Russia’s Foreign Ministry has denied reports last month that Russian diplomats tried to buy tear gas in Malta and then transfer it to Venezuela.

“The Russian diplomatic mission in Valletta works in strict accordance with the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, Russian diplomats do not participate in any secret operation,” said a statement from the Russian Foreign Ministry.

The Russian ministry stressed that the Maltese authorities did not send their comments on the matter to the Russian embassy in Valletta.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov discussed a range of security issues during separate meetings in Sochi, including the situations in Iran and Venezuela, and have agreed to take concrete steps on arms control while expressing hope for improving the bilateral relationship.

During his visit to Sochi on Tuesday, Pompeo first met with Lavrov to discuss a wide range of security issues, with arms control topping the agenda. The two diplomats then held a joint press conference before Pompeo sat down for talks with Putin.

Russian President Vladimir Putin told US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo that he had the impression President Donald Trump wanted to restore relations between the US and Russia after the Mueller inquiry exonerated him.

“As you know, just a few days ago, I had the pleasure of talking with the US president on the phone,” Putin told Pompeo on Tuesday, as the two met in Sochi. “I got the impression that the [US] president was inclined to re-establish Russian-American relations and contacts to resolve together the issues that are of mutual interest to us.”

President Donald Trump has said he will meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin at next month’s G20 summit in Osaka, Japan.

Trump announced the pair of meetings to reporters in the Oval office on Monday afternoon.

“I’ll be meeting with him directly, President Xi. Yes, I will be meeting with President Putin also,” he said.

Earlier that morning, Russian newspaper Kommersant reported that Washington had requested a meeting with Putin, and was awaiting the Kremlin’s response.

A Kremlin spokesman responded to Trump’s statement on Monday by saying no preparations were underway for such a meeting.

Turkey's Erdogan says de-escalation deal signed with Russia at risk as Syrian government presses on with Idlib assault.

At the press conference following the bilateral meeting, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told journalists that he and his US counterpart Mike Pompeo have agreed the need to resume communication channels between the two countries.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has expressed hope that despite the disagreement, the US and Russia can continue a dialogue on Venezuela.

The US top diplomat continued by saying that during the talks, he had urged Russia to end its support for Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, but his call was flatly rejected by Moscow.

President Donald Trump will meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin when world leaders gather in Japan next month for the annual G-20 conclave, the president said Monday.

Trump's announcement comes amid an escalating trade war with China that has roiled markets as both the U.S. and Beijing have upped tariffs on each other's products. After trade talks fell apart last week, Trump raised tariffs on $200 billion in Chinese goods.

"I'll meet with them directly," Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.

Trump was widely criticized by members of his own party for his last formal meeting with Putin last year, in which the president contradicted his own intelligence officials by saying he saw no reason to believe Russia tried to influence the 2016 election. The president later sought to walk the comment back, saying he meant to say he saw no reason why they wouldn't have attempted to meddle in the election.

It seems for the State Department lately it's all Iran and Venezuela all the time, or perhaps there's just an aversion to real diplomatic work.

After snubbing Germany's Merkel last week to make an unplanned stop in Iraq to pressure leaders there into resisting cooperation with Iran, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Monday scrapped a scheduled trip to Moscow, diverting his plane for a surprise visit to Brussels to presumably crash an EU meeting exploring ways of salvaging the Iran nuclear deal.

The US’ continuous military buildup in Japan, namely deployment of missile defense systems, is a direct threat to Russia, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said after meeting his Japanese counterpart Taro Kono.

“We've yet again drew attention to certain actions of Washington, including the deployment of the global missile defense systems’ elements to Japan, bolstering of its military presence in the region and activities in the arms control sphere, where the US is demolishing all the existing agreements. We perceive such actions as a threat for our country,” Lavrov said on Friday.

President Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani is planning to travel to Ukraine in coming days along with lawyer Victoria Toesning, Joe diGenova confirmed to Breitbart News.

“My wife Victoria Toensing is going with Rudy to Ukraine to investigate and gather facts,” diGenova said in a brief phone conversation. He referred further questions to Giuliani.

The trip, reported first by New York Times, is to encourage the incoming president to continue inquiries that could shed insight into the origin of the FBI’s investigation into the Trump campaign, as well as into 2020 candidate Joe Biden’s involvement in the firing of a Ukrainian prosecutor who was investigating a company his son worked for.

Giuliani told the Times if he meets incoming president Volodymyr Zelensky, he will “tell him what I know about the people that are surrounding him, and how important it is to do a full, complete, and fair investigation.”

