Alexei Navalny

Russian President Vladimir Putin on April 5 signed a law allowing him to potentially hold onto power until 2036, a move that formalizes constitutional changes endorsed in a vote last year.

Russia called its U.S. ambassador back to Moscow for consultations on March 17 after Joe Biden described Vladimir Putin as a "killer" who would "pay a price" for election meddling, prompting the first major diplomatic crisis for the new American president.

Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny, who is serving a two-and-half-year jail term in a penal colony outside Moscow, said on March 15 he was locked up in a "real concentration camp".

Russian police on March 13 arrested around 200 opposition politicians and municipal deputies at a Moscow conference as authorities tighten the screws on Kremlin critics ahead of parliamentary elections.

Journalists from the Belarusian opposition news portal Nexta have accused long-time leader Alexander Lukashenko of large-scale corruption in a online video with millions of views.

Almost 2 million people had already watched the video of the investigation titled "Lukashenko: A gold mine," one day after it was posted to YouTube by a group of journalists exiled in Poland.

Russia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs said late on Tuesday that new sanctions imposed by the United States were evidence of a "hostile anti-Russian lunge" and said it would retaliate to what it described as another blow to U.S.-Russia ties.

The United States on March 2 imposed sanctions on senior Russian officials in a coordinated action with the European Union as U.S. intelligence concluded that Moscow orchestrated the near fatal poisoning of jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny.

Ambassadors of 27 European Union nations have agreed further anti-Russian sanctions over the situation around Russian blogger Alexey Navalny, a source in one of the delegations told TASS on Monday.

New EU sanctions against Russia due to the situation around Alexey Navalny will be officially approved next week, President of the European Council Charles Michel said at a press conference following the first day of the EU online summit.

Biden and his foreign policy team are known quantities in Moscow, and their calls to be tougher on Russia are taken seriously there. In any case, the Kremlin sees an anti-Russian tinge to almost all the key points of the new US administration's agenda.

When Biden pledges to restore ties with Europe, the Kremlin assumes this will be done by othering Russia.