LONDON – The Russian foreign and defence ministers and their British counterparts, which are the countries currently presiding in the G20 and G8 groups, opened a session of the Strategic Dialogue here on Wednesday. The Strategic Dialogue is being held in the two-on-two format unprecedented for the relations of the two countries, spokesperson of the British Foreign Office confirmed to Itar-Tass.
LONDON – The gridlock on missile defence has to be resolved and Russia is ready for equal partnership, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Wednesday, March 13, after a meeting of the first meeting of the Russian-British Strategic Dialogue in the “2+2” format.
LONDON – Neither Russia nor Great Britain supports anyone personally in Syria, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Wednesday, March 13, after the first meeting of the Russian-British Strategic Dialogue in the “2+2” format.
LONDON – Moscow has no plans to expand military-technical cooperation with Syria, Russian Defence Ministry Sergei Shoigu said on Wednesday, March 13, after the first meeting of the Russian-British Strategic Dialogue in the “2+2” format.
LONDON – Russia and Britain will have a year of cross-cultural exchange in 2014, according to a joint statement adopted in London on Wednesday, March 13, after the first meeting of the Russian-British Strategic Dialogue in the “2+2” format.
LONDON – Moscow and London have agreed to coordinate their efforts on Mali in the U.N. Security Council.
MOSCOW – Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas has arrived in Russia on an official visit. This is his tenth trip to Russia but the first one made in the capacity of president of the State of Palestine.
MOSCOW – Russia declares for an undelayed opening of an interethnic dialogue in Syria without strings attached, the Russian Foreign Ministry stated on Wednesday, commenting on the meeting Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov had with a delegation of French diplomats on Wednesday.
MOSCOW – Russia’s Central Election Commission is prepared to participate in the international monitoring of Venezuela’s early presidential election, due on April 14, CEC Secretary Nikolai Konkin said in response to a question from ITAR-TASS.
WASHINGTON – A new research centre, which will deal with problems of global politics with emphasis on America, Russia and their bilateral relations has been established in the US capital. The Centre of Global Interests is the brainchild of political analyst Nikolai Zlobin who calls himself a Washingtonian with Russian passport.
VORONEZH - Voronezh mayor Sergei Koliukh resigned on Wednesday. First deputy mayor for strategic planning, economics and finance Gennady Chernushkin has been appointing acting mayor, Town Hall spokesman Vitaly Margolin said.
GORKI – Russia is planning to spend over five billion roubles for subsidies to the airports in remote districts and the renovation of the fleet of regional airplanes in 2013, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said at a meeting devoted to the development of regional passenger traffic on Wednesday.
MOSCOW – Russian Natural Resources Minister Sergei Donskoy believes that Gazprom and Rosneft have a conflict of interests as concerns the right to explore and develop offshore fields.
MOSCOW – Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller and China National Petroleum Corporation President Jiang Jiemin have discussed in Beijing commercial and technological parameters of gas supplies to the Chinese market, in particular, through a new pipeline dubbed Siberian Force, the Russian gas giant said in a statement on Wednesday.
MOSCOW - No dramatic changes are likely in the monetary policy of the Central Bank of Russia because of possible appointment of Elvira Nabiullina as CBR governor, said the analysts polled by Itar-Tass. The CBR will continue its course towards decreasing the inflation rate.
MOSCOW – The chief of Russia’s consumer rights watchdog Rospotrebnadzor, Gennady Onishchenko, sees no reasons for banning the import of meat products from the EU countries.
MINSK – The terms for Russian oil exports to Belarus will be better in the second quarter of the year than those in the first quarter, the press service of the Belarussian government said on Wednesday.
NIZHNY NOVGOROD – The Nizhny Novgorod Region presents five major investment projects at MIPIM 2013 international real estate exhibition that opened in Cannes, France, on Tuesday.
KIEV – Ukraine’s National Joint Stock Company Naftogaz Ukrainy has made a payment for natural gas imported from Russia in February. The Naftogaz press service told Itar-Tass on Wednesday that about 162 million US dollars have been transferred to Russia’s natural gas monopoly Gazprom.
MOSCOW – Russian chief sanitary inspector Gennady Onishchenko said he had seen no problems with biological resources after the disaster at the Japanese Fukushima nuclear power plant. Speaking at a press conference on Wednesday, Onishchenko said Russian experts continued monitoring.
PRETORIA - South Africa is taking an interest in Belarus' experience in ensuring complete food security, as it looks for partners in joint agricultural projects.