The 2019 Victory Day speech by President Vladimir Putin was as important as ever as it sent a message to the present-day states that consciously distort the events of the past. Putin reminded of the graffiti of the Brest Fortress defenders which still makes us gasp for air in its incredible oath and testament to us. As those soldiers fought until the very end, this oath was one of hope and defiance:

”I am dying but I do not surrender”

– a phrase that will now act as the title of yet another incredible, sensitive speech by Putin.

The Immortal Regiment March in St. Petersburg yesterday saw 1.18 million estimated participants. People celebrate Victory Day by carrying portraits of their relatives who fought against nazism, as well as portraits of the Soviet leaders and marshals/generals of the Red Army who lead the country during the war.

As China and Russia modernize their militaries and restructure their forces, the U.S. military is wary that its traditional advantages may be negated in a potential war with either, or both, powers.

In the face of a rising China and resurgent Russia, some pundits point to the U.S. military’s surplus of combat experience and large-scale logistical expertise in massing forces as an overwhelming advantage.

But that may not actually help that much against a peer adversary capable of launching cyber attacks the minute mobilization orders are cut, according to retired Army Gen. Jack Keane, a former vice chief of staff for the U.S. Army.

It appears that the Kremlin is very slowly changing its approach to the Ukrainian issue and is now relying more on unilateral actions. The first two measures taken by the Russians are maybe not “too little too late”, but certainly “just the bare minimum and at that, rather late”. Still, I can only salute the Kremlin’s newly found determination. Specifically, the Kremlin has banned the export of energy products to the Ukraine (special exemptions can still be granted on a case by case basis) and the Russians have decided to distribute Russian passports to the people of Novorussia. Good.

Why is retired US Admiral James Stavridis writing Cold War propaganda in TIME magazine in 2019? The answer is simple, says comedian and political commentator Jimmy Dore: he makes bank doing it.

While Stavridis’ recent article in TIME is pretty extreme in its calls to sanction sports teams, symphonies and academic institutions for the crime of being Russian, Dore has a rather simple explanation for the former admiral’s anti-Moscow gusto:

Tehran and Moscow have called on the European sides to the 2015 Iran nuclear deal to comply with their commitments to guarantee the survival of the agreement, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

After holding talks with his Russian counterpart in Moscow on Wednesday, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif attended a joint press conference with Sergei Lavrov, during which he said the nuclear deal's survival could be guaranteed if the agreement's European signatories fulfilled their obligations, which he said they had yet to fully honor.

Russia and China have fulfilled their obligations “but other countries, particularly the European sides to the JCPOA, have failed to honor their commitments," said Zarif.

The US transpolar territory is much smaller than that of Russia, Canada and Denmark. And in fact the US doesn’t really have territories bordering the Arctic Ocean. In this regard, we have to distinguish between territories above the Arctic Circle, which is the imaginary line at the 66th parallel, and those bordering the Arctic Ocean, which defines the Arctic region. From a geographic standpoint, the US is not an Arctic Nation because it does not have territories bordering the Arctic Ocean.

For more than two weeks contaminated oil from Russia has clogged the giant Druzhba pipeline, the main delivery line for multiple EU countries, especially impacting Belarus, Poland and Germany. Russia is Germany's largest energy supplier — and with no word on just how long the blockage will last — it is likely to prove financially disastrous as there's an estimated 37 million barrels of contaminated crude accumulating in pipelines spanning from Belarus to Ukraine to Hungary.

Far from being a mere technical disaster, Russian authorities had previously revealed the developing "dirty oil" crisis to be intentional — the result of organized crime and an attempt to cover up mass theft on the part of oil executives.

Israel on Tuesday criticized an article authored by a close adviser to Russian President Vladimir Putin, which claimed that Ukraine’s president may want to move Israeli Jews into parts of his country, as “conspiratorial and anti-Semitic.”

Jerusalem was “puzzled” by Sergey Glazyev’s article, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Emmanuel Nahshon told The Times of Israel.

The owner of a Washington, D.C., area radio station that broadcasts Sputnik International 24/7 has been ordered to register his Florida-based broadcasting company as a Russian federal agent.

WTOP-FM reports Judge Robin Rosenburg ruled Tuesday that RM Broadcasting must register with the U.S. government. RM and a Russian government-owned news agency agreed in 2017 that the station would broadcast the agency's communications continuously without edit until 2021.

