Russia

MOSCOW, August 27. /TASS/. Russian Chief of General Staff Valery Gerasimov has met with Head of the Joint Staff Department of the Chinese Central Military Commission Li Zuocheng in Moscow. During the negotiations, the army officials discussed expanding bilateral military cooperation.

"Today I offer to discuss the prospects of expanding and deepening our bilateral relations, including holding joint military exercises and exchanging opinions on the situation in the critical regions of the world," the chief of General Staff said.

MOSCOW, August 28. /TASS/. Russia is doing the best it can to prevent a provocation involving the use of chemical weapons in Syria, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov told reporters on Tuesday.

MOSCOW, Aug. 25 (Xinhua) -- The United States and its allies are planning to carry out new missile strikes on Syria on the pretext of a provocation that the Syrian government is behind a "chemical attack," the Russian Defense Ministry said Saturday.

EKATERINBURG, August 23. /TASS/. The one-piece 1.6-kg emerald found in the Sverdlovsk Region earlier this year was sold for 4 mln rubles ($58,700). A Russian company engaged in gem cutting purchased it, press service of the Mariinsky Mine told TASS on Monday.

"The emerald was sold. The sum is over 4 mln rubles ($58,700). A Russian cutting company purchased it," the press service said, without detailing the buyer’s name.

KUBINKA /Moscow Region/, August 24. /TASS/. The most advanced Katran rotary-wing unmanned aerial vehicle publicly shown for the first time at the Victory Day parade in Moscow in the spring will enter flight tests before the end of the year, Russian Helicopters Group told TASS at the Army-2018 forum on Friday.

"Currently, the Katran drone is undergoing ground trials that will be concluded in the autumn of this year, after which the Group’s specialists will start the program of the Katran’s flight tests to be completed in 2019," the press office said.

MOSCOW, August 22. /TASS/. The Western countries are known to have made at least a hundred chemical agents similar to the Novichok nerve gas since the mid-1990s, as follows from a report published on the Russian Foreign Ministry’s website.

The Foreign Ministry recalled that on January 13, 1993 Moscow was one of the first to have put its signature to the Chemical Weapons Convention and promptly began its implementation.

BOCHAROV RUCHEI, August 22./TASS/. All foreign forces staying in Syria without an invitation from Damascus must leave the country, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Wednesday in comments on a statement by US National Security Adviser John Bolton.

"All foreign forces staying there without an invitation from the Syrian government must be eventually withdrawn," Lavrov told reporters.

MOSCOW, August 23. /TASS/. Moscow will definitely respond to Washington’s latest sanctions and in particular, it will step up efforts to abandon the dollar in trade operations, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said in an interview with International Affairs magazine. Extracts from the interview were available on the publication’s website on Thursday.

GENEVA, August 23. /TASS/. Moscow will give a tit-for-tat response to the expansion of US blacklists of Russian companies and individuals, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov told reporters on Thursday.

LONDON, August 21. /TASS/. Intimidating people with the so-called Russian threat, the UK government only compromises its own international authority and strips itself of a possibility for constructive dialogue with Moscow, the Russian embassy in the United Kingdom said on Tuesday, commenting on UK Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt’s speech at the US Institute for Peace.