The republics that were part of the USSR "took with them gifts from the Russian people" during the collapse of the Soviet Union, said Russian President Vladimir Putin in a televised interview.

Putin noted that the Union Treaty stipulated the right of the republics to leave the Union, but the procedure was not regulated.

Putin did not specify what kind of gifts were taken. The Russian president also did not specify which republics of the former Soviet Union "took Russia’s lands."

In the same …

The Belarusian authorities ordered state-owned companies to stop using bank accounts and withdraw money from all Russian banks except state-owned ones, reported Belarusian news outlets Naviny.by and TUT.by, citing sources in financial industry.

The order of the Belarusian government concerns the banks with Russian capital, one of the bankers said. This includes the subsidiaries of Sberbank and VEB (BPS-Sberbank and BelVEB), which have traditionally been actively working with Belarusian state- …

The Russian anti-aircraft missile systems Pantsir-S deployed in Syria and Libya may face a serious problem, because Israeli military got hold of one of Pantsir missiles, reported the Russian news outlet Avia.pro, noting that a few days ago a Pantsir-S missile landed in the Golan Heights. The missile was reportedly fired by the Syrian air defense trying to shoot down an "Israeli cruise missile".

The article emphasizes that "Israel could use the Pantsir technology to develop means to counter …

The new Ukrainian cruise missile Neptune is capable of "reaching" the ships of the Russian fleet in the port of Novorossiysk, stated the Ukrainian military expert Mikhail Zhikhorov in his article in the newspaper "Business Capital".

"Theoretically, the range of the missile allows the system to reach the targets around the occupied Crimea, and from the coast of the Sea of Azov - to ships near the port of Novorossiysk," the expert says.

He noted that Neptune was originally designed to deter the …

Russian President Vladimir Putin said that Russia and Ukraine "did not argue but only had different views".

"First of all, Crimea has always been ours, even from a legal point of view," Putin said, in an interview with Russia 1 TV channel, calling the annexation of Crimea "the highest degree of democracy."

In an interview, he was asked whether a dispute of such a scale was worth "acquiring" Crimea, while practically "losing" Ukraine.

According to the Russian President, Russia did not argue …

The combat experience, which was gained by Russian private military companies (PMCs) in Ukraine and Syria, gives the Kremlin the opportunity to use these companies to project its military influence in other regions, stated the representative of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense  Vadim Skibitsky during the meeting of the OSCE Forum for Security and Cooperation, dedicated to the activities of private military companies, Ukrinform reports.

Skibitsky said that …

Relations between Russia and Poland are "at their lowest possible level", this goes against the interests of the two countries, said Russian Presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Channel One Russia.

"Our relations with Poland today do not just leave much to be desired, they are bad. They are probably at their lowest level, which is clearly contrary to the interests of our two countries, because the peoples of our two countries would be interested in the opposite," said Peskov, as quoted by …

German Chancellor Angela Merkel should withdraw her support for the Nord Stream-2 project over the murder in Berlin of Georgian citizen Zelimkhan Khangoshvili, which was allegedly carried out by Russia, writes the newspaper Bild, citing deputy head of the Free Democratic Party of Germany Alexander Graf Lambsdorff.

The MP said the killing in Berlin "a couple of hundred meters from government buildings" was a sharp blow to German sovereignty and Berlin should "think three times before laying a …