Markets are reeling from Trump's declaration via Twitter that tariffs will be increased from 10 percent to 25 percent on $200 billion worth of Chinese goods. This is happening in the same week in which U.S. Navy destroyers sailed near islands in the South China Sea claimed by China, and as the Pentagon published the 2019 China Military Report. The report says China is building an army capable of global intervention and accuses China of conducting espionage in order to accumulate military knowledge.

Actual Chinese foreign policy, however, is currently focused not on the United States, but westwards towards Central Asia and Europe as part of the One Belt, One Road Initiative (OBOR). China has one offshore military base in Djibouti and the One Belt, One Road Initiative will place another in Pakistan.

Ukrainian government troops fired on a bus carrying workers from the Donetsk water treatment plant.

“This Tuesday [May 7] at 9:17 [local time] in the morning a bus with employees of the Donetsk water treatment plant was attacked with grenade launchers by Ukrainian armed formations,” the representative of the Donetsk militias in the Joint Center for Control and Coordination of the Ceasefire informed reporters.

The Joint Center representative stated that the workers of the plant were unharmed from this attack.

Russia has vowed to expand cooperation with Iran, including in the field of peaceful use of nuclear energy, despite US threats of sanctions.

"No threat of new sanctions will stop our legitimate and mutually beneficial cooperation with Iran," Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov told Sputnik on Sunday.

Referring to US sanctions that have been in place against Russia since 2012, Ryabkov said, “It is clear that over this period there has been a serious adaptation to this illegal trick by the United States.”

He said Tehran has an even bigger experience on how to live under the US sanctions.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has warned China and Russia to “respect our interests” in the Arctic, or face the consequences.

Frozen and desolate, the Arctic region looks set to be the next frontier for competition between the US, Russia, and China. Speaking at a meeting of the Arctic Council in Finland on Monday, Pompeo launched a broadside against the US’ competitors in the region, particularly China.

“Arctic seaways could become the 21st century Suez and Panama canals,” America’s top diplomat stated.

Syrian militants fired 36 rockets at Russia’s Khmeimim airbase in two attacks on Monday, but both were repelled by the air defenses with no damage dealt, the Russian military said, adding that jets launched strikes in response.
The shelling came from the Idlib de-escalation zone, controlled by the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham terrorist group (formerly known as Al-Nusra Front), the head of the Russian Center for Reconciliation in Syria, Maj. Gen. Viktor Kupchishin, said.

The militants used a drone to direct the fire from multiple launch rocket systems, but the attacks were repelled by Khmeimim’s air defense systems.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has condemned Washington’s “unprecedented campaign” and “irresponsible plans” aimed at toppling the legitimate government of Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela.

“We see an unprecedented US-led campaign aimed at toppling the lawful authority in Venezuela. We condemn this campaign as a blatant violation of all the international laws secured by the UN Charter," Lavrov said at the beginning of a Sunday meeting with his Venezuelan counterpart Jorge Arreaza in Moscow.

“We call on the Americans and all (the countries) who support them to cancel irresponsible plans and act strictly according to the international legislation, as President (Vladimir) Putin said a couple of days ago in a phone conversation with President (Donald) Trump,” he added.

Lavrov is travelling on Monday to Finland, where he is expected to hold rare face-to-face talks with US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

An Aeroflot-operated SSJ100 caught fire at Moscow's Sheremetyevo Airport on Sunday after making an emergency landing; 41 people were killed in the tragedy. The aircraft was bound for the northern Russian city of Murmansk.

The burnt Sukhoi Superjet 100 (SSJ100) aircraft is being taken out of Moscow's Sheremetyevo Airport on 6 May, following a tragedy that claimed the lives of 41 people.

The SSJ100 had to make an emergency landing at Sheremetyevo International Airport due to a fire on board that ultimately burned the aircraft up. Russia's flagship carrier Aeroflot confirmed that the fire was extinguished.

We recently stumbled across this remarkable article from 1988! in the journal Imprimis, and when we read it, we could scarcely believe our eyes. When we started asking people about it, we heard different things - one person said this has been disproven, others said it was true and that they knew eye-witnesses who were deported.

Apparently the British government sued Tolstoy when he made these charges in an attempt to shut him up. We don't know if the charges are true or not, but it makes for extraordinary reading, and I appeal to people who know something about this to please help us fill out our knowledge in the comments section below. It is situations like this where our commentors are simply invaluable.

Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper reacts to President Donald Trump not discussing Russian meddling in the 2016 US election with Russian President Vladimir Putin in a phone call between the two leaders.

