MOSCOW — Russia and Syria have called for immediate cessation of the bloodshed in the Syrian Arab Republic, Russia’s presidential envoy to the Middle East, Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov, and Syria’s ambassador to Russia, Riyad Haddad, said on Tuesday.
UNITED NATIONS – Russia regrets the fact that Ukraine turned up among the countries, which either voted against or did not support a resolution of the UN General Assembly against the heroization of Nazism, the Russian mission at the UN said in a statement.
BERLIN — Deployment of Patriot missile systems at the Turkish-Syrian border would rather create more problems than solve any, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Andrei Denisov told a news conference here after the opening of a two-day international congress on European security and defence known as the Berlin Security Conference.
MOSCOW — Russia does not rule out asymmetrical measures to possible EU visa restrictions, Ambassador-at-Large of the Russian Foreign Ministry Anvar Azimov said on Tuesday. “As for the resolutions of the European Parliament, the Council of Europe, the Magnitsky list and etc, we oppose the linking of these issues with the politicization of the visa-free regime,” he said.
PARIS — President of France Francois Hollande will pay a visit to Russia in 2013, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said on Tuesday. “Next year, we expect a visit by the French president,” Medvedev told a news conference after talks with his French counterpart.
PARIS — Russian has no special relations with Syria’s Bashar Assad and is not offering political asylum to him, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said here on Tuesday after a meeting of the Russian-French intergovernmental commission.
KIEV – Initiating of sanctions against Ukrainian state officials in Europe is an attempt to settle accounts with the Ukrainian authorities for the criminal cases against the former Prime Minister, Yulia Timoshenko, a senior official at the Foreign Ministry said Monday night in an interview with Ukrainian TV.
KIEV — Two hundred twenty three deputies have applied for joining the Party of Regions parliamentary faction at Ukraine’s newly-elected Verkhovnaya Rada (parliament). “At the moment, we have received applications from 223 deputies but the work will continue,” Alexander Yefremov, the head of the ruling Party of Regions faction, said on Tuesday.
KIEV — Ukraine’s President Viktor Yanukovich signed a law on the national referendum, the official presidential site reported on Tuesday. The law reads that Ukraine’s national referendum may be organised on approval of new versions of the Constitution, on addendums to it, on abolishment or on recognising as invalid a law on changes to the Constitution.
BISHKEK — Kyrgyzstan’s leader of the parliamentary majority Feliks Kulov announced during an emergency meeting of the faction about his resignations in protest against the skewed vote. “I do not have a moral right to head the coalition after the country has failed to have honest elections,” he said. “Despite all our efforts, they had many violations.”
MOSCOW— Russia’s Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev confirmed the country’s state programme for support of employment, the government’s press service reported on Tuesday.
PARIS — Russia’s accession in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) is an aim of the near future, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said at a meeting with representatives of the French business quarters here on Tuesday.
PARIS — Russia plans organisation of a full-format economic union with Kazakhstan and Belarus by 2015, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said on Tuesday.
PARIS — A protocol on creating the Russian-French Business Cooperation Council was signed at Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev's meeting with representatives of French business circles on Tuesday.
PARIS — The Russian Railways Company and the French auto maker PSA Peugeot Citroen have signed a shareholder agreement to manage Gefco logistics. The agreement was signed after the 17th meeting of the Russian-French commission on bilateral cooperation and the meeting between Russian and French prime ministers Dmitry Medvedev and Jean-Marc Ayrault.
PARIS — Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev told a press conference in Paris on Tuesday that Russia would not give up keeping the euro in its foreign currency reserves and that Russia wishes the European Union soonest settlement of its economic problems.
MOSCOW — Russia’s largest independent natural gas producer Novatek has finalized the deal to buy a 49 percent stake in the gas producer Nortgas for $1.375 billion.
LONDON — MegaFon has managed to get orders from investors for all the shares of the company, which this Wednesday will be placed on the stock markets of the Russian and British capitals, the Financial Times reported on Tuesday with reference to informed sources.
