Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Saturday the Kremlin should play a leading role in Russian rap music and in youth culture, rather than trying to shut it down.

RUSSIA has called for showdown talks between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump amid simmering tensions between Moscow and Washington.

Vladimir Putin's spokesman reiterates day after Maria Butina's guilty plea that Kremlin considers all charges against her "absolutely groundless"

There will be no meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin while Russia still holds Ukrainian ships and sailors seized near Crimea, U.S. national security adviser John Bolton said on Thursday.

MEPs in Strasbourg on Wednesday urged Russian president Vladimir Putin to free Ukrainian prisoners. One of them, Oleg Sentsov, received an EU human rights prize in absentia there the same day. Sentsov, a Ukrainian film maker from Crimea, was jailed on terrorism charges in a show trial in 2014. Putin should also free 23 Ukrainian sailors recently captured by the Russian navy, who face six years in prison, MEPs said.

President Vladimir Putin said on Tuesday it was unclear to him why a Russian woman, Maria Butina, had been detained in the United States and accused of being a Russian agent because his intelligence chiefs had told him they knew nothing about her.

On Monday, Vladimir Putin said he’d given Donald Trump a note with suggestions on disarmament. This might be the first move in extending an important agreement