Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov stated that Russia wrote off the loans provided by the Soviet Union to other countries because they were 90% unrecoverable, TASS reports.

According to Lavrov, several factors impeded the recovery of these funds. The Minister recalled that the USSR was not an integral part of the international monetary and financial system and the exchange rate of the ruble was set by the Russian State Bank.

“A few years ago, we wrote off several billion dollars in loans …

The Ministry of Defense of Ukraine requested an additional 4.5 billion hryvnias ($ 220 million USD) from the budget to raise salaries for the military, ukrmilitary.com reports, citing a letter from Minister of Defense Stepan Poltorak to Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman.

The Ministry of Defense suggests raising the salary of troops to 9000 hryvnias ($436 USD) and of officers to 15,300 hryvnias ($741 USD) from October 1.

The letter explained that according to a survey, 36% of servicemen cited …

The Polish Sejm intends to make a claim against Russia regarding the payment of military reparations, stated Arkadiusz Mularczyk, the Head of the Sejm Committee on the Payment of Military Reparations in an interview with Rzeczpospolita news outlet.

“In the next convocation, the Parliament will have to prepare claims to Russia for compensation for damage inflicted on the country by the Soviet Union,” Mularczyk said. “I know that the Baltic States are ready to file such claims.”

He also noted …

The Armed Forces of Russia will not buy the new Armata tanks in large numbers, due to their costliness, lamented Russian Deputy Prime Minister Yury Borisov on Monday, Rambler.ru news outlet reports.

He added that the T-72 tank already in the armament is far more attractive to the military, both technically and financially.

The Armata tank has the letter “O”, which means that it is a prototype. When such prototypes are made, it implies that this is done not for technical interest’s sake, but …

The proportion of Russian citizens who expect the exchange rate of the Russian national currency to drop has grown by 70% since spring 2018 and reached a record since the start of the study (2013).

44% of respondents expect the ruble to weaken in the next 12 months, the results of the Central Bank of Russia’s July survey indicate.

This is 17 percentage points more than in March, and higher than the previous record from August and September 2014 (41%). Thus the Russian currency market’s April …

NATO destroyers accompanied Russian military aircraft over the Baltic Sea last week, according to a statement made on Monday by the Ministry of Defense of Lithuania circulated in a weekly review of the country’s airspace.

According to the report, on duty aircraft from the Portuguese and Spanish Air Force stationed at Zokniai airbase in Lithiania, escorted Russian An-26 aircraft on July 26. “The plane flew over the Baltic Sea from the Kaliningrad region,” the department informed.

According to …

The Embassy of Ukraine in the Czech Republic protested the visit of the European Parliament Member Jaromir Kohlicek and Senator Jaroslav Doubrava to the Crimean territory annexed by Russia.

"We are talking about yet another reoccurring violation of the Ukrainian legislation by the mentioned politicians, who, despite repeated warnings, continue to ignore not only Ukrainian laws but also the international law," said the embassy’s statement.

The statement notes that most of the Czech politicians, …

The border with Israel will be controlled exclusively by the Syrian army, says the Russian ambassador to Tel-Aviv Anatoly Viktorov.

The diplomat discussed agreements reached prior to the movement of Syrian government troops into the southwest of the country. He claimed that both sides agreed that “on the other side of the border there will only be Syrian armed forces.”

Additionally, he emphasized that Russia’s priority is “maintaining the security of the State of Israel,” adding that “no non- …