Panicked Putin goes into hiding as Kremlin caught using 'pre-recorded' footage

Vladimir Putin appears to have gone into hiding amid the ongoing US-Israeli assault on Iran - with the Kremlin allegedly using pre-recorded footage to trick Russian citizens. State media broadcast two supposedly "new" videos of the Russian leader on March 2 and 3, using footage that had actually been recorded earlier, according to the investigative outlet Sistema. The meetings with Russian officials were presented by the Kremlin press service and loyal media as taking place on the days they aired, but analysts spotted a key giveaway detail - the houseplants in Putin's Kremlin office.

Sistema published a report on how the condition of two aglaonema plants in the background of the president's office videos could be used to identify when the footage was actually filmed last month. While the Kremlin quietly replaced the plants with new ones, seemingly in response to the investigation, the meetings aired earlier this month showed old, yellowing foliage, suggesting they were filmed earlier and recycled as Putin grapples with the US-Israeli attack on Iran.

The US and Israel launched a huge military operation against Iran on February 28, striking targets in Tehran and other cities and killing the country's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Putin has closely allied himself to Iran's hardline government, cemented by a 20-year pact signed in January 2025 that covered military, economic and security cooperation.

The Russian leader continued normal diplomatic activity during the outbreak of conflict - holding phone calls with the leaders of the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Hungary, according to Kremlin briefings.

However, his PR machine released no photographs or videos of the Russian leader during those calls.

The apparent release of staged or delayed footage to conceal gaps in the president's public schedule could allow Putin to lie low as he decides on Russia's next moves following the major strikes aimed at topping his allies.

It wouldn't be the first time the Kremlin had been accused of using such a "canned footage" ploy, with Sistema finding 18 instances of "new" meetings being shown on Russian television using pre-recorded video in 2025 alone.

The latest instance has revived questions about the Kremlin's closely-managed presentation of Putin's activities, however, alongside suspicion that he prefers to keep a low profile during moments of major international crisis.

Russia sharing intelligence to help Iran strike US military

Russia is providing Iran with intelligence to strike American military targets in the Middle East, it has been reported.

Moscow began to pass the Islamic Republic information on the positions of US forces as soon as the war began on Saturday, the Washington Post reported, citing three US officials familiar with the matter.

The information allowed “sophisticated” attacks by Iranian missiles and drones against US radar facilities, warships and aircraft. It also made it possible to target temporary structures not possible to spot with Iran’s own satellites, including the facility in Kuwait where six US soldiers were killed.

The report, which The Telegraph has not been able to independently confirm, marks the first sign of Russia’s active participation in the expanding conflict.

One official said: “It does seem like it’s a fairly comprehensive effort.”

Vladimir Putin has long objected to the US providing satellite intelligence to the Ukrainian military, and now appears to be responding in kind.

While Iran has only a small number of military-grade satellites, Moscow has many and has honed their capabilities in its war with Ukraine.

“The Russians are more than aware of the assistance that we’re giving the Ukrainians,” a US official told the Post. “I think they were very happy to try to get some payback.”

“Much [of Russia’s support to Iran] will be space based imagery,” said Mike Petersen, principal research scientist at the Centre for Naval Analyses, a federally funded organisation tied to the US military.

“This is good for knowing what bases are being used when, and what aircraft may be parked. It can allow Iran to temporarily slow or halt airfield ops,” he wrote on X.

“Russia may also provide locations on intelligence stations in the region, allowing Iran to put them under drone attack,” Mr Petersen added. Moscow’s satellites can also snoop on US communications so Iran can “understand strategic force dispositions”.

But Mr Petersen pointed out that the US had prepared to “operate in environments like this for years”, and would have “countermeasures for these eventualities”.

Before the war, China reportedly provided Iran with technology to help rebuild its ballistic missile arsenal, which the 12-day war last June had slashed.

However, Beijing has not intervened to provide concrete assistance in the current conflict, two officials told the Washington Post.

Neither Russia nor China’s foreign office responded to requests for comment.

Moscow has around 110 military satellites in orbit, while Iran has around 13 that are still operational, with three registered to the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.

On Thursday, Adml Brad Cooper, the head of US central command, announced that US strikes had destroyed Iran’s military space force.

