Headline

Putin Wins Russian Presidential Election With 87.97% Of The Vote

Published

2 years ago

March 17, 2024

Vladimir Putin was headed for another six-year term as Russian president Sunday, exit polls showed, paving the way for the hardline former spy to become the longest-serving Russian leader in more than 200 years.

Victory for the 71-year-old in the three-day vote was never in doubt, with all his major opponents dead, in prison or exiled, and authorities waging an unrelenting crackdown on those who publicly oppose the Kremlin or its military offensive on Ukraine.

The government-run VTsIOM pollster projected Putin had won the election with 87 percent of the vote after polls closed in Russia’s western-most region of Kaliningrad at 1700 GMT.

The highly-touted election was marked by a surge in deadly Ukrainian bombardments, incursions into Russian territory by pro-Kyiv sabotage groups and vandalism at polling stations.

The Kremlin cast the election as an opportunity for Russians to throw their weight behind the full-scale military operation in Ukraine, where voting is also being staged in Russian-controlled territories.

Kyiv slammed the vote as a sham and President Volodymyr Zelensky denounced Putin as a “dictator” who was “drunk from power”.

“There is no evil he will not commit to prolong his personal power,” Zelensky said in a message on social media.

– Opposition dismisses vote –

Allies of the late Alexei Navalny — Putin’s most prominent rival, who died in an Arctic prison last month — has urged voters to flood polling stations at noon and spoil their ballots for a “Midday Against Putin” protest.

His wife, Yulia Navalnaya, was greeted by supporters with flowers and applause in Berlin. She said she had written her late husband’s name on her ballot after voting at the Russian embassy.

Some voters in Moscow appeared to heed Navalny’s call, telling AFP they had come to honour his memory and show their opposition in the only legal way possible.

“I came to show that there are many of us, that we exist, that we are not some insignificant minority,” said 19-year-old student Artem Minasyan at a polling station in central Moscow.

Leonid Volkov, a senior aide to the late opposition leader who was recently attacked in Lithuania where he fled political persecution in Russia, dismissed the results published by Moscow.

“The percentages drawn for Putin have, of course, not the slightest relation to reality,” Volkov, Navalny’s former chief of staff wrote on social media.

Russia’s foreign ministry spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, argued the long lines outside embassies abroad were evidence of support for the Kremlin.

“If the people queueing abroad to vote in the Russian presidential election had taken part in the ‘noon’ action, they would have all dispersed after noon. But no,” she wrote on social media.

– Tributes to Navalny –

At Navalny’s grave in a Moscow cemetery, AFP reporters saw spoiled ballot papers with his name scrawled across them on a pile of flowers.

Navalny, who galvanised mass protests, tried to run against Putin in the 2018 presidential election and toured Russia to drum up support, but his candidacy was rejected.

“We live in a country where we will go to jail if we speak our mind. So when I come to moments like this and see a lot of people, I realise that we are not alone,” said 33-year-old Regina.

There were repeated acts of protest in the first days of polling, with a spate of arrests of Russians accused of pouring dye into ballot boxes or arson attacks.

Any public dissent in Russia has been harshly punished since the start of Moscow’s offensive in Ukraine on February 24, 2022 and there were repeated warnings from the authorities against election protests.

The OVD-Info police monitoring group announced that at least 80 people had been detained across nearly 20 cities in Russia for protest actions linked to the elections.

The surge in Ukrainian strikes on Russia continued unabated with the Russian defence ministry reporting at least eight regions attacked overnight and on Sunday morning.

– Fatal border attacks –

Three airports serving the capital briefly suspended operations following the barrage, while a drone attack in the south sparked a fire at an oil refinery.

In Russia’s border city of Belgorod, multiple rounds of shelling killed two — a man and a 16-year-old girl — and wounded 12 more, the region’s governor said Sunday.

The governor has ordered the closure of shopping centres and schools in Belgorod and the surrounding area for two days because of the strikes.

In the Russian-controlled territory of Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region, where voting is also taking place, “kamikaze drones” set a polling station ablaze, according to the Moscow-installed authorities.

