Russian President Vladimir Putin was joking when he said Moscow was supporting Democratic candidate Kamala Harris in November's U.S. presidential election, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in an interview with Sky News Arabia.

Putin said that Moscow would back Harris to win the election in a comment that cited her "expressive and infectious" laugh.

Exclusive: Key British-Russian activist tells Tom Watling that even if he and other opposition leaders are killed, others will come in their place to challenge Putin, as he thanked The Independent for

Seven weeks after he was released from a Siberian penal colony in a historic East-West exchange, Kara-Murza did not say how he thought Putin would leave, but argued Russia must not squander what he said would be a narrow sliver of time to establish a democratic government,

Murza, one of the faces of Russian opposition to Vladimir Putin alongside Evan Gershkovich, sits down with The Independent for the first time since being freed in a historic prisoner swap