No, it doesn't appear to be mere hyperbole, considering it's the well-known neocon uber-hawk senator from South Carolina, who like the late John McCain would never waist precious opportunity to put the USA firmly on the war path.

Addressing recent reports that Cuba and Russia have sent troops to Venezuela to prop up embattled President Nicolas Maduro, Sen. Lindsey Graham angrily tweeted Friday, "Where is our aircraft carrier?"

America's most trusted talking heads are in meltdown mode, once again accusing Donald Trump of taking orders from Vladimir Putin, after the US leader was seemingly too soft with the Russian president in a recent phone call.

Rachel Maddow, Jake Tapper, and other spirited Russiagate promoters suffered full-on meltdowns upon learning that Trump apparently hadn’t ‘properly' discussed the issue of “election meddling” in his first phone call with Vladimir Putin since the Mueller report's release.

Rather, the two leaders spoke about "trade, Venezuela, Ukraine, North Korea, nuclear arms control" and "the Russian hoax" during the hour-long call, according to Trump's tweet.

An agreement has been reached on a meeting between Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and US Secretary of State Michael Pompeo in Finland next week, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov informed TASS.

BEIRUT — During a Middle East tour last month, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo focused primarily on Iran’s influence in the region, but on Mar. 20 in Jerusalem he also labeled Russia an adversary of US regional allies in addition to Iran and China when speaking about energy and security in the eastern Mediterranean. “Revisionist powers like Iran and Russia and China are all trying to take major footholds in the East and in the West,” Pompeo said, alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the leaders of Greece and Cyprus.

Russia is creating a group of countries at the United Nations to contain US plans for possible intervention in Venezuela, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Thursday.

“We are mobilizing a group of countries that, like us, respect the UN Charter, to neutralize these plans,” he said when asked by the press about the Russian reaction to a possible US invasion of Venezuela.

According to Lavrov, Moscow hopes that this group will be able to attract considerable support from other members, since the aim of this mobilization is extremely simple: “to uphold the norms and fundamental principles of international law set out in the UN Charter.”

George Orwell would have been in stitches Wednesday watching Attorney General William Barr and members of the Senate Judiciary Committee spar on Russia-gate. The hearing had the hallmarks of the intentionally or naively blind leading the blind with political shamelessness.

From time to time the discussion turned to the absence of a legal “predicate” to investigate President Donald Trump for colluding with Russia. That is, of course, important; and we can expect to hear a lot more about that in coming months.

More important: what remains unacknowledged is the absence of an evidence-based major premise that should have been in place to anchor the rhetoric and accusations about Russia-gate over the past three years. With a lack of evidence sufficient to support a major premise, any syllogism falls of its own weight.

George Orwell would have been in stitches Wednesday watching Attorney General William Barr and members of the Senate Judiciary Committee spar on Russia-gate. The hearing had the hallmarks of the intentionally or naively blind leading the blind with political shamelessness.

From time to time the discussion turned to the absence of a legal “predicate” to investigate President Donald Trump for colluding with Russia. That is, of course, important; and we can expect to hear a lot more about that in coming months.

More important: what remains unacknowledged is the absence of an evidence-based major premise that should have been in place to anchor the rhetoric and accusations about Russia-gate over the past three years. With a lack of evidence sufficient to support a major premise, any syllogism falls of its own weight.

President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke on the phone for over an hour on Friday, a significant occurrence for an administration that has been very reticent to engage in dialogues with Russia.

According to White House officials, the focus of the talks was on Venezuela, with Trump making it clear that the “United States stands with the people of Venezuela,” which of course means regime change.

Russia obviously would’ve been aware of that position already, since we’re just days out from a failed US-backed coup in Venezuela. It’s not clear what specifics would have been focused on, but some US officials were blaming Russia for the coup’s failure, which may have been a topic of discussion.

Russia has been backing the Maduro government in Venezuela, while the US has long sought regime change, and since January has recognized the nation’s opposition leader as the rightful president.

NATO has beefed up its presence in the Baltic region considerably recently ahead of a series of massive army and naval drills taking place over the next two months.

A unit of four Royal Air Force Eurofighter Typhoon warplanes officially started their airspace policing mission over the Baltic states on Thursday, taking over from the German Luftwaffe, whose planes had carried out the rotating patrols since last August.

The air policing mission was handed off to the RAF at a solemn ceremony attended by Estonian, British and German military personnel at the Amari Air base near Tallinn, Estonia, about 200 km west of the country's border with Russia.

