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Kremlin reveals Putin’s inner turmoil post-Moscow terror attack

Law enforcement has apprehended all four assailants, with suspicions of assistance from five others, as per investigators….reports Asian Lite News

Russian President Vladimir Putin puts up a tough exterior, but he’s deeply disturbed by recent events in the nation, including the deadly terrorist attack on Crocus City Hall, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov disclosed to VGTRK, TASS reported.

“The head of state takes these tragedies to heart. And believe me, just because you don’t see tears on his face does not mean that he is not hurt. And I doubt if anyone, including you and me, knows about his inner turmoil,” the Russian presidential spokesman said.

On the fateful evening of March 22, terrorists struck the music venue in Krasnogorsk, Moscow Region, just beyond the city’s borders. The latest figures report 144 fatalities.

Law enforcement has apprehended all four assailants, with suspicions of assistance from five others, as per investigators. The Russian Investigative Committee asserted that the attackers have ties to Ukrainian nationalists.

Furthermore, the Russian Emergencies Ministry’s department in the Moscow Region has updated the count of those injured in the terrorist onslaught on Crocus City Hall to 551.

“At the time of 6:00 a.m. Moscow time on March 30, 2024, the toll from the terrorist attack stood at 695 casualties, with 144 fatalities, including five children,” the ministry disclosed in an official statement.

Health officials informed TASS that the majority of those injured in the attack have been receiving outpatient care.

Last Sunday, Russia declared its first nationwide mourning since 2018.

A solemn minute of silence was observed in memory of the victims of the Crocus City Hall attack before the commencement of a charity concert near the makeshift memorial erected at the scene of the attack.

Candles, arranged to resemble cranes, adorned the stage; many attendees held candles in their hands. During the minute of silence, footage depicting cranes soaring into the sky was projected onto the facade of Crocus City Hall, followed by images of those who lost their lives in the tragedy.

The minute of silence commenced at 19:52 Moscow time, approximately the time when the tragic events unfolded on March 22. Following the poignant tribute, a musical ensemble led by director Valery Gergiyev took the stage. Several survivors also joined the performance, sharing their harrowing experiences of surviving the attack.

Throughout the day, people continued to bring flowers in honour of the victims. Security measures were heightened, with the crowd being divided into multiple streams, and metal detectors were installed to ensure safety, TASS reported. (ANI)

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Kremlin Denies Knowledge About ‘Missing’ Putin Critic Navalny

Alexei Navalny’s lawyers have not been able to see him since December 6, reports Asian Lite News

The Kremlin has said that it has “no information” about jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who reportedly has been missing from prison since December 6, Al Jazeera reported.

Navalny’s lawyers have not been able to see him since December 6.

The prison authorities moved him from the penal colony, where he was serving his sentence for multiple charges, including extremism, but have not said where he was transferred to.

Prison officials told a court on Friday (local time) that Navalny had left the IK-6 facility in the town of Melekhovo in the Vladimir region, about 230 km (140 miles) east of Moscow, Al Jazeera reported, citing Vyacheslav Gimadi, the head of the legal department at Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation.

On being asked if the Kremlin had any information about Navalny, spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said: “No. I repeat again: we do not have the capacity, or right, or desire to track the fates of those prisoners who are serving sentences by order of a court.”

Navalny, who rose to prominence by lampooning President Vladimir Putin’s “elite” and alleging “extensive corruption” was sentenced in August to an additional 19 years in prison on top of the 11 and a half years he was already serving, Al Jazeera reported.

Kremlin Spokesperson Dmitry Peskov

“We don’t know [where he is] for the 10th day,” Navalny’s lawyer posted on X.

The allies of the Putin critic had been preparing for his expected transfer to a “special regime” high-security facility, the harshest grade in Russia’s prison system, before he was moved.

“Where he was taken is not known,” Navalny’s spokeswoman, Kira Yarmysh, posted on X, saying he was moved on December 11. “Let me remind you that the lawyers have not seen Alexei since December 6.”

Earlier, Navalny’s team had alleged that the jailed Russian leader suffered a serious health incident.

Meanwhile, another Navalny ally, Maria Pevchikh, has urged the United Nations Human Rights Committee to help them locate the jailed leader.

“What is happening with Alexei is, in fact, an enforced disappearance and a flagrant violation of his fundamental rights. Answers must be given,” she said on Thursday.

Several rights groups have also weighed in on Moscow’s criticism. Amnesty International acknowledged “the possibility that he may be in transit to another prison colony.”

