Russia

MOSCOW, March 27. /TASS/: The West is trying as best it can to "whitewash" and paper over the topic of the Nord Stream explosions, but Moscow will continue to oppose such attempts, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Monday.

"Western countries are making every effort to ‘whitewash’ <…> this topic, to paper it over, so that it disappears from the agenda. But, of course, Russia will continue to do everything possible to prevent this from happening," he said.

Peskov also mentioned the possibility of demanding compensation for Nord Stream.

MOSCOW, March 27. /TASS/: Russia will develop economic cooperation with sovereign nations, Secretary of the Security Council Nikolay Patrushev said in an interview with the Rossiyskaya Gazeta newspaper.

"Russia is not going to close its economy from the world. It will remain open and will be integrated with economies of sovereign nations taking care of their prosperity, including owing to cooperation with us," the official said.

MOSCOW, March 27. /TASS/: Moscow and Minsk keep getting stronger and are capable of handling the most difficult challenges, Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin said on Monday.

MOSCOW, March 26 (Reuters) - Russian air defences halted a Ukrainian drone attack on a Russian town on Sunday in which three people were hurt and apartment blocks were damaged, the Russian Defence Ministry said.

Kyiv did not immediately respond to a request for comment. It has previously denied Russian assertions that its drones - also known as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) - have flown into Russian territory and caused damage to civilian infrastructure.

MOSCOW, March 26. /TASS/: Russian President Vladimir Putin sees Western countries as "initiators and instigators" of the conflict in Ukraine.

"An armed coup - that's where it all started. We were forced to protect the population of Crimea, and this way or another we ended up supporting Donbass. They pretend they had nothing to do with it. They are the initiators of this conflict and the instigators. And today they are handing over millions more munitions, hardware and so on," the president said, answering questions from host Pavel Zarubin.

MOSCOW, March 26./TASS/: Russia’s COVID-19 case tally rose by 10,940 over the past day versus 12,382 a day earlier, bringing the total since the pandemic began to 22,586,210, the anti-coronavirus crisis center reported on Sunday.

As many as 778 people were hospitalized with COVID-19 in Russia over the past day, down from 1,373 a day earlier (43.3-percent decline). The number of hospitalized patients grew in nine regions and declined in 69, while in seven regions the figure remained the same.

MOSCOW, March 26. /TASS/:  An unscheduled long informal communication of the Russian and Chinese presidents, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, speak of the leaders' attitude, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov opined in an interview with the ‘Moscow. Kremlin. Putin’ program on the Rossiya-1 TV channel.

MOSCOW, March 26. /TASS/: The blast in the city of Kireyevsk in the Tula region was caused by an unmanned aerial vehicle, a spokesman for the local law enforcement agencies told TASS on Sunday.

"The blast in the Tula region was caused by a tactical reconnaissance unmanned aerial vehicle," he said.

"The explosion in the city of Kireyevsk in the Tula region was caused by a Ukrainian Tu-141 Strizh unmanned aerial vehicle. The drone was stuffed with explosive substances," the spokesman specified.

MOSCOW, March 26 (Reuters) - Russia and China are not creating a military alliance and the cooperation between their armed forces is "transparent", President Vladimir Putin said in comments broadcast on Sunday, days after hosting Chinese leader Xi Jinping in the Kremlin.

Putin and Xi professed friendship and pledged closer ties, including in the military sphere, during their March 20-21 summit, as Russia struggles to make battlefield gains in what it calls a "special military operation" in Ukraine.

March 25 (Reuters) - Russia will station tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus, President Vladimir Putin said on Saturday, sending a warning to NATO over its military support for Ukraine and escalating a standoff with the West.

Although not unexpected and while Putin said the move would not violate nuclear non-proliferation promises, it is one of the Russia's most pronounced nuclear signals since the beginning of its invasion of Ukraine 13 months ago.