LONDON — For the acquisition of TNK-BP, Rosneft can take a loan and use cash reserves totalling 30 billion US dollars, the British media reported on Tuesday. Reuters reported that Rosneft will hold roadshow for a dollar-denominated Eurobond by the end of Wednesday of this week.
ULAN-UDE — Helicopters of Russia holding company made first ever supply of a new multi-purpose Mi-171 civil helicopter to Indonesia. “That country’s leading mining company bought a certified helicopter produced at Ulan-Ude’s aviation plant /U-UAZ/,” the plant’s press service said on Tuesday.
KIEV — Ukraine has blocked Romanian petrol supplies to the Ukrainian market, the press service of the Odessa-based Rompetrol-Ukraina Company reported on Tuesday.
MOSCOW — The Joint-Stock Financial Corporation Sistema on Tuesday announced the signing of an agreement on the acquisition of SG-trans – Russia’s largest independent operator of specialised railcars for the transportation of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), Sistema reported in a press release.
BISHKEK — The European Union remains one of the major economic partners of Kyrgyzstan, Kyrgyzstani Foreign Minister Erlan Abdyldayev said here on Tuesday during a meeting of foreign ministers the Central Asian region’s countries with representatives of the European Union.
MOSCOW — The State Corporation Russian Technologies (Rostekhnologii) is selling 45.42 percent of shares of the world’s largest titanium producer JSC VSMPO-Avisma to a joint venture of Gazprombank and VSMPO management team. The deal is worth 965-970 million US dollars, VSMPO-Avisma CEO Mikhail Voevodin told reporters.
MOSCOW — The Board of the Federal Service for Tariffs has made a decision to raise wholesale gas prices by 15 percent on average starting from July 1, 2013, the federal service said in a statement published on Tuesday, adding that the decision means prices of natural gas produced by Russia’s gas giant Gazprom and affiliated companies that is supplied to the market for further sale to the population.
MOSCOW —The Russian government will allocate about one billion roubles of subsidies within next three years to the Russian republic of Buryatia for the environmental protection measures, which are envisaged under the federal target program over the protection of the Baikal Lake and socio-economic development of the Baikal nature reserve for 2012-2020.
WARSAW — The number of travelers crossing the Russo-Polish state border has grown by 70 percent due to a vise free schedule which has been in effect since August 2012, a spokeswoman for the Warmii and Mazur Polish border guard service told Itar-Tass on Tuesday.
PRETORIA — Russian ambassador to Zambia Boris Malakhov died after a heart bypass surgery he underwent at Zuid-Afrikaans Hospital in Pretoria, a source from the Russian embassy in South Africa told Itar-Tass on Tuesday. Malakhov died an hour after a coronary bypass, the source said. He was 59.
MOSCOW — Russian ombudsman Vladimir Lukin said inmates at Kopeisk penitentiary # 6 had complained to him about beatings and extortions. "At present, our representatives are working there /at penitentiary # 6/; they have not finished work yet; it will last for two or three more days. Lukin said human rights activists had reported similar complaints earlier.
MOSCOW— A series of pickets against proposals to increase the term of army draft was held outside the Russian State Duma downtown Moscow on Tuesday. They had been organized by two public organizations, including the Business Women of Russia and the Non-Governmental Sphere of Security (NSB) trade union.
STAR CITY (Moscow Region) — The main and backup crews of the next expedition to the International Space Station (ISS) started the examination – a comprehensive two-day exam training at the Cosmonaut Training Centre (CTC).
MOSCOW — Russian Defense Minister Gen. Sergei Shoigu has introduced new members of the Board of the Defense Ministry on Tuesday – Chief of General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces Colonel-General Valery Gerasimov, First Deputy defense minister Colonel-General Arkady Bakhin, Deputy defense ministers Yuri Borisov and Ruslan Tsalikov.
MOSCOW — The new leadership of Russia’s Defence Ministry will continue the work that it began with Anatoly Serdyukov, only some of the nuances will change, the defence minister’s press secretary Darya Zatulina told journalists after the ministry’s board meeting on Tuesday.
