Politics

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Joe Biden on Monday issued an executive order directing the closure of U.S. government agencies and executive departments for Jan. 9 to show respect for former President Jimmy Carter who died on Sunday at age 100.

(Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Washington; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)

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By Bo Erickson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. President-elect Donald Trump on Monday threw his support behind House Speaker Mike Johnson, who will stand for reelection to the top job this week with a slim Republican majority in the House of Representatives.

“Speaker Mike Johnson is a good, hard working, religious man. He will do the right thing, and we will continue to WIN. Mike has my Complete & Total Endorsement. MAGA!!!” Trump said in a post on Truth Social.

The House is scheduled to elect a speaker on Friday following the swearing-in of the new Congress. The endorsement from Trump is essential to Johnson’s hopes of maintaining the leadership position he assumed in October 2023.

The job puts him in a close working relationship with Trump, who returns to the White House on Jan. 20.

Thirty-four Republicans voted against Johnson’s stopgap funding bill in December, raising questions on whether some of them would support Johnson’s next bid for the speakership because they argued the legislation favored Democrats.

Republicans hold a 219-215 majority in the House, meaning the vote will likely be dependent on Republicans maintaining their unity.

Representative Victoria Spartz, a Republican, said on Fox News on Monday that she remained uncommitted, saying Johnson was afraid to bring up votes on fiscal legislation that could hamper Trump’s agenda.

“I can give him a chance, but I would like to hear from him how he’s going to be delivering this agenda,” Spartz said. She spoke before Trump posted his endorsement on social media.

Moderate New York Republican Representative Mike Lawler on Sunday told ABC-TV’s “This Week” program: “The fact is that these folks are playing with fire, and if they think they’re somehow going to get a more conservative speaker (than Johnson) they’re kidding themselves.”

Some lawmakers are urging the creation of a commission to examine ways to bring down escalating U.S. budget deficits and a national debt that has topped $36 trillion, by possibly trimming spending on government-run retirement and healthcare programs.

Democrats oppose reducing those programs’ benefits and have called for shoring up their fiscal condition largely through higher taxes on the wealthy.

Given Republicans’ narrow majority, if as few as two were to vote for someone other than Johnson, it could doom his bid to continue as speaker.

Prior to Trump’s endorsement, Republican Representative Thomas Massie on Monday reiterated his intention to oppose Johnson’s election. He and other right-wing Republicans have pushed for deep domestic spending cuts.

No other Republican has publicly challenged Johnson for the leadership position but lawmakers have wide latitude to cast votes for whoever they want, including citizens who are not members of the House.

The chamber went three weeks without a speaker in 2023 after a small group of Republicans voted to oust then-Speaker Kevin McCarthy.

If Johnson — or another Republican — is unable to coalesce a majority of support, the chamber could be without a speaker in time for the official certification of Trump’s victory on Jan. 6, sparking an uncertain path forward as it is difficult for the House to do business without a speaker.

Whoever ultimately does obtain the speaker’s gavel likely will have to temporarily govern with even a tighter majority after Trump’s Jan. 20 inauguration, as he has picked two House Republicans to join his administration.

(Reporting by Doina Chiacu, Bo Erickson; Editing by Howard Goller, Richard Cowan and Alistair Bell)

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By Bo Erickson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -January brings several consequential dates for the U.S. Congress as Republicans consolidate power as a result of last November’s elections with full control of the Senate, House of Representatives and White House. 

JAN. 3:

The 119th Congress convenes with new members being sworn in. Republicans hold a narrow majority of 219-215 in the House. The Senate majority is 53-47, well below the 60-vote threshold needed to advance most legislation. 

Republican Senator John Thune already has been selected for the top job of Senate majority leader, but all eyes will be on the lower chamber as the House votes for speaker.

Speaker Mike Johnson is running to stay in his position and is backed by President-elect Donald Trump. However, if as few as two Republicans vote against Johnson, his speakership could be in jeopardy because a majority of the chamber is needed to win.

Democrats will nominate Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries to challenge Johnson for the speakership but are expected to fall a few votes short.

The party with the majority — no matter how slim — is always expected to win the speaker’s post.

JAN. 6:

Exactly four years after an angry mob of Trump supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol trying to stop the congressional certification of President Joe Biden’s 2020 victory, Congress will once again convene to certify Trump’s 2024 win during a joint session of Congress. Vice President Kamala Harris, who Trump defeated in the election, will preside over the Electoral College count in her dual capacity as Senate president.

