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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 …
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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 …
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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 …
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Poland: Smolensk air disaster was caused by an explosion onboard the aircraft
The cause of death for members of the government delegation that crashed near Smolensk in 2010 was an explosion that occurred aboard the Tu-154M plane, as stated by Antoni Macierewicz, Chairman of the Sub-commission on the investigation of the Smolensk disaster and former Polish National Defense Minister, during a live broadcast on the TV channel TVP1.
"The passengers were killed by an explosion in the center wing before colliding with the ground. This [explosion] was their cause of death," …
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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 …