• Crimean government employees fired for mining bitcoins at the workplace

    Two employees of the Council of Ministers of the Crimea have paid for installing software for mining bitcoins on a government server with their posts, as announced at a press conference in Sevastopol by the head of the Anti-Corruption Committee of the Crimea, Alexander Akshatin.

    "The people have been fired. I think that in the future there will be no interest [in doing something like this]," RIA Novosti news agency quotes Akshatin as saying.

    The Committee head explained that the incident …

  • Putin: conditions are in place to end the war in Syria

    Conditions have been created in Syria allowing for the end of the war, Russian President Vladimir Putin said at a meeting with Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the TV channel Russia-24 reports.

    “The necessary conditions have been created for putting an end to the fratricidal war in Syria, completely destroying terrorists and allowing Syrians to return to peaceful life," said Putin.

    He said that the earlier decisions on creating "de-escalation zones" in Syria created the conditions for the …

  • German Ambassador to Russia: Investors in Russia concerned about scandal with Siemens turbines

    The scandal surrounding Siemens turbines has heightened the concern of foreign investors in Russia, stated German Ambassador to Russia Rüdiger von Fritsch in an interview with the newspaper Kommersant.

    “The anxiety and uncertainty among foreign investors in Russia has been exacerbated by the fact that even a company such as Siemens, which has been operating in the world for more than 160 years and has created 3,000 jobs here, cannot rely on written and oral promises,” said the ambassador.

    The …

  • Russia threatens to block Telegram messenger, Google and Facebook

    The Minister of Communications and Mass Media of the Russian Federation, Nikolay Nikiforov, stated that Telegram and other Internet services that refuse to comply with Russian legislation will not work in Russia, as reported by RIA Novosti.

    "We have no prejudiced attitude to either Russian or foreign Internet services. As it is written in the law, so it will be, without options. Services that don’t comply with Russian laws in Russia, won’t work in Russia," said the Minister in response to …

  • Russia promises to retaliate if US infringes on the Treaty on Open Skies

    The spokesperson for the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova has stated that they will take adequate measures if the United States complicates the conduction of Russian observation flights over US territory, reported TASS.

    "Regarding the measures that the United States is imposing - which, as the media write, are intended to make it difficult to conduct Russian observation flights over America - we will evaluate them, including from the point of view of compliance with the Treaty (on …