Hostility like the 2021 Capitol riot is not expected, yet Congress has since then passed reforms to the certification process to prevent outside disruptions. Trump has vowed to pardon some of the Jan. 6 defendants when he takes office.

JAN. 7-9: 

President Joe Biden has declared Jan. 9 a national day of mourning and the official state funeral for former President Jimmy Carter, who died on Dec. 29 at the age of 100. Congressional leaders announced the coffin bearing Carter’s remains will lie in state in the Capitol Rotunda from Jan. 7 to Jan. 9 in the run-up to the state funeral. 

JAN. 20: 

Trump will be sworn in on the West Front steps of the Capitol and takes office as the 47th president, only the second president to be reelected after leaving office. Trump is expected to announce dozens of executive actions on his first day in office from immigration changes to energy decisions. 

Once Trump is inaugurated, he will be able to formally nominate his Cabinet picks and some Senate confirmation votes could be held promptly.

(Reporting by Bo Erickson; editing by Richard Cowan and David Gregorio)

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“Somebody texted my wife and told her about it — that’s when I found out,” Jones said Monday, a day after the 39th president died at the age of 100, surrounded by family in the one-story house he and his late wife, Rosalynn, built before he launched his first political campaign more than 60 years ago.

Indeed, the Carters put this town of fewer than 700 people — not much bigger than when Carter was born Oct. 1, 1924 — on the world stage. His remarkable rise to the White House, landslide defeat in 1980 and rehabilitation thereafter as a freelance diplomat and global humanitarian were reflected Monday in tributes from Plains’ residents and around the world.

Not far from where Jones sat on his front porch, black ribbons hung alongside U.S. flags flying in front of the souvenir shops and cafes that make up the nucleus of Plains’ main street, which spans just a few blocks from Carter’s 1976 presidential campaign headquarters — the old train depot — to where the family once operated its peanut warehouses. TV cameras and news trucks lined the street that runs in front of the old gas station where the former president’s late brother, Billy Carter, once would hold court with national journalists who covered his older brother.

Across the railroad tracks, Philip Kurland stood in his political memorabilia shop, which he opened years after the Carters returned from Washington, and recalled the former president not as a famous figure but an approachable neighbor who once prayed with him when he was sick.

“We’re in a state of denial,” he said. “I was telling people: Let’s start planning for his 101st birthday.”

At Maranatha Baptist Church, where the Carters long taught Sunday school, a handful of residents trickled in for a silent vigil Monday evening. A piano played softly as people lit candles at the altar, with lighted Christmas trees standing on either side.

In Washington, plans continued for the state rites that will affirm Carter’s global status. President Joe Biden confirmed that Jan. 9, 2025, will be a day of national mourning, with federal offices closed for Carter’s state funeral at the National Cathedral. Biden, a longtime Carter friend and political ally, will deliver a eulogy for his fellow Democrat. Congressional leaders have confirmed to the Carter family that the former president will lie in state from Jan. 7 to Jan. 9, when his remains will be transported to the cathedral for the state funeral.

In New York, the 15 members of the U.N. Security Council stood in silent tribute to the Nobel Peace Prize winner. U.S. deputy ambassador Dorothy Shea read a statement from the U.N.’s most powerful body at the start of an emergency meeting on Yemen.

“President Carter was a peacemaker who worked tirelessly and effectively in support of conflict mediation, the furtherance of human rights and the strengthening of democracy, both while he was in office and during his many years of service thereafter,” the Security Council statement said.

China’s deputy U.N. ambassador, Geng Shuang, remembered Carter as “a driving force” in establishing relations between Beijing and Washington. “We highly commend his achievements,” Geng said, stating that Carter “made great contribution over the years to … cooperation between the two countries.”

Prominent Egyptian rights defender Hossam Bahgat, a fierce critic of the government of President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi’s government, said Carter was among the first to warn of “Israeli apartheid” against Palestinians — a position that put Carter at odds with much of the U.S. foreign policy establishment.

“Such a profile of courage,” Bahgat wrote on Facebook. “He warned of Israeli apartheid as early as 2007. He stood by his principles and moral standards because he understood his mission and stayed true to his beliefs without seeking to placate donors or please hedge-funder packed boards.”

