• China refuses to finance $14 billion Gazprom megaproject

    Russian officials’ attempts to get through to Chinese investors in order to enlist their support in developing the economy in the East and overcoming western sanctions are continuing to fail for the fifth consecutive year. 

    The new negotiations to secure a Chinese loan for the construction of Russia’s largest gas processing plant in the Amur province have ended with yet another disappointment for the Russians. 

    Gazprom had hoped to pay for the Amur gas processing plant, which is scheduled to …

  • Russia: US sanctions on Venezuelan state oil company illegal

    Moscow has said that the sanctions imposed by Washington on PDVSA, the Venezuelan state-owned oil company, in an attempt to undermine Nicolas Maduro’s power, are illegal. 

    “The legitimate leadership of Venezuela has already described these sanctions as illegal. One can fully get behind this perspective,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters. 

    The US Treasury Department said that the measures against the Venezuelan state-owned oil company were adopted in order to “change the …

  • Media: Russian Military Command behind the creation of Wagner private military company

    According to an investigation by the Bell newspaper, Evgeny Prigozhin, a Russian businessman known as “Putin's chef”, created the private military company (PMC), the  Wagner Group following the orders of Russia's high-ranking military leaders. 

    The very idea of creating a PMC was born at the St. Petersburg Economic Forum in 2010. Eeben Barlow, the founder of Executive Outcomes, the world's first legal private military company, was also present at the forum. Barlow told the military about the …

  • Poland urges UN to send peacekeepers to Donbas

    Polish Radio reports that during a meeting of ministers from European countries members of the UN Security Council with the head of the EU diplomatic department Federica Mogherini, the Polish Foreign, Minister Jacek Czaputowicz called on the participants to consider sending a UN peacekeeping mission to Ukraine.

    “It is important for us to keep the issue of aggression against Ukraine on international forum agendas, including the UN. It would be good to consider new initiatives that will bring us …

  • Media: Israel unable to stop Iran’s arms shipments to Syria

    Despite all Israel’s attempts to shut down Iran’s supply routes for sending weapons to Syria, Tehran has still been able to arm its proxies with rockets and other weapons. 

    The Israeli news site Nziv reported with reference to sources in the Arab press that the Assad regime and Hezbollah had received another arms shipment. This time, the weapons were delivered by air, virtually out in the open. 

    The munitions were reportedly transported in an Il-76TD cargo plane belonging to the Iranian …