Your Geopolitical Quiz for the Day:

Two countries are embroiled in a ferocious rivalry. One country’s meteoric growth has put it on a path to become the world’s biggest economic superpower while the other country appears to be slipping into irreversible decline. Which country will lead the world into the future?

Replacement missiles for the S-400 anti-air missile system sold to China by Russia last year have been sent, according to media reports. Some of the system’s missiles and other equipment were damaged in a storm in the English Channel in December 2017.

The replacement missiles departed from Russia at the beginning of April, The Diplomat reported, citing Russian military diplomatic sources. It's not known how many of the interceptors were damaged and required replacement.

Beijing bought six units of the advanced anti-air interceptor system in 2015 for $3 billion, but the first batch was delivered only in April 2018, following several months of delays caused by a storm in the English Channel in December 2017. The tempest damaged several components of the system, including some of the missiles and auxiliary equipment, causing the ship to turn back, Sputnik reported, citing Russia's defense industry cooperation service.

If there was a clickbait headline competition, Fox News has just produced one that could easily win it. The network said one of its guests believes Russia has nuclear missiles in Venezuela, and presumably no one but him noticed.

To be clear, there are no Russian nukes in Venezuela, as far as any open evidence or official statements go. Representative Mario Diaz-Balart of Florida, whose appearance on Tucker Carlson Tonight on Tuesday sparked the flashy headline, doesn’t appear to believe there are any either. But that doesn’t stop a really determined traffic-hungry editor from insinuating the opposite.

President Trump suggested on Wednesday that his administration had warned the Russian government to stay out of Venezuela after two Russian planes carrying military personnel arrived in Caracas this week, a move that places another significant obstacle in the White House’s slow-moving effort to oust President Nicolás Maduro.

During an Oval Office meeting with Fabiana Rosales, the wife of Juan Guaidó, the Venezuelan National Assembly politician recognized by the Trump administration and 50 other countries as the rightful interim president, Mr. Trump said that Russia needed to see its way out of the conflict.

“Russia has to get out. What’s your next question?” Mr. Trump told reporters.

On Wednesday, the Russian foreign minister spoke to US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, telling the top US diplomat that Washington's interference in Venezuela's affairs was a destructive approach fraught with "the most serious consequences."

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov urged the United States to refrain from returning to the imperious 'Monroe Doctrine' in its relations with Venezuela, and indicated that while the Russian and US positions on the crisis in the Latin American country remain incompatible, dialogue must continue.

"We agreed to maintain contacts, including on Venezuela, but I don't see a way to reconcile our positions — ours, on the one hand, which is based on the UN Charter and the principles and norms of international law, and that of the United States, on the other, in which Washington assigns the acting president of another country," Lavrov said, speaking to reporters in Tashkent, Uzbekistan on Thursday.

Early this week Chinese media confirmed that Russian warships arrived in Qingdao, a port city in East China's Shandong Province, at the start this week's join China-Russia naval exercises.

The Russian fleet included the Varyag guided missile cruiser, a submarine, two anti-submarine ships, a corvette, a landing ship, a tanker and a rescue vessel, according to China's Global Times.

Early this week Chinese media confirmed that Russian warships arrived in Qingdao, a port city in East China's Shandong Province, at the start this week's join China-Russia naval exercises.

The Russian fleet included the Varyag guided missile cruiser, a submarine, two anti-submarine ships, a corvette, a landing ship, a tanker and a rescue vessel, according to China's Global Times.

A high level Pentagon official has admitted that US forces will be in Syria for "the long haul" and coupled his statement by declaring the territory contains “a lot of the oil resources and arable land.”

The unusually frank remarks were made this week by Michael Mulroy, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for the Middle East, while addressing a conference at the D.C. based Center for a New American Security (CNAS), months after President Trump appeared to have caved to his advisers, reversing course earlier this year from his stated goal of a full and rapid US troop exit from Syria.

Mulroy said “we have a very capable partner” — in reference to the primarily Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) — and quickly noted the US-trained SDF happens to occupy key regions in eastern Syria with "a lot of the oil resources and arable land," and added that, "we are there with them".

Diaz-Balart told Fox News if Maduro stays in power it could be "an open door for the Russians and for the Chinese and for others to increase their activity against our national security interest."

Journalist Tucker Carlson then asked: "Are you suggesting they are going to invade?”

“The closest we ever came to nuclear war was because the Russians put missiles, right, nuclear missiles in Cuba,” replied Diaz-Balart.

