• Russia intends to create offshore zones to help oligarchs under sanctions

    Russian authorities are discussing a project to create special offshore zones to support businessmen who fell under US sanctions, reported Vedomosti newspaper.

    Vedomosti’s sources say that offshore zones could be establoished on Oktyabrsk Island in Kaliningrad and on Russky Island in the Far East. The draft bill was developed by the Ministry of Economic Development and it is now under peer review by the relevant departments. The Ministry plans for its adoption during the spring session.

    As …

  • Russia's Gazprom claims it doesn’t plan to stop gas transit through Ukraine

    Alexey Miller, CEO of Gazprom, said that the company has never raised the issue of stopping gas transit through Ukraine, RIA Novosti reported.

    According to him, Russia’s resource base is currently shifting “north”, so the central gas-transport corridor “won’t have the same level of resources.” Miller emphasized that the gas transit through Ukraine can remain at a rate of 10-15 billion m3 of gas per year, but Kyiv must justify “the economic feasibility of a new transit contract.”

    German …

  • Russia's Channel One takes its interview with former head of Pentagon off the air

    Vladimir Pozner’s interview with Former United States Secretary of Defense William Perry was taken off the air. According to Pozner, the program would eventually air but he did not specify when that would happen, Meduza reports.

    The program was scheduled to be aired on April 9 according to an announcement on Pozner’s website. The announcement has since been deleted but a cached copy was saved in Google’s search engine. Pozner’s explanation was that the management of Channel One decided the …

  • Merkel stresses importance of preserving gas transit through Ukraine

    At a joint press conference with President Petro Poroshenko, While referring to the construction of the Nord Stream-2 gas pipeline, German Chancellor Angela Merkel noted that she considers it important to preserve the transit of gas through Ukraine.

    "We spoke about this subject in detail, and, of course, I listened carefully to Ukraine’s concerns. Yesterday during a conversation with the Russian president, I said that it cannot be the case that Nord Stream 2 means Ukraine no longer has any …

  • Ukraine seizes Russian ship over illegal sand mining in the Black Sea

    Ukraine has seized a Russian dredge ship for illegal sand mining in the Karkinitsky Bay of the Black Sea, Ukrainian Prosecutor General Yuri Lutsenko reported on Facebook.

    The Crimean Prosecutor's Office is in charge of issues of illegal sand mining in the Karkinitsky Bay area of ​​the Black Sea, including the Swan Islands reserve, on the Russian-annexed Crimean territory.

    It has been established that the dredge vessel was carrying dredge from the home port of Tuapse, in Russia, which belongs …