Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has told Russian President Vladimir Putin that the international community should give Israel a "strong and deterrent lesson" for its actions against the Palestinians, according to reports this week.

At least nine people, mostly children, were killed after a lone teenage gunman opened fire at a school in the Russian city of Kazan, regional officials said, according to The Moscow Times. President Vladimir Putin has ordered an "urgent" tightening of gun controls in the wake of the shooting, which took place on the first day back to school after a 10-day holiday.

UKRAINE has warned Russia still has about 100,000 troops stationed near its border with Ukraine and Crimea despite Russian President Vladimir Putin's apparent attempts to de-escalate tensions in the region.

Russian President Vladimir Putin last week poked the nest of anxieties over the use of artificial intelligence to gain power in a video address to students at 16,000 selected schools. "Artificial intelligence is the future, not only for Russia but for all humankind," he said. "Whoever becomes the leader in this sphere will become the ruler of the world."

Russia's Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine was as "reliable as a Kalashnikov assault rifle", Russian president Vladimir Putin said on Thursday, in a video-conference with deputy prime minister Tatyana Golikova. The European Medicines Agency is still studying Sputnik V safety prior to EU-wide approval. Hungary has started to use it. But Germany and the Czech Republic have rowed back on previous enthusiasm to give the jab to their nationals.

VLADIMIR Putin has been told to ignore the European Union completely in favour of direct talks with individual member states by a former diplomat who dismissed the bloc as "weak".