MOSCOW – Russia plans to provide assistance to Bangladesh in launching telecommunication satellites, President Vladimir Putin said after the talks with Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on Tuesday.
MOSCOW – Russian President Vladimir Putin will pay a visit to Bangladesh. The agreement was reached at the Tuesday negotiations between the Russian president and Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and was fixed in the joint statement.
MOSCOW – Russia will extend a 1 billion dollar loan to Bangladesh for buying Russia-made weapons. “Russia will extend a 1 billion dollar loan that Bangladesh will use to buy Russian weapons and military hardware,” President Vladimir Putin told reporters after the talks with Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on Tuesday.
MOSCOW – Speaker of Russia’s State Duma Sergei Naryshkin opened on Tuesday the spring session of the parliament’s lower house.
MOSCOW – Opposition lawmakers at the State Duma lower house of the Russian parliament have submitted a bill cancelling the ban on the adoption of Russian children by U.S. citizens, Dmitry Gudkov from A Just Russia faction, one of the authors of the document, told Itar-Tass on Tuesday.
KIEV – Ukrainian opposition leader and former Prime Minister Yulia Timoshenko, who is now undergoing medical treatment at a Kharkov-based hospital, has stopped her personal protest action, Igor Kolpashchikov, the chief of the Kachanovskaya penal colony in Kharkov, where Timoshenko was kept prior to hospitalization, said on Tuesday.
MOSCOW – Investments in a joint project of Russia’s gas giant Gazprom and Bangladeshi Petrobangla Corporation will make up 193 million U.S. dollars, Russian President Vladimir Putin told reporters, summing up results of his Tuesday’s talks with Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.
NOVOZAPOLYARNY SETTLEMENT – Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev arrived at the Zapolyarnoye (Trans-Polar) gas field in the Yamal Peninsula where he took part in the ceremony of launching the field at the full capacity of 130 billion cubic metres of gas per year. With the commissioning of a new complex gas treatment plant the annual production of the Valanginian deposits of the field will be 6.5 billion cubic metres of gas and 1.3 million tonnes of gas condensate.
NOVY URENGOY – The private companies can claim for several sectors of the Russian continental shelf, from which the state-run companies refused, Russian Minister of Natural Resources and Ecology Sergei Donskoy said at a meeting devoted to the prospects of the resources of the Russian continental shelf here on Tuesday.
NOVY URENGOI – Russia’s gas export amounted to 138 billion cubic metres in 2012, Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller told reporters on Tuesday.
NOVY URENGOY – The operation in Venezuela remains on the list of the priorities for the Russian oil major Rosneft regardless political changes in that country, Rosneft CEO Igor Sechin said on Tuesday.
NOVY URENGOI – Laying a third and fourth line of the Nord Stream gas carrier will be economically feasible, and it will be done by a newly-created company, Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller told the media.
MINSK – Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko said on Tuesday his country managed to cope with time challenges and achieve sustainable economic growth. “In general we’ve coped with challenges of our time and achieved slight, but sustainable economic growth,” he told a news conference that brought together over 350 journalists from 285 Belarussian and foreign media.
MINSK – Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko said on Tuesday the population should not fear a collapse of the national currency as that in 2011. “This did not happen last year, not on January 1, even provocations did not help, and this will not happen now,” he told a news conference.
MINSK - Belarus’ President Alexander Lukashenko said he was not planning to dismiss the country’s government. “You have not heard me saying so,” he told a news conference in Minsk on Tuesday. “I have not said the government may be dismissed.”
MINSK – The Belarus-Russia Union State will remain in conditions of the Common Economic Space /CES/ and over organisation of the Eurasian Union, Belarus’ President Alexander Lukashenko told a news conference on Tuesday.
MOSCOW – Russia’s Accounts Chamber will check Gazprom within the current year, Head of the Chamber Sergei Stepashin told a news conference on Tuesday. “The auditing is due to be finalised by autumn, by November of the current year,” he said.
ALMA-ATA – The objectives of modernisation of economies of Belarus, Kazakhstan and Russia are tough to be achieved without a concord of their foreign trade policies, the Eurasian Development Bank’s Centre of Integration Research said in its report on common trade policy and modernisation tasks for the Common Economic Space /CES/. The work on the report featured leading experts from Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus.
KIEV – Ukraine’s Aerosvit aviation carrier suspends from Tuesday operation of flights between Kiev and Moscow for commercial reasons, the company’s press service reports. “The company presents its apologies to passenger as it cancels flights to/from Moscow and suggests they take flights of partner carriers or be reimbursed in accordance with the rules of aviation transportation,” the statement reads.