Back in Georgia, neighbors of the Carter Center in Atlanta congregated near the grounds where Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter would redefine what a post-presidency can be. The Carters established the Carter Center in 1982 and for four decades oversaw diplomatic missions, election monitoring and public health programs with operations that spanned five continents.

“I really appreciate him as an ex-president, what he’s done since” leaving office, said Richard Hopkins, an Atlanta resident.

Hopkins said Carter’s public service went beyond elected office. A Korean War veteran, Hopkins noted that Carter, a U.S. Naval Academy graduate, was a submarine officer after World War II. He also highlighted the Carters’ work with Habitat for Humanity, which builds houses for low-income people. The Carters’ Habitat involvement came in addition to their Carter Center work; they headlined their own annual builds into their early 90s.

Habitat for Humanity CEO Jonathan Reckford said the Carters were integral to Habitat’s growth.

“Most people think President Carter started and ran Habitat, which is not actually true,” he said Monday. “But what is true is Habitat was founded in 1976, and it was a tiny organization in 1984 when President and Mrs. Carter famously wrote a bus up from south Georgia to spend a week sleeping in a church basement and rehabbing a tenement building on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. That’s when the world found out about Habitat.”

Jason Carter, the former president’s grandson who now chairs the Carter Center’s governing board, said in a recent interview that the former president formed that lifelong commitment to service because of Plains.

“My grandfather could go to a village anywhere in the world,” the younger Carter said, and help people without patronizing them. “Because he was from a village like that himself.”

Some residents like Jones are worried about their small town now that the Carters are gone.

“Interest in Plains will dwindle,” he predicted.

Jill Stuckey, a longtime Carter friend who oversees the Jimmy Carter National Historical Park for the National Park Service, is more optimistic. She expressed personal sadness but commended the Carters for ensuring a lasting impact in Plains, just as they have globally through the Carter Center.

“Since the moment Rosalynn passed, he wanted to be with her. So knowing that he’s finally reunited with Rosalynn is a wonderful thing. But those of us who selfishly wanted to keep him here forever, I’m in that camp,” Stuckey said.

But the Carters, she emphasized, planned long ago to be buried in the same town where they were born, married and spent most of their lives. Rosalynn Carter already is buried in a plot visible from the front porch of the family home. The house and gravesite eventually will be added to the National Park.

Said Stuckey: “I think they’ve kind of set us up for success.”

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PLAINS, Ga. (AP) — Jimmy Carter already had drawn months of media scrutiny as a devout Southern Baptist running for president. Then the 1976 Democratic nominee brought up sex and sin as he explained his religious faith to Playboy magazine.

Carter was not misquoted. But he was certainly misunderstood, as his thoughts in the wide-ranging interview were reduced in the popular imagination to utterances about “lust” and “adultery.”

Nearly a half-century later, as Carter was receiving hospice care in the same south Georgia home where he once spoke with Playboy journalists, his interviewer Robert Scheer still believed Carter was treated unfairly. He recalled the former president as a “real” and “serious” figure whose intent was smothered by the intensity of a campaign’s closing stretch.

Carter died Sunday at age 100.

“Jimmy Carter was a thoughtful guy,” Scheer told The Associated Press. “But that got lost here. I’ve never seen a story like it. It was worldwide. … It just never went away.”

Political disaster ensued. Rosalynn Carter was suddenly being asked whether she trusted her husband. The fallout, in Carter’s words, “nearly cost me the election.”

Carter spent five-plus hours with Playboy across several months — “more time with you than with Time, Newsweek and all the others combined,” he told Scheer and Playboy editor Barry Golson.

The resulting Q&A spanned 12,000 words, and Scheer added thousands more in an accompanying story. Carter discussed military and foreign policy, racism and civil rights, political journalism and his reputation as a “vague” candidate.

“They weren’t interested in sensationalized stuff,” Scheer said of Playboy.

Hugh Hefner’s publication reached an estimated 20 million-plus readers each month with its pictorials of nude women. But the magazine chronicled American culture as well, with its branded “Playboy Interview” featuring such power players as the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., John Lennon, Malcom X and leading newsman Walter Cronkite.

Carter, unafraid of nuance, proved he belonged among them, Scheer said.

Carter’s most-remembered comments came at the end of their final session. Standing outside Carter’s front door, Golson pressed Carter on whether his piety would make him a “rigid, unbending president” unable to represent all Americans.

