Russian State Duma speaker Vyacheslav Volodin says Vladimir Zhirinovsky is alive, contradicting a report in local media that the 75-year-old firebrand politician had died.
Russia's unprovoked invasion of Ukraine heads into its second month as fighting rages and Western allies unleashed another set of crippling sanctions on Moscow while promising more military support and aid to Kyiv.
Lyudmyla Denisova, Ukraine's ombudswoman, has accused Moscow of forcibly removing hundreds of thousands of civilians from obliterated Ukrainian cities to Russia to put pressure on Kyiv to surrender.
The European Union and the United States have struck a deal under which the bloc will receive at least 15 billion cubic meters of U.S. liquefied natural gas this year in an effort to wean itself off Russian gas imports.
U.S. authorities have accused three Russian intelligence officers of hacking U.S. nuclear companies and others for nearly six years, charging them and another man employed by the Russian Defense Ministry of computer conspiracy and other crimes.