The U.S. Department of the Treasury has expanded the so-called Kremlin List of Russian oligarchs and close confidants of Russian President Vladimir Putin to include the names of separatist representatives of the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics (DPR and LPR), as reported by Radio Liberty.

According to the report, the list was expanded to include nine ministers and one deputy minister of the separatist-held Donetsk and Luhansk regions as well a former Luhansk official and his family …

Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said on Facebook that the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has adopted a "shameful decision" in refusing to invite 15 "justified" athletes and coaches from Russia to attend the Winter Olympics in South Korea.

"The IOC Commission has adopted a shameful decision. Unjust and unlawful. Immoral and politically motivated. By denying our athletes, whose rights were reinstated by a sports court designed specifically to resolve such disputable situations, the …

Croatia is demanding that the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine replace four faulty MiG-21 aircraft that were purchased in Ukraine, reports the publication Jutarnji Vijesti citing its own sources.

“Croatia wants to return four defective MiG-21 military aircraft to Ukraine, and is asking the Ukrainian Defense Ministry to replace them with four airplanes that work properly and to provide a guarantee along with the aircraft,” the publication reported.

Aircraft 131, 132, 134 and 135 were purchased …

The Russian Ministry of Defense has criticized an article by the online news outlet Fontanka which it claims disclosed the personal details of the Su-25 assault jet pilot who was shot down in Syria on February 3. The Defense Ministry considers this a “violation of the elementary concepts of decency and the ethics of journalist activity”.

“We are convinced that the law enforcement organs will give their assessment of what happened in accordance with Russian legislation,” RBC reported, citing …

Separate subdivisions of the armed forces of the self-proclaimed Republic of South Ossetia were integrated into the army of the Russian Federation. The bill was signed by Russian President Vladimir Putin, the press service of the Kremlin reported.

The bill provides for the procedure for “the entry of separate units of the armed forces of the Republic of South Ossetia into the armed forces of the Russian Federation.”

The bill concerning the Ossetian army joining the Russian Armed Forces was …

The German government expressed concern about reports of the possible use of chemical weapons in Syria, not far from the capital of Damascus and the northern province of Idlib. “If it turns out that the Syrian army once again resorted to the use of chemical weapons, this horrible act would be a flagrant violation of the moral and legal obligations not to use them,” said the German Foreign Ministry in a press release on February 5.

Earlier it became known that the Syrian military might have …

Former NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen has been appointed Deputy Chairman of the Board at Latvian bank Norvik Banka, according to the website of the international intelligence community InformNapalm.

Grigory Guselnikov, a Russian banker, is the owner of Norvik Banka; he also controls Vyatka Bank.

In July, the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) denied Grigory Guselnikov and Sait-Salam Gutseriev from purchasing the Ukrainian branch of Sberbank.

"This bank [Vyatka Bank] recently tried …

The authorities of eleven villages in Moldova adopted a symbolic "declaration of union with Romania," Newsmaker reports. They became participants in the campaign for the unification of Moldova and Romania, organized by the Unionist platform Acţiunea 2012.

The activists expect that by the 100th anniversary of the reunification of Romania, which is likely to be in 2018, this declaration will be adopted in a hundred Moldovan settlements. For now, 11 Moldovan villages have documented their desire …