The Baptist deacon responded with an 823-word soliloquy on human imperfection, pride and God’s forgiveness. He said he believed in “absolute and total separation of church and state” and explained his faith as rooted in humility, not judgment of others.

Quoting Matthew 5:27-28, Carter explained that Jesus Christ considered an offending thought equivalent to consummated adultery, and by that standard, he was in no position to judge a man who “shacks up” and “screws lots of women,” because he had “looked on many women with lust” and, thus, “committed adultery many times in my heart.”

Scheer called it a “sensible statement,” reflecting Carter’s Baptist tradition: “He was saying, ‘Look, I’m not going to be some fanatic. … I’m not this perfect guy.’”

Playboy realized Carter provided explosive material — and not just about sex. Citing President Lyndon Johnson’s handling of Vietnam, Carter included the last Democratic president alongside disgraced Republican Richard Nixon as guilty of “lying, cheating and distorting the truth.”

The magazine decided to send the full Q&A text to about 1,000 media outlets in late September, before the usual October publication date for the November edition.

The idea, Scheer explained, was to allow time for fair coverage rather than drop bombshells days before the election.

Headline writers, satirists and late-night television pounced anyway, labeling it Carter’s “lust in my heart” interview. “Saturday Night Live,” then a fledgling NBC sketch comedy show, had a field day. One political cartoonist depicted Carter lusting after the Statue of Liberty.

He lamented to NPR in 1993 that the Playboy interview morphed into “the No. 1 story of the entire 1976 campaign.”

“I was explaining Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount,” Carter wrote wistfully in a 2015 memoir.

Carter’s faith had endeared him to many fellow white evangelicals and cultural conservatives. That made him a difficult foil for Republicans, who wanted to cast Democrats as out of step with most of America. The flip side, Scheer noted, was that many young voters and urban liberals — key Democratic constituencies — “wondered if he was this Southern square.”

“Hamilton Jordan (Carter’s campaign manager) had always called Carter’s faith ‘the weirdo factor,’” said Amber Roessner, a University of Tennessee media historian who has written extensively on Carter. “Talking to Playboy was their way to prove he wasn’t some kind of prude.”

Scheer, who was with Carter as part of his traveling press corps, said Playboy’s early text release sparked a frenzy.

“Reporters were scrambling, asking me, ’Bob, what is this?” he recalled.

The press traveling with Carter focused initially on Carter’s criticism of Johnson, who died in 1973. It was a juicy detail because Carter was headed Texas to campaign with LBJ’s widow.

Carter initially told reporters his criticisms of LBJ were taken out of context. Scheer “ran back to the plane to get the tapes,” and effectively caught the nominee violating his pledge never to make a “misleading statement.”

Lady Bird Johnson skipped Carter’s Texas events, Scheer said. Carter apologized to her by telephone.

When his commentary on adultery ballooned, Carter insisted the exchange had been off-the-record, throwaway banter as Scheer and Golson prepared to leave.

“He was still wearing the mic!” Scheer told AP.

The way the story morphed “ended up making Carter seem like a creep,” Roessner said.

Rosalynn Carter fashioned a pat response: “Jimmy talks too much, but at least people know he’s honest and doesn’t mind answering questions.” And, no, she never worried about his fidelity.

“The only lust I worried about was that of the press,” she wrote in 1984, recounting how her discipline finally cracked when a reporter asked whether she ever committed adultery.

“If I had,” she replied, “I wouldn’t tell you.”

President Gerald Ford, who had been gaining on Carter but still trailed badly, leveraged the story. The Republican president was an Episcopalian, soft-spoken about religion, but he invited leading evangelical pastors to the White House the day after the interview’s release, including the Rev. W.S. Criswell of Dallas First Baptist Church.

Criswell later declared from his pulpit that he had asked Ford: “Mr. President, if Playboy magazine were to ask you for an interview, what would you do?” Ford’s reply, according to Criswell: “I was asked by Playboy magazine for an interview — and I declined with an emphatic ‘No’!”

Thousands of his parishioners roared.

The Rev. Billy Graham, then the nation’s top evangelist, and the Rev. Jerry Falwell, the rising leader of the so-called Religious Right, also blitzed Carter. National media, including The AP, highlighted criticism from Christian pastors from around the country.

Roessner, the daughter of a Protestant pastor, said Carter’s Playboy comments were clumsy, “but if anyone should have understood the context … it should have been the ministers.”

