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Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday cited genetics to declare that Russians and Ukrainians are “one people” and reiterated his claim to Ukrainian territory, saying: “I think that it is not their territory but the historical territory of Russia.”
The Russian leader’s remarks came two days after U.S. envoy, Steve Witkoff called him a “humanitarian” for releasing an imprisoned U.S. citizen. Witkoff also hailed Russia’s willingness to restart talks over ending the war.
Putin’s statements, in an interview with Kremlin journalist Pavel Zarubin broadcast late Thursday, doubled down on his claims to territory in Ukraine that Russia invaded and illegally annexed in 2022.
“First of all, I think that it is not their territory but the historical territory of Russia,” Putin said, while also asserting that illegal referendums Russia orchestrated at gunpoint in September 2022 proved residents want to be Russian.
Putin has long insisted that Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, Donetsk and Luhansk regions, which Russia has tried — and failed — to fully capture over more than four years of war have always been Russian.
History contradicts his view. The territories at various times have been part of the Russian and Ottoman empires, medieval Kievan Rus’ and earlier civilizations.
“Speaking about territorial losses would be inappropriate here,” he said.
“Even now we are ready to negotiate and to look for a way out of this hard, difficult situation, in the sense that these are a people very close to us,” he continued, adding: “What is there to say? The latest genetic studies show that Russians and Ukrainians are in fact one people.”
Good morning. It’s Friday, Oct. 23, and I struggled to retain my composure this morning after reading about an old dog who got a second chance after being given up for euthanasia.
The top of today’s edition of The 7 briefing is again dominated by the midterm elections. President Donald Trump, who hit the campaign trail in Iowa last night, made news earlier in the day by defending the controversial attack ad of Vivek Ramaswamy, the Republican candidate for governor in Ohio.
As Republicans brace for major losses next month, Elon Musk is preparing for a fight. Several Democrats have vowed to investigate the billionaire if they win control of either chamber. Musk has warned them that, if they do so, he will retaliate in kind.
Beyond the midterms, the briefing covers a potential breakthrough in the treatment of melanoma. We have some useful phone security advice. And we take a look at Netflix’s dubious new experiment.
Read today’s edition of The 7 here.
Driving across Washington can take ages. Some local officials are trying to reignite conversations about an alternative: flying ferries across rivers.
A potential commercial ferry system with electric hydrofoil ferries — which use water pressure to rise out of the water on stilts and glide through the air — were the focus of a feasibility study conducted by the Navy Yard Business Improvement District.
Driving “from Georgetown to anything east of Capitol Hill is pretty challenging given our commuter traffic,” said Emeka Moneme, president of the district. “Our waters are beautiful. We want to use them more.”
The design of the electric hydrofoil boats doesn’t cause major waves, so they can travel faster through no-wake zones in the Anacostia and Potomac rivers than other boats, according to a summary of the feasibility study.
Potential stops could include Georgetown, the Wharf, Navy Yard, National Landing near Reagan National Airport, Old Town Alexandria and National Harbor, the summary said. Between Old Town and Navy Yard, a hydrofoil could take about 20 minutes, the summary said.
Previous conversations about a commercial ferry system in the D.C. area have faltered and the project is still far from guaranteed this time around.
So far, Moneme said the study has been presented to local government offices in the region. But several questions remain, including determining who would run the system and what the fare would be.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has banned service members and Defense Department personnel from seeking personal financial gain from nonpublic military information, warning that trades on prediction market platforms put U.S. troops and missions at risk.
In a Tuesday memo to the force reviewed by The Washington Post, Hegseth said that any financial transactions with third-party platforms that leveraged military information — regardless of whether it was classified — could be met with punishment under military and federal law. He named predictive market companies Polymarket and Kalshi, which allow people to place bets on various potential outcomes.
“Our enemies watch movements in these markets. When an American service member, intelligence professional, or other department civilian engages in a financial transaction on a military outcome, they create a signal,” the memo says. “That signal can be aggregated, correlated, and exploited by hostile foreign intelligence services to anticipate our movements, targets, and timing.”
An August report from the nonprofit analyst group Anti-Corruption Data Collective found that more than 150 accounts may have traded on insider military information.
Federal authorities have accused an Army Special Forces soldier of using foreknowledge of the January mission to capture Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro to profit more than $404,000 off Polymarket bets. The soldier pleaded not guilty.
