Kremlin Web News Today

Masha Gessen writes about the various takeaways from the TV personality Tucker Carlson’s face-to-face interview with the Russian President, Vladimir Putin, in Moscow this week.

When someone like Boris Bondarev, a Russian counselor to the UN in Geneva, Switzerland, slams the door on his employer, the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and on his home country, it is only natural to wonder if Russian President Vladimir Putin’s system is showing cracks three months into the dictator’s disgraceful Ukraine adventure. The answer, however, is “not really.” Despite the relative failure of the invasion so far, prominent defectors are remarkably few in number. The Russ...

A former police officer discussed Russia’s invasion on the telephone. A priest preached to his congregation about the suffering of Ukrainians. A student held up a banner with no words — just asterisks. Hundreds of Russians are facing charges for speaking out against the war in Ukraine since a repressive law was passed last month that outlaws the spread of “false information” about the invasion and disparaging the military. Human rights groups say the crackdown has led to criminal prosecu...

Russian President Vladimir Putin has lamented the collapse of the Soviet Union three decades ago as the demise of what he called “historical Russia” and said the economic crisis that followed was so bad he had to moonlight as a taxi driver. Putin’s comments, released by state TV on Sunday, are likely to further fuel speculation about his foreign policy intentions among critics, who accuse him of planning to recreate the Soviet Union and of contemplating an attack on Ukraine, a notion the K...