“Are you saying the Russians will put nuclear missiles in Venezuela?” Carlson asked.

“What I am suggesting is that they are already there,” answered Diaz-Balart, without offering any evidence to back up his claim.

update 5: As predicted, what Guaido dubbed “Operation Liberty” — a full on coup attempt for which he appealed for Venezuela's military to rise up against Maduro — appears to have failed to achieve significant momentum, given Caracas officials are taking to the air waves to declare the "mediocre" coup attempt successfully put down.

“A mediocre coup d'etat attempt has failed,” said defense minister Vladimir Padrino on a state radio broadcast Tuesday afternoon, following prior statements saying he was ready put down the rebellion by force. And in a television appearance Padrino further called the day's events "ridiculous".

Meanwhile national security advisor John Bolton has stated this is "not a coup" given that the US already sees opposition leader Juan Guaido as the country's president. Bolton said of the rapidly unfolding and increasingly violent events that "it is not a coup for Juan Guaido to try and take command of the Venezuelan military."

Donald J. Trump
?

The war on Syria is not over. Western -supported terrorists still occupy Idlib, as well as al Tanif, and strategic resource-rich areas East of the Euphrates. The Al- Rukban concentration camp[1] still holds about 40,000 desperate and dying captives, and the Al-Hawl camp[2] holds 73,000 captives.

The West’s terrorists are expendable, but the West supports them all, including al Qaeda, ISIS, and the YPG/SDF terrorists.

Under the familiar pretense of “going after ISIS”, the Western coalition carpet bombed Raqqa, shipped ISIS out, and re-occupied the ruins with SDF proxies – occupiers posing as liberators.

An international audit firm says Russia has successfully managed to decrease the use of US dollar in its settlements with its foreign trade partners, significantly increasing the number of deals in Russian rubles and euro.

“Tendency towards doing away with the US dollar on foreign trade is obvious. This is the way to a more stable economy and protection of it against sanctions,” said Elena Trubnikova, chairwoman of the board of FinExpertiza, a Russian network of professional audit, valuation and consulting firms, on Monday.

“This is mostly true for exports, as selling the goods for the national currency of the exporter is a natural order of things,” the RIA-Novosti further quoted her as saying.

According to a research conducted by the Moscow-based consultancy network, the share of settlements in Russia’s foreign trade using the US currency have been reduced by 12.6 percent between 2013, before Western sanctions were introduced against Russia, through 2018.

Iranian and Russian military forces will stage a rare naval drill in the Persian Gulf later this year, the commander of Iran’s Navy has announced.

Rear-Admiral Hossein Khanzadi made the announcement during a press conference on Monday upon return to Tehran from a high-profile visit to China, where he met with his counterparts from other countries.

“Our negotiations with Russia revolved mostly around technical and operational topics and we plan to hold a joint naval exercise” this year, he said.

While Iranian and Russian naval forces have in the past trained together in the Caspian Sea, the upcoming Persian Gulf drill is expected to take bilateral cooperation to a new level.

The announcement comes at a time when Iran has threatened to close the Hormuz Strait, a strategic chokepoint through which a large chunk of world’s oil transits every day, in response to threats by the United States to zero out Tehran’s crude exports.

Ukraine still heavily relies on Russian gas, therefore it won’t be able to use reverse flows if the gas transit stops completely, Vladimir Putin said. As of now, the reverse gas flows “exist only on paper.”

There are no real reverse flows of gas in Ukraine, Putin said, adding that “if there’s no transit, there’re also no gas supplies.” He was apparently referring to reports that Ukraine continues to buy reverse supplies of Russian gas at a higher price from European nations.

The Russian president said that Ukraine is buying gas at twice the price it could have paid. Meanwhile, Kiev is “fooling around” instead of coming to terms with the conditions of gas transit decided by Moscow. Eventually, it is the Ukrainian taxpayer who suffers the most, Putin argued.

The Ukrainian armed forces shelled the outskirts of the Donetsk water filtration plant in eastern Ukraine late on Friday, prompting the evacuation of personnel, an official from the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic has said.

"The armed forces of Ukraine opened fire toward Yasinovataya. The zone of shelling included the outskirts of the Donetsk water filtration station. The Ukrainian troops continue mortar fire, the personnel has taken shelter. To date, a total of 35 120-mm mortar rounds have been fired. The damage is being assessed," the head of the DPR mission to the Joint Centre for Control and Coordination (JCCC), Ruslan Yakubov, said.

