The deputy of Russia’s State Duma has responded to claims made by US journalist Tucker Carlson that the Joe Biden administration attempted to assassinate Vladimir Putin.
Speaking on the latest episode of his podcast, Carlson said that Biden’s team “tried to kill Putin” while in office.
The former Fox News commentator did not elaborate further, except to label the idea as “insane”.
Speaking to Russian state media outlet RIA Novosti, Amir Khamitov said: “We don’t know whether Carlson has any secret data that allows him to assert this, or whether these are just his assumptions.
“But Biden’s reality is so bizarre and unpredictable that anything can be assumed.”
For context: Carlson was ousted from Fox News in 2023 amid the network’s troubles over airing inaccurate claims of electoral fraud in the 2020 presidential election, a conspiracy often trumpeted by Carlson on his show.
He travelled to Moscow last February for a widely criticised interview with Putin and returned last month to interview Moscow’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov.
Ukraine’s government has sacked a deputy defence minister in charge of buying weapons amid infighting over procurement.
A dispute ignited last week after defence minister Rustem Umerov criticised Ukraine’s arms acquisition effort as having failed to deliver results for frontline troops.
He subsequently dismissed Dmytro Klimenkov, citing “unsatisfactory” results, and said he would not renew the contract of Maryna Bezrukova, the head of the agency which coordinates weapons purchases for Kyiv’s military.
The agency was established after a series of allegations earlier in the war of ministry misspending, and has aimed to cut out intermediaries and minimise the risk of corruption.
In a statement on Friday, Umerov said the agency had “inexplicably transformed into an ‘Amazon'” and its purchases were too publicly visible.
At least nine Russian drones launched at Ukraine overnight crossed into Belarus, according to a report from a military monitoring group.
The Belarusian Hajun project says the drones were recorded flying in the country’s airspace between 11.30pm and 1.30am (8.30pm and 10.30pm UK time).
It added that, at around 00.55am (9.55pm UK time), an explosion was heard near the Belarusian city of Mazyr. Shortly after this, it says a drone disappeared from its radars.
“At the moment, everything indicates that last night, a Shahed drone was shot down by the air defence forces near Mazyr,” the project concluded.
For context: This is not the first time Russian drones have ended up crossing into Belarus, an ally of Moscow, since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
In October, the Belarusian Hajun project reported that drones had crossed into Belarusian airspace as the country’s president, Alexander Lukashenko, was travelling by helicopter.
In the wake of the presidential election in the US, focus has fallen on the prospect of talks between new president Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin.
Both men have signalled a willingness to engage in discussions with the other, with each hinting that any negotiations could potentially range beyond the topic of Ukraine.
Stephen Sestanovich, a Russian and Eurasian studies expert at the Council on Foreign Relations, and a former US State Department official, said a limited presence for Kyiv in the talks would be an incentive for Russia’s president.
“For all these blustering exchanges, the thing Putin most wants to hear is that this is a deal Russia and the US will strike by themselves,” he told the New York Times.
He suggested the American leader should factor this in when approaching negotiations, saying: “To keep Putin off balance, Trump has to show him a deal is possible only if it makes sense to Ukraine and our allies.”
Moscow and Washington briefly discussed arms control talks during the Biden administration in 2021.
Wendy Sherman, the former deputy secretary of state, who conducted the talks for the US side, warned that if talks with Russia begin, the Trump administration should be prepared – and conscious of what the Russian leader sought to achieve from the negitiations.
“Putin will want what he has always said he wanted: As much territory as possible, no Ukraine ever in NATO, no Western nuclear weapons in Europe that could target Russia,” she said.
She added that she believed a discussion of a revival of the arms control treaty that has been partly suspended by Russia and expires in February next year, was “likely low on his list”.
Ukraine has halted a Russian security service plot to carry out strikes on fighter jets and helicopters, according to Kyiv.
The SBU security service said it had detained two Ukrainian nationals they accuse of being Russian “agents” after they photographed an F-16 jet taking off.
It added it had seized phones with evidence they were gathering intelligence for Russia’s FSB to prepare a strike on airfields.
The suspects are being held without bail and face life imprisonment if found guilty.
A Ukrainian special forces commander has told Sky News that North Koreans have been seen blowing themselves up with grenades rather than risking capture.
The commander, who goes by the codename ‘Puls’, said Kim Jong Un’s men were likely either learning lessons from mistakes made during their first, bloody clashes with Ukrainian soldiers, tending to their wounded or waiting for reinforcements.
Watch security and defence editor Deborah Haynes’s full report from the frontline in Ukraine here…
Ukrainian forces have repelled 85 Russian attacks near the key town of Pokrovsk, Kyiv has said.
Ukraine’s general staff noted fighting in some 20 settlements surrounding the town in its morning update.
It also said yesterday Russian troops were “intensively attacking” there.
The town of Pokrovsk, which has been under aerial bombardment and is being advanced upon from several sides by Moscow’s troops, is home to a major logistics hub used by Ukrainian forces, which services the eastern region of Donbas.
Analysts and military experts say the town is a key part of Ukraine’s defence and losing it could cause the entire frontline to crumble.
Capturing Pokrovsk would allow Moscow to disrupt Ukrainian supply lines along the eastern front and boost its campaign to capture the city of Chasiv Yar, which sits on higher ground – offering potential control of a wider area.
Russian airstrikes continue in Ukraine.
On top of the strikes on Kyiv and Kharkiv we reported on this morning, we can bring you images from Odesa, Lyptsi and Chernihiv.
Drones struck houses in Chernihiv, which lies to the north of Kyiv, while shelling struck residential buildings in the southeastern region of Odesa.
Lyptsi is right on the eastern frontline, and has seen fierce fighting.
The book also likens Russia’s war in Ukraine to the Soviet struggle against the Nazis.
The three-volume “Military History of Russia” was edited by Vladimir Medinsky, an aide to Vladimir Putin who headed a delegation that held unsuccessful peace talks with Ukraine in 2022.
It explains why the Kremlin believes the war started and how it is being fought, as well as highlighting what it regards as “incidences of battlefield heroism”.
Ivan Basik, a military historian affiliated with the Russian army, said Western and Ukrainian actions had made the war “inevitable” at a news conference to discuss the new book.
“The most important task was to explain to the younger generation, to schoolchildren, the forced nature of the special military operation carried out by the Russian Federation,” he said.
Earlier, we shared a report from security and defence editor Deborah Haynes about North Korean troops fighting alongside Russian troops.
It details the lengths gone to by Moscow to disguise the identity of North Korean soldiers fighting against Ukraine, and attempts from Kyiv to identify Pyongyang’s forces on the battlefield.
Watch the video report below and read the full story here.