IZHEVSK – The rifle’s developer, the Izhmash plant in central Russia, increased rifle sales on the U.S. market by 15 percent in 2012 as against the same period of last year. “We exported items worth $16.2 million and significantly improved the quality of our produce,” the plant’s director-general, Konstantin Busygin, said on Tuesday.
MOSCOW — Russia will raise the oil export duties by 1.9 percent from the current level of 395.6 U.S. dollars per tonne to 403.3 U.S. dollars per tonne starting from February 1, 2013, expert of the Russian Finance Ministry Alexander Sakovich told reporters on Tuesday.
PRETORIA – The would-be BRICS (an acronym standing for Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) development bank should have a start-up capital of at least 50 billion U.S. dollars, according to Anil Sookal, Deputy Director-General of South Africa’s Department of International Relations and Cooperation and Sous-Sherpa in charge of preparations for a BRICS summit due in South Africa’s Durban on March 26-27.
MOSCOW – Moscow welcomes the release of a number of citizens from Georgia’s prisons and insists on the amnesty of all political prisoners having Russian citizenship, the Foreign Ministry’s commissioner for human rights, democracy and the supremacy of the rule of law, Konstantin Dolgov, said on Tuesday.
MOSCOW – The State Duma lower house of the Russian parliament may pass a bill tightening control over weapons turnover as early as this spring, one of the authors of the new document, chairwoman of the house committee for security and combating corruption Irina Yarovaya told reporters on Tuesday.
MOSCOW – The Russian Audit Chamber and the leadership of the Russian Football Union (RFS) are forming a special group for the struggle against fixed matches, Chairman of the Russian Audit Chamber Sergei Stepashin said on Tuesday.
MOSCOW – Russian Prosecutor-General’s Office will look into the implementation of the law banning the adoptions of Russian orphans by US citizens and, possibly, it will present its ideas of how to make its operation better, Prosecutor-General Yuri Chaika told an audience of Russian media. He congratulated those present upon Russian Press Day, marked on Monday.
MOSCOW – Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree to form a state committee for the run-up and holding of the 22nd Winter Olympics and the 11th Winter Paralympics in Sochi in 2014. The corresponding document was posted at the Russian presidential website on Tuesday.
MOSCOW – Russian President Vladimir Putin, who chairs the board of trustees of the Russian Geographical Society, on Tuesday opened the Society’s headquarters in Moscow. It is located at Novaya Square, 10, just a stone’s throw from the presidential administration.
MOSCOW – The deputies from the A Just Russia faction submitted for consideration in the State Duma the package of the amendments for tougher legislative measures to prevent the social orphanage in Russia.
MOSCOW – The Russian Audit Chamber put under full control the spending of budget resources for the construction of the football stadiums by the FIFA World Cup-2018, Chairman of the Russian Audit Chamber Sergei Stepashin said on Tuesday.
MOSCOW – The Russian Audit Chamber will conduct an audit inspection of the funds, which were allocated for the support of underage orphans this year, Chairman of the Audit Chamber Sergei Stepashin told reporters on Tuesday. “We singled out this issue without politicizing it, concerning orphans and how the decree issued by Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin will be fulfilled, as major budget allocations were made for it,” he said.
VLADIVOSTOK – A three-months-long gaming for wolves has begun in the constituent region of Yakutia-Saha, which is evidencing a real onslaught of these predators. According to estimates more than 3,500 wolf zooids make their habitat on the territory of Yakutia today while scientists claim the optimal number of these animals in Yakutia should not exceed 500.
MOSCOW – Russia’s Investigations Committee is marking the second anniversary since its foundation. Two years ago, the Investigations Committee was set up upon a decree by President Dmitry Medvedev on the basis of the former Department of Investigations of the Prosecutor General’s Office. The scope of its powers and duties has expanded since then, as it conducts investigations of the criminal cases pertaining to criminal raids, tax crimes, and crimes committed by underage citizens against underage citizens.
MOSCOW – The cost of the project to build a football stadium in St. Petersburg, which will host the matches of the FIFA World Cup-2018, can be reduced by 10 billion roubles, Chairman of the Russian Audit Chamber Sergei Stepashin said on Tuesday.
BERLIN – The Supreme Land Court of Stuttgart began a trial against the spouses Andreas and Heindrun Anschlag on Tuesday. The German prosecutor’s office accused them of espionage for the Soviet Union and then for Russia. The pair has already faced the accusations, the Supreme Land Court told Itar-Tass. It is unclear how long the Tuesday court session will last.