“We’ve also struck Iran’s equivalent of Space Command, which degrades their ability to threaten Americans,” he said.

However, experts doubt it had the ability to do so in the first place.

“They were not a threat in space capabilities,” Victoria Samson, head of the non-profit Secure World Foundation, told the Defense One website. “The threat that they have [is] for counter-space capabilities, they’re great at jamming and spoofing.”

According to the US space force, Russia’s own space capabilities have suffered in recent years. The number of satellite launches has declined amid “funding shortfalls, international isolation and broader societal problems”.

Increasingly, Moscow relies on civil and commercial satellite imagery for the war in Ukraine, the US space force reports in its fact sheet on foreign threats. That includes purchases from the Chinese company Spacety.

Why we all want baby girls now (and I did too)

I kept my secret for the long and broadly enjoyable nine months of my pregnancy. But as soon as my daughter was born, I could let it out. Thank God it’s a girl!

My husband and I decided not to find out the sex of our unborn child at the 20-week scan, as many parents do. It’s our first, we said. Let it be a glorious surprise. But when it came to thinking of baby names, I could only think of ideas for girls. Scores of options emerged while, curiously, I had only one potential name for a baby boy.

I guess I couldn’t imagine having one. Although my husband has two brothers, I have two sisters and between us we have five daughters and a son, which means that girls outnumber boys 9:5 across three generations or 8:4 across two. None of us has ever owned a male pet, and when my dad raised the issue of getting a dog with balls last year, we all objected. In that instance, we were overruled by the patriarchy.

Girl preference

Once I had a baby girl in my arms, I felt able to admit it had always been my preference. But this scenario is wildly different to one population forecasters say may well emerge in the near future, in which new parents are cuddling baby girls not by happy coincidence, but thanks to sex-selective IVF.

Already legal in the US, Mexico and the UAE, if it becomes the norm, it will contribute to a demographic shift happening across the globe. After centuries of male domination, the past two decades reveal an extremely sharp rise in the number of baby girls born each year, closing a large gender gap that has historically favoured boys.

Last week, The Economist reported that in 2000 there were 1.6 million “missing” girls from the global population, due to infanticide and abortion. This year, the number is 200,000 and falling. The magazine posed the radical question of what the world might look like if this imbalance were flipped. Would it be better or worse? The short answer: “It would not be as bad as too many men.”

Nathalie Renders, 45, is bringing up three boys aged between five and 12 in Dubai with her husband, though they are from the UK. She didn’t think about gender when pregnant with her first two, she says, as the focus was on having healthy babies. By the time she had her third, they did find out he was going to be a boy, but only out of practicality – to check she had the right clothes. “I wasn’t the kind of Mum who wanted to dress a girl up,” she says.

They moved back to the UK for a year when her first two boys were young. “What struck me was the difference in how I felt being a parent back in the UK with boy children. I was getting more concerned for their safety as they grew up. In particular around knife crime.”

The family moved back to Dubai, where sex-selective IVF is legal. “I do know people who have gone down that route after having two or three of one gender and wanting something different,” Renders says. “Sometimes it’s worked, and sometimes it hasn’t.”

“If I get comments of ‘Oh, three boys! You’ll need to try for a girl,” it typically comes from people from Asian countries. When I ask why, they might say, so there’s someone to look after you, or someone you can teach to cook. Occasionally people say surely you want another female in the house. But me and the cat are super happy.”

Sperm-sorting, as it’s colloquially known, is only available to a very small proportion of rich prospective parents, just like ultrasounds 50 years ago. But as soon as scans became cheap and commonplace, families all over the world, especially in cultures where girls were seen as a burden, began to abort female foetuses. Technological advances suggest that women could soon be able to buy kits that test their blood for gender weeks into a pregnancy.

In previous centuries, boys have been viewed as the breadwinners, and as simply ‘better’ than girls. In countries where culture and religion further undermine the value of women, misogyny has led to devastating trends for the murder and abortion of females. But these countries, in particular large Asian nations such as China, India and South Korea, have been stealthily dropping their desire for boy babies.

