MOSCOW - Russia on Friday condemned an executive order by U.S. President Donald Trump to build a new missile defence shield, accusing the United States of trying to upset the global nuclear balance and pave the wave for military confrontation in space.

This follows Trump's earlier statement on Jan. 30 that the United States had contacted Russia about repatriating the remains of the victims of the Washington plane crash. Asked by journalists if he had personally spoken to Putin,

However, an important memoir published in 2024 by John Sullivan, who served as the U.S. ambassador to Russia from 2020 until 2022, could provide some answers. Ominously titled "Midnight in Moscow" the book shows just how belligerent towards Russia the Biden administration was at a fraught moment — and how little key American diplomats seemed to think of real diplomacy.

Many fear the cessation of U.S. funds could expose Washington's allies and create a vacuum that its foes could gladly seek to fill.

Moscow is open to dialogue with the administration of Donald Trump on the Ukrainian conflict. This was announced today, January 20, by Russian President Vladimir Putin at a meeting with permanent members of the Russian Security Council.

The Russian Foreign Ministry's special ambassador said Moscow may decide to favor the "quantitative and qualitative increase" of nuclear arms.

NICOLE GRAJEWSKI is a Fellow in the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and an Associate with the Project on Managing the Atom at the Harvard Kennedy School. She is the author of Russia and Iran: Partners in Defiance From Syria to Ukraine.

A passenger flight operated by the Russian airline Pobeda, en route from Dubai to Moscow, safely landed in Astrakhan, a city in southern Russia, after issuing a distress signal over the Caspian Sea, Interfax news agency reported citing Russian emergency services.

On Jan. 24, 2011, a suicide bomb attack at Moscow's Domodedovo airport international arrival gate killed 37 people and injured more than 170 others.

Aleksandr Lukashenko has awarded himself a seventh term as president of Belarus, with the West calling the so-called vote a sham and introducing additional sanctions. Belarusian political observer Artsiom Shraibman told the Kyiv Independent that Lukashenko faces uncertain future after the vote.

President Trump on Monday signed an order that "mandated a process to develop an ‘American Iron Dome,’" a next-generation U.S. missile defence shield against ballistic, hypers