On Friday evening, the Ukrainian armed forces attacked the outskirts of Donetsk and Yasinovataya, using mortars, AFV-mounted guns, air defense systems and firearms.

Seven suspected members of Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) have been detained outside Moscow. The men were tasked by “foreign emissaries” to recruit more terrorists locally, investigators said.
The group was busted during a joint operation of several Russian law enforcement and intelligence agencies, Russia’s Investigative Committee said Monday. It released an undated video, showing a special police task force raiding a house somewhere in the Moscow Region and arresting several men.

US National Security Advisor John Bolton called on Venezuela’s military to side with Washington protégé Juan Guaido, after the opposition leader declared a military coup in Caracas on Tuesday.
Bolton, one of the leading US figures in the operation to topple the Venezuelan government, called on Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino to side with Guaido, claiming this would protect Venezuela’s constitution.

.@vladimirpadrino: The FANB must protect the Constitution and the Venezuelan people. It should stand by the National Assembly and the legitimate institutions against the usurpation of democracy. The United States stands with the people of Venezuela.

— John Bolton (@AmbJohnBolton) April 30, 2019
Padrino earlier rejected Guaido as a traitor and said on Twitter that the national armed forces (FANB) were loyal to the legitimate President Nicolas Maduro.

One day after reports that President Trump was pushing for a new nuclear arms treaty with Russia and China, the Russian Foreign Ministry has issued a statement confirming that they, too, are willing to negotiate on the matter. China has yet to directly respond.

Yesterday’s report suggested that Trump’s primary goal for any treaty was to place new limits on Russia’s nuclear arsenal. Russia’s Deputy FM Sergei Ryabkov said that Russia wants a joint statement of all three nations repudiating any use of nuclear weapons.

Talk of new nuclear negotiations is a surprise after the US unilaterally withdrew from the Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty. Many feared this would usher in an era where disarmament talks just didn’t happen.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has made his first comment about a self-admitted Russia agent sentenced in the United States.

Putin’s Saturday comments in Beijing were made after Russian foreign agent Maria Butina was sentences to 18 months in prison.

"It's an outrage," Putin told reporters. "It's not clear what she was convicted of or what crime she committed. I think it's a prime example of 'saving face.' They arrested her and put the girl in jail. But there was nothing on her, so in order not to look totally stupid they gave her, fixed her up, with an 18-month sentence to show that she was guilty of something."

The summit between North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and President Vladimir Putin was significant on various levels and reaffirms the onset of a multipolar world.

Knowing your enemies and understanding your friends is a maxim to live by. At the level of nation states, at a historic moment, defined by Gramsci’s rather overused but nonetheless prescient formulation, “the old is dying and the new cannot be born,” it is more than a rule to live by, it is a prerequisite of survival.

Failing to understand their enemies was central to the grim fate that befell Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gaddafi and the countries they led, Iraq and Libya. Thus far, the North Koreans, led by Kim Jong-un, have not allowed themselves to go down the same path.

Russia has dropped out of the top five countries with the largest defense spend for the first time since 2006, according to new international data Monday.

Total world military expenditure rose to $1.8 trillion in 2018, according to new data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), marking an increase of 2.6% from 2017 and the highest total spend since 1988.

The 8th ‘Moscow Conference on International Security’ is taking place in the capital with the participation of defense ministers from at least 35 states and over 1,000 experts from more than 100 countries. Russia, in particular, is represented by the likes of Defense Minister Sergey Shoygu, Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces Valery Gerasimov, and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.

In recent years there has been a shortage of measles vaccines in Ukraine. Vaccination rates had dropped to 31% in 2016 and were the lowest in Europe. And yet there were hardly any cases of measles. In 2017 sufficient vaccines became available for a ‘catch-up campaign’ and 90% of the children in Ukraine received the MMR. Since then there has been an explosion of cases of measles. The number has already surpassed 12,000! Why is the media ignoring the current outbreak of measles in Ukraine? And what is really going on?

Moscow may soon extend its fast-track naturalization procedure to all citizens of Ukraine, Vladimir Putin announced days after residents of the country’s east were allowed to get Russian passports within three months.

“We’re thinking on granting Russian citizenship to Ukrainians under a simplified procedure,” Vladimir Putin told reporters on the sidelines of the Belt and Road summit in Beijing.

Russia’s Foreign Ministry official Maria Zakharova said on Thursday that Moscow regrets that the “language of sanctions and threats” has become the “visiting card” of the United States.