Meanwhile, girl preference is booming all over the developed world, from the sperm-sorting north Americans to emerging evidence suggesting that girls are first choice in Scandinavia, Czech Republic, Lithuania, the Netherlands and Portugal. In Finland, this was detected by statistics showing that families who have a girl first are likely to have fewer children overall. If the firstborn is a boy, they keep trying. In the US, adoptive parents will pay up to $16,000 (£12,000) more for a girl, according to a 2010 study by a team of economists from the London School of Economics, The California Institute of Technology and New York University.

Natural order

More men are born naturally, with a global ratio of 105 boys to every 100 girls. This ratio remains unchanged in the UK. As boys are marginally more likely to die young, there should be roughly the same number of men and women when they reach reproductive age.

But this ratio skewed further in the late twentieth century. In China, where the one-child law disadvantaged girls, there was a high of 117.8 boys to every 100 girls born in 2006. In India, the ratio was 109.6 in 2010. In South Korea in 1990, it was 115.7. Today these disparities have shrunk to 109.8 in China and 106.8 in India. In South Korea the balance is back to normal.

A friend in China who is in her early forties tells me that she doubts anyone in her generation would still think a boy is preferable. She grew up in London, but asks a colleague in his thirties who grew up in China, for his opinion. “Among those of my generation, no one prefers boys,” he says. “The one above us, yes, but not those of my age. In fact, many of us prefer girls.”

Money remains an issue. “For a boy, you have to buy a property for him to start a family, whereas for a girl it’s cheaper as you don’t have to,” he explains. “At the end of the day, you give her away. Girls study harder, they sit still, they’re easier to manage.”

Gender disappointment

A much stronger sentiment than that of preferring, secretly or otherwise, boys or girls, is active regret over giving birth to the ‘wrong’ sex. In countries like the US, where ‘gender reveal’ parties have become popular, the fallout is a slew of ‘gender disappointment’ clips on social media, in which couples, who have gathered their nearest and dearest together to reveal the results of an ultrasound scan, get a nasty surprise and cannot hide their devastation at the prospect of becoming a #boymom.

One Mumsnet user writes that she feels “embarrassed, stressed, upset and really anxious” about the gender disappointment she experienced during pregnancy. “I’ve had points where I feel like I’d rather not be pregnant than have a boy – and I don’t know why I feel like this.”

Another mother says she is devastated to be pregnant with her third boy. “Not to be having boys, but because I will never raise a child with the shared experience of being female.”

The trouble with boys

Given that boys have such a bad reputation, if we can’t change the narrative about dangerous men and toxic masculinity, why would anyone want one? Ninety-three per cent of the global prison population is male. It is men who subjugate women, submit them to sexual violence, and kill them. They start wars to kill each other. They are also more likely to kill themselves.

In the UK specifically, though it’s a universal trend, there is a much-discussed fear about the lost future of generations of boys who have been taught they are innately bad. There is no gender gap in the UK yet we are all quaking at the chilling story depicted in recent Netflix drama Adolescence, in which a young teenager fatally stabs a teenage girl because, it transpires, she was taunting his manhood.

Male rage

The lack of female partners has led to the phenomenon of angry single men, their fury fanned by influencers like Andrew Tate, who has successfully convinced potentially millions of men worldwide that women are disposable belongings. He is hugely popular, and YouTube reportedly still profits from his content, despite a ban.

In China, single men are known as ‘bare branches’. In the west, they call themselves “incels” – involuntarily celibate. Everywhere, sexually frustrated single men appear to blame more than their lack of a decent shag on women. Studies have linked the gender gap to increased rape and violent crime. Of the 145 mass shootings in the US between 1982 and December, just four were carried out by women and two by mixed-sex attackers.

On a global level, I’m all for more girls and the potential reduction in all kinds of crime it should cause. On a personal level, while I’m happy with my daughter, I know that in the long run, I would have been just as happy with a son.

As a parent, if you take yourself down the route of thinking having one sex or another will lead to a specific kind of child, a predetermined childhood, I think you are setting yourself up for failure. No one can predict that a daughter will enjoy cooking or shopping with them, or that a boy will prove your perfect footy companion. If we claim to prefer girls or boys for these reasons, we are only cementing the gender norms women have fought for years to tear down.

Google DeepMind launches AI tool to help identify genetic drivers of disease

Researchers at Google DeepMind have unveiled their latest artificial intelligence tool and claimed it will help scientists identify the genetic drivers of disease and ultimately pave the way for new treatments.

