President Vladimir Putin

Vaccination will be voluntary, the Kremlin says, and will begin with health care workers and people with chronic medical conditions. Russia's Sputnik V vaccine is still in clinical trials.

Leaders in the Kremlin and Beijing, as well as in Mexico and Brazil, have conspicuously not congratulated the president-elect, instead waiting for legal challenges to be resolved.

In an interview, the Russian opposition leader accuses President Vladimir Putin of ordering the attack with the Soviet-era nerve agent Novichok. A Kremlin spokesperson calls the accusation groundless.

A spokeswoman says the Russian opposition leader's bank accounts were frozen and his Moscow apartment "seized" in connection with a libel suit while he was in a coma after poisoning by a nerve agent.

Alexander Lukashenko declared a landslide victory in Aug. 9 polls widely seen as fraudulent. He was sworn in for a sixth term Wednesday in a secret ceremony in the capital, according to state media.

In a speech to the U.N. General Assembly, the president once again sought to blame China for the COVID-19 pandemic and called on Beijing to be punished for its handling of the disease.

It's the first country to approve a COVID-19 vaccine, but it has not finished Phase III trials to assess safety and effectiveness in the general population.

Russian military intelligence, the GRU, is linked to the invasion of Ukraine and interference in the 2016 U.S. election. Now it's suspected of a bounty program to kill U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

The vote approves constitutional changes, including a reset on presidential terms that will allow Putin to run twice more after his current six-year term expires in 2024.

The president said he was never briefed on intelligence, first reported by The New York Times, showing Russia had offered bounties to Taliban-linked militants to kill Western forces in Afghanistan.