MOSCOW – Russia and Belarus has agreed the volumes of oil and petroleum product supplies at 5.75 million tonnes in the second quarter of the year, said Aliya Samigullina, the spokeswoman to Russian Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich.
KIEV – The board of directors of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) has made a decision to grant a 300-million-euro loan to Ukraine to increase safety of 15 reactors operating at the republic’s nuclear power plants, a representative of the Kiev-based office of the bank told Itar-Tass. The funds will be transferred under the state guarantees.
BAKU – South Korea’s Samsung Engineering Co LTD will build a urea fertiliser manufacturing plant in Azerbaijan. The agreement to the effect was signed between the State Oil Company of the Azerbaijani Republic (SOCAR) and the Korean partners in Baku on Wednesday.
KIEV – The setting up of a trilateral consortium with the participation of Ukraine, Russia and the European Union would be the ‘optimum alternative’ for managing Ukraine’s gas transportation system (GTS), President of the Ukrainian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs and deputy of the Verkhovna Rada (parliament) Anatoly Kinakh said.
NIKOLINA GORA (Moscow region) – Russian President Vladimir Putin came to ‘the family nest’ of the Mikhalkovs to congratulate a famous family on the 100th birth anniversary of Sergei Mikhalkov.
MOSCOW – There will never be tuition-paid education in Russia, President Vladimir Putin vowed on Wednesday, March 13.
MOSCOW – President Vladimir Putin proposed using sport as a criterion for evaluating the work of kindergartens, schools and universities in Russia.
VILNIUS – Lithuania’s Constitution Court has passed a ruling that denies an opportunity for a Lithuanian-U.S. figure skating pair Isabella Tobias and Davidas Stagniunas to represent this country at the 2014 Winter Olympic Games in Sochi.
MOSCOW – IT specialists and sociologists have figured out the “digital competence” index of Russian Internet users. According to a survey presented at an international conference on children’s security and digital literacy on the Internet, which took place in Moscow on Wednesday, March 13, this index does not exceed 34 percent.
MOSCOW – President Putin accompanied by famous U.S. actor Steven Seagal attended an opening ceremony of a new building of the Sambo-70 sports center in the southwest of Moscow on Wednesday.
SOCHI – During their ninth inspection visit members of the delegation of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) have found the trial competitions in Sochi as a successful model of upcoming Sochi Olympics-2014.
SOCHI – Demand for the tickets for the 2014 Winter Olympic Games in Sochi has exceeded all the expectations, Dmitry Chernyshenko, the president of the Sochi’2014 organizing committee told a news conference here Wednesday.
MOSCOW – The State Duma lower house of Russian parliament passed under the first reading on Wednesday a bill imposing penalties of 200,000 roubles for repeated drunk driving and harsher punishment for road accidents with casualties involving drunk drivers.
MOSCOW - Bolshoi Theatre /GABT/ art director Sergei Filin, who is convalescing abroad after an acid attack, said he was not in conflict with /GABT leading soloist/ Pavel Dmitrichenko and that he felt "no enmity toward him."
MOSCOW – The Russian government has approved an agreement between Russia and Mongolia to create a wildlife reserve in the headwaters of the trans-boundary Amur River.
MOSCOW – Russia’s Embassy in Damascus has provided aid to organising a flight, which carries over 100 Russians and CIS citizens to Moscow from Syria, the Russian Foreign Ministry reported on Wednesday.
MOSCOW - The Moscow department of the Federal Bailiff Service /UFSSP/ said 846 foreigners have been deported from Russia since the beginning of this year.
KIEV – The Ukrainian Embassy in Damascus confirmed that journalist Anhar Kochneva was free and stayed on the territory of the Ukrainian diplomatic mission, the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry’s press service said on Wednesday.
MOSCOW – Sickness rates caused by flu and respiratory infections are down their peak. A general decline in sickness rates caused by these infections is expected in two-three weeks' time, Russia's Head Sanitary Doctor Gennady Onishchenko told a press conference on Wednesday.
MOSCOW – Head of the committee for security and combating corruption under the State Duma lower house of the Russian parliament Irina Yarovaya /United Russia faction/ denied any violations in the issue concerning her apartments.
HELSINKI – Russia and Finland are quite capable to double student exchange as a minimum, visiting Russian Vice-premier Olga Golodets declared during her visit to Helsinki.
MOSCOW – Russia’s largest national book exhibition fair, Books of Russia, has opened at the All-Russia Exhibition Center (VVTs) in Moscow on Wednesday. This year’s exhibition – the 16th – is on at pavilion 57.
