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On Today’s Episode:Biden Says the U.S. Will Not Supply Israel With Weapons to Attack Rafah, by Erica L. GreenWith a Gaza Cease-Fire in the Balance, Netanyahu Maneuvers to Keep Power, by Steven ErlangerStormy Daniels Returns to the Stand, by Matthew HaagJohnson Survives Greene’s Ouster Attempt as Democrats Join G.O.P. to Kill It, by Catie Edmondson, Carl Hulse and Kayla Guo

Persons: Biden, Erica L, Netanyahu, Steven Erlanger Stormy Daniels, Matthew Haag Johnson, Catie Edmondson, Carl Hulse, Kayla Guo Organizations: Will, Weapons, G.O.P Locations: U.S, Gaza

The ballistic missiles rolled through Red Square, the fighter jets zipped overhead and rows of foreign dignitaries impassively looked on. Russia’s annual commemoration of the end of World War II presented a traditional ceremony on Thursday cherished by millions of Russians, a reflection of President Vladimir V. Putin’s broader attempts to project normalcy while resigning the population to a prolonged, distant war. At last year’s Victory Day celebration, as Russia struggled on the battlefield, Mr. Putin said the country was engaged in a “real war” for survival, and accused Western elites of seeking the “disintegration and annihilation of Russia.” On Thursday, he merely referred to the war in Ukraine once, using his initial euphemism for the invasion, “special military operation.”And on Russia’s most important secular holiday, he dedicated more time to the sacrifices of Soviet citizens in World War II than to the bashing of modern adversaries. Still, he did not ignore those adversaries entirely, reviving familiar criticisms and grievances about what he says are attempts to undermine Russia and accusing the West of “hypocrisy and lies.”

Persons: impassively, Vladimir V, Putin, ” Locations: Russia, Ukraine

☆ 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

☆ Display of Battered Men Was Russia’s Warning to the Public, Analysts Say
▼ + stars: | 2024-03-26 | by ( Valerie Hopkins | Neil Macfarquhar | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

The four men accused of carrying out Russia’s deadliest terror attack in decades appeared in a Moscow court on Sunday night bandaged and battered. Another was in an orange wheelchair, his left eye bulging, his hospital gown open and a catheter on his lap. One of the most disturbing videos showed one defendant, identified as Saidakrami M. Rajabalizoda, having part of his ear sliced off and shoved in his mouth. A photograph circulating online showed a battery hooked up to genitals of another, Shamsidin Fariduni, while he was being detained. How the videos began circulating was not immediately clear, but they were spread by nationalistic, pro-war Telegram channels that are regarded as close to Russia’s security services.

Persons: Rajabalizoda, Shamsidin Fariduni Locations: Moscow

☆ Screams and Blank Stares of Shock: Horror at a Russian Concert
▼ + stars: | 2024-03-24 | by ( Valerie Hopkins | Alina Lobzina | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

Once they heard the shots ring out on Friday night at Crocus City Hall, Efim Fidrya and his wife ran down to the building’s basement and hid with three others in a bathroom. They listened as shots rang out and thousands of people who had come to a sold-out rock concert on Moscow’s outskirts began screaming and trying to flee. Horrified and scared, Mr. Fidrya did the only thing he could think to do: He held on tight to the bathroom door, which didn’t lock, trying to protect the group in case the assailants came to find them. “While we could hear shooting and screaming, I stood the whole time holding the bathroom door shut,” Mr. Fidrya, an academic, said in a phone interview from Moscow. “The others were standing in the corner so that if someone started shooting through the door, they wouldn’t be in the line of fire.”

Persons: Efim Fidrya, Fidrya, ” Mr, “, ” Organizations: Crocus City Locations: Crocus, Moscow’s, Moscow

☆ Long Lines of Russian Voters Signal Discontent With Putin’s Rule
▼ + stars: | 2024-03-17 | by ( Anatoly Kurmanaev | Valerie Hopkins | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Long lines of voters formed outside polling stations in major Russian cities during the presidential election on Sunday, in what opposition figures portrayed as a striking protest against a rubber-stamp process that is certain to keep Vladimir V. Putin in power. Before he died last month, the Russian opposition leader Aleksei A. Navalny had called on supporters to go to polling stations at midday on Sunday, the last day of the three-day vote, to express dissatisfaction with Mr. Putin, who is set to win his fifth presidential term in a vote that lacks real competition. Mr. Navalny’s team, which is continuing his work, and other opposition movements reiterated calls for the protest in the weeks leading up to the vote. Simply appearing at the polling station, for an initiative known as Noon Against Putin, they said, was the only safe way to express discontent in a country that has drastically escalated repression since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine two years ago. The opposition leaders said showing solidarity with like-minded citizens by mere presence was more important than what the voters chose to do with their ballots, because the election lacked real choice.