– ‘Difficult period’ –

Putin, a former KGB agent, has been in power since the last day of 1999 and is set to extend his grip over the country until at least 2030.

If he completes another Kremlin term, he will have stayed in power longer than any Russian leader since Catherine the Great in the 18th century.

In a pre-election address Putin said Russia was going through a “difficult period” and called on the country to be “united and self-confident.”

A concert on Red Square is being staged on Monday to mark 10 years since Russia’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula — an event that is also expected to serve as a victory celebration for Putin.

bur/jj

Headline

South Korea, Japan Protest China, Russia Aircraft Incursions

Published

2 days ago

December 10, 2025

Editor

South Korea and Japan reacted furiously on Wednesday after Chinese and Russian military aircraft conducted joint patrols around the two countries, with both Seoul and Tokyo scrambling jets.

South Korea said it had protested with representatives of China and Russia, while Japan said it had conveyed its “serious concerns” over national security.

According to Tokyo, two Russian Tu-95 nuclear-capable bombers on Tuesday flew from the Sea of Japan to rendezvous with two Chinese H-6 bombers in the East China Sea, then conducted a joint flight around the country.

The incident comes as Japan is locked in a dispute with China over comments Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi made about Taiwan.

The bombers’ joint flights were “clearly intended as a show of force against our nation, Defence Minister Shinjiro Koizumi wrote on X Wednesday.

Top government spokesman Minoru Kihara said that Tokyo had “conveyed to both China and Russia our serious concerns over our national security through diplomatic channels”.

Seoul said Tuesday the Russian and Chinese warplanes entered its air defence zone and that a complaint had been lodged with the defence attaches of both countries in the South Korean capital.

“Our military will continue to respond actively to the activities of neighbouring countries’ aircraft within the KADIZ in compliance with international law,” said Lee Kwang-suk, director general of the International Policy Bureau at Seoul’s defence ministry, referring to the Korea Air Defence Identification Zone.

South Korea also said it deployed “fighter jets to take tactical measures in preparation for any contingencies” in response to the Chinese and Russian incursion into the KADIZ.

The planes were spotted before they entered the air defence identification zone, defined as a broader area in which countries police aircraft for security reasons but which does not constitute their airspace.

Japan’s defence ministry also scrambled fighter jets to intercept the warplanes.

Beijing later Tuesday confirmed it had organised drills with Russia’s military according to “annual cooperation plans”.

Moscow also described it as a routine exercise, saying it lasted eight hours and that some foreign fighter jets followed the Russian and Chinese aircraft.

Since 2019, China and Russia have regularly flown military aircraft into South Korea’s air defence zone without prior notice, citing joint exercises.

In November last year, Seoul scrambled jets as five Chinese and six Russian military planes flew through its air defence zone.

Similar incidents occurred in June and December 2023, and in May and November 2022.

Meanwhile, Tokyo said Monday it had scrambled jets in response to repeated takeoff and landing exercises involving fighter jets and military helicopters from China’s Liaoning aircraft carrier as it cruised in international waters near Japan.

It also summoned Beijing’s ambassador after military aircraft from the Liaoning locked radar onto Japanese jets, the latest incident in the row ignited by Takaichi’s comments backing Taiwan.

Takaichi suggested last month that Japan would intervene militarily in any Chinese attack on the self-ruled island, which Beijing claims as its own and has not ruled out seizing by force.

AFP

Headline

Thousands Reported To Have Fled DR Congo Fighting As M23 Closes On Key City

Published

3 days ago

December 9, 2025

Editor

Fierce fighting rocked the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo on Tuesday as the Rwanda-backed M23 militia rapidly advanced towards the strategic city of Uvira, with tens of thousands of people fleeing over the nearby border into Burundi, sources said.

The armed group and its Rwandan allies were just a few kilometres (miles) north of Uvira, security and military sources told AFP.

The renewed violence undermined a peace agreement brokered by US President Donald Trump that Kinshasa and Kigali signed less than a week ago, on December 4.

Trump had boasted that the Rwanda-DRC conflict was one of eight he has ended since returning to power in America in January.

