• Kremlin: Putin has no plans to visit Vostok 2018 military exercises with other leaders

    Russian President Vladimir Putin appears to have no intention of inviting other world leaders to join him in attending  the Vostok 2018 military exercises. His press secretary Dmitry Peskov said there are no plans “[to invite other leaders to visit the exercises] together with the President of Russia,” Interfax reports. Peskov added that does not know if the leaders of other countries will attend the exercises separately.

    The Vostok 2018 exercises will be held in Siberia and in the Far East …

  • Russia creates an offshore zone on an island that does not exist

    One of the two newly created Russian offshore companies on Oktyabrsky Island, cannot be realized, since the island does not exist as a geographical entity, writes the newspaper Vedomosti.

    The publication refers to the words of Deputy Finance Minister Ilya Trunin, who complained that his “Kaliningrad colleagues have a basic problem".

    ”As it turns out, there is no Oktyabrsky Island in the Kaliningrad region. This geographical entity does not exist,” the official noted.

    According to the former …

  • Russia’s real foreign debt five times higher than official figure

    The Russian government’s nominally low foreign debt of $50 billion, at 3.6% of the GDP, is only the tip of the iceberg with respect to the government’s lending to western creditors, finanz.ru reports.

    If one takes into account the loans of the state banks and the state corporations and structures which are more than 50% owned by the government, the total foreign debt of the government sector exceeds the official figure by a factor of five, at $255 billion.

    These were the figures cited by the …

  • Russia fines Crimean plant Titan $10 million for air pollution

    The arbitration court of the annexed Crimea decided that the Titan plant in the Crimean town of Armyansk should pay 736.9 million rubles ($10.5 million USD) to the Russia budget for the negative impact on the environment, as reported by Rosprirodnadzor (Russia's Federal Service for Supervision of Use of Natural Resources) in a press release on their website. According to the report, the inspection found that the enterprise was discharging liquid industrial waste into the acid storage.

    The …

  • Russian submarine approaches Latvian border

    A Russian submarine came close to Latvia’s borders on September 11, the Latvian National Armed Forces posted on Twitter.

    According to the tweet, the Russian Navy’s Dmitrov submarine (NATO classification: “Kilo”) was spotted three nautical miles outside of Latvia’s territorial waters.

    At the start of May, the Russian Navy’s SB-121 and Kashtan ships were spotted 12 nautical miles from Latvia’s territorial waters. A large project 775 landing ship (NATO classification: Ropucha) was also seen six …