Persons: Vladimir V, Putin, Aleksei A, Navalny, Mr, Navalny’s Locations: Russian, Ukraine

“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

Listen and follow The DailyApple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon MusicRussians go to the polls today in the first presidential election since their country invaded Ukraine two years ago. The war was expected to carry a steep cost for President Vladimir V. Putin. Valerie Hopkins, who covers Russia for The Times, explains why the opposite has happened.

Persons: Vladimir V, Putin, Valerie Hopkins Organizations: Spotify, Amazon Music, The Times Locations: Ukraine, Russia

☆ As Putin Pitches His Vision, Voters Avert Their Gaze From the War
▼ + stars: | 2024-03-15 | by ( Valerie Hopkins | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Vladimir V. Putin’s vision of Russia — successful, innovative and borderless — is on display at one of Moscow’s biggest tourist attractions, a Stalin-era exhibition center that currently houses a sleek showcase called Russia 2024. The exhibition promotes what the Kremlin portrays as Russia’s achievements in the past two decades, roughly the period Mr. Putin has been in power, and his promises for the future after he secures another six-year term in rubber-stamp elections this weekend. The exhibition is in many ways a microcosm of a country whose people largely — at least in public — avert their gaze from the big and bloody war in Ukraine that Mr. Putin started more than two years ago. The centerpiece is a grand hall housing pavilions featuring all the Russian regions, including five illegally annexed from Ukraine. Visitors to one pavilion are greeted by two LED screens attached to robotic arms displaying tulip fields that portray the region of Belgorod, which borders Ukraine, as calm and peaceful.

Persons: Vladimir V, Russia —, Stalin, Putin Organizations: Mr, Visitors Locations: Russia, Ukraine, Belgorod, Ukrainian

☆ Large Crowd Gathers for Navalny’s Funeral in Moscow
▼ + stars: | 2024-03-01 | by ( Valerie Hopkins | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Huge crowds of people, some holding flowers, turned out in Moscow on Friday for the funeral services for Aleksei A. Navalny, Russia’s most prominent opposition figure, two weeks after his mysterious death in a remote Arctic penal colony. The service took place under tight monitoring from the Russian authorities, who have arrested hundreds of mourners at memorial sites since Mr. Navalny died. Police presence was heavy around the church where funeral services began shortly after 2 p.m. local time. People chanted Mr. Navalny’s last name as his coffin was taken into the Church of the Icon of the Mother of God Soothe My Sorrows, a Russian Orthodox church in southern Moscow. A photograph taken inside the church and posted on Mr. Navalny’s YouTube channel showed him in an open coffin, lying in repose with red and white flowers over his body.

Persons: Aleksei A, Navalny, Navalny’s, Yulia Navalnaya, Daria, Zakhar Organizations: Police, of, YouTube Locations: Moscow, Russian, Russia

☆ 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

☆ From a Funeral Image, the Textures of Faith and State in Russia
▼ + stars: | 2024-03-01 | by ( Valerie Hopkins | Oleg Matsnev | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

This image of Aleksei A. Navalny’s body in a coffin, at a church in southern Moscow, conveys many of the traditions of the Russian Orthodox Church, an institution that has bound itself closely to the Kremlin but that also counted opposition figures, including Mr. Navalny, among its faithful. “I, to my shame, am a typical post-Soviet believer,” Mr. Navalny said in an interview in 2012. “I keep fasts, I got baptized at church, but I go to church quite rarely.”Being an Orthodox Christian, he said, made him feel “like I am part of something big and shared.”He added: “I like that there are special ethics and self-restraints. At the same time, it doesn’t bother me at all that I exist in a predominantly atheistic environment. Until I was 25 years old, before the birth of my first child, I myself was such an ardent atheist that I was ready to grab the beard of any priest.”Those remarks reflected the circumstances of many Russians who came of age as the Soviet Union broke apart and as the Russian Orthodox Church again rose to prominence in public life.