She recalled Carter’s resentment during a 2014 interview she conducted with him. Decades of global humanitarian work had by that time afforded the former president a profile above politics, yet “almost 40 years later, it was clearly something he held on to,” she said. He was “still incredibly frustrated by what he felt was unfair coverage and response.”

The 1976 campaign was the first after Richard Nixon’s resignation, driven by reporting from The Washington Post, and many journalists were demonstrating a new level of distrust of politicians, especially one Scheer described as “wearing his religion on his sleeve.”

Those same news organizations largely ignored what the soon-to-be president said about them, Roessner noted.

“The traveling press have zero interest in any issue unless it’s a matter of making a mistake,” Carter told Playboy. “There’s nobody in the back of this plane who would ask an issue question unless he thought he could trick me into some crazy statement.”

Scheer, at least, asked plenty of policy questions, and, looking back, he pointed to Carter’s narrow victory just weeks later.

“Whatever they said, I think it did exactly what they wanted to accomplish,” Scheer said. “That doesn’t mean they weren’t nervous.”

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This story was first published April 16, 2023, and has been updated with news of Carter’s death.

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By Andrew Hay

(Reuters) – Memorial services for former U.S. President Jimmy Carter are expected to take place over several days in Georgia and Washington, D.C., after he died on Sunday at the age of 100. Here is what we know about funeral plans. 

WHEN IS THE FUNERAL?

Carter’s state funeral, a national tribute traditionally reserved for heads of state, will take place over seven to 10 days. It starts this week with ceremonies in Carter’s home state of Georgia.

MAJOR MOMENTS 

A motorcade will take Carter from his hometown of Plains, Georgia, to Atlanta, where he will lie in repose on Saturday and Sunday at the Carter Presidential Center, the New York Times reported. 

His body will then be flown to Washington on Jan. 6 where it will lie in state in the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol. George H.W. Bush was the last U.S. president to lie there, a tradition dating back to Abraham Lincoln.

A funeral service will be held at the Washington National Cathedral on Jan. 9.

President Joe Biden last year said Carter asked him to deliver the eulogy at the service.     

Afterwards, Carter will be buried in a private ceremony in his hometown of Plains, the Carter Center said on Sunday.

PUBLIC OBSERVANCES

Biden declared a national day of mourning on Jan. 9. He ordered U.S. flags to be flown at half-staff for 30 days at military posts and on federal buildings.

Rather than flowers, Carter’s family asked for donations to his namesake Atlanta-based center to help its work in global health, peace, and human rights.

(Reporting By Andrew Hay; Editing by David Gregorio)

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WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden said Monday that the United States will send nearly $2.5 billion more in weapons to Ukraine as his administration works quickly to spend all the money it has available to help Kyiv fight off Russia before President-elect Donald Trump takes office.

The package includes $1.25 billion in presidential drawdown authority, which allows the military to pull existing stock from its shelves and gets weapons to the battlefield faster. It also has $1.22 billion in longer-term weapons packages to be put on contract through the separate Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, or USAI.

Biden said all longer-term USAI funds have now been spent and that he seeks to fully use all the remaining drawdown money before leaving office.

“I’ve directed my administration to continue surging as much assistance to Ukraine as quickly as possible,” Biden said in a statement. “At my direction, the United States will continue to work relentlessly to strengthen Ukraine’s position in this war over the remainder of my time in office.”

In addition to the weapons support, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen announced Monday that the U.S. is also providing $3.4 billion in economic assistance to Ukraine to help pay for critical government services during its ongoing fight against Russia. The money will pay salaries for civilian government and school employees, healthcare workers and first responders.

The new military aid comes as Russia has launched a barrage of attacks against Ukraine’s power facilities in recent days, although Ukraine has said it intercepted a significant number of the missiles and drones. Russian and Ukrainian forces are also still in a bitter battle around the Russian border region of Kursk, where Moscow has sent thousands of North Korean troops to help reclaim territory taken by Ukraine.

The Biden administration is pushing to get weapons into Ukraine to give Kyiv the strongest negotiating position possible before Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20. Trump has talked about getting some type of negotiated settlement between Ukraine and Russia and has praised Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Many U.S. and European leaders are concerned that Trump’s talk of a settlement might result in a poor deal for Ukraine, and they worry that he won’t provide Ukraine with all the weapons funding approved by Congress.

