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☆ Isolated From West, Putin Projects Domestic Power at Inauguration
▼ + stars: | 2024-05-07 | by ( Valerie Hopkins | Anton Troianovski | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Vladimir V. Putin was inaugurated for a fifth term as president on Tuesday in a ceremony filled with pageantry and a televised church service, as the Russian leader tried once more to depict his invasion of Ukraine as a religiously righteous mission that is part of “our 1,000-year history.”Mr. Putin took the presidential oath — he swore to “respect and safeguard the rights and freedoms of man and citizen” — with his hand on a red-bound copy of Russia’s constitution, the 1993 document that guarantees many of the democratic rights that he has spent much of his 25-year rule rolling back. Mr. Putin claimed his fifth term in March in a rubber-stamp election that Western nations dismissed as a sham. If he serves the full six years of his new term, he will become the longest serving Russian leader since Empress Catherine the Great in the 19th century. “Together, we will be victorious!” Mr. Putin said at the end of a speech after he took the oath in the Kremlin’s gilded St. Andrew’s Hall.

Persons: Vladimir V, Putin, Mr, —, ” —, Empress Catherine the Great Organizations: Andrew’s Locations: Russian, Ukraine

☆ Russia to Hold Drills on Tactical Nuclear Weapons in New Tensions With West
▼ + stars: | 2024-05-06 | by ( Anton Troianovski | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Russia said on Monday that it would hold military exercises with troops based near Ukraine to practice for the possible use of battlefield nuclear weapons, ratcheting up tensions with the West after two European leaders raised the prospect of more direct Western intervention in the war. Such weapons, often referred to as “tactical,” are designed for battlefield use and have smaller warheads than the “strategic” nuclear weapons meant to target cities. Russia’s Defense Ministry said that President Vladimir V. Putin had ordered an exercise for missile, aviation and naval personnel to “increase the readiness of nonstrategic nuclear forces to carry out combat missions.”Russian officials claimed the order was in response to comments from the West about the possibility of more direct Western involvement in the war in Ukraine. And it came at the start of a week of extensive publicity for the Russian leader, with his inauguration scheduled for Tuesday, followed on Thursday by the annual Victory Day celebration, which commemorates the Soviet defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945. The announcement of the exercise was Russia’s most explicit warning in its more than two-year invasion of Ukraine that it could use tactical nuclear weapons there.

Persons: Vladimir V, Putin Organizations: Russia’s Defense Ministry Locations: Russia, Ukraine, Nazi Germany

☆ Worries Over Ethnic Tensions Have Kremlin Treading Carefully on Massacre
▼ + stars: | 2024-03-27 | by ( Anton Troianovski | Milana Mazaeva | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

At a memorial service this week outside the concert hall where Islamist extremists are suspected of carrying out a deadly terrorist attack, one of Russia’s most popular pro-Kremlin rappers warned “right-wing and far-right groups” that they must not “incite ethnic hatred.”At a televised meeting about the attack, Russia’s top prosecutor, Igor Krasnov, pledged that his service was paying “special attention” to preventing “interethnic and interfaith conflicts.”And when President Vladimir V. Putin made his first comments on the tragedy last weekend, he said he would not allow anyone to “sow the poisonous seeds of hatred, panic and discord in our multiethnic society.”In the wake of the assault near Moscow that killed 139 people last Friday, there has been a recurring theme in the Kremlin’s response: a fear that the tragedy could spur ethnic strife inside Russia. While Mr. Putin and his security chiefs are accusing Ukraine — without evidence — of having helped organize the killing, the fact that the four detained suspects in the attack are from the predominantly Muslim Central Asian country of Tajikistan is stoking anti-migrant rhetoric online.

