Brendan joined Newsweek in 2018 from the International Business Times and well as English, knows Russian and French. You can get in touch with Brendan by emailing [email protected] or follow on him on his X account @brendanmarkcole.

The Russian leader is convinced that Moscow’s battlefield superiority is growing, and that Ukraine’s defenses may collapse in the coming months, according to people close to the Kremlin.

On July 1, former Deputy Defense Minister Timur Ivanov was convicted on charges of embezzlement and money laundering and sentenced to 13 years in prison in a high-profile case that exposed rampant military corruption widely blamed for Moscow’s military setbacks in Ukraine.

The Kremlin said on Tuesday that it was shocked by the sudden death of Russia's former transport minister Roman Starovoit, news of which broke hours after President Vladimir Putin had sacked him. Starovoit was found dead in his car outside Moscow with a gunshot wound and the principal hypothesis is that he took his own life,

Roman Starovoit, Russia’s recently ousted transport minister, was found dead from a gunshot wound in his car in a Moscow suburb on Monday, just hours after President Vladimir Putin abruptly dismissed him.