Russia expelled two Swedish diplomats, reports Expressen newspaper quoting the spokesperson of the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs Patric Nilsson.

He called this decision "a response to the refusal to grant a Swedish visa to a Russian diplomat."

TASS news agency reported that the official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova, also called the expulsion of diplomats a retaliation measure.

In December last year, Reuters news agency reported about the expulsion of …

Kyiv considers invalid the Russian passports which, according to Putin’s decree, can be issued to residents of a number of south-eastern regions in Ukraine through a simplified procedure.

According to Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman, passports will not be considered valid for crossing the state border and when used on the territory of Ukraine. The prime minister also promised to contact partner countries so that “fake” documents such as these would be declared invalid for use on their …

The first president of Ukraine Leonid Kravchuk, in an interview with the Ukrainian news outlet Apostrof, said that  the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), Nikita Khrushchev forced the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic to integrate the Crimea, since Russia "could not sustain it (the Crimea)."

“[Nikita Khrushchev] comes to Kyiv, comes to the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of …

The Secretary General of the Council of Europe, Thorbjørn Jagland, in an interview with AFP, once again criticized the possible withdrawal or expulsion of Russia from the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), calling it a "dramatic event."

However, the CE Secretary General is convinced that "there are good chances for resolving the conflict with Moscow," which will allow Russia to avoid a possible exit from PACE, writes the Deutsche Welle Russian service.

According to …

In 2019 Russia will finish establishing the Liana radar surveillance system, which will give it coverage of the entire planet, the Russian Defense Ministry told Izvestia.

According to Russian media, two Pion-NKS satellites are scheduled to be launched into orbit before January 1, 2020. In conjunction with a pair of Lotos-s satellites, they will reportedly enable “the Russian General Staff to observe even small objects throughout the world”.

With its satellites orbiting at an altitude of 100 …

It is possible that Israel and Ukraine will begin producing remotely piloted aircraft for military use, said  the Israeli Ambassador to Ukraine, Joel Lion, as quoted by RBC-Ukraine.

“We are in a state of war with another country. Therefore, it has been very hard for us to hold a shield with one hand and build our country with the other. This is know-how that we would like to share with Ukraine. And maybe there are other things apart from drones that we could work on with Ukraine,” Lion said in …

On Tuesday Russia’s Investigative Committee released the first results of its investigation into the incident where the contamination of Russian oil led to the temporary suspension of oil transit through the Druzhba pipeline, which accounts for around 20% of the country’s oil exports.

According to the investigation, the oil with organic chlorine compounds capable of “eating” pipes and refinery equipment ended up in Transneft’s system as the result of an embezzlement scheme.

The six suspects, …

In the first quarter of 2020, the American investment bank Morgan Stanley will notify the Bank of Russia that it is ceasing its banking activity in Russia, according to the report for 2018 by the bank’s Russian division.

The bank will surrender its brokerage and depository licenses and close the corresponding departments. Morgan Stanley will convert its remaining business into a company that offers consulting services for investments and property.

The bank’s report notes that, as a result of …