The amount of claims against the Russian government, brought in foreign arbitration courts, continues to grow by leaps and bounds.

To date, the total amount of lawsuits is approaching the $100 billion dollar mark, said the Russian Presidential representative, Harry Minh, speaking in the State Duma.

"Currently, 37 trials are underway in arbitration courts, and as part of these claims, lawsuits totaling $99 billion have been brought against the Russian Federation," Minh said.

The number of …

Russia does not intend to stop using the U.S. dollar, said Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.

"We are not trying to escape from the system that now exists, and which is crucially based on the dollar," the minister said. Lavrov stressed that the U.S. either does not realize its responsibility as a country, the issuer of the dollar, or grossly abuses its position.

At the same time, the Russian Foreign Minister confirmed that the Kremlin wishes to "de-dollarize" the Russian economy.

"It …

The European Parliament calls for Belarus to be disconnected from the SWIFT payment system, as well as to ban the country's national team from participating in the Tokyo Olympic, reported the Belarusian news outlet Nasha Niva.

The European Parliament calls on the Council of the European Union to expand sanctions against Belarus as soon as possible. The sanctions list should include all those responsible for the forced landing of the Ryanair passenger plane and the arrest of opposition …

Emigrant sentiment continues to intensify in Russia as the standard of living declines, the post-Crimean syndrome fades away, and the authorities instead of a brighter future offer the society repressions and a course to "resuscitate" the corpse of the USSR.

As of May 2021, 22% of Russian citizens said they would like to go abroad for permanent residence, showed a survey conducted by Levada Center.

In four years, the proportion of those wishing to emigrate has increased by 7 percentage points, …

Disconnection of Russia from SWIFT is unlikely, but there is a more serious problem - the loss of access to correspondent accounts abroad, through which Russian banks conduct transactions in foreign currency, said Olga Skorobogatova, the first deputy chairman of the Russian Central Bank, at a roundtable in the State Duma.

"Many times we spoke about this, and SWIFT itself said, we really consider these risks minimal and do not see any serious threat and do not think that it will happen, because …

The EU Permanent Representatives Committee (COREPER) extended for a year without any discussions restrictive measures against Crimea as part of the EU's strategy to reject Crimea's annexation by Russia, adopted in 2014, TASS reports, citing a diplomatic source in Brussels.

"COREPER has decided to extend for 12 months restrictive measures against Crimea and Sevastopol," TASS’ source said. The decision will be formally approved by the EU Council next week and will then come into force. …

The Russian Finance Ministry has retracted its statement on plans to transfer all of its foreign currency reserves from dollars to euros.

The RIA Novosti report, quoting Dmitry Timofeev, director of the Department of External Restrictive Measures Control of the Finance Ministry, was retracted by the Ministry.

The original article stated that the Russian authorities want to make Russia a "euroized country" replacing the dollar with the euro.

According to the publication, the Kremlin planned …

Russia will increase arms supplies to sub-Saharan Africa, reported the press service of Rosoboronexport, Russia’s national export agency for defense products.

“Contracts totalling $1.7 billion were signed in 2020-21, and the number of African customers rose to 17. The Russia-Africa forum, held in 2019, provided a boost for deliveries of Russian weapons to the region,” said Alexander Mikheev, CEO of Rosoboronexport.

“The deliveries to the region will include helicopter equipment, air defense …