Policies enacted by the US and EU have discredited Western banking and its currencies, according to the Russian president The West is discrediting its own currencies and banking system, while established monopolies in the global economy are crumbling, Russian President Vladimir Putin said in his annual address to the Federal Assembly on Thursday.

Russian journalist Dmitry Muratov, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate last year, has reported that two men doused him with red paint as he prepared to travel by train from Moscow to Samara, on Thursday. The chief editor of the liberal newspaper Novaya Gazeta shared photos of his paint-splattered compartment and said his eyes were burning from the substance.

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