Russian President Vladimir Putin has made an unscheduled visit to Chechnya, his first trip to the mainly Muslim republic within the Russian Federation in nearly 13 years.

Chechnya President Ramzan Kadyrov has invited Tesla CEO Elon Musk to Russia after being filmed behind the wheel of one of the company’s Cybertrucks mounted with a machine gun.

Over the years, Russia’s southern republic of Dagestan, located in the North Caucasus region, has been beset by extremist violence.

Russian authorities say more than 15 police officers and several civilians, including an Orthodox priest, have been killed by armed militants in the southern republic of Dagestan.

The attack on a Moscow-area concert hall that killed scores of people has dealt a major blow to President Vladimir Putin's image as a tough guy who is able to defend Russia from all threats.

Alexei Navalny, Russia’s top opposition leader and President Vladimir Putin’s fiercest foe, has died in prison.

Alexei Navalny, Russia’s top opposition leader and President Vladimir Putin’s fiercest foe, has been buried in Moscow, two weeks after his still-mysterious death in an Arctic prison.

A prominent Russian investigative reporter has received a brain injury and multiple fractures when she and a lawyer accompanying her were brutally beaten by unidentified assailants in the Russian province of Chechnya.

Masked assailants in the Russian province of Chechnya have attacked and beaten a prominent journalist and a lawyer.

In a span of a decade, Alexei Navalny has gone from the Kremlin’s biggest foe to Russia’s most prominent political prisoner.

Russia is offering weapons for sale ranging from Kalashnikov assault rifles to missile systems despite facing sanctions from the West over its war on Ukraine.

As Russian troops wage a ferocious fight for control of strongholds in eastern Ukraine, a parallel battle is unfolding in the top echelons of military power in Moscow.

Russia is complaining about Pope Francis’ latest condemnation of atrocities in Ukraine.

Kremlin-connected businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin kept a low profile over the years, but he has been increasingly in the spotlight recently.

Gen. Sergei Surovikin has become the face of Russia’s new military strategy in Ukraine, which includes unleashing a barrage of strikes against the country's infrastructure.

Moscow’s barrage of missile strikes on cities across Ukraine has elicited celebratory comments from Russian officials and pro-Kremlin pundits.

Even as the Kremlin moved to absorb parts of Ukraine in a sharp escalation of the conflict, the Russian military suffered new defeats that highlighted its deep problems on the battlefield and opened rifts at the top of the Russian government.

Russia’s retreat from a key Ukrainian city over the weekend elicited outcry from an unlikely crowd – state-run media outlets that typically speak glowingly about Moscow’s war.

Ukraine's counteroffensive in the northeastern part of the country seemed to catch Russia by surprise in the nearly 7-month-old war.

Russia attacked power stations and other infrastructure, causing widespread outages across Ukraine as Kyiv’s forces pressed a swift counteroffensive that has driven Moscow’s troops out of swaths of territory it had occupied in the northeast.

On Eid al-Adha, an important religious holiday in Islam, Ukrainian Mufti turned fighter Said Ismahilov asked fellow Ukrainian muslims to pray for victory and for those still living in areas under Russian occupation.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Wednesday he's in “intense contacts” with Russia and other countries to stop escalating global hunger exacerbated by the war in Ukraine by allowing the export of grain stored in Ukrainian ports and ensuring Russian food and fertilizers have unrestricted access to world markets.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is claiming control over Ukraine’s seaside city of Mariupol even as its defenders are holding out inside a massive steel mill near the water.

Under relentless bombardment and a Russian blockade, the key port of Mariupol is holding out, but weapons and supplies shortages could weaken the resistance that has thwarted the Kremlin’s invasion plans.

The mayor of the Ukrainian port city of Mariupol says more than 10,000 civilians have died in the Russian siege of his city and the full death toll could surpass twice that number.

Protests against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine resumed in Moscow, St. Petersburg and other cities on Friday, even as authorities sought to push back against the spreading antiwar sentiment and project an image of strength and righteousness, following large demonstrations the day before.

(AP Photo/Kamran Jebreili)ABU DHABI – In spite of the surging coronavirus pandemic, major arms makers descended Sunday on a convention center in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, hoping to make deals with militaries across the Middle East. The UAE unveiled $1.36 billion in local and foreign arms deals to supply its forces with everything from South African drones to Serbian artillery. Significant national pavilions were absent, including the United States, the world’s largest arms exporter. Ad“The threats are obvious lately,” said Walid Abukhaled, CEO of Saudi Arabian Military Industries Company, a holding company owned by the country’s sovereign wealth fund. “If Iran goes into a major rearmament program or starts to flex its muscles, that’s where missile defense and air defense systems come in,” he said.