Persons: Aleksei A, Navalny, “, Mr Organizations: Russian Orthodox Church, Orthodox, Soviet Locations: Moscow, Russian, Soviet Union

☆ Russian Court Jails Rights Advocate for ‘Discrediting’ the Military
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-27 | by ( Valerie Hopkins | More About Valerie Hopkins | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

A Moscow court sentenced the co-chairman of Memorial, the Russian rights group that was awarded the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize, to two and a half years in prison on Tuesday for “discrediting” Russia’s military by voicing his opposition to the war in Ukraine. Although the Kremlin ordered his group liquidated in late 2021, the co-chairman, Oleg Orlov, 70, chose to stay in Russia after its invasion of Ukraine two years ago and has continued to criticize his government despite a climate of increasing repression. In November 2022, Mr. Orlov wrote an article headlined “They Wanted Fascism. They Got it,” in which he blamed President Vladimir V. Putin and the wider Russian public for the invasion and for allowing the country to slip “back into totalitarianism.”Nearly a year later, he was convicted of “repeated discreditation” of Russia’s armed forces. That charge carries a sentence of up to five years in prison, but he was punished only with a fine of 150,000 rubles, about $1,600, because of mitigating factors including his age and his prominent public profile.

Persons: ”, Oleg Orlov, Orlov, Vladimir V, Putin, “ Organizations: Memorial, Kremlin Locations: Moscow, Ukraine, Russia

☆ In Russia, Knowing That Her Son Is Dead, and Waiting for Him Anyway
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-25 | by ( Valerie Hopkins | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

When Yulia Seleznyova walks around her home city in Russia, she scrutinizes everyone passing by in the hope that she will lock eyes with her son Aleksei. Russian authorities acknowledged dozens of deaths, though pro-Russian military bloggers and Ukrainian authorities estimated that the real number was in the hundreds. Aleksei was not recognized in the official death toll because not a single fragment of his body was identified in the rubble after the strike. Ms. Seleznyova was left with nothing to bury, and, she says, no closure. But it has also left a small shred of hope for a miracle.

Persons: Yulia Seleznyova, Aleksei, Seleznyova Organizations: U.S Locations: Russia, Ukraine, Ukrainian, Russian

☆ Yulia Navalnaya’s Account Is Briefly Suspended by X
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-20 | by ( Valerie Hopkins | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

The social media platform X temporarily suspended on Tuesday an account created by Yulia Navalnaya, the widow of Aleksei A. Navalny, and then restored it, saying it had been mistakenly flagged by its automated security protocols. Ms. Navalnaya opened the account on Monday to announce that she would continue her husband’s work advocating for a free, peaceful and democratic Russia in the wake of her husband’s death in a remote Arctic prison. More than 90,000 users followed the account in its first 24 hours. But on Tuesday, the account and its activity suddenly disappeared, replaced by the words “Account suspended” and a note that X — the social media company formerly known as Twitter — “suspends accounts which violate the X Rules.”“Our platform’s defense mechanism against manipulation and spam mistakenly flagged @yulia_navalnaya as violating our rules,” X’s safety team wrote on the platform later on Tuesday. “We unsuspended the account as soon as we became aware of the error, and will be updating the defense.”

Persons: Yulia Navalnaya, Aleksei A, Navalnaya, “, ” Locations: Russia

☆ Risking Arrest, Russians Mourn Navalny in Small Acts of Protest
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-17 | by ( Valerie Hopkins | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

The flowers, wrapped in paper to shield them from the icy wind, were not only a symbol of mourning. They also served as a form of protest in a country where even the mildest dissent can risk detention. “He didn’t die, he was killed,” said Alla, 75, a pensioner who declined to give her last name because of possible repercussions. “Theoretically, we knew that they wanted to destroy him,” said her friend Elena, 77, whose arm was interlaced with Alla’s. “But when it happened it was such a shock, the senseless brutality of it, just senseless.” She found out what had happened when her daughter and granddaughter called her in tears to share the news.

Persons: Aleksei A, Stalin, ”, Alla, Elena Locations: Russian

☆ Aleksei Navalny, Putin Critic, Dies in Prison, Russian Authorities Say
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-16 | by ( Andrew E. Kramer | Valerie Hopkins | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

Aleksei A. Navalny, an anticorruption activist who for more than a decade led the political opposition in President Vladimir V. Putin’s Russia, died Friday in a prison inside the Arctic Circle, according to Russian authorities. His death was announced by Russia’s Federal Penitentiary Service, which said that Mr. Navalny, 47, lost consciousness on Friday after taking a walk in the prison where he was moved late last year. He was last seen on Thursday, when he had appeared in a court hearing via video link, smiling behind the bars of a cell and making jokes.