NEW YORK – NASA, the Russian Space Agency Roscosmos and other partners to the International Space Station project have made public the composition of crews to go the ISS in 2014. NASA’s report for the mass media says Expedition 39 that will be launched in mid-March 2014 will consist of commander Richard Mastracchio representing NASA, Koichi Wakata of the Japanese Space Agency and Mikhail Tyurin of Roscosmos.
PLESETSK, Arkhangelsk region – Russia’s booster vehicle Rokot that took off from the Plesetsk cosmodrome in northern Russia on Tuesday, has put on the low Earth orbit an orbiting unit of three military satellites and the Briz-KM upper stage.
MOSCOW – The first spacecraft from Russia’s new Vostochny cosmodrome in the Far East will be launched to the Moon, the head of Roscosmos, the federal space agency, Vladimir Popovkin, told reporters on Tuesday. “In 2015 the Luna-Glob spacecraft (Russian for Moon-globe) will be used as a payload during the first launch from the Vostochny cosmodrome,” he said. “From there we will start our exploration of the Moon.”
MOSCOW – A gas explosion ripped through an apartment building in the Chuvash Republic, the Emergencies Ministry told Itar-Tass on Tuesday. “A domestic gas explosion occurred in the village of Tuvsi, the Tsivilsky district, at 05:40 Moscow time,” the source said. According to preliminary information, six people were saved.
CHEBOKSARY – Chuvashiya’s branch of Russia’s Investigative committee opened a criminal case on the gas explosion, which killed two people. Senior Aide to Head of the republic’s branch of the Investigative Committee Oleg Dmitriyev told Itar-Tass on Tuesday the case had been opened in compliance with part 3 article 219 of Russia’s Criminal Code “Violation of fire security requirements, which causes death of two or more people.”
KRASNOYARSK – A fire that broke out in a private residential house in the town of Yeniseisk, Krasnoyarsk territory in East Siberia, claimed the lives of four children aged two to fifteen years old. Their mother was admitted to a city hospital with heavy burns.
MOSCOW – Almost 12,000 people remain without electricity in the Altai territory, Russia’s EMERCOM told Itar-Tass on Tuesday. “At 12:30 Moscow time, disruption of energy supplies occurred in two regions. The affected area includes 24 settlements, where 11,800 people live,” the source said.
BARNAUL – It took Altaienergo specialists only 35 minutes to restore the energy supplies to two regions in the Altai territory, where 11,800 people live. “All settlements, where the supplies were disrupted, receive electricity via reserve lines,” the energy company’s press service said on Tuesday.
NALCHIK – The rescue operation on the Elbrus Mount over the search for alpinist from Moscow Artyom Ivanov, 23, is about to be complete. The rescuers have found the bag and other things of the climbers, who dug out a shelter in the snow on the Elbrus Mount over the foil weather back on January 9, head of the Elbrus highland search-and-rescue team Boris Tilov told Itar-Tass on Tuesday.
NALCHIK – Alpinist from Moscow Artyom Ivanov, 23, died of a head wound rather than hypothermia. “According to the preliminary reports, the young man has got a head wound in the falling that the bloody trace of about 10 metres long showed,” spokesman for the North Caucasus regional emergency situation centre Kantemir Davydov told Itar-Tass.
SYKTYVKAR – A panel of judges of the Supreme Court of the Komi Republic on Tuesday upheld the verdict for four officials found guilty of the death of 23 old persons in a fire at the veterans' home in the village of Podyelsk, Kortkeross district, Komi. The tragedy occurred on January 31, 2009.
MAKHACHKALA – Judge of Dagestan’s Supreme Court Magomed Magomedov was assassinated in Makhachkala, the capital city of this volatile Caucasus republic, on Tuesday, a spokesman for the republican administration of the Russian Investigations Committee told Itar-Tass.
MOSCOW – Over the past year, visitors from Russia’s other regions and foreign citizens committed over 23,000 crimes in Moscow, Head of the Moscow Chief Investigative Department of Russia’s Investigative Committee - Law Lieutenant-General Vadim Yakovenko said on Tuesday.
MOSCOW – Russian drug control police seized 106 tonnes of narcotic drugs last year, drug control service chief Viktor Ivanov told the media on Tuesday. “Last year our drug control service seized 106 tonnes of substances we are expected to keep under control, which is 70 percent more than in 2011,” he said, adding that the confiscated drugs included mostly opiates, marijuana and synthetic formulas.