AlphaGenome predicts how mutations interfere with the way genes are controlled, changing when they are switched on, in which cells of the body, and whether their biological volume controls are set to high or low.

Most common diseases that run in families, including heart disease and autoimmune disorders, as well as mental health problems, have been linked to mutations that affect gene regulation, as have many cancers, but identifying which genetic glitches are to blame is far from straightforward.

“We see AlphaGenome as a tool for understanding what the functional elements in the genome do, which we hope will accelerate our fundamental understanding of the code of life,” Natasha Latysheva, a DeepMind researcher, told a press briefing on the work.

The human genome runs to 3bn pairs of letters – the Gs, Ts, Cs and As that comprise the DNA code. About 2% of the genome tells cells how to make proteins, the building blocks of life. The rest orchestrates gene activity, carrying the crucial instructions that dictate where, when and how much individual genes are switched on.

The researchers trained AlphaGenome on public databases of human and mouse genetics, enabling it to learn connections between mutations in specific tissues and their impact on gene regulation. The AI can analyse up to 1m letters of DNA code at once and predict how mutations will affect different biological processes.

The DeepMind team believes the tool will help scientists map out which strands of genetic code are most essential for the development of particular tissues, such as nerve and liver cells, and pinpoint the most important mutations for driving cancer and other diseases. It could also underpin new gene therapies by allowing researchers to design entirely new DNA sequences – for example, to switch on a certain gene in nerve cells but not in muscle cells. Details are published in Nature.

Carl de Boer, a researcher at the University of British Columbia in Canada, who was not involved in the work, said: “AlphaGenome can identify whether mutations affect genome regulation, which genes are impacted and how, and in what cell types. A drug could then be developed to counteract this effect.

“Ultimately, our goal is to have models that are so good we don’t have to do an experiment to confirm their predictions. While AlphaGenome represents a significant innovation, achieving this goal will require continued work from the scientific community.”

Some scientists have already begun using AlphaGenome. Marc Mansour, a clinical professor of paediatric haemato-oncology at UCL, said it marked a “step change” in his work to find genetic drivers for cancer.

Gareth Hawkes, a statistical geneticist at the University of Exeter, said: “The non-coding genome is 98% of our 3bn base pair genome. We understand the 2% fairly well, but the fact that we’ve got AlphaGenome that can make predictions of what this other 2.94bn base pair region is doing is a big step forward for us.”

Why one of Putin’s closest allies defended Zelensky .

A disinformation campaign from Belarus?

Disinformation and propaganda are an essential part of any war. Russian President Vladimir Putin is no stranger to this game. So when Belarusian President Alexander, Putin's longtime ally defended Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in October 2023, many were surprised but also sceptical.

Lukashnko’s press conference

A video clip of Lukashenko speaking about Zelensky began making its rounds on social media on October 7th, 2023. It was eventually posted to Twitter by Anton Gerashchenko, an advisor to Ukraine’s former Minister of Internal Affairs.

“Zelenskyy is acting absolutely appropriately”

"We, and Russians, and journalists say that Zelenskyy is this and that, a beggar, acting disrespectfully and dishonestly.” Lukashenko said, “And I have to say that Zelenskyy is acting absolutely appropriately." But what did he mean? 

A longer clip was later posted online

The original clip was quite short and only showed the short sentence praising Zelensky and his actions. A longer video was later posted to social media and it revealed more of the Belarusian leader's thoughts on Russia’s invasion.

Russia’s invasion was planned long ago

Newsweek reported that Lukashenko suggested Russia’s invasion of Ukraine may have been planned as early as 2014, which was the same year that Moscow annexed Crimea and began helping rebels in Ukraine’s eastern oblasts.

Preparing for a fight

Lukashenko explained that Ukraine had been preparing the Bakhmut region for defense against a Russian invasion, creating a layered defense in that region as well as in other parts of the Donbas region, all at the behest of America.

Accusing the U.S. of malfeasance

The Belarusian President accused the United States of offering to fund Ukraine’s war if the Ukrainians fought to the last man. They would receive money and weapons, as well as anything else they needed to fight against the Russians.

