Vladimir Putin tightens grip on power by promoting family members and younger allies to his inner circle as economic strain and opposition threats mount in Russia.

The test comes days after President Vladimir V. Putin announced the previous trial of another Russian nuclear weapon.

North Korea's top diplomat has visited the Kremlin for talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The meeting follows last month's meeting between Putin and Kim Jong Un in Beijing.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said the country has tested a new, nuclear-capable missile and is preparing to deploy it.

President Vladimir Putin hailed the first long distance test of a nuclear-powered cruise missile that he said has no equal in the West.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is claiming that Ukrainian forces are surrounded by the Russian army in two key eastern cities and is offering to negotiate a deal for their surrender

“H ISTORY TEACHES that wars begin when governments believe the price of aggression is cheap,” argued President Ronald Reagan in 1984. He oversaw a vast increase in America’s defence budget that the Soviet Union could try to counter only by wrecking its economy. By the end of the decade the “evil empire” was collapsing.

The Trump administration has lifted sanctions on a kleptocratic ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who was removed this month as president of the Serb territory within Bosnia and Herzegovina for chipping away at the US-brokered peace deal that ended bloody ethnic violence in the Balkans in the 1990s.