Persons: “, ”, Igor Krasnov, “ interethnic, Vladimir V, Putin Organizations: Kremlin, Ukraine, Central Locations: Moscow, Russia, Central Asian, Tajikistan

Listen and follow The DailyApple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon MusicWarning: this episode contains descriptions of violence. More than a hundred people died and scores more were wounded on Friday night in a terrorist attack on a concert hall near Moscow — the deadliest such attack in Russia in decades. Anton Troianovski, the Moscow bureau chief for The Times, discusses the uncomfortable question the assault raises for Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin: Has his focus on the war in Ukraine left his country more vulnerable to other threats?

Persons: Anton Troianovski, Vladimir V, Putin Organizations: Spotify, The Times Locations: Moscow, Russia, Ukraine

☆ In First Remarks on Attack, Putin Tries to Link Assailants to Ukraine
▼ + stars: | 2024-03-23 | by ( Anton Troianovski | More About Anton Troianovski | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia laid the groundwork on Saturday for blaming Ukraine for the Moscow concert hall attack. And in making his first remarks on the assault more than 19 hours after it began, he pledged to punish the perpetrators, “whoever they may be, whoever may have sent them.”Mr. Putin, in a five-minute televised address, claimed that someone in Ukraine had tried to help the attackers escape across the border from Russia before they were apprehended by Russian security services. He did not definitively pin the attack on Ukraine; nor did he refer to the assessment by American officials that a branch of the Islamic State was behind it. “They were trying to hide and were moving toward Ukraine,” Mr. Putin said, referring to the four men who carried out the attack and who the Kremlin said had been captured in western Russia. “Based on preliminary information, a window for crossing the border was prepared for them by the Ukrainian side.”

Persons: Vladimir V, Putin, Mr, “, ” Mr, ” Organizations: Ukraine, Islamic Locations: Russia, Moscow, Ukraine, Islamic State, Ukrainian

☆ Deadly Moscow Attack Shatters Putin’s Security Promise to Russians
▼ + stars: | 2024-03-23 | by ( Anton Troianovski | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Just days later came a searing counterpoint: His vaunted security apparatus failed to prevent Russia’s deadliest terrorist attack in 20 years. The assault on Friday, which killed at least 133 people at a concert hall in suburban Moscow, was a blow to Mr. Putin’s aura as a leader for whom national security is paramount. “The election demonstrated a seemingly confident victory,” Aleksandr Kynev, a Russian political scientist, said in a phone interview from Moscow. “And suddenly, against the backdrop of a confident victory, there’s this demonstrative humiliation.”Mr. Putin seemed blindsided by the assault. When he did, the Russian leader said nothing about the mounting evidence that a branch of the Islamic State committed the attack.

Persons: Vladimir V, Putin, “, ” Aleksandr Kynev, ” Mr, Mr, ” Organizations: Islamic State Locations: Russia, Moscow, Ukraine, Russian, Beslan

The warning was related to the attack on Friday, according to people briefed on the matter. Pro-Kremlin voices immediately seized on the U.S. Embassy’s warning to paint America as trying to scare Russians. And he has been quick to accuse Ukraine of acts of terrorism to justify his invasion of the country. But I would disabuse you at this early hour of any connection to Ukraine.”“Our thoughts obviously are going to be with the victims of this terrible, terrible shooting attack,” he also said. Mykhailo Podolyak, a top adviser to Ukraine’s presidential office, said in a video statement that “Ukraine has absolutely nothing to do” with the attack.

Persons: Vladimir V, Putin, Mr, ”, John Kirby, Maria Zakharova, Washington, Mykhailo Podolyak, Aishvarya Kavi Organizations: U.S, Embassy, State Department, Kyiv, Biden’s National Security Council, White, Reuters, “ Locations: Moscow, America, Russia, Ukraine, Russian, U.S, Washington

His most beloved crooner sang a nationalistic ballad with an appeal to Russians: “The Motherland is calling. Don’t let her down.”His favorite band belted out a moody song about wartime sacrifice. And then he took the stage, under a banner celebrating the 10th anniversary of Crimea’s seizure from Ukraine, to remind thousands of Russians gathered on Red Square that his fight to add territory to Russia wasn’t over. President Vladimir V. Putin, a day after declaring victory in a performative election, signaled on Monday that the war against Ukraine would continue to dominate his rule and called for unity in bringing the people of eastern Ukraine “back to their home family.”“We will move on together, hand in hand,” Mr. Putin told the crowd, boasting of a restored railroad line that he said would soon connect to Crimea through territory taken from Ukraine. “And this is precisely what really makes us stronger — not words, but deeds.”

