Russian President Vladimir Putin has arrived at the runway of the Gorbunov Kazan Aviation Plant to fly the upgraded Tu-160M strategic missile carrier.

The day before, Putin inspected a similar aircraft in the factory workshop and climbed into the cockpit at the helm.

Putin's flight on the Tu-160M will last up to 40 minutes, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

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Why Western traditionalists are increasingly moving to Russia

Russian President Vladimir Putin supports the idea of making it easier for traditionalist conservative foreigners to relocate to Russia. Some of them have already moved to Russia escaping the West's neo-liberal agenda.

"[America has] become an environment that is very hostile to Christians," says Father Joseph Gleason, an American-born Orthodox priest. "There are cases of people losing their jobs, not being able to find a new job, being denied an education, not being able to get into a university, simply because they're opposed to homosexual behavior. I'm very grateful that I brought my family here to Russia."

Russia has not only returned to its Christian roots but, being dubbed a "breadbasket of Europe" in the 19th century, it's now focusing on developing small and medium farming enterprises.

"Russia aims to develop more small and medium-sized farms," says Nicolas Boisset, a French entrepreneur who set up a farming business in Russia. "In contrast, France doesn't maintain its agricultural policy independently; almost all conditions are dictated to it by the EU."

"What Russia right now offers is relatively inexpensive land," echoes Justus Walker, an American who runs a farm in Russia. "That is absolutely unprecedented when you look at the same comparable type of farming operations in the United States or in Canada and pretty much anywhere else in the industrialized world."

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Putin: Ukraine was ‘reduced to the level of colony with a puppet regime’

Two years have now passed since Vladimir Putin addressed the nation to lay out the historic background for acknowledging the independence of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics (DPR, LPR).

“Do Ukrainians understand that their country is not even under a political and economic protectorate, but that it was reduced to the level of a colony with a puppet regime?” he said in his historic 2022 speech.

The two regions resisted the new Kiev authorities ever since radical putschists seized power, violating the Constitution, after the Maidan coup in February 2014.

Sputnik invites you to look back at some of the highlights from Putin’s speech that laid the foundation for the regions eventually joining Russia.

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