Oil, Iran top agenda as Putin visits Saudi Arabia Moscow, Russia | AFP | Russian President Vladimir Putin will visit Saudi Arabia on Monday, where he is set to seal oil agreements as well as use his influence to defuse rising tensions in the Gulf. The meeting with King Salman …
Read More »Hold the vodka: Russians cut drinking by 40 percent under Putin
Moscow, Russia | AFP | Russians might have a reputation as a nation of hard drinkers, but a report by the World Health Organization published Tuesday showed their alcohol consumption has dropped by more than 40 percent from its peak in the early 2000s. The WHO put the decrease down to …
Read More »Trump told Russian officials he wasn’t concerned by interference in 2016 elections
Washington, United States | AFP | US President Donald Trump told Russia’s foreign minister and ambassador that he was unconcerned about their country’s interference in the 2016 elections, The Washington Post reported Friday. Trump made the previously unreported comments during the same May 2017 Oval Office meeting in which he famously …
Read More »Russia to help Uganda develop nuclear energy
Moscow, Russia | AFP | Russia and Uganda have agreed to work together in the field of nuclear energy, the Russian nuclear agency Rosatom said Wednesday, as Moscow seeks to strengthen its influence in Africa. Russia’s state-owned companies have been at a key part of the strategy to bolster Moscow’s presence …
Read More »Russia launches floating nuclear reactor in Arctic despite warnings
Moscow, Russia | AFP | Russia will launch the world’s first floating nuclear reactor and send it on an epic journey across the Arctic on Friday, despite environmentalists warning of serious risks to the region. Loaded with nuclear fuel, the Akademik Lomonosov will leave the Arctic port of Murmansk to begin …
Read More »Russians killed in missile test blast were working on ‘new weapons’
Moscow, Russia | AFP | Russia’s nuclear agency chief on Monday confirmed that five scientists killed last week were developing “new weapons” and vowed to continue testing despite the explosion. The accident took place at an Arctic military facility on the coast of the White Sea on Thursday, but Russian authorities …
Read More »Russia missile test blast kills five nuclear agency staff
Moscow, Russia | AFP | Russia’s nuclear agency said Saturday an explosion during missile testing in the Arctic left five of its staff dead and involved radioactive isotopes after a nearby city reported a spike in radiation levels. Rosatom said the force of explosion on Thursday threw several of its staff …
Read More »From reformer to hardliner: Putin’s 20 years on the global stage
Moscow, Russia | AFP | Twenty years ago on Friday, Russian president Boris Yeltsin appointed his fourth prime minister in less than 18 months: Vladimir Putin, then a relatively unknown security services chief with scant experience of politics. The departing Yeltsin was casting around for a successor and few could have …
Read More »Murder, ‘gay-hunters’ strike terror in Russia’s LGBT community
Saint Petersburg, Russia | AFP | When LGBT activist Yelena Grigoryeva found her name on a hit list of a “gay-hunting” group, she did not appear to take the threat seriously. The group called itself “Pila”, meaning “saw”, after the series of Hollywood horror films of the same name, in which …
Read More »Beijing warns of ‘countermeasures’ over US missile plans
Beijing, China | AFP | China warned Tuesday it would take unspecified countermeasures if the United States goes ahead with plans to deploy ground-based intermediate-range missiles in the Asia-Pacific region. The comments come days after US Defense Secretary Mark Esper said Washington was now free to deploy the weapons following its …
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