Russia

MOSCOW, February 14. /TASS/: It was quite predictable that the attempt to impeach Donald Trump, who already vacated the presidential office, would ultimately fail but US society is still split, Chairman of the Russian State Duma (lower house of parliament) Committee for Foreign Affairs Leonid Slutsky said on Sunday.

MOSCOW, February 14. /TASS/: The policy of deterring Russia is intensifying as the country grows stronger, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Sunday during a meeting with editors-in-chief of Russian media outlets.

"As soon as we began to stabilize, to get back to our feet - the policy of deterrence followed immediately," he said in a fragment of the meeting, aired by the Rossiya-24 TV channel

"And as we grew stronger, this policy of deterrence was being conducted more and more intensely," Putin added.

MOSCOW, February 14. /TASS/: The Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline will be built despite Washington’s destructive steps aimed at hindering this effort, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak said in an interview broadcast by Rossiya-1 TV channel on Sunday.

"European countries and European companies are interested in it. We are sure that it will be built despite those destructive approaches, which we have seen on the part of the US that certainly, in its turn, has been delaying the implementation of this project," Novak said.

MOSCOW, Feb 14 (NNN-TASS) – A total of 98 workers are being evacuated after a cave-in in a coalmine in Russia’s Siberian coal-rich region of Kuzbass, the press service of the Russian emergencies ministry told TASS on Sunday.

Rescuers were alerted about the incident at about 3:10 local time on Sunday (23:10 Moscow time on Saturday).

“A total of 98 people were in the mine at the time of the incident. People are being taken to the surface,” the press service said.

MOSCOW, February 13. /TASS/: Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin signed a decree expanding the list of Ukrainian companies that have economic sanctions imposed on them in connection with unfriendly actions of Ukraine. The document was published on the official portal of legal information on Friday.

The document introduces amendments to Appendix No. 2 to the Decree of the Government of the Russian Federation of November 1, 2018 No. 1300 on Measures to implement the decree of the President of the Russian Federation No. 592 of October 22, 2018.

MOSCOW, February 13. /TASS/: The situation with the coronavirus infection spread in Russian schools is challenging overall, but under control, Education Minister Sergey Kravtsov told Sergey Brilev’s news show on Rossiya-1 on Saturday.

"Overall, the situation is challenging, of course, but under control," he said.

The switch to remote learning in 2020 was a forced measure, the minister emphasized.

First Deputy Education Minister Dmitry Glushko said earlier that over 97% of Russian pupils, meaning 16.3 mln people, returned to in-person learning on January 18.

MOSCOW, February 13. /TASS/: Russia’s coronavirus cases rose by 14,861 in the past day to 4,057,698, the anti-coronavirus crisis center reported on Saturday.

The coronavirus growth rate is 0.37%, according to the data from the crisis center.

Particularly, 1,130 new coronavirus cases were registered in St. Petersburg in the past 24 hours, 884 in the Moscow Region, 441 in the Nizhny Novgorod Region, 356 in the Voronezh Region, and 342 in the Rostov Region.

The number of active cases currently stands at 400,095 in Russia.

MOSCOW, February 13. /TASS/: Moscow has submitted a request to Twitter due to blocking of the official account in that social network of the Russian delegation at the talks on military security and arms control in Vienna, Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told TASS on Saturday.

"A request has already been submitted to the company. Hopefully that is a technical issue," she said.

MOSCOW, February 12. /TASS/: Thanks to mass vaccination against the novel coronavirus infection, Russia is about to take the epidemic under control, Oksana Drabkina, the Russian Health Ministry’s chief visiting therapist, said on Friday.

MOSCOW, February 12. /TASS/: The Sputnik V Light anti-coronavirus vaccine reduces the likelihood of severe forms of the disease but doesn’t exclude them completely, Alexander Gintsburg, director of the Gamaleya National Research Center for Epidemiology and Microbiology of the Russian Health Ministry, the vaccine developer, said on Friday.