Persons: Aleksei A, Vladimir V, Navalny Organizations: Russia’s Federal Penitentiary Service Locations: Russia

☆ Aleksei Navalny, Russian Opposition Leader, Dies in Prison at 47
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-16 | by ( Valerie Hopkins | Andrew E. Kramer | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Aleksei A. Navalny, an anticorruption activist who for more than a decade led the political opposition in President Vladimir V. Putin’s Russia while enduring arrests, assaults and a near-fatal poisoning, died Friday in a Russian prison, according to Russia’s Federal Penitentiary Service. The prison authorities said that Mr. Navalny lost consciousness on Friday after taking a walk in the Arctic penal colony where he was moved late last year. He was last seen on Thursday, when he had appeared in a court hearing via video link, smiling behind the bars of a cell and making jokes. Kira Yarmysh, Navalny’s press secretary, said in a live broadcast Friday that Navalny’s advisers were not yet able to issue an official confirmation of his death but believed that he had perished. Despite increasingly harsh conditions, including repeated stints in solitary confinement, he maintained a presence on social media, while members of his team continued to publish investigations into Russia’s corrupt elite from exile.

Persons: Aleksei A, Vladimir V, Navalny, Kira Yarmysh, Biden, “, Putin, ” Mr Organizations: Russia’s Federal, Service, White House Locations: Russia, Russia’s, United States

How the Russian Government Silences Wartime DissentJust days after invading Ukraine, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia signed a censorship law that made it illegal to “discredit” the army. The indignities of the crackdown, and the long arm of the Russia law, is being lost in the numbers. Nanna Heitmann for The New York TimesIn dry legalese, the court documents recount the Russian state’s case against these statements and protests. People’s “negative assessment” of the Russian military could adversely affect its performance, the court said, presenting a national security risk. And I very much don’t want this.”Sergei Platonov at district court in Moscow listening to his guilty verdict in November.

Persons: Vladimir V, Putin, ”, — schoolteachers, —, That’s, Ukraine —, pollsters, Andrei Kolesnikov, Demyan, Aleksandr T, Olga V, ” Maksim L, Omsk Diana I, Denis V, Russia ”, “, Maksim P, Anna S, Maria V, people’s “, Russia’s, Zaynulla Gadzhiyev, Mr, Bespokoyev, Marina Tsurmast, scrawled, Nanna Heitmann, Tsurmast, Gadzhiyev, Vladimir Kara, Murza, Aleksandra Y, Skochilenko, Selimat, Vladimir A, Rustam I, ” Yelena L, Aleksandr K, Olga P, Dmitri D, Sergei V, Eve, Daria Ivanova, Ms, Ivanova, “ you’ll, Anton Redikultsev, Redikultsev, Jan, Marina, Sergei P, ” Yuldash, ” Dmitri S, Peskov, Putin’s, Sergei Platonov, Platonov, Russian Gestapo ”, Polina, Kolesnikov, Anna Sliva, Sliva Organizations: New York Times, Times, Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, OVD, Penza Yuriy V, Russia, ”, Ukraine ” “, YouTube, Bucha, Ukraine, Police, The New York Times, Armed Forces, Russian Federation, VK, Russian Gestapo, The New York Locations: Russia, Russian, Ukraine, “, Omsk, Peace, Ukraine ” “ Ukraine, Bucha, Moscow, St, Petersburg, Iglino, ”, Novosibirsk, Siberia, Crimea, Ukrainian, Kalga, Russia’s, OVD, Coast, Primorye, Soviet

☆ Putin, Bidding to Cement His Legacy, Will Seek Re-election as President
▼ + stars: | 2023-12-08 | by ( Valerie Hopkins | Ivan Nechepurenko | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

In the absence of genuine political opposition, Mr. Putin is all but assured of winning another six-year term, prolonging his authoritarian grip. There had been next to no doubt that he would run: Perhaps in an acknowledgment of his expected candidacy, Mr. Putin declared his intentions not at a podium, but in a conversation with soldiers that was recorded on camera. Still, the exchange was laden with symbolism, coming after a military awards ceremony at the Kremlin that underscored his standing as a wartime president overseeing a brutal invasion of Ukraine. The interaction appeared to be highly choreographed, though the Kremlin later denied that was the case. A Ukrainian-born Russian military officer and official from Donetsk, a Russian-occupied city in eastern Ukraine, approached Mr. Putin and expressed gratitude that its residents now had the opportunity to vote for the first time in Russian presidential elections, and they wanted to cast their votes for Mr. Putin.

