The United States informed Russia about President Joe Biden’s visit to Kyiv hours before his departure, according to White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan. “We did notify the Russians that President Biden will be traveling to Kyiv. We did so some hours before his departure for deconfliction purposes,” Sullivan told reporters during a conference…

Top Turkish defense and intelligence officials met their Syrian counterparts this week in Moscow at meetings also attended by Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu. Held on Dec. 28, it was the first meeting between Turkish and Syrian defense ministers in more than a decade. The gathering, which wasn’t announced in advance, is expected to pave…

Russian President Vladimir Putin arrived in Minsk on Dec. 19 for a one-day “working visit,” during which he is slated to hold talks with his Belarusian counterpart, Alexander Lukashenko. Putin was accompanied on the trip by Sergey Shoigu and Sergey Lavrov, his ministers of defense and foreign affairs, respectively. The Russian president last visited Belarus,…

MOSCOW—A massive fire gutted a shopping mall on Moscow’s eastern outskirts on Monday, the second such blaze in four days. The blaze at the mall in Balashikha that trades in construction items and home decoration materials first erupted at a storage area and later spread to part of the building. A guard was hospitalized after…

LONDON—The British government said on Thursday it had frozen assets worth more than 18 billion pounds ($20.5 billion) held by Russian oligarchs, other individuals and businesses sanctioned over Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. Russia has overtaken Libya and Iran to become Britain’s most-sanctioned nation, the Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation (OFSI), part of the finance ministry,…

MOSCOW—A Moscow court on Tuesday said it had fined Amazon.com Inc. 4 million roubles ($65,000) for failing to remove banned content relating to drug use and suicide, the first such penalty in Russia for the U.S. tech giant. Russia has fined other foreign tech firms for not removing content, part of what critics say is…

Tensions are rising between Russia and the White House. Both accuse the other of sabotaging gas pipelines and threatening armageddon. And instead of reporting and explaining reality, the U.S. media is stoking the fires. But that’s to be expected when the free press turns into a perpetual propaganda machine. In this eye-opening new episode of…

TOKYO—Japan has protested to Russia over multinational military exercises being conducted on Russian-held islands claimed by Japan, and is seriously concerned about shooting drills by Russian and Chinese warships off Japan’s northern coast, an official said Monday. Beijing has been increasing its military cooperation with Moscow, and has been taking part in the multinational “Vostok…

The U.S. ambassador to Russia departed his post on Sunday and will retire, the U.S. Embassy announced. “U.S. Ambassador to the Russian Federation John J. Sullivan has concluded his tenure as U.S. envoy and departed Moscow today,” the U.S. Embassy in Russia said in a statement Sunday. “Ambassador Sullivan was appointed in December 2019 and…

Tech firm Nvidia Corp. has been told by Washington not to sell two of its artificial intelligence (AI) acceleration chips to Beijing and Moscow, potentially affecting millions of dollars’ worth of revenues. “On August 26, 2022, the U.S. government, or USG, informed NVIDIA Corporation, or the Company, that the USG has imposed a new license…