Russia

MOSCOW, December 26. /TASS/: The state-of-the-art Chukavin sniper rifle is already being supplied to Russian troops in the special military operation zone in Ukraine and the Kalashnikov arms manufacturer is studying the input by the military of its combat use, Kalashnikov Group President Alan Lushnikov said on Monday.

ST. PETERSBURG, December 26. /TASS/: Leaders of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) gathered on Monday at the invitation of Russian President Vladimir Putin in St. Petersburg for a traditional pre-New Year informal summit.

The meeting is being held at the Presidential Library on Senate Square. It is attended by leaders of Azerbaijan, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan.

The summit will last two days.

MOSCOW, December 26. /TASS/: The average level of Russians' trust in Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2022 is 78%, Valery Fyodorov, Director General of the All-Russian Public Opinion Research Center, said on Monday, citing data obtained in the course of daily telephone polls among 1,600 adult Russians living in 80 regions of the Russian Federation.

"The average level of trust in Vladimir Putin this year was 78%," he said during a roundtable discussion at the Social Research Expert Institute (EISI).

MOSCOW, December 26. /TASS/: Russian President Vladimir Putin has established the office of his first deputy in the Military Industrial Commission he chairs. The Deputy Head of Russia’s Security Council Dmitry Medvedev has been appointed to the post.

According to a presidential decree published on Monday, Emergencies Minister Alexander Kurenkov joined the commission instead of Igor Artemyev (who previously headed the Federal Anti-Monopoly Service, FAS).

MOSCOW, December 26. /TASS/: Dmitry Rogozin, former chief of Russia’s state space corporation Roscosmos and now the leader of the Tsar’s Wolves team of military advisers in Donbass, is recovering after successful surgery, his aide said on Monday.

"Dmitry Olegovich underwent major surgery to extract a fragment of a Ukrainian projectile from a bone in his neck. The surgery was successful and now he is recovering," the aide said.

MOSCOW, December 26. /TASS/: The era of the unipolar world, when the United States dictated conditions to other countries and even "broke" their political systems, is coming to an end, Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Galuzin told TASS in an interview.

Dec 26 (Reuters) - Jailed Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny said on Monday he was suffering worsening back pain from long spells in solitary confinement that he said were part of a deliberate strategy by the authorities to undermine his health.

In a post on Twitter, he also complained of being injected with unknown drugs.

"See how the system works when you are not allowed to beat up a person, but your leadership ordered you to hurt them badly," the Twitter post said.

MOSCOW, December 25. /TASS/: Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov has said Russia will prefer to cutting oil production over supplies under a Western price cap, the Asharq News television channel reported.

"What is the Russian Federation saying? We won’t supply oil under contracts that will indicate a price cap that’s proposed by Western countries. That’s ruled out. That’s what the Russian president said - that Russia won’t supply oil under deals that will indicate caps," he said.

MOSCOW, December 25. /TASS/: Russia will destroy the Patriot air defense systems if the US provides them to Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Rossiya-1 television on Sunday.

"Of course, we’ll take them out, 100%!" he said in interview with journalist Pavel Zarubin on the Moscow. Kremlin. Putin program.

The president said Ukraine so far doesn't have these systems.

Putin told reporters on Thursday that "the Patriot is a fairly outdated system" and an "antidote" to these systems will be found.

MOSCOW, December 25. /TASS/: The Russian side will wait until the final parameters of the EU embargo are clear, as it doesn’t understand what can substitute for Russian oil products in Europe, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak said in an interview with TASS.

"Europe used to be a key market for the sale of our oil products. Let us wait and see which decisions they will make in the long run. So far, we don’t know what may substitute for our fuel," he said.