• World Bank cuts Russia's economic forecast

    The World Bank predicts that the Russian economy will shrink 1.9%, a poorer estimate than the December forecast which estimated a dip of only 0.7%.

    The worsening of the forecast is due to a revaluation of oil prices for 2016. In the previous forecast the bank assumed that the average oil price would be 49 dollars per barrel. According to the bank’s new estimates, the average oil price this year will be about 37 dollars per barrel.

    The new WB forecast also anticipates 1.1% growth in the …

  • Yatsenyuk intends to introduce ban on oil products from Russia

    Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk intends to introduce a ban on the import of oil products from Russia. He stated this on April 6th during a meeting with the government. Ukraine has established strict sanctions on goods from Russia after the annexation of the Crimean peninsula in 2014 and because of Moscow's support for separatists in eastern Ukraine. Russia responded with its own ban on Ukrainian goods.

    At a meeting with the government in Kiev, Yatsenyuk said that "we have introduced …

  • Putin: The publication of the Panama Papers is an attempt to destabilize Russia

    Russian President Vladimir Putin made his first comments on the investigation of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, calling it “nonsense”, Dozhd reported.

    “The publication of the ‘Panama Papers’ is an attempt to destabilize the situation in the country,” Putin stated. “The easiest way to do this is to motivate people to distrust the authorities.”

    The International Consortium for Investigative Journalism (ICIJ) recently published a report highlighting the ways in which …

  • Gazprom has accepted Georgia's terms on the transit of gas to Armenia

    Georgia, as before, will get 10% of the total volume of Russian gas supplies to Armenia as transit fees according to the agreement signed by the Russian corporation, as reported by the Ministry of Energy of Georgia."The text of the contract has already been agreed upon. The Ministry of Energy received the contract and sent it to the Ministry of Justice for legal assessment. The contract will then be submitted to the government for approval. Only after that will the contract come officially into …

  • Erdoğan: Russia is a party to the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh

    The President of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, believes that Russia is involved in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. “Russia said that Turkey is a party to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Indeed, Russia is a party to the conflict,” Erdoğan stated. Reuters quotes Erdogan as saying that Russia was involved in the conflict in Georgia, in Ukraine and now the conflict in Syria as well.

    Earlier, the Foreign Minister of Russia, Sergey Lavrov, stated that Russia doesn’t find Turkey responsible for the …