Novaya Gazeta has reported that Chechen leadership was tasked with the creation of two battalions (600 servicemen in each) to deploy to Syria. The State Duma Deputy from Chechnya, Adam Delimkhanov, is responsible for the implementation of this task. According to Novaya Gazeta’s sources, the recruitment of personnel for these battalions has been ongoing for several months.

The staff of the Shchyolkovsky department of the Chechen Ministry of Internal Affairs provided the details of one of the …

A court in the city of Tyumen found the blogger, Alexei Kungurov, guilty for public "justification of terrorism" for a blog post he wrote on the LiveJournal social networking service, dedicated to the Russian campaign in Syria, reported Russia's Novaya Gazeta daily. He was sentenced to two and a half years in a penal colony settlement.

Earlier, a family friend, Maxim Karpikov, told Novaya Gazeta about the verdict.

Kungurov is a known political activist in the Tyumen region, who also …

On the 20th of December, the Spokesperson for the United States Department of State, John Kirby, stated at a briefing that the U.S. Administration expresses its concern over the escalation of tensions in eastern Ukraine. “The United States is deeply concerned by the recent upsurge of violence in eastern Ukraine,” Kirby said.

“Over the past two days, six Ukrainian servicemen were killed and 33 were injured during attempts by pro-Russian separatists to seize more territory from Ukraine. This the …

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov called the negotiations of Russia, Turkey and Iran the most effective format to resolve the conflict in Syria. Other formats are not effective, he stated after attending the trilateral negotiations in Moscow.

"I believe, the most effective format is the one which you may see today. It is not an attempt to cast doubt on the efforts of other partners to make progress settling the Syrian crisis. It’s just a statement of fact,” Lavrov said at a press …

On the 20th of December, the Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Sergey Lavrov, stated after a meeting with his Turkish and Iranian counterparts, Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu and Javad Zarif, in Moscow, that Russia, Turkey, and Iran are ready to contribute to the establishment of an agreement between the Syrian authorities and the opposition, and become its guarantors.

The three countries favored the expansion of the ceasefire throughout Syria, with the exception of the areas controlled by terrorist …

7 billion euro will be invested in two threads of the sea area of the Turkish Stream pipeline, explained a memorandum to the Russian bill on the ratification of the intergovernmental agreement on the pipeline.

At the beginning of the month, the law on ratification of Turkish stream was signed in Turkey providing the construction of two threads of a gas pipeline under the Black Sea. The first line is for supplies to a Turkish market while the second one is for transit to Europe.

"About 7 …

Ukrainian law enforcement authorities have opened a case against Booking.com for booking hotels in the Crimea, the Deputy of the faction of People's Front in the Verkhovna Rada, Georgiy Logvinsky, wrote on his Facebook page.

According to him, Booking.com is violating article 332-1, 191 of the Ukrainian Criminal Code (illegal transportation of people across the state border and appropriation, embezzlement of property). The website, the deputy says, should be blocked on the Ukrainian territory …

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Moscow will take “adequate measures” in response to the US Treasury Department’s announcement on Tuesday that it would extend sanctions against Russia, TASS reported.

"We regret that Washington continues this destructive line,” Pekov said. “We still disagree with this line and we believe that it very seriously harms our bilateral relations. Certainly, as this has been already in practice, the Russian side will take adequate measures.”

"We can only once …