Russia

21 Apr 2023; MEMO: Russian President Vladimir Putin discussed the OPEC+ deal to cap oil production with the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman, in a telephone call on Friday, the Kremlin said, reports Reuters.

The two expressed satisfaction with the level of cooperation between the two countries to bring stability to the global oil market, the Kremlin said in a readout of the call.

Putin and the Crown Prince, who is widely known as MbS, have also forged close business relations.

MOSCOW, April 21. /TASS/: The proportion of Russian citizens' confidence in President Vladimir Putin amounted to over 80%, according to the All-Russian Public Opinion Research Center that published the results of a survey conducted between April 10 and 16 among 1,600 respondents aged over 18.

"When asked about trust in Putin, 80.1% of respondents answered positively (+0.4% over the week), the approval rate of the Russian president's work was up by 0.4% and stood at 77.5%," the pollster noted.

MOSCOW, April 21. /TASS/: The Kiev regime’s extremist statements and crimes confirm the need to continue the special military operation until all of its objectives have been achieved, the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Friday.

April 20 (Reuters) - A Russian Sukhoi-34 supersonic warplane accidentally fired a weapon into the city of Belgorod near Ukraine late on Thursday, causing an explosion and injuring three people.

Video footage from the site showed piles of concrete on the street, several damaged cars and a building with broken windows. One shot showed what appeared to be car upside down on the roof of a store.

MOSCOW, April 20 (Xinhua) -- The global trend towards multipolarity will intensify, and those who choose to resist this shift will ultimately lose and face new challenges, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Thursday.

"The global trend ... towards multipolarity is inevitable, and will only intensify," Putin said during a videoconference of the Council for Local Self-Government Development.

"Those, who do not understand this, and who will choose not to follow this trend, will lose," he said.

19 Apr 2023; MEMO: Russia, on Wednesday, accused Ukraine of sabotaging the Black Sea grain deal by demanding bribes from ship owners to register new vessels and carry out inspections under the cover of a deal the United Nations hopes could ease a global food crisis, Reuters reports.

MOSCOW, April 19. /TASS/: The conversation with the US, British and Canadian ambassadors summoned to the Russian Foreign Ministry on Tuesday took a harsh tone, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said.

"They were summoned to the Foreign Ministry and everything was explained to them, in a tough tone, without any desire to soften things or soft-pedal the situation," the diplomat told Radio Sputnik on Wednesday.

Zakharova stressed that, if Western diplomats continue to act this way, such behavior would be deemed inconsistent with their declared status.

MOSCOW, April 19. /TASS/: The Kiev regime is seeking to exploit the Black Sea initiative with might and main, not shunning either the abuse of the rules of procedure or demands for bribes from shipowners. This is stated in the comments by Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, which was released on Wednesday.

MOSCOW, April 19. /TASS/: The deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, Dmitry Medvedev, has warned of the dangers South Korea's plans to supply weapons to Ukraine are fraught with.

"There have emerged new enthusiasts eager to help our enemies. South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol has said that in principle his country is ready to supply the Kiev regime with weapons," Medvedev said on his Telegram channel on Wednesday.

MOSCOW, April 19. /TASS/: The trilateral agreements inked by Russia, Azerbaijan and Armenia for a possible settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict constitute a genuine basis for finding a way out of the situation, but the provisions of these agreements must be observed, Russian Presidential Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Wednesday.

"We are ready to welcome any steps by the parties involved that could ease tensions and would contribute to further progress regarding the implementation of the trilateral agreements," Peskov said.