“As if attempted poisoning, imprisonment and inhumane conditions of detention were not enough, Alexei Navalny may now have been subjected to an enforced disappearance,” it added.

The dissident was taken from Russia to Germany in 2020 after he was poisoned with Novichok, a Soviet-era nerve agent. Navalny had to be airlifted from the Siberian city of Omsk and arrived comatose at a hospital in Berlin, CNN reported.

Navalny was immediately incarcerated upon his return to Russia in January 2021 on charges of violating the terms of his probation related to a fraud case brought against him in 2013, which he also dismissed as politically motivated.

He has also campaigned from prison against Russia’s war against Ukraine and has even attempted to mobilise public opposition to the war.

According to CNN, Navalny posed one of the most serious threats to Putin’s legitimacy during his rule, which has spanned more than two decades.

When Navalny was sentenced to 19 years in a maximum-security penal colony in August, he said, “the number of years does not matter.” (ANI)

ALSO READ: Putin says 617,000 Russian soldiers now in Ukraine

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Kremlin says it has not abandoned moratorium on N-testing

Moscow : Russian President Vladimir Putin attends a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Heads of State Council via a video conference at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia on Tuesday, July 04, 2023.(Photo:IANS/Kremlin)

While many diplomats, spies and officials have said they expect Putin to stay in power for life, there has yet to be any confirmation of his plans to run in the 2024 presidential vote…reports Asian Lite News

The Kremlin said on Tuesday that Russia had not abandoned a moratorium on nuclear testing, and dismissed a suggestion by one commentator that it should detonate a thermonuclear bomb.

Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said he did not know where New York Times reporters had got the idea that Russia may be preparing to test an experimental nuclear-powered cruise missile, or may have recently tested one.

Margarita Simonyan, hawkish editor-in-chief of the state-owned broadcaster RT, suggested in an interview extract posted online by the foreign-based digital broadcast network RTVI that Russia should detonate a nuclear bomb at high altitude over Siberia as a warning to the West.

Putin may run in Russia’s 2024 election

Russian President Vladimir Putin may soon indicate he will take part in a 2024 presidential election, Kommersant newspaper reported on Tuesday, paving the way for the Kremlin chief to stay in power until 2030.

As part of a conference in November, officials suspect that Putin may announce he will take part in the election in March next year, Kommersant reported, citing unidentified sources close to the presidential administration.

The newspaper, one of Russia’s most respected, said there were, however, other scenarios for what Putin might do at the conference and the final decision rested with him. The Kremlin did not immediately comment.

Putin, who was handed the presidency by Boris Yeltsin on the last day of 1999, has been leader for longer than any other Russian ruler since Josef Stalin, beating even Leonid Brezhnev’s 18-year tenure.

Putin turns 71 on October 7.

While many diplomats, spies and officials have said they expect Putin to stay in power for life, there has yet to be any confirmation of his plans to run in the 2024 presidential vote.

Putin said last month he would make an announcement on his plans only after parliament called the presidential election — due by law to be done in December.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said last month that if Putin decided to run, then no one would be able to compete with him.

While Putin may face no competition for votes, the former KGB spy faces the most serious set of challenges any Kremlin chief has faced since Mikhail Gorbachev grappled with the crumbling Soviet Union nearly four decades ago.

The war in Ukraine has triggered the biggest confrontation with the West since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis and the biggest external shock to the Russian economy in decades. Putin faced a failed mutiny by Russia’s most powerful mercenary, Yevgeny Prigozhin, in June.

Prigozhin was killed in a plane crash two months later.

The West casts Putin as a war criminal and a dictator who has led Russia into an imperial-style conflict that has weakened the country and forged Ukrainian statehood while uniting the West and handing NATO a post-Soviet mission of opposing Russia.

Putin, though, presents the war as part of a much bigger struggle with the United States, which the Kremlin elite says aims to cleave Russia apart, grab its natural resources and then turn to settling scores with China.

The former Soviet spies who wield power in Moscow have repeatedly warned of the risk of a Russia-NATO conflict as the West’s post-Cold War dominance wanes, Russia lays to rest the humiliations of the Soviet collapse and China rises to superpower status.

The West says it does not want a NATO-Russia conflict but simply to help Ukraine defeat Russian forces. The Kremlin says the West will never achieve Russia’s defeat in Ukraine.

