By Vladimir Soldatkin MOSCOW (Reuters) -Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday ordered his top officials to draft proposals for a possible test of nuclear weapons, something Moscow has not done since the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has given state awards to the developers of the Burevestnik cruise missile and the Poseidon underwater torpedo, the latest signal in what analysts have cast as efforts by the Kremlin to discourage the West from supporting Ukraine.

Officials in Washington say the U.S. has identified key targets inside Venezuela that are tied to drug trafficking operations.

Putin announced successful Poseidon nuclear drone testing as President Donald Trump urged Russia to end the Ukraine war instead of testing missiles on Monday.

The Trump administration has lifted sanctions on a kleptocratic ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who was removed this month as president of the Serb territory within Bosnia and Herzegovina for chipping away at the US-brokered peace deal that ended bloody ethnic violence in the Balkans in the 1990s.

MOSCOW (Reuters) -Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday ordered the Russian cabinet to draw up by December 1 a road map for the extraction of rare earth minerals which are used in smartphones, electric vehicles and weapons systems.

Rebels in Sudan claimed to have shot down a Russian-made transport plane as it flew over territory under their control. The IL-76 plane belonged to Sudan's Airforce and crashed near the town of Babanusa after coming under fire from the paramilitary group the Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

Her name was Kira. Invited to speak as a “hero’s child,” she broke from the carefully prepared script. In front of the cameras, she told Putin that her uncle, wounded in the arm, had been sent back to the front without proper treatment.