Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko ordered the release of 250 political prisoners on Thursday in exchange for easing sanctions from Washington, according to the US embassy in nearby Lithuania. It is reportedly the largest one-time release of its kind so far, as Belarus is ramping up efforts to normalize ties with the United States.
The narratives they offer through culture are therefore some of the clearest expressions of how they see their role in a wartime country. This year, Moscow has hosted two major government-backed awards ceremonies one for books, one for films. In both cases, the organisers played it safe, repeating familiar themes, many of them rooted in Soviet-era cultural and wartime mythology. Prizes went largely to people within the same orbit in most cases, the families of well-known Soviet-era cultural icons.
One could attribute Russian attempts at hacking and influencing the 2016 general election to retaliation for the CIA's involvement in Ukraine, or to a personal vendetta against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton with regard to Ukraine ahead of the Maidan revolt, or to rousing anti-Putin sentiment in Russia: ... Five years ago, he blamed Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for the anti-Kremlin protests in Moscow's Bolotnaya Square. "She set the tone for some of our actors in the country and gave the signal," Putin said. "They heard this and, with the support of the U.S. State Department, began active work." (No evidence was provided for the accusation.) ...
William Burns had travelled halfway around the world to speak with Vladimir Putin, but in the end he had to make do with a phone call. It was November 2021, and US intelligence agencies had been picking up signals in the preceding weeks that Putin could be planning to invade Ukraine. President Joe Biden dispatched Burns, his CIA director, to warn Putin that the economic and political consequences if he did so would be disastrous.
The United States' top diplomat Marco Rubio traveled to Eastern Europe on Sunday for talks with the conservative leaders of Hungary and Slovakia, both of whom are aligned with US President Donald Trump. The visit comes a day after Rubio, who is also Trump's national security advisor, urged Europeans to defend Western civilization in a speech at the Munich Security Conference.
In the first months of Russia's full-scale invasion, his defiance and everyman image won him global acclaim and overwhelming support at home. list of 4 itemsend of list But that unity, exhausted by four years of full-scale war, has given way to a more complex mood. Now, while many Ukrainians still back him as an international figurehead, concerns about governance and corruption are reshaping his standing domestically.
United States special envoy Steve Witkoff has said he held productive and constructive meetings with Russian special envoy Kirill Dmitriev in Florida, as President Donald Trump's administration presses to end Russia's nearly four-year war in Ukraine. We are encouraged by this meeting that Russia is working toward securing peace in Ukraine, wrote Witkoff in a post on X following Saturday's talks.
They threw everything they had at us [until] there were no more chairs to hurl at each other, Vucic recounted in a magazine interview 20 years later. Dinamo supporters then stampeded the pitch, where their team jumped into the fray, assaulting police officers, and the game was officially called off before it began.
