KYIV, March 26 — Ukraine and Russia accused one another on Wednesday of flouting a truce on energy strikes brokered by the United States (US), and conditions set by Russia cast doubt over a planned ceasefire in the Black Sea.

WASHINGTON, March 19 — Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday agreed to stop attacking Ukrainian energy facilities temporarily but declined to endorse a full 30-day ceasefire that President Donald Trump hoped would be the first step toward a permanent peace deal.

WASHINGTON, March 18 — United States President Donald Trump said he would speak to Russia’s Vladimir Putin today about ending the Ukraine war, with territorial concessions by Kyiv and control of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant likely to feature prominently in the talks.

MOSCOW, March 16 — Russia battled to drive the last Ukrainian soldiers from western Russia on Sunday, Russian officials said, after a seven-month incursion by Ukraine that aimed to distract Moscow's forces, gain a bargaining chip and rile President Vladimir Putin.

MOSCOW, March 14 — President Vladimir Putin said yesterday that Russia had trapped the remaining Ukrainian soldiers in its western Kursk region, where they have clung on for more than seven months in one of the key battles of the war.

MOSCOW, March 13 — President Vladimir Putin donned military fatigues for a surprise visit to troops in Russia's western Kursk region yesterday where he ordered them to press their lightning advance and swiftly retake the rest of the area from Ukrainian forces.

MOSCOW, March 7 — Russia warned French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday not to threaten it with nuclear rhetoric and, mocking his height by calling him 'Micron', ruled out European proposals to send peacekeeping forces from Nato members to Ukraine.

PARIS, Feb 21 — French President Emmanuel Macron said yesterday he will travel to Washington to try to convince President Donald Trump that his interests were in line with European allies and that showing any weakness to Russia's Vladimir Putin would make it harder to deal with China and Iran.

RIYADH, Feb 18 — The United States (US) and Russia agreed in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia on Tuesday to press ahead with efforts to end the war in Ukraine, a US official said, as Kyiv and its European allies watched anxiously from the sidelines and Moscow raised a major new demand.

MUNICH/WASHINGTON, Feb 16 — United States (US) and Russian officials will meet in Saudi Arabia in the coming days to start talks aimed at ending Moscow's nearly three-year war in Ukraine, a US lawmaker and a source familiar with the planning said on Saturday.

KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 13 —The ringgit ended higher against the US dollar today as the local note corrected from its oversold position.

WASHINGTON/MOSCOW/KYIV, Feb 13 — Donald Trump said both Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy expressed a desire for peace in separate phone calls with him yesterday, and Trump ordered top US officials to begin talks on ending the war in Ukraine.

MOSCOW/BAKU, Dec 30 — President Vladimir Putin on Saturday apologised to Azerbaijan's leader for what the Kremlin called a "tragic incident" over Russia in which an Azerbaijan Airlines plane crashed after Russian air defences were fired against Ukrainian drones.

MOSCOW, Dec 20 — Russian President Vladimir Putin said yesterday that he was ready to compromise over Ukraine in possible talks with US President-elect Donald Trump on ending the war and had no conditions for starting talks with the Ukrainian authorities.

BEIRUT, Dec 17 — Syria's Bashar al-Assad issued his first statement since being toppled from power, saying he was evacuated to Russia from the Hmeimim base on December 8 as it came under drone attack, after leaving Damascus that morning with rebel fighters closing in.

OSLO, Dec 10 — Russian President Vladimir Putin does not truly understand the destructive power of nuclear weapons, a 92-year-old survivor of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki said yesterday, on the eve of his Japanese survivors’ group receiving the Nobel Peace Prize.

MOSCOW, Nov 10 — Russian President Vladimir Putin signed into law a treaty on the country’s strategic partnership with North Korea, which includes a mutual defence provision, according to a decree published yesterday.

BRUSSELS, Oct 29 — As Kamala Harris and Donald Trump enter the final days of their close-fought White House contest, Europe is jittery about the potential impact of the United States (US) presidential election on the war in Ukraine and the continent's security.

KAZAN, Russia, Oct 24 — Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that the Middle East was on the brink of a full-scale war as tensions rose sharply between Israel and Iran.

MOSCOW, Oct 16 — Russia is seeking to convince BRICS countries to build an alternative platform for international payments that would be immune to Western sanctions when it hosts the group's leaders at a summit next week.