US ‘will take part in Russia's version of Eurovision'
'On behalf of the American people, I want to congratulate the Russian people on Russia Day. The United States remains committed to supporting the Russian people as they continue to build on their aspirations for a brighter future,' Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, said in a statement.
'We also take this opportunity to reaffirm the United States's desire for constructive engagement with the Russian Federation to bring about a durable peace between Russia and Ukraine,' he added. 'It is our hope that peace will foster more mutually beneficial relations between our countries.'
As a sign of improving relations, there are reports in Russia that a performer from the United States would take part in the Intervision Song Contest, a Kremlin-backed alternative to the Eurovision Song Contest that will take place in Moscow in September. Russia will be represented by Shaman, a pop singer whose videos have drawn comparisons to Nazi propaganda.
Russia was banned from Eurovision in 2022 as western organisations cut ties with Moscow over the war. However, Putin signed a decree in February ordering Russian officials to revive the Intervision, a separate event that took place in eastern Europe during the Soviet era.
Although Russia participated in Eurovision up until 2021, the LGBT-friendly event faced increasing criticism in Moscow as Putin sought to depict his country as a bastion of 'traditional values'. Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, has said there will be 'no perversions' at the Intervision.
A Kremlin official has said that 20 'friendly countries,' including Belarus, Brazil, Cuba and India will take part. It is unclear who will represent the US. An Intervision organiser told Tass, a state news agency, that a competition would soon be held in the US to determine its contestant. The Times was unable to verify the report. Aside from Belarus, Serbia is the only other European country planning to take part, Moscow said.
It comes after a poll revealed this week how the attitudes of ordinary Russians towards Americans are changing. Only 40 per cent of Russians believe that US is the 'most hostile' country to Russia, compared to 76 per cent before Trump's election victory in November, according to the Levada Centre, an independent polling agency in Moscow.
The poll found that the most hostile countries to Russia are now considered to be Germany, Britain and Ukraine, with the US in fourth place, Levada said. It is the first time that America has not occupied the number one spot since polling began in 2005. In contrast, almost 90 per cent of Ukrainians now say they distrust Trump, according to another poll that was published in April by the New Europe Centre.
Sporting ties between Russia and America are also improving under Trump, who has often boasted of his 'great relationship' with Putin, a former KGB officer who has been in power for 25 years. After talks between Putin and Trump in March, the two leaders announced that Russian and US ice-hockey stars would play a series of friendly matches. The games would prove a boost to Russia, which was banned from most international sports events after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. No date has so far been given for the matches.
Rubio's comments were covered by Channel One, Russia's main television station, in a news programme dedicated to the national holiday, which also included a congratulatory message from a Russian policewoman in Melitopol, a Ukrainian city that is under the control of Moscow. 'Victory will be ours!' said a masked Russian national guard officer.
'After three years of silence, the United States has again congratulated Russians on Russia Day,' wrote Olga Skabeyeva, a Channel One TV presenter who has been sanctioned by the US for promoting Kremlin propaganda.
The broadcast of Rubio's comments followed days of deadly Russian drone and missile attacks on Ukrainian towns and cities. At least 14 people, including children, were injured in Russian strikes overnight on Kharkiv, Ukraine's second city, officials said.
Kim Jong-un, the North Korean dictator, also offered his congratulations to Moscow on Russia Day, pledging that Pyongyang would always 'stand with' Russia in what he described as its 'sacred war' in Ukraine. Congratulatory messages were also sent to Moscow by the autocratic leaders of Belarus, Iran, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan, among others.
Iryna Voichuk, a Ukrainian journalist, accused Washington of shaking Russia's 'bloodstained hand', while Anton Gerashchenko, a former adviser to the Ukrainian interior ministry, posted a vomit emoji next to Rubio's statement.
The Russia Day holiday was first celebrated in Russia in 1992 to commemorate the country's declaration of sovereignty after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Three years ago, Antony Blinken, Rubio's predecessor as US secretary of state, used the occasion to express support for Russians opposed to the Kremlin's crackdown on dissent.