ALSO READ-No charges against Wagner chief Prigozhin, says Kremlin

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UK to keep Kremlin assets frozen  

The UK has been reluctant to be seen to be at loggerheads with Ukraine over the issue…reports Asian Lite News

Britain is likely to keep Russian state assets immobilised for some time after the war in Ukraine ends, and certainly until Moscow has agreed to pay compensation for the damage it has inflicted, British officials have confirmed.

The Council of Europe summit last week established a digital register of damage for Ukraine as the first step towards an international compensation mechanism for victims of Russian aggression.

Last Friday, the foreign secretary, James Cleverly, insisted that Russia’s sovereign assets would remain immobilised until Russia agreed to pay for the damage it had caused in Ukraine. But the consequences of the evolving British position on postwar negotiations with Russia, including the retention of Russian central bank assets as leverage for compensation, are only gradually emerging. It is thought that about $300bn (£243bn) in Russian central bank reserves were in G7 states at the time of the freezing, but the mapping of the assets is not complete.

Officials say work is continuing day and night, including with the EU, over the feasibility of confiscating Russian state assets, but no solution has yet been found. Tory backbench MPs, the Labour party and the Ukrainian government are pressing for Russian state assets held in the UK – valued at £26bn last year – to be seized outright and then handed directly to Ukraine for reconstruction.

But an alternative, less legally risky strategy is gaining ground whereby the west holds on to the assets until Russia agrees to pay compensation. The same objective of Russia’s funding of Ukraine’s reconstruction would be achieved, but without taking the risk of breaching international law by simply seizing Russian assets.

The Commons has already passed a motion requiring the government to come up with a plan on the use of Russian state assets, but for months it has been refusing to commit to the effective expropriation of the Russian central bank assets stored in the UK, fearing the move would set a precedent that would paralyse the international financial system, and lead to countermeasures against the UK.

The UK has been reluctant to be seen to be at loggerheads with Ukraine over the issue.

But at last week’s Council of Europe summit in Reykjavik, a total of 44 countries and the EU indicated their intention to back a new register of damages with its offices in The Hague. A satellite office in Ukraine will be established.

The Dutch prime minister, Mark Rutte, underlined that “Russia must be held accountable, including for damage suffered by Ukraine and its people. We are therefore proud that the seat of the register of damage will be in The Hague, the legal capital of the world.” The register will be established for an initial period of three years and will serve as a record of evidence and claims information on damage, loss or injury caused by the Russian aggression against Ukraine and its people. It paves the way towards a future international comprehensive compensation mechanism for the victims of the Russian aggression, something the UN has already endorsed.

The foreign affairs select committee was told on Tuesday that seizing as opposed to freezing Russian state assets would be in breach of international law. Antonios Tzanakopoulos, professor of public international law at St Anne’s College, University of Oxford, said the sovereign assets of the Russian Federation were generally protected by sovereign immunity as an embodiment of the state, but a freezing of those assets, a temporary violation of the rule of immunity, could be justified as a countermeasure in response to Russia’s violation of international law.

But he added the essence of a countermeasure was that it was intended to induce the state to comply with the law, and as a result the measure must be temporary and reversible. On this basis a disposal or seizure of the assets as a punitive measure was explicitly not allowed in international law, he said.

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Kremlin slams Britain over supply of depleted uranium weapons

Moscow has urged all international powers to halt all weapon shipments to Ukraine, claiming that this will simply prolong the conflict….reports Asian Lite News

Britain will have to bear full responsibility for its decision to supply depleted uranium shells to Ukraine, said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov.

Peskov said on Wednesday that when such weaponry was previously used by NATO in Yugoslavia, it resulted in devastating consequences, including a rise in oncological and other diseases.

Those who use this ammunition must understand that they will “cause irreparable harm to themselves and their citizens” and ultimately bear full responsibility for their actions, he added.

: UK armed forces minister, James Heappey.

The spokesman made the remarks a day after British Minister of State for the Armed Forces, James Heappey, confirmed that Britain had already sent “thousands of shells for Challenger 2 tanks, including depleted uranium munitions” to Kiev.

Last week, Andrey Kelin, Russia’s envoy to Britain, in an interview with RT claimed that DU munitions will be a “terrible thing… for the agriculture and for the people” of Ukraine. He added that the radioactive residue could contaminate Ukraine’s water and soil “for at least six generations.”

According to a 2007 government assessment, Heappey claims that depleted uranium poses relatively “low” health and environmental concerns.

