Russian business leaders are backing legislation that would stop Western companies one day returning to the market they left after the Ukraine invasion.

Vladimir Putin has refuted claims about his deteriorating eyesight, despite being frequently spotted reading from large-sized scripts during briefings.The 72-year-old leader is known for his reluctance to admit any health issues.

Trump has generally veered away from overtly criticizing Putin while openly berating Ukraine's leader Volodymyr Zelensky, but has repeatedly condemned Russia's lethal airstrikes and floated that the Kremlin could be "tapping us along."

Russian President Vladimir Putin, in separate telephone conversations on Friday, told Iran's president that Moscow condemned Israel's actions against Tehran and told Israel's prime minister that questions around Iran's nuclear programme could only be solved through diplomacy.

Smirnova, the director of the Narva museum that is housed in the fortress, has defiantly hung from the battlements a large banner of Putin’s face, with the words “war criminal” below it. In January this year a court in Moscow issued an arrest warrant for Smorzhevskikh-Smirnova on the charge of spreading false information.

Leaders will hold talks on the war in Ukraine and spiralling conflict in the Middle East as they gather at a major global summit in Canada.

Ukraine has destroyed a Russian military convoy in a single strike using a U.S.-supplied HIMARS rocket system in the Donetsk region. According to early reports, more than 20 Russian soldiers were killed and many others injured in the attack, which took ...