Zelensky was left holding the bag

Lukashenko went on to accuse the U.S. and the West of not holding up their end of the deal they made with Zelensky, saying they were only sending older equipment and not giving the Ukrainian president anything at all in some cases.

Fighting to the last without the promised help

“He is fighting to the last Ukrainian. Meanwhile, they either don't do what they promised on time or don't give what they promise,” Lukashenko said according to a translation by the state-owned BelarusianTelegraph Agency (BelTA).

Zelensky is allegedly angry?

“The West (Europeans in particular) do not honor commitments. This is why Volodymyr [Zelensky] tells them: ‘Why aren't you doing what you've promised?' He goes and makes demands of them. Is he doing the right thing? He is,” Lukashenko added.

Seeing Lukashenko’s comments in context

It is important to note that Lukashenko’s comments were more an attempt to discredit the West and Zelensky than they were about praising the Ukrainian leader for how he was conducting the war against Russia’s invasion.

Parroting Moscow’s propaganda

"My interpretation of that whole press conference by Lukashenko is that he's in certain ways parroting a line from Moscow,” wrote Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Davis of Defense Priorities in an email to Newsweek on Lukashenko's comments.

A secret deal

“Basically, that Ukraine and the West always had a secret deal for him to fight and not to make peace, and there was a secret pact made with us to give them everything they needed, and Zelensky would use all his manpower for war," Lt. Col. Davis continued.

Lukashenko wasn’t really praising Zelensky

Davis explained that Lukashenko was not praising Zelensky for his opposition to Russia but rather that the Ukrainian President was doing the right thing in the sense that he was performing the role given to him by the United States and the West.

Making Russia’s enemies look bad

“I think he's trying to make Zelensky look bad, make America look bad, and the West look bad by implying that we desired conflict all along and now Zelensky is mad because he feels like the West left him hanging out to dry,” Lt. Col. Davis added.

Another disinformation campaign

“In my view, this is just another version of the disinformation campaign that Russia and Belarus routinely pedal,” the lieutenant colonel continued. But we did still learn valuable info from the press conference, particularly that Russia had a plan to invade since 2014.

Deadly bat-borne virus with no cure is spreading with 'epidemic potential'

Health officials are working hard to contain a contagious virus after five cases of the deadly disease were detected near one of India's largest cities.

Originating from bats, the Nipah virus has been identified in West Bengal, close to the country's third-most populated city, Kolkata. Now, urgent contact tracing is taking place, as well as quarantines as authorities work to contain the outbreak.

According to Indian media, three new infections were reported this week, which include a doctor, a nurse, and a health staff member. Two nurses - one male and one female - had already tested positive earlier, according to reports.

Both members of staff were working at the private Narayana Multispecialty Hospital in Barasat. As per Narayan Swaroop Nigam, the principal secretary of the department of health and family, one of the two nurses is in critical condition.

It is reported they developed spiking fevers and breathing problems in late 2025, according to The Telegraph. The seriously unwell nurse is now reportedly in a coma, and is said to have caught the infection while treating a patient with severe lung problems.

That particular patient died before any tests were done. Consequently, officials officials have tested 180 people and quarantined 20 high-risk contacts as fears grow of further spread.

Nipah virus is transmitted between humans and animals, most from infected bats or pigs. Human to human contact could also lead the virus to spread. Fruit bats, which are widespread across India's cities and countryside, are the virus's natural hosts.

It's understood that the infection can start off with no symptoms, before the patient becomes acutely unwell with respiratory problems.

Symptoms include fever, headaches, muscle pain, vomiting, and sore throat, while severe cases can cause brain inflammation, leading to coma within 24 to 48 hours. The virus has a high mortality rate, and there is currently no vaccine, or treatment available.

Rajeev Jayadevan, the ex-president of the Indian Medical Association, Cochin, said: "Humans being infected with it is rare, with the most likely source from bats caused by eating an infected animal."

To cut down the risk of infection, experts say to avoid exposure to to pigs and bats and by not drinking raw date palm sap, which may have been contaminated by animals. Luckily, Nipah virus does not occur in the UK. There have also been no cases linked to travel.

Veterans aged 65 told to prepare for war

Military veterans aged 65 face being mobilised under new powers to prepare the Armed Forces for war.

