Russia

MOSCOW, Jan. 21 (Xinhua) -- Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Grushko said on Sunday that NATO's Steadfast Defender 2024 exercises signify a final and irrevocable return to the Cold War schemes.

NATO's Supreme Allied Commander Europe, General Christopher Cavoli, announced earlier that the exercises, scheduled for next week, will be the largest in decades and will last for several months.

"These exercises are another component of the hybrid war that the West has waged against Russia," Grushko said.

MOSCOW, January 19. /TASS/: The Russian Armed Forces carried out 17 group strikes, with weapons including Kinzhal missiles, on Ukrainian defense enterprises from January 6-12, the Russian Defense Ministry said in a daily bulletin of the special military operation.

MOSCOW, January 19. /TASS/:  Washington's "toxic reaction" to Moscow's stance on talks about strategic stability serves to affirm that Russia is in the right, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in a statement.

She was commenting on criticism from Pranay Vaddi, a senior director for arms control, disarmament, and nonproliferation at the National Security Council under US President Joe Biden.

MOSCOW (AP) — More than 1,000 people rallied in the Russian region of Bashkortostan on Friday, continuing a series of protests triggered by the conviction and sentencing of a local activist and handing a new challenge to the Kremlin.

Russia Jan 18 (Reuters) - The head of one of Russia's biggest ethnically mixed republics accused what he called extremists and traitors on Thursday of trying to bring about its secession, a day after police used tear gas and batons to break up a rare demonstration.

The clashes took place in a small town in Bashkortostan, a republic of 4.1 million people in the Urals Mountains, where a leading rights activist was sentenced on Wednesday to four years in a penal colony.

ST. PETERSBURG, Jan. 18 (Xinhua) -- Electric vehicles can continue to drive free of charge on federal toll highways in 2024, the Russian government's press service said Thursday.

Russian First Deputy Prime Minister Andrei Belousov, who supervises the federal project "Electric and hydrogen car," said that the privilege for electric vehicles will resume on Jan. 19.

MOSCOW, January 16. /TASS/: Russia is gaining allies around the world, as most countries support the idea of a multipolar world, so Russian parliamentarians need to build and develop relations with them, Russian State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin said, speaking at the first plenary session of the chamber's spring meeting.

MOSCOW, January 16. /TASS/: Russian President Vladimir Putin has met with the foreign ministers of Russia and North Korea, Sergey Lavrov and Choe Son Hui, who earlier in the day held talks in Moscow, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

"Russian President Vladimir Putin received at the Kremlin DPRK Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui," Peskov said.

According to him, the top diplomats informed the Russian president of the agreements reached.

MOSCOW, Jan 16 (Reuters) - A court on Tuesday sentenced a former senior officer in the National Guard to six years in a prison colony after convicting him of buying equipment unable to protect the bridge which links southern Russia to Crimea, the TASS state news agency reported.

TASS said that Colonel Sergei Volkov had purchased two radar-based air defence systems for 395 million roubles ($4.5 million) which were meant to be able to bring down Ukrainian attack drones by suppressing their signal.

MOSCOW, Jan 16 (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Tuesday that Ukraine's statehood could suffer an "irreparable blow" if the pattern of the war continued, and Russia would never be forced to abandon the gains it had made.

Putin made his televised comments a day after Switzerland agreed to host a global summit at the request of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.

Putin dismissed "so-called peace formulas" being discussed in the West and Ukraine and what he called the "prohibitive demands" they entailed.