Brexit, US-Taliban deal, Putin critic poisoning, Pope on Gay rights, more: What happened across the
Brexit, US-Taliban deal, Putin critic poisoning, Pope on Gay rights, more: What happened across the world in 2020
Decades from now, history will remember 2020 as a year of a blur with many losing their lives and jobs - courtesy of the coronavirus pandemic. As the year comes to an end, let us look back at some of the biggest stories that broke in 2020 across the world.
advertisement
UPDATED: December 18, 2020 16:27 IST
From left: British and EU flags; US special envoy Zalmay Khalilzad and Taliban political chief Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar sign US-Taliban peace deal; Russian opposition leader and Putin critic Alexei Navalny; Pope Francis
Russian president Vladimir Putin dismissed new information linking Russian secret services to the near-fatal poisoning of opposition leader Alexey Navalny, saying if Russia had wanted to kill the politician it would have succeeded.
Accusing Mr Navalny of ties to US intelligence, Mr Putin said Russian agents needed to monitor him. “But this doesn’t mean at all we needed to poison him. Who is he of use to? If we had wanted to, we would have carried this through to the end,” he told his annual press conference.
Tensions have surged in recent months between Russia and European nations led by Germany over the poisoning of Mr Navalny, who’s recovering in Berlin after a nerve-agent attack on him in Siberia in August that he and western governments have blamed on the Kremlin. The European Union in October sanctioned six senior Russian officials over the use of the poison.
Navalny Interrogated in Germany Despite ‘Nonexistent’ Russian Criminal Probe Dec. 18, 2020 Navalny has vowed to return to Russia as soon as he makes a full recovery. Moskva News Agency
Leading Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny said German prosecutors interrogated him and his wife at Moscow’s request Thursday despite Russian authorities refusing to launch a criminal investigation into his poisoning.
Navalny is undergoing rehabilitation in Berlin after recovering from what European scientists established was poisoning with a Novichok nerve agent in Siberia this summer. Russia has insisted that Germany provide hard evidence of the poisoning, which it denies, before it opens a criminal probe.
SHARE
The city of Austin, Texas, is reported to have been hacked and a Russian state-sponsored group is suspected to be behind the intrusion.
First reported today by The Intercept, which references documents prepared by the Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center that have not been publicly released, the hack has been traced to mid-October. It’s said to have been used as a jumping-off point for more attacks. The Russian advanced persistent threat group Berserk Bear, which may be linked to Russia’s Federal Security Service, is believed to be behind the attack.
Berserk Bear, also known as Energetic Bear, Dragonfly and several other names was the subject of a warning by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency Oct. 22. Notably, that warning stated that the group was targeting government networks.