• Putin says Trump confessed to him about huge military spending

    Russian President Vladimir Putin said said that U.S. leader Donald Trump admitted that the US is spending too much on its military.

    "Donald [Trump] told me they [the US] have a crazy [military] budget passed for next year, $738 billion, in my opinion,” Putin said in an interview with the Russian news agency TASS.

    He added that the US president had " said this with regret" and said "too much spending." "I have to do it. He is generally a supporter of disarmament, as he says," Putin concluded. …

  • Kremlin: Putin-Erdogan meeting in March will not be easy

    The meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan will not be easy, but both sides intend to keep a course on a peaceful settlement of the conflict in Syria, said Dmitry Peskov, a spokesman for the Russian President. The Kremlin representative also commented on Erdogan's request to Russia to "step aside". He reminded that Russian forces are in the country at the invitation of Damascus.

    "Yes, in the middle of the week, March 5th or 6th, the …

  • Russia says it cannot guarantee safety of Turkish aircraft in Syria

    The Turkish side cannot count on the safety of its combat aviation in northern Syria, stated the Russian Reconciliation Center for Syria, after Turkey shot down two Syrian fighter jets over Idlib.

    "The command of the Russian troops cannot guarantee the safety of Turkish aviation in the skies of Syria," the head of the Russian Reconciliation Center for Syria, Rear Admiral Oleg Zhuravlev, said, as quoted by TASS.

    "Amid a sharply aggravated situation, the Syrian government closed the airspace in …

  • Turkish drone destroys Russian-made Pantsir air defense system in Idlib

    On Friday, a missile fired by a Turkish drone destroyed a Russian-made Pantsir-S1 deployed by the Syrian Army in Idlib province.

    A video released by Turkish media, shows an active Syrian Pantsir being destroyed by a Turkish drone.

    According to Turkish media, the Pantsir radar was active when it was hit, indicating that the system failed to detect the incoming missile.

    The Syrian Air Defense Force reportedly has more than 30 Pantsir systems. Russia has also strengthened its Syrian Khmeimim …

  • Three journalists from Russian state news agency detained by Turkish police

    Turkish police detained three employees of the Sputnik-Turkey news agency in Ankara because of the publication "Stolen Province: Why France handed over part of Syria to Turkey 80 years ago," reported the newspaper Sözcü.

    The article was about the Turkish bordering province of Hatay, which after the First World War became part of Syria, under the control of France, and then the region was taken over by Turkey.

    According to RT's editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan, it is currently not possible …