Persons: Vladimir V, Putin, Catherine the Great, Mr Organizations: Kremlin Locations: Ukraine, Ukrainian, Donetsk, Russian

A cold wind was blowing across the steppe, but Sapura Kadyrova didn’t see the point in bundling up. She was waiting to greet her son, who was arriving home from the war in a crimson government-issued casket. “So maybe I won’t be warm,” Ms. Kadyrova, 85, moaned. “In February he would have turned 50, and he promised me he would be allowed to come home then,” Ms. Kadyrova told her guests. While as many as 80 percent of Ukrainians have a close friend or relative who was injured or killed in the war, many Russians in urban centers still feel insulated from it.

Persons: Ms, Kadyrova, Garipul S, Kadyrov, “, ” Ms Locations: Klishchiivka, Ukraine

The skeletons are never far away from Konstantin A. Dobrovolsky. Sometimes he sleeps above them in a tiny olive-green trailer in the woods. For 44 summers, he has traversed the hilly scrabble northwest of Murmansk, the most populous city above the Arctic Circle and the northernmost frontier in World War II, in search of the remains of Soviet soldiers who died defending it. He has continued unearthing those bones even as descendants of the soldiers — of Russian, Ukrainian and other ethnic origins — are dying on a new front line, in Ukraine. While the Kremlin has sought to draw parallels between the Great Patriotic War, as World War II is known in Russia, and the current war, it is a comparison that Mr. Dobrovolsky, who is categorically opposed to the invasion of Ukraine, wholeheartedly rejects.

Persons: Konstantin A, Dobrovolsky Organizations: Kremlin Locations: Murmansk, Ukraine, Russia

More than a year after her mother died, Alla Kotliarova buried her for the third — and she hopes final — time. There was no priest, no tearful neighbors, no ceremonial procession to the cemetery sitting among thin pine trees at the end of town. But there was at least some measure of closure for Ms. Kotliarova, 62, who laid her mother, Tamara Kotliarova, to rest in the family plot. No official cause of death was listed, though her mother had long grappled with diabetes, but Ms. Kotliarova is convinced that the stress of the Russian invasion and occupation hastened her demise. “If it weren’t for this war, she wouldn’t have died,” said Ms. Kotliarova, as she wiped tears from her eyes with a small handkerchief and placed flowers and snacks on the sandy funeral mound.

Persons: Alla Kotliarova, Kotliarova, Tamara Kotliarova, wouldn’t, ”

Metro trains are running smoothly in Moscow, as usual, but getting around the city center by car has become more complicated, and annoying, because anti-drone radar interferes with navigation apps. There are well-off Muscovites ready to buy Western luxury cars, but there are not enough available. And while a local election for mayor took place as it normally would last Sunday, many of the city’s residents decided not to vote, with the result seemingly predetermined (a landslide win by the incumbent). Almost 19 months after Russia invaded Ukraine, Muscovites are experiencing dual realities: The war has faded into background noise, causing few major disruptions, and yet it remains ever-present in their daily lives.

Organizations: Metro Locations: Moscow, Russia, Ukraine

☆ Russia’s ‘Merchant of Death’ Is Looking to Forge a New Life in Politics
▼ + stars: | 2023-09-10 | by ( Valerie Hopkins | More About Valerie Hopkins | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

As an arms trafficker, he operated in some of the world’s most dangerous places, becoming one of the world’s most wanted men and earning the nickname “Merchant of Death,” not to speak of a 25-year prison sentence in the U.S. But now, nine months after returning to Russia in a prisoner exchange, Viktor A. “I’ve been for 15 years locked up in your federal system,” he said in an interview conducted in somewhat stilted English at his party’s Moscow headquarters. “So what do you expect for me, that I have to take time to take vacation? He was long suspected of having links to Russia’s military intelligence agency, the G.R.U.

Persons: Merchant of, ”, Viktor, Vladimir V, “ I’ve, I’ve Locations: U.S, Russia, Ulyanovsk, Moscow, Thailand, Manhattan

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