With the new fighting, more than 30,000 people have fled the area around Uvira for Burundi in the space of a week, a UN source and a Burundian administrative source told AFP.

The Burundian source told AFP on condition of anonymity he had recorded more than 8,000 daily arrivals over the past two days, and 30,000 arrivals in one week. A source in the UN refugee agency confirmed the figure.

The Rwanda-backed M23 offensive comes nearly a year after the group seized control of Goma and Bukavu, the two largest cities in eastern DRC, a strategic region rich in natural resources and plagued by conflict for 30 years.

Local people described a state of growing panic as bombardments struck the hills above Uvira, a city of several hundred thousand residents.

“Three bombs have just exploded in the hills. It’s every man for himself,” said one resident reached by telephone.

“We are all under the beds in Uvira — that’s the reality,” another resident said, while a representative of civil society who would not give their name described fighting on the city’s outskirts.

Fighting was also reported in Runingo, another small locality some 20 kilometres (12 miles) from Uvira, as the M23 and the Rwandan army closed in.

Burundi views the prospect of Uvira falling to Rwanda-backed forces as an existential threat, given that it sits across Lake Tanganyika from Burundi’s economic capital Bujumbura.

The city is the main sizeable locality in the area yet to fall to the M23 and its capture would essentially cut off the zone from DRC control.

Burundi deployed about 10,000 soldiers to eastern DRC in October 2023 as part of a military cooperation agreement, and security sources say reinforcements have since taken that presence to around 18,000 men.

The M23 and Rwandan forces launched their Uvira offensive on December 1.

Rich in natural resources, eastern DRC has been choked by successive conflicts for around three decades.

Violence in the region intensified early this year when M23 fighters seized the key eastern city of Goma in January, followed by Bukavu, capital of South Kivu province, a few weeks later.

– Regional risk –

The peace deal meant to quell the fighting was signed last Thursday in Washington by Congolese President Felix Tshisekedi and his Rwandan counterpart Paul Kagame, with Trump — who called it a “miracle” deal — also putting his signature to it.

The agreement includes an economic component intended to secure US supplies of critical minerals present in the region, as America seeks to challenge China’s dominance in the sector.

But even on the day of the signing, intense fighting took place in South Kivu, where Uvira is located, which included the bombing of houses and schools.

Witnesses and military sources in Uvira said that Congolese soldiers fleeing the fighting had arrived in the city overnight Monday and shops were looted at dawn.

Several hundred Congolese and Burundian soldiers had already fled to Burundi on Monday, according to military sources, since the M23 fighters embarked on their latest offensive from Kamanyola, some 70 kilometres north of Uvira.
Since the M23’s lightning offensive early this year, the front had largely stabilised over the past nine months.

Burundian President Evariste Ndayishimiye warned in February there was a danger of the conflict escalating into a broader regional war, a fear echoed by the United Nations.

Headline

‘Santa Claus’ Arrested For Possessing, Distributing Child Sexual Abuse Material

Published

3 days ago

December 9, 2025

Editor

A 64-year-old man from Hamilton Township has been arrested in the United States after investigators linked him to the possession and distribution of child sexual abuse material.

The suspect, identified as Mark Paulino, had been working as a “Santa for hire” at holiday events, a role that placed him in repeated contact with children.

Mercer County officials said the investigation began on 4 December when detectives were alerted to suspicious online activity involving the uploading of child pornography from a residence in Hamilton Township. The probe quickly identified Paulino, a retired elementary school teacher, as the person involved.

Police stated that Paulino had presented himself online as a retired teacher and had recently performed as Santa Claus for photographs and private, corporate, and organisational events. “Because this role involved direct, repeated contact with children, detectives worked around the clock to secure a search warrant,” authorities explained.

The warrant was executed on 5 December, during which police seized multiple items regarded as evidentiary. Paulino was taken into custody without incident and charged with possession and distribution of child sexual abuse materials, as well as endangering the welfare of a child.

Prosecutors have filed a motion to detain him pending trial. The investigation remains ongoing, and authorities have urged members of the public with relevant information to come forward.