Persons: Don’t, ”, Vladimir V, Putin, Mr Locations: Ukraine, Russia, Crimea

☆ With New Six-Year Term, Putin Cements Hold on Russian Leadership
▼ + stars: | 2024-03-17 | by ( Anton Troianovski | Nanna Heitmann | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

President Vladimir V. Putin on Sunday extended his rule over Russia until 2030, using a heavily stage-managed presidential election with no real competition to portray overwhelming public support for his domestic dominance and his invasion of Ukraine. Some Russians tried to turn the undemocratic vote into a protest, forming long lines at polling stations at a predetermined time — noon — to register their discontent. At the same time, Ukraine sought to cast its own vote of sorts by firing a volley of exploding drones at Moscow and other targets. But the Kremlin brushed those challenges aside and released results after the polls closed claiming that Mr. Putin had won 87 percent of the vote — an even higher number than in the four previous elections he participated in. Afterward, Mr. Putin took a lengthy, televised victory lap, including a swaggering, after-midnight news conference at which he commented on the death of the imprisoned opposition leader Aleksei A. Navalny for the first time, referring to it as an “unfortunate incident.”

Persons: Vladimir V, Putin, Mr, Aleksei A, ” Organizations: Sunday Locations: Russia, Ukraine, Moscow

☆ Putin Breaks Silence on Navalny’s Death, Calling It an ‘Unfortunate Incident’
▼ + stars: | 2024-03-17 | by ( Anton Troianovski | More About Anton Troianovski | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

President Vladimir V. Putin described the death of the imprisoned opposition leader Aleksei A. Navalny as an “unfortunate incident” and claimed he had been ready to release him in exchange for Russian prisoners held in the West. Mr. Putin, in a news conference after Russia’s presidential election, said that “some people” had told him before Mr. Navalny’s death “that there was an idea to exchange Mr. Navalny for some people held in correctional facilities in Western countries.”“I said, ‘I agree,’” Mr. Putin said. “Just with one condition: ‘We’ll trade him but make sure that he doesn’t come back, let him stay over there.’”He added: “But this happens. That’s life.”The comments, in response to a question from NBC News, were Mr. Putin’s first about Mr. Navalny’s death at a penal colony in the Arctic— and a rare moment, if not the first, when the Russian president uttered Mr. Navalny’s name in public.

Persons: Vladimir V, Putin, Aleksei A, ”, Navalny, “, ‘, ’, Mr, Putin’s, Navalny’s Organizations: NBC News Locations: West, Russian

“All of us decent people are hostages here.” Like other voters interviewed, she declined to provide her last name, for fear of reprisal. “It is so important to see people who think like you, who don’t agree with what is happening,” she said. More broadly, the muted, purely symbolic form of civil disobedience envisioned by the initiative underscores just how little the Russian opposition can do to influence events in the country amid the pervasive repression. Noon Against Putin has been expected to be particularly large-scale abroad, because dissident voters faced lower risks outside Russia. Ms. Navalnaya was seen standing in a long line outside the Russian Embassy in Berlin on Sunday afternoon.