The Government is set to increase the age at which the nation’s pool of retired soldiers, known as the strategic reserve, can be called upon from 55 to 65.

The new measures are being introduced as part of a new Armed Forces bill, which will be published in Parliament later.

The changes will make it easier to mobilise tens of thousands of former military personnel.

The Army has shrunk to its smallest number in more than 200 years, with just over 70,000 full-time, fully-trained troops ready to deploy to the frontline.

Under existing rules, the pool of retired soldiers can be called upon in the event of “national danger, great emergency or attack in the UK”.

However, under the new changes, this will be lowered to “warlike preparations”, which is already the threshold for reservists who have recently left the Armed Forces.

The measures come amid fears Britain could be dragged into a full-scale war with Russia in a matter of years.

Defence and security chiefs have repeatedly warned of the potential for large-scale war in recent months.

Al Carns, the Armed Forces minister, said just before Christmas that war was “already knocking on Europe’s door” and that Britain had to be prepared for a conflict that was “bigger” than those fought in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Last week, the UK announced it would be deploying troops to Ukraine, alongside France, if and when a ceasefire deal between Moscow and Kyiv is agreed.

While it is unclear exactly how many troops could be involved, reports have suggested up to 7,500 UK personnel could be deployed.

If this figure is accurate, it would effectively mean that around 21,000 personnel would be committed to Ukraine – with one cohort deployed, another in training and a third recovering for operations there.

However, military analysts have warned such a deployment would stretch the Armed Forces and would effectively become an “all of Army effort” to maintain.

Sources at the Ministry of Defence have pushed back against suggestions that 7,500 troops could be deployed, with insiders saying it could be lower.

£28 billion funding black hole

On Friday, the Government pledged to spend £200m to upgrade armoured vehicles and buy new kit in preparation for the peacekeeping mission.

The proposed changes would come into force next year if approved by Parliament, the BBC reported.

The Government estimates there are around 95,000 people within the strategic reserve, including veterans from the Royal Navy, Army, and RAF.

These are different to the reserve forces, which comprise personnel who volunteer part-time to serve in the military. Currently, there are almost 32,000 active reservists across the three wings of the Armed Forces.

The military has struggled to recruit and retain personnel in recent years. The Army has suffered the most, having shrunk from more than 100,000 personnel in 2010 to just over 70,000 now.

The most recent figures show a very marginal increase in the number of people joining the military. But it is still at its lowest ebb since the Napoleonic Wars.

Meanwhile, the Armed Forces is grappling with a £28 billion funding black hole over the next four years despite plans to boost defence spending.

Sir Keir Starmer was warned about the shortfall by the head of the military, Air Chief Marshal Sir Richard Knighton, a few days before Christmas.

On Monday, Sir Richard admitted Britain did not have the cash to deliver its military ambitions, which were set out by the PM in June as part of the Strategic Defence Review.

The Chief of the Defence Staff told MPs on the Commons defence committee: “I’ll be completely honest with you – we will not be able to do everything that we would wish to do as quickly as we might want to do it.

“If we wanted to do everything that’s currently in the programme and do all the extra things in the SDR [strategic defence review], could we do that with the budget that we have got? The answer’s no.”

UK not ready to defend itself

This is despite Sir Keir having announced last year that defence spending would rise from 2.3 per cent of GDP to 2.6 per cent by 2027. Looser pledges were also made in the strategic defence review to hit 3 per cent in the early 2030s and 3.5 per cent by 2035.

As part of the Strategic Defence Review, Sir Keir vowed to build 12 new nuclear attack submarines and spend billions more on new defence technology.

Britain’s military spending is the subject of increasing criticism, with a parliamentary report last year warning the country was not ready to defend itself against attack.

Earlier this month, the UK fell down the global defence spending rankings, and is now Nato’s 12th-biggest spender in terms of GDP compared with third in 2021.

News of the latest shortfall is said to have prompted Sir Keir to order a key MoD document, the defence investment plan, to be overhauled.

The Defence Investment Plan, which will set out how the Government’s long-term defence plans will be paid for, was originally due to be published in the autumn. However, it now appears to be stuck in financial purgatory, with Sir Richard telling MPs the MoD “do not have a date” for when it will be released.