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Telegraph
an hour ago
- Telegraph
Trump calls nuclear bluff of Russia's hawk-in-chief
Normally, when the US acts against Russia, Vladimir Putin is quick to respond in kind: sanction for sanction, travel ban for travel ban, expulsion for expulsion. 'Proportional reciprocation' and 'symmetrical response' are staples of the Kremlin lexicon, usually accompanied by howls of outrage, denouncing Washington's provocations. Yet since Donald Trump ordered two nuclear submarines to steam towards Russia on Friday – an unusually dramatic gesture for any US president and one that would typically signal a grave geopolitical crisis – Putin has been uncharacteristically silent. Were Putin to follow his own doctrines of reciprocity, Russian submarines would now be heading towards the United States and the world would be holding its breath. Instead, he has recognised the obvious: Mr Trump's move is more about theatre than altering the US nuclear posture. The president is playing a game all too familiar to the Russians. The Kremlin has been bandying about nuclear threats since even before Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, with none more loud than Dmitry Medvedev, Putin's clownish sidekick and chief social media warrior. This week, Mr Medvedev, who was Russia's president from 2008 to 2012 and prime minister from 2012 to 2020, called the latest US deadline for Moscow to accept ceasefire talks a 'step towards war', and warned Mr Trump that Russia possessed nuclear strike capabilities of last resort. It was this war of words that prompted Mr Trump to order nuclear submarines closer to Russia. In doing so, he has essentially called Russia's bluff and may well feel vindicated by the Kremlin's silence. The outrage instead came from pro-Kremlin military commentators in the Russian media, with one accusing Mr Trump of 'throwing a temper tantrum' while another dismissed the submarine deployment as 'meaningless blather'. But by swatting away Mr Medvedev's threats, the US president has given him a relevance he rarely enjoys – for all his mouthiness – either at home or abroad. Hailed by European optimists as a pro-Western reformer when he took over as president from Putin in 2008, Mr Medvedev styled himself as a tech-loving moderniser and defender of civil liberties In reality, he was never the champion of Russia's Western-oriented middle class that he pretended to be. He proved instead to be a mere placeholder while he helped Putin perform a constitutional sleight of hand that reset the clock on his presidency. Ordinary Russians likened the charade to Gogol's play The Government Inspector, in which a fraudster impersonates a powerful official only for the real inspector to appear in the final scene. Cynical though it was, most Russians accepted the ruse. Since Putin's return, Mr Medvedev has been sidelined, seeking relevance from the periphery by turning himself into an ever more bombastic caricature of his former self – one even Russians struggle to take seriously. Last year, The Insider, an anti-Kremlin investigative site, reported that Mr Medvedev's most 'unhinged' social media posts often appeared shortly after deliveries from his Tuscan vineyard arrived at his Moscow address. Rumours of Mr Medvedev's drinking have swirled for over a decade, growing louder as his fulminations against the 'bastards and degenerates' in Kyiv have intensified and footage emerged of him nodding off at a series of official events. Alcohol might explain part of his transformation from a Western-courting politician to someone who now denounces Western leaders as a 'pack of grunting pigs'. But it is more likely that he simply craves attention – and Mr Trump has just given it to him, even if the US president describes him as a 'failed' has-been. The real target of the submarine manoeuvre is almost certainly Putin himself – a man Mr Trump admires but has grown frustrated with because of his refusal to make concessions on Ukraine. Matters are coming to a head, with Mr Trump vowing to impose sanctions on Russia and tariffs on countries buying its energy unless Moscow agrees to a ceasefire by Aug 8. So far, Putin has remained unmoved, seemingly calculating that Washington will retreat from secondary tariffs, which would hurt Russia's energy-dependent economy but also carry significant diplomatic costs for Mr Trump. With time running out ahead of the real showdown, the submarine move should be seen as an attempt to ratchet up pressure on Putin. In that light, the Kremlin's silence looks less like a triumph for the US president than evidence that the Russian leader has not blinked – yet.
