Vladimir Putin - The African Mirror

Oct

2023

Burkina Faso and Russia’s Rosatom sign agreement for nuclear power plant

BURKINA Faso and Russian state nuclear company Rosatom signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) for the construction of a nuclear power plant in the landlocked Sahel West African state, Burkina Faso's energy ministry said in a statement. The nuclear power plant will enable the country to meet its energy needs, adding that the agreement was signed by energy and mines minister Simon-Pierre Boussim, and Nikolay Spasskiy, Rosatom's deputy director general. The deal follows a request made by Burkina Faso junta leader Captain Ibrahim Traore to Russian President Vladimir Putin during the Russia-Africa summit in St Petersburg in July. Traore, who seized power…

Oct

2023

By GUY FAULCONBRIDGE and LAURIE CHEN

Putin to visit China to deepen ‘no limits’ partnership with Xi

WORLD

RUSSIAN President Vladimir Putin will meet Xi Jinping in China this week in a bid to deepen a partnership forged between the United States' two biggest strategic competitors. Putin will attend the Belt and Road Forum in Beijing on October 17-18, his first trip outside the former Soviet Union since the Hague-based International Criminal Court issued a warrant for him in March over the deportation of children from Ukraine. China and Russia declared a "no limits" partnership in February 2022 when Putin visited Beijing just days before he sent tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine, triggering the deadliest land war in…

Oct

2023

By The African Mirror

Putin talks security with Malian leader in third phone call in two months

NEWS

RUSSIAN President Vladimir Putin discussed trade and security with Mali's leader in their third phone conversation in less than two months, the Kremlin said. The frequency of Putin's contacts with Mali's interim president Assimi Goita underlines Moscow's strong interest in building its influence in the coup-prone Sahel region of West Africa where it is cultivating strong security ties at the expense of France and the United States. The two leaders discussed their "mutual commitment to further strengthening trade and economic ties, security cooperation and the fight against terrorism", the Kremlin said in a statement. Goita echoed this in a post on social media and…

Jul

2023

By MARK TREVELYAN

Putin discusses grain deal, awkward BRICS summit with Ramaphosa

NEWS

RUSSIAN President Vladimir Putin held a phone call with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa in which they discussed the Black Sea grain deal, due to expire on Monday, and a summit in South Africa next month, the Kremlin said. Ramaphosa finds himself in an awkward position as host of the BRICS summit because of an arrest warrant issued against Putin in March by the International Criminal Court (ICC), which accused him of the war crime of deporting Ukrainian children to Russia. The warrant means member states of the ICC - of which South Africa is one - are obliged to arrest him if…

Jul

2023

By GUY FAULCONBRIDGE

Russia’s Putin snubs Prigozhin, Biden jokes about poison

WORLD

RUSSIAN President Vladimir Putin offered Wagner mercenaries the opportunity to keep fighting at a meeting just days after their failed mutiny but suggested Yevgeny Prigozhin be moved aside in favour of a different commander, the Kommersant newspaper said. Putin initially said he would crush the June 23-24 mutiny, comparing it to the wartime turmoil that ushered in the revolutions of 1917, but hours later a deal was clinched to allow Prigozhin and some of his fighters to go to Belarus. Mystery surrounds the fate of that deal as well as the future of Wagner, one of the world's most battle-hardened mercenary…

Jul

2023

By GUY FAULCONBRIDGE

Russian general says top military brass betrayed soldiers fighting in Ukraine

WORLD

A Russian general said he had been dismissed as a commander after telling the military leadership about the dire situation at the front in Ukraine, where he said Russian soldiers had been stabbed in the back by the failings of the top military brass. After the June 24 mutiny by Wagner mercenaries, the biggest domestic challenge to the Russian state in decades, President Vladimir Putin has so far kept Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov in their jobs. Major General Ivan Popov, who commanded the 58th Combined Arms Army, said in a voice message…

Jul

2023

By ANDREW OSBORN and MARK TREVELYAN

Putin held post-mutiny talks with Wagner leader Prigozhin and his fighters – Kremlin

WORLD

PRESIDENT Vladimir Putin has held Kremlin talks with Wagner mercenary group founder Yevgeny Prigozhin and his commanders to discuss the armed mutiny Wagner attempted to mount against the army's top brass, Putin's spokesman said. The meeting was first reported by French newspaper Liberation, which said Prigozhin had met Putin and the head of the National Guard, Viktor Zolotov, and SVR Foreign Intelligence boss Sergei Naryshkin. The meeting, according to Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, was held on June 29, five days after the aborted mutiny, which is widely regarded to have posed the most serious challenge to Putin since he came…

Jul

2023

By GUY FAULCONBRIDGE

Mercenary chief Prigozhin back in Russia, Belarus’s Lukashenko says

WORLD

BELARUSIAN President Alexander Lukashenko said that the mutinous chief of Russia's Wagner group was still in Russia with thousands of fighters, but dismissed speculation that President Vladimir Putin would have Yevgeny Prigozhin killed. Lukashenko helped broker a deal to end last month's mutiny, the gravest challenge to Putin in his 23 years in power, under which Prigozhin was supposed to stand down his mercenaries and move to Belarus in exchange for Putin dropping charges. But in comments that raised questions about the deal, Lukashenko said Prigozhin and his fighters were still in Russia, and that it was possible they would…

Jul

2023

By The African Mirror

Putin reassures Asian allies of Russia’s stability after mutiny

WORLD

PRESIDENT Vladimir Putin reassured Asian leaders of Russia's stability and unity in his first appearance at an international forum since the country was rocked by a brief armed mutiny last month. "The Russian people are consolidated as never before," Putin told a virtual meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), a group that also includes China and India. "Russian political circles and the whole of society clearly demonstrated their unity and an elevated sense of responsibility for the fate of the Fatherland when they responded as a united front against an attempted armed mutiny." Putin's emphasis on Russia's unity at…

Jul

2023

By STEVE HOLLAND and NATHAN LAYNE

Exclusive: Trump says aborted mutiny ‘somewhat weakened’ Putin

WORLD

FORMER U.S. President Donald Trump, a longtime admirer of Russian President Vladimir Putin, said Putin has been "somewhat weakened" by an aborted mutiny and that now is the time for the United States to try to broker a negotiated peace settlement between Russia and Ukraine. "I want people to stop dying over this ridiculous war," Trump told Reuters in a telephone interview. Speaking expansively about foreign policy, the front-runner in opinion polls for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination also said China should be given a 48-hour deadline to get out of what sources familiar with the matter say is a Chinese…