Russia’s wartime economy has been sustained, in part, by oil and gas revenues as Europe has relied on it for several decades. Key to that arrangement is Ukraine, the country Russia is at war with, as the countries have a deal in place to allow Russian gas to transit via Ukraine and reach Europe.

Russia's friends — or frenemies — aren't all pariah states. Some of them enjoy good relations with the West, too.

The 50,000-year-old remains of a baby mammoth uncovered by melting permafrost have been unveiled to the public by researchers in Russia's Siberia region who call it the best-preserved mammoth body ever found.

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Sunday hosted Slovakia’s prime minister, Robert Fico, in a rare visit to the Kremlin by an EU leader since Moscow’s all-out invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Secretive North Korea has one of the world’s largest militaries, with 1.28 million active soldiers, but unlike in Russia, the Korean People's Army (KPA) has no recent experience of combat. Pyongyang’s army is “thoroughly indoctrinated but with low readiness,” says Mark Cancian, from the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).

The newly discovered memo, written in March 1994 by Wayne Merry, chief of the U.S. Embassy’s internal politics division at the time, didn’t make the same impact as Kennan’s for two reasons. First, Merry did not go public.

Ukrainian officials say the bungled attempt to steal the remains was part of a continuing Russian effort to repatriate the remains of the Soviet war dead.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said more than 3,000 North Korean soldiers have been killed or wounded fighting for Moscow in Russia's western Kursk region.

Russian President Vladimir Putin held talks in the Kremlin on Sunday with Slovakia’s prime minister, Robert Fico, in a rare visit to Moscow by an EU leader since the conflict between Russia and Ukraine began in 2022.

Volunteers helping to clean up a major oil spill along Russia's Black Sea coast appealed in a video released on Monday for President Vladimir Putin to urgently send federal aid, saying that they and local authorities were overwhelmed.

"Through various sources of information and intelligence, we assess that North Korean troops who have recently engaged in combat with Ukrainian forces have suffered around 1,100 casualties," the JCS said in a statement.