The Independent
2 hours ago
- The Independent
Donald Trump may finally have the measure of Putin
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Times
2 hours ago
- Times
Why did Trump move his nuclear deterrent? Not for strategic gain
President Trump announced on Friday that he had sent two nuclear submarines 'closer to Russia' in response to threatening rhetoric from the country's former president, Dmitry Medvedev. Whatever Trump's reason for the sabre-rattling deployment, strategic advantage is not one of them. Moving a pair of Ohio-class submarines equipped with nuclear missiles — 'boomers' in US military parlance, or 'bombers' in the UK — nearer to Russia would put them in shallower waters, making them easier to detect. And moving them anywhere quickly, which means making noise and disturbance in the water, would also increase their vulnerability. However, if Trump is referring to nuclear-powered attack submarines, rather than boomers, he can move them wherever he wants; it makes no difference to the nuclear relationship with Russia. America's boomers are far better off staying where they are, deep in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. They move very slowly and very quietly, staying underwater for 70 days or more without surfacing — a deadly game of silent deterrence they have played with Moscow for the past 60 years. They do not need to go any nearer to Russia to maintain that threat. Each Ohio boat carries missiles with a range of more than 7,000 miles, so they could reach Moscow, or anywhere else in Russia, from underneath either of the oceans they patrol. Indeed, they could sit in their Pacific base at Kitsap-Bangor in Washington State, or at King's Bay Georgia on the Atlantic coast, and still launch against any target within Russia. The real deterrent threat of the boomers is not what they can do — that dreadful destructive power has been well understood for many years — but their ability to remain elusive and undetectable while they do it. On any given day, the US would aim to have perhaps four or five of its 12 operational boomers on patrol across the Atlantic and Pacific. Each submarine carries up to 20 Trident II D5 ballistic missiles, and each missile can carry up to 12 independently targeted warheads, although some of these would undoubtedly be decoys. Every Ohio boat could deliver to any part of the northern hemisphere a mixture of 240 nuclear warheads and decoys against a range of targets. Every US president knows they have the power on any day to unleash about 1,000 nuclear warheads from just this one component of the total nuclear force. Rushing extra boomers out to sea as a political signal would be hugely disruptive to the careful preparation and maintenance schedules for rotating boats and crews that 'continuous at-sea deterrence' requires. It would be contemplated only in the most dire circumstances and would simply add more overkill to America's already huge capabilities. Russia is outmatched by the destructive power of America's boomers, but nonetheless maintains a more than adequate deterrent in the form of its own nuclear submarine force. Moscow has been phasing out its Soviet-era Delta design in favour of newer Borei-class boomers. At present Russia is thought to keep maybe three of its older Delta boats and seven of its eight Borei submarines available for launching nuclear missiles. Each Borei-class boat can launch 16 Bulava missiles, with up to six independent warheads apiece, each of which has a 6,000-mile range. Unlike the extravagant American undersea presence across two oceans, Russia is believed to keep only one or two bombers on 'continuous at-sea deterrence' duties and relies instead on the ability to put other boats to sea rapidly in a time of crisis, offering a pretty loud signal to western intelligence agencies if they ever did it. Nevertheless, both the US and Russia have more than enough nuclear power prowling slowly through the deepest oceans to threaten each other with ultimate destruction. It's the most stable part of the strategic nuclear balance, part of the 'triad' of nuclear deterrence: heavy missiles launched from silos deep underground; air-launched glide bombs and missiles loaded with nuclear warheads; and submarine-launched ballistic missiles systems like Trident and Bulava. The sites of the underground silos are all known and might feasibly be hit before launching their missiles in a 'bolt from the blue' attack. Aircraft, too, can be detected and attacked before they release their armaments, or even while still on the ground. But the submarine out at sea can remain undetected, providing a guaranteed retaliatory weapon for both sides. Even in a massive, all-out first strike on the homeland, the boomers would still be intact — as would their threat of second-strike nuclear retaliation. The only hope for an aggressor would be simultaneously to cut into the firing chain that authorised a boomer to launch — a huge gamble for any attacker to take. This continuous, silent, shadow war has provided ample material for novelists and analysts alike. Tom Clancy was an obsessive amateur and in 1984 produced his debut novel, The Hunt for Red October, which contained astonishingly accurate technical information about the whole business. The Pentagon was alarmed at his independent powers of deduction. The secretary of the navy wanted to know 'who the hell cleared it?' When the nuclear missiles carried on Russian submarines only had a range of 1,500 miles, there were regular stories of Soviet boomers cruising around Bermuda, about 600 miles from the east coast of the US. That was true enough. But Nato's supreme commander (Atlantic) once remarked that he wished Russia would put more of its boomers so close: 'In the first hour of hostilities, we take them out,' he said. Operating near the enemy coast is always dangerous. In 1986 K-219, a Yankee-class Russian boomer, suffered an onboard explosion northeast of Bermuda. The Russians could not recover it. The CIA also secretly had a go. But the submarine was lost, taking all its nuclear weapons to the bottom with it. That catastrophe was turned into a realistic novel as well. In the world of submarines, the boomers are behemoths. The Ohio class weighs almost 19,000 tons, the Borei 24,000, and its Soviet-era predecessors were even bigger. The simple fact remains that these vessels can only perform their deterrent role properly by keeping very quiet, a long way out to sea and deep beneath it. Michael Clarke is visiting professor in defence studies at King's College London and a former director of the Royal United Services Institute