However, uranium munitions produce “chemically toxic and radioactive DU particulate” when they strike hard targets, according to Doug Weir, an expert with the Conflict and Environment Observatory. He added that the dust poses “an inhalational risk to people.”

Moscow has urged all international powers to halt all weapon shipments to Ukraine, claiming that this will simply prolong the conflict.

ALSO READ: Russia warns US of nuclear escalation  

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Russia to skip annual Earth Hour

Kremlin Palace (L) and the Saint Basil's Cathedral in Moscow, capital of Russia

The Russian justice ministry included the WWF’s Russia branch on its list of foreign agents earlier this month.

The Kremlin on Friday said it will refrain from going dark to mark this year’s Earth Hour after Moscow labelled World Wildlife Fund (WWF) a “foreign agent,” reported Russian news agency, TASS.

“This year we decided to refrain from taking part in this event. It is because they have become a foreign agent,” said Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov. Peskov said the Kremlin will not be joining in with the international Earth Hour environmental movement on March 25, when major facilities traditionally turn off their exterior lights.

The move comes as Russia cracks down on most foreign-linked groups since its offensive in Ukraine, including climate-orientated organisations.

The Russian justice ministry included the WWF’s Russia branch on its list of foreign agents earlier this month.

Before the Kremlin’s announcement, WWF in Russia said on its website that Earth Hour will only take place online this year.

Earth Hour, which WWF organises, encourages people worldwide to turn their lights off for 60 minutes to raise awareness about environmental issues.

Participants turn off lights in residential buildings as well as the illumination of famous city landmarks and monuments for one hour between 8:30 and 9:30 p.m. local time (the event does not apply to street lights, air navigation lights and traffic lights).

Russia has taken part in the event, which is scheduled this Saturday, for 14 years.

Earth Hour is an annual international event, which has been held since 2007 on the last Saturday in March by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) (placed on the Russian Justice Ministry’s list of foreign agents on March 10, 2023), reported TASS. (ANI)

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Kremlin begins work on referendum to annex parts of Ukraine

Russian President Vladimir Putin has routinely said that if the people showed support for joining his country, then the Kremlin would respond…reports Asian Lite News

Russia appears to be laying the groundwork for annexing occupied parts of Ukraine by holding referenda.

Kremlin official Sergei Kiriyenko cited recent surveys on Sunday showing that support in the eastern Ukrainian regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, collectively known as Donbas, for joining Russia is between 91 per cent and 92 per cent.

In the recently conquered regions of Kherson and Zaporizhzhya, Kiriyenko said the level of support was between 75 per cent and 77 per cent.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has routinely said that if the people showed support for joining his country, then the Kremlin would respond.

However, Russia is not in full control of all the regions that it hints are ready to be annexed. Ukraine controls large parts of Donetsk and has hinted at a counter-offensive in Kherson.

On Sunday, the Ukrainian army’s Operational Command South said they have attacked three Russian command posts and at least two ammunition depots in Kherson.

The Command said that their forces killed 11 Russian soldiers and destroyed 11 rocket launchers, three armoured vehicles and a self-propelled howitzer.

ALSO READ-Kremlin denies reports of Xi refusing to visit Russia

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Kremlin denies reports of Xi refusing to visit Russia

Earlier, the media reported that the Chinese President refused to visit Moscow in response to the invitation from his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin…reports Asian Lite News

Earlier, the media reported that the Chinese President refused to visit Moscow in response to the invitation from his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has denied media reports suggesting that Chinese President Xi Jinping refused to visit Russia.

“This is not true. This is completely untrue. The fact is that certain Covid restrictions in China continue, and this is absolutely normal, and this should be treated with understanding,” RT quoted Peskov as saying.

“And as all these relaxations of these restrictions allow, of course, all visits will be carried out,” he said.

Earlier, the media reported that the Chinese President refused to visit Moscow in response to the invitation from his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin.

As reported, the Russian leader invited Xi during a telephone call on June 15.

Peskov said that the country’s Ministry of Defence has its own plans in connection with the launch of the process of Finland and Sweden joining NATO.

“Such options are being worked out not in the Kremlin, but in the Ministry. We have already said many times that there are relevant plans there and work is being done to ensure our security,” Peskov said.

Thus, he answered the question whether the Kremlin is considering the option of placing a NATO base on the border with Russia and how Moscow can respond in this regard.

At the same time, Peskov added that Putin had already assessed the entry of Finland and Sweden into NATO.

ALSO READ-Xi examines military options to offset rising disquiet