Russia

MOSCOW, July 15. /TASS/: Russian President Vladimir Putin said during a phone talk with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa that obstacles still persisted for Russian exports under the gain deal, the Kremlin press office reported on Saturday.

The phone talk was held on July 15 at the initiative of the South African side, the Kremlin press office specified.

MOSCOW, July 15. /TASS/: Moscow’s Basmanny District Court has ruled to arrest seven members of nationalist organizations suspected of an assassination attempt on journalists Margarita Simonyan and Ksenia Sobchak, the court’s press service told TASS on Saturday.

"The court has granted a request and selected custody as a restriction measure for the suspects who were earlier detained for the assassination attempt on Sobchak and Simonyan," the court said.

July 15 (Reuters) - Russia on Saturday demanded the immediate release of a senior Orthodox cleric detained in Kyiv on suspicion of inflaming religious hatred and justifying Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

A Kyiv court ordered pre-trial detention on Friday for Metropolitan Pavlo, a senior figure in the Ukrainian Orthodox Church who had been under house arrest since April.

July 15 (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin held a phone call with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa in which they discussed the Black Sea grain deal, due to expire on Monday, and a summit in South Africa next month, the Kremlin said on Saturday.

Ramaphosa finds himself in an awkward position as host of the BRICS summit because of an arrest warrant issued against Putin in March by the International Criminal Court (ICC), which accused him of the war crime of deporting Ukrainian children to Russia.

July 15 (Reuters) - President Volodymyr Zelenskiy warned Ukrainians that Russia was throwing all its resources into a campaign to stop Kyiv's troops from pressing their counter offensive and a top general reported new progress on the southern front.

But Ukrainian military analysts suggested that things were not easy for Ukrainian forces in their bid to advance southward.

Ukraine has launched a counter offensive to take back swathes of land in eastern and southern Ukraine captured by Russian forces in their invasion launched in February 2022.

July 15 (Reuters) - Russia is investigating whether a North Korean intercontinental ballistic missile crashed in its waters during a test launch on Wednesday, state media quoted Deputy Foreign Minister Andrei Rudenko as saying.

RIA and TASS news agencies quoted Rudenko as saying that Russia's defence ministry was investigating, but "so far we have no clear information that the missile fell in Russia's economic zone".

MOSCOW, July 14. /TASS/: Russia and Poland maintain parity in terms of the number of diplomatic missions, Polish Ambassador to Russia Krzysztof Krajewski said on Friday.

"We have parity in terms of the number of missions. Poland has its embassy in Moscow, Russia has its embassy in Warsaw. Each of us has three consulates general," he said in an interview with the Polish Press Agency. "So, parity is maintained."

MOSCOW, July 14. /TASS/: The Kremlin sees measures restricting the ability of foreigners to exit their Russian businesses as part of protecting the domestic economy, Presidential Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday.

MOSCOW, July 14. /TASS/: Additional measures to ensure the protection of critically important facilities were the focus of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s meeting with permanent members of the Russian Security Council on Friday.

"Our agenda today has several issues. The first one is extra measures of protection of critically important facilities," Putin said at the beginning of the meeting.

MOSCOW, July 14. /TASS/: Paris has knowingly taken another step towards escalation of the conflict in Ukraine with its decision to supply long-range missiles to Kiev, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in a commentary circulated on Friday.

"Paris has knowingly taken another step towards escalation of the Ukrainian conflict, confirmed its gamble on the systematic and uninterrupted pumping of Kiev terrorists with increasingly deadly weapons systems aimed at the new Russian territories, civilians and civilian infrastructure," the diplomat said.