Contents tagged with Russia

  • Hungary may oppose EU arms embargo on Belarus

    EU ambassadors will soon discuss the extension of the embargo on selling weapons to Belarus. The matter has been reviewed annually since 2011, and requires the consent of all 28 EU member-states.

    However, this year there is reason to believe that the extension of the embargo may be blocked by Hungary, which has already exempt biathlon rifles and other sport weapons from the embargo.

    Diplomatic sources told Radio Liberty that Hungary has already warned that, before supporting the arms embargo, …

  • Russian oil giant Rosneft reports losses in Venezuela

    In its annual IFRS report and presentation on Tuesday, the Russian energy company Rosneft reported that it has a total of $4.4 billion invested in the Venezuelan economy as of the start of 2019.

    $2.3 billion, more than half of the total, is in the form of loans to the Venezuelan state-owned oil company PDVSA, which have been issued since 2014 as prepayments for oil.

    PDVSA has received a total of roughly $6.5 billion from Rosneft, although two thirds of this debt has already been paid off. …

  • Russian Defense Minister orders to expedite new missile development to counter US

    Russia will have to develop new types of weapons in a limited time frame in response to the US’s withdrawal from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoygu said in a conference call on Tuesday.

    The defense industry has been given two years to create a ground-based variant of the Kalibr system with the long-range cruise missile that “proved itself” in Syria according to Shoygu.

    “In this same time frame, we will have to create a ground-based …

  • European Court of Human Rights to start hearings on Ukraine’s lawsuit against Russia in the end of February

    In 2019, the European Court of Human Rights will consider 5 lawsuits submitted by Ukraine against Russia for "aggression in the Crimea and the Donbas", Ukrainian Minister of Justice Pavlo Petrenko announced. 

    “First hearings on a case of Ukraine against Russia on human rights violations in the Crimea will take place in the ECHR on February 27,” Vice Prime Minister of Ukraine Pavlo Rozenko wrote on Facebook. 

    According to Rozenko, the claims about human rights violations in the Crimea, …

  • Russian recruitment offices refuse to grant veteran status to soldiers fighting in Syria

    Russian soldiers who have participated in combat in Syria are fighting to obtain official recognition as combat veterans and pension supplements for their families, Kommersant reports.

    In the Russian city of Vladimir, a court has awarded a lawsuit filed by the widow of a Russian officer killed in Syria against the local recruitment office, which refused to pay her pension supplements for the loss the family breadwinner. The issue is that the recruitment offices in Russia refuse to recognize …

  • Media: three subsidiaries of Russian Space Agency are in a financial crisis

    RIA Novosti reports,citing materials presented at the meeting between the head of Roscosmos Dmitry Rogozin and Russian President Vladimir Putin, that the financial condition of three subsidiaries of the Russian State Space Corporation, Roscosmos is in a crisis. 

    According to  Roscosmos’  documents, measures are being taken to improve the financial state of the State Organization "Gagarin Research & Test Cosmonaut Training Center", Federal governmental enterprise "Scientific-and-testing center …

  • Media: Russia detained hundreds of Iranian military in Syria

    A large number of Iranian troops and representatives of the Shiite armed groups supporting Bashar Assad are detained in the Russian base in Khmeimim (Syria). The number of detained is in the hundreds, reports Saudi television channel Al-Arabia citing the Syrian center for human rights monitoring. 

    Among the detained are dozens of commanders. 

    Al-Arabia suggests that the wave of arrests may be in connection with a battle in the Syrian city Sha’ta. 

    According to German outlet Spiegel, Moscow …

  • Kremlin complains German representatives refused to attend the conference in Russia because of participants from Crimea

    German representatives refused to participate in the fifth meeting of the heads of Russian and German educational and research organizations that should have taken place in Kazan on February 4 to 6, reported the Russian Foreign Ministry. 

    The Ministry noted that the German representatives objected to the participation of the Crimean Federal University’s Principal, Andrei Falaleev at the conference. 

    “Just a week before the forum, German Foreign Ministry and the conference of principals of …

  • US gives Russia evidence of 9M729 missile tests which violates INF Treaty

    US Ambassador to Russia John Huntsman said that the US has given Russia the geographical coordinates and the dates of the tests done with the 9M729 missiles which the Pentagon believes violate the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty.

    The Russian government has repeatedly claimed that the US has presented no evidence to support its accusations that Russia is in breach of the treaty, which prohibits missiles with a range between 500 and 5,500 km.

    “Russia conducted flight tests of the …

  • Ukrainian border guards built observation towers on the Azov Sea coast

    The State Border Guard Service and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine prepared a set of measures aimed at strengthening military positions in the Black and Azov Seas. The head of the Ukrainian State Border Guard Service, Petro Tsyhykal, told the Ukrainian Channel 5  that the border guards had already erected five observation towers on the coast of the Sea of Azov, which will soon be equipped with the necessary means of audiovisual control.

    “Now five towers have already been built on …