concert hall attack Friday night in Russia's Crocus City have been taken into custody and were remanded into pre-trial detention through May 22.

Questions have swirled over how the country's powerful security apparatus was unable to thwart the deadliest attack in Russia in two decades -- even as Western counterparts issued public and private warnings just two weeks prior.

Over two years into Moscow's all-out war against its neighbour, Kyiv's troops are struggling to hold back the Russian army as Western support fails to keep pace with the fighting.

Biden said the stopgap shipment of missiles, shells and ammunition for Kyiv was "not nearly enough" and would run out in a couple of weeks.

Victory in the March 15-17 contest will allow him to stay in the Kremlin until at least 2030, longer than any Russian leader since Catherine the Great in the eighteenth century.

The ceremony will take place two weeks after Navalny died in an Arctic prison, amid pressures denounced by his team who accuse Russian President Vladimir Putin of murdering his top critic.

For the Ukrainian troops holding Russian forces from cities like Kostyantynivka, the task is becoming harder as their resources and stamina ebb.

Former US President George W. Bush believed he had a "sense of his soul".

A heightened Russian offensive in eastern and southern Ukraine saw them capture the key town of Avdiivka last week in a major boost ahead of the second anniversary of the February 2022 invasion.

Donald Trump's last remaining Republican rival for the US election in November bashed the ex-president Sunday for his continued silence over the death of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny and his recent outburst over NATO.

As President Volodymyr Zelensky headed for Berlin and Paris in a new bid to secure desperately needed military aid, Ukrainian generals said there was bitter fighting inside Avdiivka and that their forces were taking up "new positions".

Putin may have signalled in last week's interview with right-wing US talk show host Tucker Carlson that Russia was interested in negotiations but this would be so much on Moscow's own terms that Kyiv would not countenance such talks.

Andrei Volna had long started losing faith in his homeland before Russian tanks entered Ukraine.

Russian President Vladimir Putin met North Korea's top diplomat in the Kremlin on Tuesday in the latest sign of deepening ties between the two authoritarian states.

President Vladimir Putin said on Monday that Moscow would intensify strikes on military targets in Ukraine, after an unprecedented Ukrainian attack over the weekend on the Russian city of Belgorod.

Authorities transferred Russia's most prominent opposition politician to an isolated penal colony three months before a presidential vote expected to easily hand Vladimir Putin a fifth term.

Finland on Monday signed an agreement to enhance military cooperation with the United States, saying it saw a long-term threat from Russia, a day after its giant neighbor issued a warning over Helsinki's recent entrance into NATO.

The Russian leader will "sum up the results of the year", his spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.

The Russian military has also lost some 2,200 of the 3,500 tanks it had before the start of the conflict, the source said, citing a declassified US intelligence assessment shared with Congress.

In a flurry of diplomatic activity after the White House announced Zelensky's visit, an aide for Mike Johnson said the new Republican speaker for the House of Representatives will also meet with the Ukrainian leader Tuesday.