NHA TRANG – Russia’s leading designer, manufacturer and supplier of automated control and combat management systems for surface ships and submarines Avrora has unveiled its office in Nha Trang, southern Vietnam, the office’s head, Kazbek Kulayev, told Itar-Tass on Wednesday.
SOCHI – A heavy rain has caused partial erosion of a rock-fill embankment on the Mzymta River in Krasnaya Polyana near Sochi. There is no threat to the population. However, for security considerations 700 workers have been evacuated from the nearest accommodation camp, the Russian Emergency Situations Ministry’s (EMERCOM) main emergency department for the Krasnodar Territory told Itar-Tass.
SOCHI – Construction workers have begun restoring a rock-fill embankment on the Mzymta River in Krasnaya Polyana near Sochi eroded by a heavy rain.
SOCHI – Mudslides triggered by downpours hit a section of the left bank of the Mzymta River outside Sochi overnight to Wednesday. The most powerful mudslide blocked a road used by local workers, sources from the Krasnodar region’s department for federal highways told Tass on Wednesday. The sources said mudslides continue. The damage and the scope of mudslides will be specified later.
SOCHI – The Russian Ministry for Emergency Situations issued on Wednesday a flooding warning for the Black Sea resort city of Sochi. As rains continue and snow is melting in the mountains, water level of local rivers may rise within the day, sources from the ministry’s Krasnodar region department have told Tass.
SOCHI – The authorities of the Black Sea resort of Sochi have put in place a state of emergency as water levels rose on 28 mountain rivers, as well as on channel ways in the local settlement of Mirny.
MOSCOW – A heavy snowfall, which began on Wednesday morning, had a quite negative impact on the traffic situation in the Russian capital. “The traffic is hampered in the city,” the press service of the Moscow department of transport and development of the road transport infrastructure told Itar-Tass on Wednesday.
KALUGA - A heavy snowfall in the Kaluga region, central Russia, caused the collision of 27 cars, but regional police said there were no casualties. "The cars were driving at 60 to 70 kilometers per hour; a heavy snowfall decreased visibility to 25 meters, so the drivers were unable to pull up in time," spokeswoman for regional road police Tatyana Vladimirova said.
MOSCOW – Thirteen railway cars loaded with crushed stone have went off rails in Russia’s northwestern republic of Karelia. No one was hurt, a spokesman for the Russian emergencies ministry told Itar-Tass late on Wednesday.
MAKHACHKALA - Dagestan's operations headquarters announced the regime of antiterrorist operation in the highland village of Echeda, Tsumada district, at 14:00, Moscow time.
MOSCOW – Four weapon smugglers were detained in the Russian North Caucasus Republic of Ingushetia, the information centre of the National Anti-Terrorism Committee told Itar-Tass on Wednesday.
MOSCOW – Russia has no plans to create private prisons, the deputy head of the Federal Penitentiary Service, Nikolai Kolesnik, told a news conference on Wednesday.
KAZAN – The Supreme Court of Tatarstan on Wednesday extended the arrest of three former officers from the Dalny police station to July. "The court has extended custody of former criminal investigation department chief Ainur Rakhmatullin to June 17, former detective Amir Sharifullin to June 18 and former detective Denis Vasilyev to July 11, 2013," the court's spokeswoman Natalia Loseva told Itar-Tass.
YEKATERINBURG – An organized criminal group, which has stolen over two million roubles from the accounts of the clients of the Russian savings bank Sberbank, was busted in Yekaterinburg, spokesperson of the Sverdlovsk regional police department Valery Gorelykh told Itar-Tass on Wednesday.
MOSCOW – The Moscow City Court on Wednesday upheld the in-absentia arrest of Georgian politician Givi Targamadze, accused of planning riots in Russia. The court thereby turned down the defense's appeal. "The court has ruled to leave the Basmanny Court's resolution unchanged, and turn down the petition of the defense," a court representative said.
MOSCOW – Over the past three years electronic bracelets used by law enforcers to punish criminals have controlled 30,000 convicts in Russia, department Chief of the Federal Service for Execution of Sentences (FSIN) Yelena Zarembinskaya, who supervises sentences not connected with isolation of criminals from society, said at a press conference.
MOSCOW – Moscow criminal police are confident that Pavel Dmitrichenko and two other suspects are involved in the attack on Bolshoi Theatre /GABT/ art director Sergei Filin.
MOSCOW – The deputy chief of the Central Customs Department has been detained in a criminal case over attempted bribery, Investigative Committee spokesman Vladimir Markin told Itar-Tass on Wednesday.