Persons: Vladimir V, Putin, Aleksei A, Navalny, Mr, Navalny’s, ”, Lena, Noon, Yulia Navalnaya, “, ” Leonid Volkov, Nanna Heitmann, Volkov, Kristina, Navalnaya, Valerie Hopkins, Tomas Dapkus, Anton Troianovski Organizations: Sunday, The New York Times, YouTube, Russian Embassy Locations: Russian, Ukraine, Moscow, Russia, Lithuania, Lane, Berlin, Riga, Latvia

☆ For Navalny’s Followers, a ‘Surge of Inspiration’ at a Sad Event
▼ + stars: | 2024-03-01 | by ( Anton Troianovski | Valerie Hopkins | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Elena Milashina, a daring Russian reporter beaten unconscious and doused in liquid iodine last year, said she has bid farewell to far too many journalists, activists and opposition figures who died an untimely death. But never, she said in a phone interview from Moscow, had she seen anything like the scene on Friday on the streets of the sleepy Maryino neighborhood on the outskirts of the Russian capital. “This was the most optimistic funeral I can remember,” said Ms. Milashina, 47, citing the large crowds and a palpable sense of unity. There was this surge of inspiration that we are all together, and that there are many of us.”The funeral of the opposition leader Aleksei A. Navalny on Friday may come to be remembered as a seminal moment in Vladimir V. Putin’s Russia. It was a day when the president’s decades-long nemesis was laid to rest, underlining Mr. Putin’s dominance; but it was also a day when an ocean of pent-up dissent re-emerged, if only for a few hours, on Moscow’s streets.

Persons: Elena Milashina, ”, Milashina, Aleksei A, Vladimir V Locations: Moscow, “, Russia, Moscow’s

☆ Putin Says Direct Western Intervention in Ukraine Risks a Nuclear Conflict
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-29 | by ( Anton Troianovski | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia said the West faced the prospect of nuclear conflict if it intervened more directly in the war in Ukraine, using an annual speech to the nation on Thursday to escalate his threats against Europe and the United States. Mr. Putin said Western countries that are helping Ukraine strike Russian territory, and have discussed the possibility of sending troops from NATO countries to Ukraine, “must, in the end, understand” that “all this truly threatens a conflict with the use of nuclear weapons, and therefore the destruction of civilization.”“We also have weapons that can strike targets on their territory,” Mr. Putin said. “Do they not understand this?”The United States and other Western governments have largely tried to distance themselves from Ukrainian strikes on Russian territory, and comments by President Emmanuel Macron of France this week about the possibility of Western troops being sent to Ukraine drew quick rebukes from other Western officials who have ruled out such deployments.

Persons: Vladimir V, Putin, “, Mr, Emmanuel Macron Organizations: West, NATO Locations: Russia, Ukraine, Europe, United States, France

☆ Navalny’s Funeral to Be Held on Friday, Spokeswoman Says
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-28 | by ( Anton Troianovski | More About Anton Troianovski | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Aleksei A. Navalny, the Russian opposition leader, will be buried on Friday after a funeral service in Moscow that will be open to the public, his spokeswoman said on Wednesday, although it was unclear whether the authorities would try to prevent people from attending. The planned service, at a church on Moscow’s outskirts, sets up the possibility of a rare display of opposition sentiment in the Russian capital, and Mr. Navalny’s spokeswoman, Kira Yarmysh, advised anyone planning to attend to “come early.”Two hours after Ms. Yarmysh’s announcement, another top aide to Mr. Navalny, Ivan Zhdanov, posted on the Telegram social messaging app that “Putin is releasing all his dogs to prevent the funeral from taking place normally.”Mr. Zhdanov did not immediately elaborate. But regardless, mourners will be taking a risk by attending. Hundreds of people who turned out across Russia at spontaneous memorials for Mr. Navalny after his death were detained, according to OVD-Info, a Russian-based rights group that tracks arrests.

