Russia

MOSCOW, May 20. /TASS/: Deputy Speaker of the Russian Federation Council (the upper house of parliament) Konstantin Kosachev has positively assessed the first face-to-face talks between Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, noting that their best follow-up would be resuming the majority of previous formats.

MOSCOW, May 19. /TASS/: Russia’s Federation Council (the upper house of parliament) has ratified a Russian-Kazakh agreement on defense cooperation, signed at a meeting between the two countries’ defense ministers, Sergei Shoigu and Nurlan Yermekbayev, in October 2020.

According to the agreement, Russia and Kazakhstan will cooperate on a wide range of issues, including military education and training, the supply of weapons and equipment, bilateral and multilateral drills and peacekeeping activities.

MOSCOW, May 19./TASS/: Russia knows for sure that the registration of Russia’s Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine is stalled by ‘signals from the corridors of power’ in Brussels, Sergey Naryshkin, director of Russia’s SVR foreign intelligence service, told Channel One television on Wednesday. This is immoral amid the pandemic, he stressed.

(Reuters) --- Moscow has offered to help mediate negotiations between Armenia and Azerbaijan to demarcate their border after an alleged Azeri incursion, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Wednesday.

Armenia accused Azerbaijan of sending troops across the border last week, highlighting the fragility of a Russian-brokered ceasefire that halted six weeks of fighting between ethnic Armenian and Azeri forces last year. 

(Reuters) --- The Kremlin said on Wednesday that strategic stability should be high on the agenda of a possible meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Joe Biden, alongside bilateral relations.

Biden, who in March said he thought Putin was a "killer", prompting Moscow to recall its ambassador to Washington for consultations, has said he would like to hold talks with Putin during a trip to Europe next month.

MOSCOW (AP) — The Russian parliament’s lower house voted Wednesday to withdraw from an international treaty allowing surveillance flights over military facilities following the U.S. departure from the pact.

The Russian exit from the Open Skies Treaty is yet to be endorsed by the upper house of parliament and needs to be signed by President Vladimir Putin to take effect. Moscow has signaled its readiness to reverse the withdrawal procedure and stay in the treaty if the U.S. returns to the agreement.

MOSCOW, May 18. /TASS/: Two Tupolev Tu-95MS strategic missile-carrying bombers performed a scheduled flight over the Black Sea, Russia’s Defense Ministry reported on Tuesday.

"Two Tu-95MS strategic missile-carrying bombers of long-range aviation performed a scheduled flight in the airspace over the neutral waters of the Black Sea," the statement says.

The crews of Su-27 fighters of the Southern Military District’s Air Force and Air Defense Army provided support for the strategic bombers during the flight that lasted over five hours, the ministry said.

MOSCOW, May 18. /TASS/: Hackers were unable to steal any state secrets as a result of attacks against Russian bodies of state power, the deputy director of the National Coordination Center for Computer Incidents, Nikolai Murashov, told a news conference in Moscow on Tuesday.

"Information that constitutes a state secret could not be stolen by any means," Murashov said.

He recalled that in Russia there were about 40 types of secrets, for instance, medical, tax and child adoption secrets.

MOSCOW, May 18. /TASS/: Russia’s coronavirus cases rose by 8,183 to 4,957,756 in the past 24 hours, the anti-coronavirus crisis center said on Tuesday.

According to data from the crisis center, Russia’s coronavirus growth rate stands at 0.17%.

The rate is the lowest in the Nenets autonomous region (0%), the Altai and Sakhalin regions (0.01%) and the Tuva region (0.03%).

MOSCOW, May 18. /TASS/: Moscow appreciates Switzerland’s neutrality and its role as an international mediator in disputes, Russian President Vladimir Putin said at a ceremony to receive credentials from foreign ambassadors on Tuesday.