The weapons systems being pulled from existing stockpiles through this latest weapons package include counter-unmanned aerial systems munitions, air defense munitions, ammunition for High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS), 155mm and 105mm artillery ammunition, air-to-ground munitions, anti-armor systems, tube-launched missiles, fragmentation grenades, and other items and spare parts.

Including Monday’s announcement, the U.S. has provided more than $65 billion in security assistance to Ukraine since Russia invaded its neighbor in February 2022.

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WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump is endorsing House Speaker Mike Johnson as he prepares to fight to keep his role leading Republicans in Congress.

Trump said Monday in a post on his social media network that Johnson “is a good, hard working, religious man” and said the Louisiana Republican “will do the right thing, and we will continue to WIN.”

“Mike has my Complete & Total Endorsement,” Trump wrote.

Johnson’s continued leadership seemed in jeopardy after a fight over a federal funding plan put the government at risk for a pre-Christmas shutdown. Though a deal was reached, the dispute showed the limits of Johnson’s influence and exposed cracks in his party’s support.

The speaker’s first two funding plans collapsed as Trump, who does not take the oath of office until Jan. 20, interceded with calls to suspend or lift the government debt ceiling.

Johnson, who has worked hard to stay close to Trump, convinced the president-elect that he would meet his demands to raise the debt limit in 2025.

Trump had remained quiet about Johnson’s fate before a Jan. 3 leadership vote for over a week, even as some Republicans have said they would not support Johnson for the role.

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(Reuters) – A state funeral for Jimmy Carter, the former U.S. president who died on Sunday at the age of 100, will be held at the Washington National Cathedral on Jan. 9, the New York Times said.

U.S. President Joe Biden has directed that Jan. 9 be a national day of mourning for Carter throughout the U.S. 

Biden will eulogize Carter at the state funeral following eight days of ceremonies in Georgia and in Washington, the Times reported.

Carter, a Democrat, became president in January 1977 after defeating incumbent Republican President Gerald Ford in the 1976 election. His one-term presidency was marked by the 1978 Camp David accords between Israel and Egypt, bringing some stability to the Middle East. 

He spent his long post-presidential career devoted to humanitarian work, for which he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. World leaders and former U.S. presidents have paid tribute to a man they praised as compassionate, humble and committed to peace in the Middle East. 

A motorcade will take Carter from his hometown of Plains, Georgia, to Atlanta, where he will lie in repose on Saturday and Sunday at the Carter Presidential Center, the Times reported. He will then be flown to Washington on Jan. 6 to lie in state at the U.S. Capitol, the Times reported. After the cathedral service, Carter will be brought back to Georgia for burial.

(Reporting by Jonathan Allen in New York; Editing by Howard Goller)

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In 2024, President Vladimir Putin further cemented his grip on power and sought to counter Russia’s isolation from the West over the war in Ukraine. But he faced continuing challenges, with a deadly attack by gunmen in Moscow and an incursion by Kyiv’s troops on his territory.

As Russia’s nearly 3-year-old war in Ukraine enters a new, potentially pivotal phase amid a new U.S. administration and its uncertain support for Kyiv, here’s a look back at how the year unfolded for Putin:

Putin ran for a fifth term in office with his top opponents either jailed or exiled abroad. But in a rare show of defiance, thousands of Russians queued in the January cold to sign petitions for an unlikely challenger. Boris Nadezhdin, a 60-year-old legislator and war critic, got the 100,000 signatures needed to put him on the ballot, but election authorities eventually barred him from running. Still, the support he received reflected anti-war sentiment and public longing for political competition in an embarrassment for Putin.

On Feb. 16, Putin’s longtime foe Alexei Navalny died in an arctic prison colony while serving a 19-year sentence on charges widely seen as politically motivated. The news of his death at age 47 shocked the world and robbed the opposition of its most charismatic leader. No exact cause of death was given, and his family and allies blamed the Kremlin, which denied involvement. Tens of thousands of mourners attended his Moscow funeral two weeks later in a show of defiance.

On March 17, Putin secured his expected election triumph, which will keep him in office until 2030, following the harshest crackdown on dissent since Soviet times. Five days later, gunmen stormed a concert hall on Moscow’s outskirts, killing over 140 people and setting the venue ablaze. An affiliate of the Islamic State group claimed responsibility, although the Kremlin, without evidence, tried to blame Ukraine for the deadliest attack on Russian soil in almost two decades. The assault stunned the capital and rekindled memories of other attacks in the early years of Putin’s presidency.

