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Added on the 04/12/2014 20:17:49 - Copyright : France 24 EN
Oil prices are plummeting, the Russian currency's nosediving, there's a recession coming... and yet Putin remains defiant. He's got good reason. The Russian president's riding the wave of record popularity. He's even nurtured a strong following among nationalists of various stripes in the west of Europe, including here in France. Given given the region's current fraught geopolitical context, can he afford such strident rhetoric?
President Vladimir Putin, who has ruled Russia as either President or Prime Minister for the past 16 years, addressed a Moscow conference hall packed with some 1,400 Russian & foreign journalists for his annual news conference. And when the leader voted for three consecutive years by Forbes Magazine the "World's Most Powerful Man" speaks, the whole world listens. After 16 years at the head of the country, how to explain Vladimir Putin’s popularity?
Will Moscow-backed insurgents march on Mariupol? The Ukranian port city is braced for an assault amid claims by the government in Kiev that 20 Russian tanks have been sent to separatists. The Kremlin denies any part in this, pointing instead to a weekend prisoner swap that was part of the recent Minsk ceasefire agreement. But is that deal dead in the water?
In The World This Week: A white police officer is cleared over the death of a black man for the second time in less than two weeks in the US, Germany mourns a young woman murdered after protecting two teenage girls who were being harassed, Russian President Putin is defiant in his end of year address, Syria's Bashar al-Assad speaks to magazine Paris Match, and a nativity scene in Nantes is at the heart of the latest controversy concerning the problematic relationship between France and religion.
Vladimir Putin has announced the first step on the formal road to the annexation of Crimea. This less than 24 hours after the West slapped sanctions on Kremlin insiders. What's next for the fast-moving Russian president? Is he improvising...or does he have a plan?
Thousands of traumatised Syrians leave the rebel enclave of Aleppo as the UN Security Council votes to deploy observers to the battered city to monitor the evacuations.
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