Persons: Aleksei A, Navalny’s, Kira Yarmysh, Navalny, Ivan Zhdanov, Putin, Mr, Zhdanov Locations: Russian, Moscow, Moscow’s, Russia

☆ Navalny Allies Say He Was About to Be Freed in a Prisoner Exchange
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-26 | by ( Anton Troianovski | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Aides to Aleksei A. Navalny asserted on Monday that the Russian opposition leader had been on the verge of being freed in a prisoner exchange with the West before he died earlier this month. Western officials were in advanced talks with the Kremlin on a deal that would have released Mr. Navalny along with two Americans in Russian prison, a top aide to the dead opposition leader, Maria Pevchikh, said in a video released on the Navalny team’s YouTube channel. As part of that deal, Ms. Pevchikh said, Germany would have released Vadim Krasikov, the man convicted of killing a former Chechen separatist fighter in a Berlin park in 2019. There was no immediate comment from any of the parties reportedly involved in the trade described by Ms. Pevchikh. A Kremlin spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.

Persons: Aleksei A, Navalny, Maria Pevchikh, Pevchikh, Vadim Krasikov, Mr, Putin, Krasikov, Tucker Carlson, Ms Organizations: West, Kremlin, YouTube, Fox News Locations: Russian, Germany, Chechen, Berlin

☆ Aleksei Navalny’s Body Was Returned to His Mother, Allies Say
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-24 | by ( Anton Troianovski | More About Anton Troianovski | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

The Russian authorities have transferred the body of the opposition leader Aleksei A. Navalny to his mother, his spokeswoman said on Saturday, ending a grim battle for custody of his remains, but it is unclear whether he will get a funeral that the public can attend. “Aleksei’s body has been handed over to his mother,” Mr. Navalny’s spokeswoman, Kira Yarmysh, said in a statement posted on social media. “The funeral is yet to come. She added that the opposition leader’s team would release information about the funeral “as it becomes available.”Mr. Navalny’s family and aides have accused the Russian authorities of keeping his body hostage and “blackmailing” his mother into agreeing to bury him in secret. On Friday, Ms. Yarmysh said that officials in Salekhard had given Ms. Navalnaya an ultimatum demanding that she assent to such a secret funeral within three hours, or else that he would be buried on prison grounds.

Persons: Aleksei A, Navalny, ” Mr, Navalny’s, Kira Yarmysh, Aleksei, Lyudmila Navalnaya, Yarmysh, Mr, “, ”, Salekhard, Navalnaya Locations: Salekhard

☆ Unpredictable Strongman? Two Years Into War, Putin Embraces the Image.
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-23 | by ( Anton Troianovski | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

After President Biden called President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia a “crazy S.O.B.” this week, the Kremlin was quick to issue a stern condemnation. But the image of an unpredictable strongman ready to escalate his conflict with the West is one that Mr. Putin has fully embraced after two years of full-scale war. At home, the Kremlin is maintaining the mystery over the circumstances of the death last week of Aleksei A. Navalny, preventing the opposition leader’s family from reclaiming his body. In Ukraine, Mr. Putin is pressing his army to maintain its brutal offensive, boasting on television that he stayed up all night as the city of Avdiivka fell to Russian forces.

Persons: Biden, Vladimir V, Putin, Aleksei A Organizations: Kremlin Locations: Russia, Ukraine, Avdiivka, Russian

☆ Navalny’s Mother Says Authorities Are ‘Blackmailing’ Her Over Son’s Remains
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-22 | by ( Anton Troianovski | Ivan Nechepurenko | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Russian authorities have declared that the opposition leader Aleksei A. Navalny died of natural causes but are refusing to release his remains until his mother agrees to a “secret funeral,” Mr. Navalny’s mother and his spokeswoman said on Thursday. Lyudmila Navalnaya, Mr. Navalny’s mother, said she had been “secretly” taken to a morgue Wednesday night, “where they showed me Aleksei.” She was shown a medical report on Mr. Navalny’s death that said he died of natural causes, according to the Navalny team’s spokeswoman, Kira Yarmysh. But Ms. Navalnaya said she now was locked in a grim battle with local authorities in the northern Russian city of Salekhard who, taking orders from Moscow, were not releasing custody of the remains. She said the authorities warned that if she did not “agree to a secret funeral,” then “they will do something with my son’s body.”“They’re blackmailing me,” Ms. Navalnaya said in a video posted on her son’s YouTube channel. “They are setting me conditions on where, when and how Aleksei should be buried.”

