Russia

MOSCOW, December 31: Gas prices in Europe dropped below $800 per 1,000 cubic meters during the trading session for the first time since November, according to ICE data.

February futures prices at the TTF hub in the Netherlands plunged to $796 per 1,000 cubic meters or 68 euro per MWh.

Since the beginning the trading session the price of gas decreased by more than 22%. In comparison with the all-time high achieved last week the price of gas plummeted almost threefold.

MOSCOW, December 31. /TASS/: New Russian vaccine against the coronavirus, Convasel, can be registered before the end of the first quarter of 2022, head of the Federal Bio-Medical Agency (FMBA) Veronika Skvortsova said in an interview with the Rossiya-24 TV channel.

"We plan to submit a report by the end of this year. Of course, the regulator will decide, there are different approaches," she said adding that the period of observation of the people they began to vaccinate in August-September takes six months.

MOSCOW, December 30. /TASS/: Russian President Vladimir Putin in his upcoming phone call with US President Joe Biden may warn Washington against provocations, particularly involving Ukraine, ahead of the Russian-US talks on security guarantees that are scheduled to take place in Geneva on January 10, Chairman of the Board of the Valdai International Discussion Club’s Development and Support Foundation Andrey Bystritsky told TASS on Thursday.

MOSCOW, December 30. /TASS/: Presidents Vladimir Putin of Russia and Joe Biden of the United States will hold their upcoming conversation over the phone, and there will be no public part, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.

"This time, it is about a phone conversation, a regular phone call. Accordingly, there will be no public part," he explained.

The phone call is scheduled for 11:30 pm Moscow time on Thursday, Peskov added. "The phone call with Biden is planned to begin half an hour before midnight, at 11:30 pm," he specified.

MOSCOW, December 30. /TASS/: The European Union’s dialogue with Russia has for years had an impermissible form, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told a news briefing on Thursday in the wake of an interview the chief of European diplomacy Josep Borrell granted to the daily Die Welt. In that interview Borrell dismissed Russia’s proposals for security guarantees as unacceptable and warned that negotiations on them could not be held without the European Union taking part.

MOSCOW (AP) — More than 87,500 people with COVID-19 died in Russia in November, the highest montly tally since the start of the pandemic, the state statistics agency reported Thursday.

A report by Rosstat brought the overall number of virus-linked deaths between April 2020 and October 2021 to nearly 626,000 — more than twice the widely-cited toll reported by Russia’s state coronavirus task force to date. Rosstat uses broader criteria in its tallying system compared to the task force.

30 Dec 2021; MEMO: First Deputy Permanent Representative of the Russian Federation to the United Nations, Ambassador Dmitry Polyanskiy, has said that his country did not agree to any military action in Syria, including the Israeli airstrikes on the strategic Latakia port.

Speaking to reporters at the UN headquarters, Polyansky described the airstrikes as a "cause for concern" which "should be avoided by all means."

MOSCOW, December 29. /TASS/: Russia does not export electric power to Ukraine at present, Energy Minister Nikolay Shulginov said in an interview with the Rossiya-24 TV Channel.

"They make purchases from Belarus. Russia is not making supplies to Ukraine," the Minister said.

Ukraine resumed the electricity import in fall 2019 after the four-year break. In April 2020, the Ukrainian regulator banned such import. The ban on electricity import was extended in September 2021 until November 1 of this year.

ST. PETERSBURG, December 29. /TASS/: Russian President Vladimir Putin congratulated Gazprom and the company's partners on the completion of works on Nord Stream 2.

"I would like to congratulate Gazprom and your partners in Nord Stream 2 project on the completion of work on the creation of this large additional pipeline and on the fact that it is ready for operation," Putin said at a meeting on the autumn-winter heating season.

MOSCOW, December 29. /TASS/: The Moscow City Court handed down a verdict to dissolve the Memorial Human Rights Center (recognized as a foreign agent in Russia), satisfying the lawsuit of Moscow’s Public Prosecutor’s office, a TASS correspondent reported from the court.

"The court decreed to fully satisfy the stated claims of the Public Prosecutor’s office on the liquidation of the Memorial Human Rights Center interregional civic organization," the judge said.