A court in Hamburg has sentenced two German citizens for violating an arms embargo on Russia imposed after the annexation of Crimea in 2014, reported the newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung.

One of the convicts is a 41-year-old businessman from Augsburg in southwestern Bavaria. He was sentenced to 3 years 9 months in prison, as fine of almost €8 million.

The first of the accused, Alexander S., was detained in February last year. According to investigators, from January 2016 to January 2018, …

Any attempt by the Belarusian authorities to demand the extradition of ex-presidential candidate Svetlana Tikhanovskaya from Lithuania is doomed to failure, said Lithuanian Deputy Foreign Minister Mantas Adomenas in an interview with Deutsche Welle.

"Lithuania does not extradite people who are subjected to political persecution. Minsk is well aware of the answer we will give them," the deputy foreign minister said.

According to him, any request for Tikhanovskaya's extradition would be a " …

The self-proclaimed Donetsk Peoples Republic allowed the militants to open "warning" fire on the positions of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in the Donbas, reported the publication Ostrov.

"Due to the lack of response from international observers to the shelling of the settlements of the Republic, in order to protect the population from Ukrainian terror, the units of the People's Militia have been given permission to open fire to suppress and destroy the enemy's firing positions," said the "people' …

Former Austrian Foreign Minister Karin Kneissl will join the board of directors of Russian state-owned oil company Rosneft.

56-year-old Kneissl, who served as Austria’s Foreign Minister from 2017 till 2019, was nominated to the board as an independent director along with former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, who has held a position in the company for more than three years, TASS reported citing the Russian government’s decree.

Kneissl, a law doctor and middle East specialist, who spent …

Self-proclaimed president of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko has not ruled out the possibility of deployment of Russian warplanes to Belarus, reports Lukashenko’s press service.

Lukashenko recalled that in 2014, during the Ice Hockey World Championships, Russian planes were in the country and were on duty together with the Belarusian Air Force. According to Lukashenko, the countries could continue to use this experience.

"Give us these planes. Both Russians and Belarusians should fly these …

The U.S. and the European Union, after almost a month and a half of deliberations, decided on retaliatory measures in connection with the poising of the Russian opposition politician, Alexei Navalny. Navalny was poisoned in the summer with the Novichok nerve agent and was sentenced to 3 year in penal colony after returning to Russia from Germany.

Almost every top official of the Russian security agencies came under personal sanctions with freezing of assets and visa bans.

The head of the …

Armenia launched at least one Iskander ballistic missile on Azerbaijani capital during the last armed clash in Nagorno-Karabakh, reported the publication Middle East Eye with a reference to a high-ranking official. The newspaper’s source said that the missile was fired in November last year, after a month and a half of heavy fighting. The source claims that the initiative to launch a missile at Baku came from Moscow. The Russians allegedly helped to carry out the launch, in an attempt to force …

Self-proclaimed president of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko dismissed his eldest son Viktor from the post of Presidential Assistant for National Security and gave him the rank of reserve Major General, reported Lukashenko’s press service.

Viktor Lukashenko is 45 years old. He has served as an assistant to the President of Belarus since 2005. Since 2007, Lukashenko’s son has been a member of the Belarusian Security Council. On February 26, Viktor Lukashenko replaced his father as head of the …