YEKATERINBURG — More than a thousand contract servicemen will be sent to do their army service at the 201st Russian military base in Tajikistan, the press service of the Central Military District told Itar-Tass on Tuesday.
KIEV — Ukraine’s state customs service insists that Russia’s Black Sea Fleet should pay all necessary duties for the supply of diesel fuel to the country’s territory, the service’s first deputy head, Alexander Dorokhovsky, said on Tuesday.
KALININGRAD — A technology accident at Kaliningrad’s heat and power plant 1 left one woman dead, press service of the regional branch of the Emergency Situations Ministry said on Tuesday.
KHABAROVSK — The Blagoveshchensk city court has sentenced Arsalan Gomboyev, who stole 18 million roubles from citizens of the Amur region by launching a financial pyramid scheme, to nine years in prison, the Interior Ministry’s department in the Far Eastern federal district told Itar-Tass on Tuesday.
MOSCOW — The Russian Investigation Committee issued final charges against four defendants in the criminal case over a massive death toll of people in a devastating flood in the town Krymsk, the Krasnodar Territory.
MOSCOW — Over 175 kilograms of Afghani heroin were confiscated in Naberezhnye Chelny, four organisers of the drug smuggling detained, head of Russia’s Drug Turnover Control Federal Service Viktor Ivanov told reporters on Tuesday.
MOSCOW — Consolidation of investigation into the Investigative committee would be organised in stages in order not to affect investigation of criminal cases, Head of Russia’s Federal Service on control over drug turnover /FSKN/ Viktor Ivanov said on Tuesday.
MOSCOW — Russia will come out in favor of the intensified fulfillment of “joint steps” to cancel visas with the European Union at a summit in Brussels on December 21, ambassador at large of the Russian Foreign Ministry Anvar Azimov said at a press conference on Tuesday.
KRASNOYARSK — The personnel of police department # 5, Krasnoyarsk Territory, began to take psychological tests, following the incident in which police officer Vladimir Ten, stabbed his colleague on November 20 and then confessed to a doubled murder.
MOSCOW — Russia’s Federal Service for control over drug turnover /FSKN/ has eliminated almost 12,000 organised criminal groups over ten years of the service’s existence, Viktor Ivanov, FSKN’s Head said on Tuesday. “In March of the coming year, FSKN will celebrate its ten years of establishment, and over this period we have eliminated 11,158 criminal groups,” Ivanov said.
MOSCOW — Judge of Moscow's Zamoskvorechye's court Andrei Fedin on Tuesday sentenced athlete Rasul Mirzayev to two years of restriction of freedom for causing death by negligence in the conflict with student Ivan Agafonov. The court counted in the time the defendant had spent in a remand prison /more than a year/, with one day counting for two. Mirzayev was released from custody in the courtroom.
MOSCOW — The Investigative Committee /SK/ opened five criminal cases over riots in the maximum security penitentiary in Kopeisk, Chelyabinsk region, and use of violence on special task force police, SK spokesman Vladimir Markin told Itar-Tass.
MOSCOW — Ukraine’s customs service unjustifiably keeps over 14,000 tonnes of diesel fuel intended for Russia’s Black Fleet, the deputy head of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s information department, Maria Zakharova, said on Tuesday.
KIEV — The Industrial District Court of Dnepropetrovsk launched Tuesday the merit proceedings in several blasts, which rocked the city last April. Four defendants, namely Viktor Sukachev, Lev Prosvirnin, Dmitry Reva and Vitaly Fedoryak faced the trial.
MOSCOW — Relatives of the deceased student Ivan Agafonov said they would appeal against the verdict in the fatal punch case. Earlier in the day, a court found sambo champion Rasul Mirzayev guilty of causing the student's death, yet softened the charges against him.
MOSCOW — Moscow prosecutors endorsed the indictment in the criminal case over the abduction of Ivan Kaspersky, son of a well-known anti-virus software designer, an official the Prosecutor General's Office /PGO/ told Itar-Tass on Tuesday.