This image released by Fancy Production shows actors Dmitry Simonov as Lyosha and Arsen Khandzhyan as Roma in a scene from the "Here I come" web series in Moscow, Russia, Saturday, July 18, 2020. Fenochka says his web series about queer young people is important for LGBTQ people in Russia, which bans gay "propaganda" among minors. (Fancy Production via AP)MOSCOW – Russian film director Andrei Fenochka says his online series about queer young people is important for LGBTQ people in a country that bans gay “propaganda” among minors. Fenochka's “Here I Come” series that debuted last fall is marked as only available to people older than 18 in accordance with Russian law. “It is important for them to feel that they are not alone, they are not in isolation, they are not banned.

Kadyrov said Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2021 that his forces have killed six suspected militants, including a warlord accused of organizing a 2011 suicide attack at a Moscow airport. He claimed that the raid marked the elimination of the last group of militants that remained in the region. (AP Photo/Musa Sadulayev, file)MOSCOW – Chechnya's Kremlin-backed leader said Wednesday that his forces have killed six suspected militants, including a warlord accused of organizing a 2011 suicide attack at a Moscow airport. After Umarov's death, Byutukayev became the leader of militants in Chechnya and swore allegiance to the Islamic State group. Despite Kadyrov’s relentless crackdown on suspected extremists, some of whom have sworn allegiance to the Islamic State group, militants have continued to launch sporadic attacks in Chechnya and other regions in Russia’s North Caucasus.

Police and investigators work at the scene after two men attacked road police in the center of the provincial capital, Grozny, Russia, Monday, Dec. 28, 2020. Two brothers attacked police with knives Monday in Chechnya, killing an officer and injuring another before being shot dead, the Russian republic's leader said. (AP Photo/Musa Sadulayev)MOSCOW – Two brothers attacked police with knives Monday in Chechnya, killing an officer and injuring another before being shot dead, the Russian republic's leader said. Ramzan Kadyrov, the strongman head of Chechnya, said the men attacked road police in the center of the provincial capital, Grozny, in an attempt to seize their weapons. International human rights groups have accused Kadyrov of rampant rights abuses, including arbitrary arrests and extrajudicial killings by his feared security forces.

MOSCOW The United States on Monday slapped the regional strongman leader of Russia's republic of Chechnya with sanctions over human rights violations. Ramzan Kadyrov, 43, has run Chechnya like his personal fiefdom, relying on his security forces to quash dissent. International human rights groups have accused Kadyrov and his lieutenants of abductions, torture and killings of their opponents. Chechen authorities have denied those accusations, and federal authorities said a probe found nothing to support the charges. The Kremlin has relied on Kadyrov to stabilize Chechnya after two separatist wars, providing generous federal subsidies and dismissing international criticism of his rule.

FILE - In this Friday, May 10, 2019 file photo, Chechnya's regional leader Ramzan Kadyrov speaks during a meeting in Grozny, Russia. (AP Photo/Musa Sadulayev, file)MOSCOW The regional strongman leader of Russia's province of Chechnya on Thursday blamed unidentified foreign spy agencies for the recent killing in Austria of a Chechen man who criticized him. Austrian police have detained two ethnic Chechen men on suspicion of involvement in the killing, which is being investigated as a possible political assassination. On Tuesday, a group of Chechens rallied outside the Russian Embassy in Vienna to protest the killing. German prosecutors last month charged a Russian man in the brazen daylight killing in Berlin of an ethnic Chechen from Georgia.

This undated photo provided by HBO Documentary Films shows a scene from "Welcome to Chechnya." In documentary film, the anonymous source has often been reduced to a shadowy, voice-distorted figure, or worse, a pixelated blur. (HBO Documentary Films via AP)Anonymous sources in documentaries have often been reduced to a shadowy, voice-distorted figure or worse, a pixelated blur. In the predominantly Muslim region in southern Russia ruled by strongman Ramzan Kadyrov, LGBTQ Chechens have been detained, tortured and killed. The face doubles were shot on a blue screen stage and converted into algorithms that, with machine learning, could digitally mask the subjects of the film.