Also last month, Sberbank CEO German Gref, one of Russia’s top banking chiefs, said the economy was in “technical stagnation,” And in June, Economy Minister Maxim Reshetnikov warned that Russia was “on the brink” of a recession.

Russia has grappled with a shrinking and aging population for decades, with President Vladimir Putin viewing it as a threat to national security.

The Trump administration on Wednesday imposed sanctions on Russia’s two largest oil companies as it called on Moscow to agree to an immediate ceasefire in the war with Ukraine.

The claim contradicts Moscow's actual negotiating stance, as Russia continues to reject any compromise and insists on its maximalist demands.

U.S. officials also told European counterparts that they support the EU using frozen Russian assets to buy U.S. weapons for Kyiv.

When they are not fighting, they write poetry, letters home or words of praise to their supreme commander,” said one of the directors at Moscow's Museum of Victory.

Air raids hit Kyiv, Dnipropetrovsk region as Ukraine’s allies expand sanctions on Russia. Russian missile and drone attacks on Ukraine have killed at least four people and wounded several others, local officials say, as Kyiv’s allies push sweeping measures against Moscow as the war nears its four-year mark.

Improvise and innovate have become the watchwords for both the Russian and Ukrainian militaries as they try to outwit each other on the ground, at sea and in the air.

Waves of Russian missiles and drones battered Ukraine overnight on October 22, killing six people, including two children, and wounding dozens more. The large-scale bombardment occurred just hours after reports that a planned meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Donald Trump in Budapest, Hungary, had been canceled.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha believes that the latest sanctions imposed by the EU and the US are a real blow to Russia, although Moscow denies this. Details: Sybiha believes that this week marked a new stage in the pressure to force Russia to make peace,