Putin made a two-day visit to North Korea in June — his first in 24 years — as the countries deepened their ties in the face of intensifying confrontations with Washington. The pact signed by Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un envisions mutual military assistance if either country is attacked. The new agreement marked their strongest link since the end of the Cold War, adding to concerns in Washington and Seoul.

Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, arrested in March 2023 and accused of espionage, was convicted and sentenced to 16 years in prison in a swift trial. His employers and the U.S. government denounced the process as a sham and rejected the charges as fabricated. Without presenting evidence, authorities claimed he was gathering secret information for the U.S. Gershkovich, the American-born son of Soviet immigrants, was the first Western reporter arrested on espionage charges in post-Soviet Russia, in a chilling signal to international journalists.

On Aug. 1, Washington and Moscow completed the biggest East-West prisoner swap in post-Soviet history. Those released included Gershkovich and fellow American Paul Whelan, along with prominent Russian dissidents like Vladimir Kara-Murza and Ilya Yashin. The multinational deal freed two dozen people — including Vadim Krasikov, serving a life sentence in Germany for killing a former Chechen militant in Berlin.

Also in August, Ukraine launched a surprise incursion into Russia’s Kursk region in the largest cross-border raid by Kyiv’s forces. It exposed Russia’s vulnerabilities and dealt an embarrassing blow to the Kremlin, with tens of thousands of civilians fleeing the region. With the bulk of the Russian army engaged in eastern Ukraine, few troops were left to protect the Kursk region. Russia forces have since regained control over part of the territory but have so far failed to completely dislodge Kyiv’s troops.

Putin traveled to regional ally Mongolia in September in a move widely seen as an attempt to counter Western efforts to isolate him over the Ukraine war. Mongolia was among the countries that ratified a treaty establishing the International Criminal Court, which in 2023 issued an arrest warrant for Putin for alleged war crimes in Ukraine. Mongolia ignored calls to arrest the Russian leader and gave him a red-carpet welcome, with both countries signing deals on energy supplies and power plant upgrades.

In October, the Pentagon announced North Korea sent about 10,000 troops to Russia to join the fighting against Ukraine — a move Western leaders said will intensify the war and jolt relations in Asia. Moscow and Pyongyang have remained tight-lipped about the claims of deployment.

Putin also hosted a summit of the BRICS bloc of nations, attended by leaders or representatives of 36 countries, in what many saw as an effort to highlight the failure of U.S.-led efforts to isolate Russia.

Former President Donald Trump won a new term in the White House in November, raising concerns that his administration would cut military support for Ukraine and force it to negotiate with Moscow. Current President Joe Biden allowed Kyiv to use U.S.-supplied longer-range weapons for deeper strikes on Russian soil.

Russia responded by firing a new hypersonic intermediate-range ballistic missile — called the Oreshnik — at a city in central Ukraine. Putin boasted the missile can’t be intercepted by air defenses. He warned that Moscow could use it for more strikes on Ukraine and also potentially to hit military facilities of NATO countries giving military support to Ukraine.

The government of Syrian leader Bashar Assad crumbled after a lightning offensive by rebels. Putin granted asylum to Moscow’s longtime ally Assad and his family, but the Kremlin’s failure to prevent his downfall nine years after it intervened militarily to prop up his rule exposed the limits of Russia’s power and dented its international clout at a pivotal stage of its war in Ukraine.

Then, an embarrassing attack again brought the war to the streets of Moscow. Lt. Gen Igor Kirillov, the chief of Russia’s Radiation, Biological and Chemical Protection Forces, was killed alongside an aide by a bomb planted outside his apartment building. Putin described Kirillov’s killing as a “major blunder” by security agencies.

On the final weekend of the year, Putin apologized for what he called a “tragic incident” in Russian airspace involving the Dec. 25 crash of an Azerbaijani jetliner that killed 38 people in neighboring Kazakhstan. His statement came amid mounting allegations the plane was shot down by Russian air defenses trying to stop a Ukrainian drone attack near Grozny in the Russian republic of Chechnya. While Russian officials acknowledged that air defense systems were at work, Putin’s apology to Azerbaijan’s leader stopped short of saying Moscow took responsibility.

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