Hegseth’s memo does not indicate whether government contract workers will be held to the same standard. Such personnel can also have access to classified information.
The Atlanta Falcons wanted to celebrate 1966. The internet saw something closer to 1936.
Ahead of Sunday’s game against the San Francisco 49ers, when Atlanta will wear uniforms inspired by its inaugural season, the Falcons updated their social media profile picture Wednesday with a stylized image featuring their original angular falcon logo against vertical red, white, black and gold stripes.
“New PFP ,” the team posted.
New PFP
pic.twitter.com/gBXWISJav4
— Atlanta Falcons (@AtlantaFalcons) October 21, 2026
It did not take long for social media users to notice what they considered an unfortunate resemblance to Nazi-era German iconography. By Thursday, the image had spread far beyond Falcons fans, spawning an assortment of World War II jokes and nicknames.
“The Bird Reich,” one commenter offered.
One said, “Falcons were up 28-3 at Dunkirk,” referencing the early score of Atlanta’s infamous Super Bowl collapse.
Another joked, “I was not expecting to wake up this morning to see that the Atlanta Falcons are preparing to invade Poland.”
The imagery, however, isn’t nearly as new, or as nefarious, as the Falcons’ post and the internet’s reaction might suggest.
The bird is the franchise’s original logo, introduced when the Falcons began play in 1966, and the stripes mimic those that appeared on Atlanta’s original red helmets.
Still, once the internet saw it, it became difficult to unsee.
Neither the Falcons nor the NFL immediately responded to a request for comment on the post or the reaction.
Paul Biya has been president of Cameroon since 1982. He is serving his eighth term, after reelection last year. At the end of the term, he’ll be 99.
Nearly half the country has known no other president.
But that’s not even the most unusual fact about his authoritarian rule, compared with one that gained a renewed round of attention in recent days: He appears to spend much of his time in Switzerland.
His return to Cameroon this week, as it struggles with widespread unemployment and a secessionist conflict that has been going on for close to a decade, sparked a wave of online criticism from people who felt as through the country was receiving an official visit — from its own president.
“President of Cameroon, the 93-year-old Paul Biya, is expected to visit Cameroon next week!” a viral tongue-in-cheek headline reads.
“The people of Cameroon, I wonder how you feel because how do you tell me that a whole head of state will be visiting you,” user Pr7ation wrote on TikTok.
In 2024, Biya was away for about two months, and this year for almost the same period, from June 7 to Aug. 20, having accumulated other, longer stints in previous years. In total, he was estimated to have spent 4½ years abroad in private visits since he became president, according to the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project — as of 2018. Since then, the figure has only climbed.
In his 2025 campaign, he was largely absent from rallies.
The government has defended the trips, dismissing reports of his failing health. Biya manages to operate the country remotely, the government says, even with the vice presidency vacant.
Cameroon’s government did not respond immediately to a request for comment on his travels.
A subtropical storm named Josephine formed Wednesday afternoon about 300 miles off the Mid-Atlantic coast. But instead of bringing unsettled weather, the offshore storm helped produce cloud-free skies from Maine to Florida.
This tranquil, sun-filled pattern could last through the end of the month for cities such as New York and Boston — forming their longest dry stretch in about two years.
In D.C., it could become the fourth two-week-dry-streak in the past five years, with the last such stretch accompanying frigid weather from late January to mid-February earlier this year.
The counterclockwise flow of air around the storm is steering dry air southward from Canada, as a high-pressure force field keeps the system offshore.
And although Josephine will remain well offshore, the storm is expected to cause minor to moderate coastal flooding around high tide in parts of the Mid-Atlantic through the end of the week.
By November, a change to the dry pattern could be coming, toward an expected stormier pattern due to enhanced jet stream winds from El Niño.
And from December through February, that stormy pattern is forecast to further accelerate, according to climate data from the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts.
Along the East Coast, strong low-pressure systems could be far more frequent than normal this winter, with about 18 forecast compared with a typical nine.
This stormy pattern is forecast to affect the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic and Southeast, but the latter two regions could see the biggest jump in storminess compared to average.
It appears that this dry streak is the calm before the storm.
The post Putin, citing genetics, claims Ukrainian land ‘is not their territory’ appeared first on Washington Post.
