Europe

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia is not intending to ask the European Union to lift sanctions due to the coronavirus outbreak, the TASS news agency cited Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov as saying on Tuesday.

The EU imposed sanctions on Russia’s banking, financial and energy sectors over Moscow’s annexation of Crimea in 2014.

PARIS (Reuters) - Major international creditors have agreed a moratorium on the poorest countries debt in response to the new coronavirus crisis, French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said on Tuesday.

Le Maire also told reporters that a large majority of African countries were eligible to be covered by the debt moratorium.

BRUSSELS/PARIS, April 13 (Xinhua) -- Europe remained the continent in the world hardest hit by the COVID-19 pandemic, as nearly 900,000 people here had contracted the novel coronavirus and nearly 80,000 patients succumbed to the disease, according to a global tally.

MOSCOW, April 13 (Xinhua) -- Russia may resort to its military resources in the fight against COVID-19 if the situation in the country continues to worsen, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Monday.

"The Defense Ministry is working, I repeat, quite efficiently, but it is using only a fraction of what it has, and it is involved abroad, while the main resources are still in reserve," Putin said at a meeting with senior government officials involved in the battle against COVID-19.

The situation in Russia is worsening, with a rising number of infections, he said.

MOSCOW, April 13. /TASS/: The novel coronavirus infection rate will slow down as warm summer weather will set in, but it may start climbing again in the autumn, the chief of the clinical research department of the Central Research Institute of Epidemiology under the Russian consumer rights watchdog Rospotrebnadzor, Tatyana Ruzhentsova said on the Rossiya-1 federal news channel.

MOSCOW, April 13. /TASS/: Russia's GDP will fall by about 5% by the end of 2020 if quarantine measures in connection with the spread of a new coronavirus infection are extended, head of the Accounts Chamber Alexey Kudrin said in an interview with RBC TV channel.

MOSCOW, April 13. /TASS/: The motor rifle troops of Russia’s Eastern Military District supported by Mi-8AMTSh assault helicopters thwarted a tank breakthrough during force-on-force drills in the Amur Region, the District’s press office reported on Monday.

"Force-on-force tactical drills with the use of artillery and army aviation took place at the Yekaterinoslavsky training range in the Amur Region under the scenario of a present-day joint force combined arms battle," the press office said in a statement.

MOSCOW, April 13. /TASS/: Russia conducts a space experiment on basic research of electromagnetic phenomena in the Earth's atmosphere at the International Space Station in cooperation with Italy, and plans to conduct three more experiments in cooperation with Hungary, Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) Executive Director for Science and Long-Term Programs Alexander Bloshenko said.

MOSCOW, April 13. /TASS/: The Russian Ministry of Finance has notified finance ministries of Luxembourg and Malta about amendments to double taxation avoidance agreements in respect of increasing to 15% the tax on dividends taken abroad, press service of the Russian ministry said on Monday.

"The Russian Finance Ministry sent letters to finance ministries of Luxembourg and Malta concerning introduction of amendments into bilateral double taxation agreements in respect of increasing the rate of the tax on dividend and interest gains to 15%," the press service reports.

MOSCOW, April 13. /TASS/: Russian president’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov said on Monday the recent close contacts between the Russian and US leaders, Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump, on issues of the oil market stabilization cannot be interpreted as a sign of a thaw in relations between the two powers.