Contents tagged with Russia
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New US ambassador to Russia: restoration of Ukraine’s sovereignty is the priority
Jon Huntsman, the new US ambassador to Russia, says that his primary goal is to improve relations between the two states. According to him, the first step towards this must be the restoration of Ukraine’s sovereignty.
As the news outlet KSL reports, Huntsman made statements to this effect at a formal swearing-in ceremony in Salt Lake City. Huntsman was officially sworn in on September 29 in Washington, but he visited Salt Lake City since he had previously been the governor of Utah.
Huntsman …
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Former Italian Prime Minister Berlusconi gives Putin duvet cover for his birthday
Former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi flew to Russia for President Vladimir Putin’s 65th birthday and presented the President with an embroidered handmade duvet cover, Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera reports.
The gift has a picture of Putin and Berlusconi, shaking hands. The photo of the duvet cover was also published by La Stampa and La Republica.
According to Italian media, Berlusconi congratulated Putin while they were in Sochi though the Kremlin made no official report of …
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Russia threatens U.S. media with sanctions
The Russian Foreign Ministry plans to take countermeasures against the American media in Russia in the event of continued pressure on the Russian television channel RT in the United States, the official spokeswoman for the ministry, Maria Zakharova, said.
According to her, the same measures will be applied to American media and American journalists that are being applied to RT (Russia Today) in the U.S., and Russia will deal with both state and private publications in the same way.
Zakharova …
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Russia creates department to fight internet anonymizers and Telegram messenger
Russia’s Federal State Unitary Enterprise “General Radio Frequency Center” (GRFC) has created a special department which investigates and analyses means of blocking websites and online services, and how to bypass the blocking, said Roskomnadzor (Russia’s Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media) head Alexander Zharov, newspaper Izvestiya reports.
“They [the department] practice blocking all the resources which would have to be blocked if they …
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Khodorkovsky congratulating Putin on his birthday wished him ‘to separate himself from Russia’
In an interview with TV Rain (Dozhd), founder of Open Russia political initiative Khodorkovsky said he was happy to congratulate Putin on his 65th birthday. "If Vladimir Vladimirovich found the strength to separate himself from the country (from the point of view of its management), then I think our country would finally see some prospects for the future, as would Putin himself. I really wish this for him," Khodorkovsky said.
Khodorkovsky recalled that he also had congratulated the President …
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Amnesty International demands the release of people detained at protest rallies in Russia
Amnesty International, an international human rights organization, demanded that the Russian authorities "immediately and unconditionally" release all detained protesters and investigate allegations of police abuse of power in St. Petersburg and Yakutsk, as reported by the Russian broadcast of Radio Liberty.
The Amnesty International statement notes that the rallies took place in many cities in Russia on Vladimir Putin’s birthday.
"The intention of the Kremlin is beyond doubt - to deprive the …
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Pentagon questions ability of Russia and Syria to defeat the Islamic State
Pentagon spokesman Eric Pahon said that he is skeptical of statements made by the Russian Defense Ministry regarding its successes in the fight against the Islamic state (IS).
TASS quotes Pahon as saying that "The efforts of the authoritarian regime of [Syrian President Bashar Assad], Russia and Iran are unlikely to lead to a complete defeat of IS."
According to Pahon, the emergence of IS "is linked, inter alia, with the repressive measures of the Assad regime." Against this background, he …
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More than 260 people detained during Putin’s birthday protests in Russia
At least 262 people were detained during protests in support of Alexei Navalny in 27 cities across Russia, according to OVD-Info.
As of 8:00 p.m., 66 people had been detained in Petersburg, 54 people in Yaroslavl, and 20 in Lipetsk. Detentions also occurred in Kaliningrad, Krasnodar, Perm, Pskov, Saransk, Selyatin, Sochi, Stavropol, Tver, Tyumen, and Yakutsk.
In Krasnodar, one of the protesters was arrested for three days. In Yekaterinburg, Izhevsk, Nizhny Tagil, Rostov-on-Don, Samara, …
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Ukraine accuses Russian private military company Wagner of involvement in Donbas conflict
The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) said that the Wagner Group, a Russian private military company, participated in conflicts in the Donbas in 2014, and subsequently in Syria.
“An evidence base has been collected on the activity of Russian soldiers in the Donbas and in Syria, the activity of the Wagner Group. The campaign’s leader is Dmitry Utkin. This project makes it possible for the Kremlin to tell the international community that there are none of its soldiers there [in Eastern Ukraine],” …
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Russia intends to increase military expenditures while reducing healthcare and education spending
The Russian government has proposed to increase total defense spending in 2017 by 179.6 billion rubles - to 3.05 trillion rubles or $52.4 billion (3.3% of GDP), as indicated in a draft amendment to the budget submitted to the State Duma, Rosbalt.ru reports.
The increase in expenses will be for the closed part of the military budget. The expenditures in all other areas, including social policy, education, and healthcare, are planned to be reduced by 54 billion rubles ($938.5 million). …