Persons: Aleksei A, Navalny, ” Mr, Navalny’s, Lyudmila Navalnaya, “, ”, Aleksei, Kira Yarmysh, Navalnaya, “ They’re, ” Ms Organizations: YouTube Locations: Russian, Salekhard, Moscow

☆ Inside Aleksei Navalny’s Final Months, in His Own Words
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-19 | by ( Anton Troianovski | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

Confined to cold, concrete cells and often alone with his books, Aleksei A. Navalny sought solace in letters. To one acquaintance, he wrote in July that no one could understand Russian prison life “without having been here,” adding in his deadpan humor: “But there’s no need to be here.”“If they’re told to feed you caviar tomorrow, they’ll feed you caviar,” Mr. Navalny, the Russian opposition leader, wrote to the same acquaintance, Ilia Krasilshchik, in August. “If they’re told to strangle you in your cell, they’ll strangle you.”Many details about his last months — as well as the circumstances of his death, which the Russian authorities announced on Friday — remain unknown; even the whereabouts of his body are unclear.

Persons: Aleksei A, Navalny, they’re, Mr, Ilia Krasilshchik Locations: Russian

☆ Aleksei Navalny Outspoken Putin Critic Is Dead, Russian State Media Reports
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-16 | by ( Anton Troianovski | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

ETAleksei A. Navalny, the most outspoken domestic critic of President Vladimir V. Putin, has died in prison, Russian state media said on Friday. Mr. Navalny’s death was reported by Russia’s Federal Penitentiary Service, according to Russian state media. In a statement carried by Russia’s RIA Novosti news agency, the penitentiary service said that Mr. Navalny, 47, lost consciousness on Friday taking a walk in the Arctic prison where he was moved late last year. “The facility’s medical staff immediately arrived and an ambulance brigade was called,” the penitentiary service’s statement said. The ambulance doctors confirmed the death of the convict.” Mr. Putin’s spokesman said that the death had been reported to Mr. Putin, according to the Tass state news service.

Persons: Aleksei, Vladimir V, Putin, Navalny’s, Navalny, ” Mr, Putin’s, Mr Organizations: Russia’s Federal Penitentiary Service, RIA Novosti, Tass

The news of Mr. Navalny’s death shocked many at the conference and could add new urgency to the discussion. Ms. Harris said at the start of her address to the conference — which had already been expected to focus on Russia — that the United States was still trying to confirm the reports of Mr. Navalny’s death, but that it held Russia’s government responsible. “I made it clear to him that I believe the consequences of that would be devastating for Russia,” Mr. Biden told reporters after meeting with Mr. Putin in Geneva in 2021. “What do you think happens when he’s saying it’s not about hurting Navalny, all the stuff he says to rationalize the treatment of Navalny, and then he dies in prison?” Mr. Biden continued. “I saw Yulia Navalnaya and Leonid Volkov last night here in Munich,” said Michael McFaul, a former American ambassador to Moscow.

Persons: Aleksei A, Yulia Navalnaya, clampdown, Navalnaya, Leonid Volkov, Kamala Harris, Antony J, Blinken, Vladimir V, Putin, Navalny’s, Harris, ”, Mr, Biden, Navalny, “, ” Mr, it’s, Ms, Michael McFaul, Aleksei, ” Edward Wong Organizations: Munich Security Conference, ” Locations: Munich, Europe, Ukraine, Moscow, Russia, United States, Geneva, American

☆ Where does Navalny’s reported death leave Russia and Putin?
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-16 | by ( Anton Troianovski | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

