Russian President Vladimir Putin and Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko arrived in the southern Russian city of Volgograd on Tuesday for World War II commemorations.

The two heads of state laid flowers at the Stalingrad memorial complex at the start of the visit, after which they addressed a Russian-Belarusian parliamentary forum, called “Great

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Ukrainian journalist Viktoriia Roshchyna was tortured during the year she spent in Russian detention, and her body was returned to Ukraine with several organs missing, according to a joint investigation published on Tuesday.

Roshchyna, 27, disappeared in the summer of 2023 while reporting on black site prisons in Russian-occupied eastern Ukraine.

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Interpol is investigating a professional training program for African women linked to a major Russian drone manufacturer, Bloomberg reported, citing the head of Interpol’s Botswana bureau. 

The agency is probing whether the program, Alabuga Start, is involved in human trafficking following a review of its social media posts, Detective Senior

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The Kremlin on Tuesday dismissed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s call for a 30-day ceasefire, saying “nuances” raised earlier by Russia’s Vladimir Putin remain unresolved.

Zelensky criticized Putin’s unilateral announcement of a 72-hour ceasefire from May 8 to May 10 as “manipulation” and called for an immediate, monthlong truce instead.

“It

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Russia’s two largest lenders, Sberbank and VTB, reported a sharp increase in delinquencies on mortgage and unsecured consumer loans in the first quarter of 2025, according to their IFRS financial reports reviewed by the RBC news website.

At Sberbank, the volume of mortgage loans showing signs of distress surged 90% between January and March,

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North Korean workers in Far East Russia’s Sakhalin region have discovered remnants of an early 20th-century Japanese temple, local mediareported Tuesday.

A stone slab with engraved Japanese characters was dug up during repair work at a kindergarten in the southern town of Korsakov, according to the Sakhalin region news website ASTV.ru.

The memorial

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