The death of Aleksei A. Navalny, as reported by authorities in Moscow on Friday, ushers in a new turning point for President Vladimir V. Putin’s Russia, underscoring both the Kremlin’s power and the potential for instability that continues to threaten it. The announcement came just a month before Russia’s rubber-stamp presidential elections, when the Kremlin will look to portray Russians as united behind Mr. Putin and his bid for a fifth term. As the third year of the war nears, Mr. Putin’s control of domestic politics appears nearly total, with his most prominent surviving opponents either in jail or in exile. Street protests are immediately snuffed out, and thousands of Russians have been prosecuted for criticizing the war. The West’s far-reaching sanctions have not crippled Russia’s economy.

Persons: Aleksei A, Vladimir V, underscoring, Putin Organizations: Mr, Russian, Ukrainian Army, Kremlin Locations: Moscow, Russia, Ukraine

☆ In Prison or Out, Navalny Was the Thorn in Putin’s Side
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-16 | by ( Anton Troianovski | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

The death of Russia’s most prominent opposition leader, Aleksei A. Navalny, at a remote Arctic prison on Friday ended one of the most audacious political careers of modern times and left wartime Russia without its most charismatic antiwar voice. After surviving a poisoning widely seen as the Kremlin’s doing in 2020 and recovering in Germany, Mr. Navalny returned to Russia in 2021, and was immediately arrested. But Mr. Navalny, a joking, gregarious, straight-talking former real estate lawyer, stayed relevant even from prison, publishing Instagram posts via messages relayed by his lawyers that were at once humorous and outraged. Mikhail Vinogradov, a Moscow political analyst, described it as the most shocking death of a Russian politician in the country’s post-Soviet history. Russians gathered for impromptu vigils in cities around the world, while images of people laying flowers at memorial sites in Russian cities ricocheted across social media.

Persons: Aleksei A, Navalny, Vladimir V, Putin, Mikhail Vinogradov Organizations: Russian, Kremlin Locations: Russia, Germany, Ukraine, Moscow, Russian

☆ Putin Says He Prefers Biden Over Trump. Commentators Are Skeptical.
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-15 | by ( Anton Troianovski | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

President Vladimir V. Putin said on Wednesday that it was in Russia’s interest for President Biden to win a second term, calling his American counterpart experienced and predictable, and dismissing concerns about Mr. Biden’s age. Mr. Putin made the comments in a brief interview with Russian state television released late Wednesday. “Who is better for us: Biden or Trump?” the interviewer asked. “Biden,” Mr. Putin responded. “He is a more experienced person, he is predictable, he is a politician of the old school.”Mr. Putin added, with a smile, “But we will work with any U.S. leader whom the American people have confidence in.”

Persons: Vladimir V, Putin, Biden, Donald J, Trump, Mr, “, “ Biden, ” Mr, ” Organizations: U.S, Republican

☆ Putin to U.S.: Let’s Make a Deal on Ukraine (on My Terms)
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-09 | by ( Paul Sonne | Anton Troianovski | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia kept returning to one message over and over in his meandering, two-hour interview with the former Fox News host Tucker Carlson: Russia wants to negotiate a peace deal in Ukraine, albeit on the Kremlin’s terms. That message seemed aimed at the American right and Republicans in Congress, with an eye to undermining support for aid to Ukraine. If so, the day after the long-anticipated interview, it seemed lost in the muddle. The Russian leader’s discursive historical diatribes, delving into everything from the Rurik dynasty to the Golden Horde, dominated commentary about the interview online and overshadowed the message he intended to deliver. In Russia on Friday, experts and even some of Mr. Putin’s allies were also puzzling over why he gave short shrift to his main ideological commonality with Mr. Carlson’s followers: opposition to L.G.B.T.Q.

Persons: Vladimir V, Putin, Tucker Carlson, Rurik, Putin’s, Carlson’s Organizations: Fox News, Golden Horde Locations: Russia, Ukraine

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