In particular, the diplomat criticized the statements of the US ambassador to Russia, John Huntsman, who threatened Moscow with two North American aircraft carriers in the Mediterranean Sea. Hunstman had stated that each aircraft carrier represents one hundred thousand tons of international diplomacy and shows Russia that if it really hopes to improve relations with the US, it has to stop destabilizing activities around the world.

“Petro Poroshenko lost the election to no one other than to Vladimir Putin”. This was stated by the official representative of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia Maria Zakharova , recalling how the current Ukrainian president opposed himself on billboards to the Russian president during the election campaign.

Ukraine’s President-Elect Vladimir Zelensky should hold talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin only with the mediation of Western countries, his military adviser on security and defense issues Ivan Aparshin said on Wednesday.

"I would not recommend the Ukrainian president to meet face to face with Putin," Aparshin told ZIK TV channel, noting that Zelensky’s talks with the Russian leader should involve representatives of the United States and the United Kingdom.

Russian media sources have confirmed a major fire is ongoing at Krasnoyarsk’s Machine-Building Plant (also commonly known as "Krasmash") in the Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk, Russia, after stunning images and video began appearing on social media Friday.

The Krasmash plant is known for producing some of the most advanced missiles in Russia's ballistic arsenal

The guarantor states of the Astana process declared their intention to counter separatist plans against Syria this country, according to the joint statement of Russia, Iran and Turkey. It was released on Friday after a regular round of negotiations in Nur-Sultan, TASS reports. The three states confirmed their commitment to the sovereignty, independence, unity and territorial integrity of Syria.

The Reuters news agency has published a retraction of an “exclusive” report on operations between the Venezuelan and Russian state oil companies, PDVSA and Rosneft, after disavowing the US-supplied source. Reuters has also acted after Rosneft applied for a criminal investigation of the media company’s operations in Russia by Moscow prosecutors.

The acknowledgment of misreporting has exposed evidence that Reuters’ reporters and bureaux in Caracas, Venezuela, Mexico City, Houston, London and Washington are routinely relaying disinformation supplied by US Government agents in their attempt to damage Venezuelan, Russian, Indian and Chinese operations in the international oil market.

A high-level Russian delegation is visiting Iraq to discuss trade and economic cooperation between the two countries.

The delegation, headed by Deputy Prime Minister Yury Borisov, met with Iraqi Foreign Minister Mohammed Alhakim on Thursday.

Borisov said the two sides discussed trade in agriculture and industry and said his country is seeking to increase food exports to Iraq.

Iraq is reliant on imports to feed its population, and imports a significant portion of food items from Iran.

The White House is in intense talks on options for the US president to pursue a deal building on the New START Treaty, which expires in 2021, officials have told CNN.

US President Donald Trump is eying a new potential signature foreign policy achievement: a grand nuclear deal with Russia and China, according to CNN.

"The President has made clear that he thinks that arms control should include Russia and China and should include all the weapons, all the warheads, all the missiles", a senior White House official told CNN.

Donald Trump prides himself on being a great dealmaker. “Deals are my art form. I like making deals, preferably big deals”, he has been known to say. Now the US president is said to be publicly hinting that a deal is on his agenda.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has arrived in China to take part in the One Belt One Road international forum on April 26-27.

Putin’s working program will begin on Friday. Together with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping, he will speak at the opening ceremony of the forum in Beijing's National Convention Center. The Russian leader will also hold a series of meetings, specifically, with the leaders of Azerbaijan, Serbia, Egypt and Cyprus and Myanmar’s foreign minister. Putin’s bilateral talks with Xi Jinping are due to be held too.

The forum’s three working sessions are scheduled for April 27. Putin plans to address one of them.

UK officials have condemned Russia’s decision to simplify procedures for Donbass residents to obtain Russian passports, the UK Foreign Office informed in a statement published on its website.

"The UK condemns [Russian] President [Vladimir] Putin’s decision to sign a decree making it easier for Ukrainian citizens living in non-Government controlled areas of eastern Ukraine to receive Russian passports," a spokesperson of the UK Foreign Office said.

"This step is the latest in a pattern of Russian behaviour aimed at threatening Ukraine’s security and sovereignty, and undermining its territorial integrity," the diplomat continued.

As Donald Trump began his meteoric rise to the presidency, the Obama White House summoned Ukrainian authorities to Washington to coordinate ongoing anti-corruption efforts inside Russia’s most critical neighbor.

The January 2016 gathering, confirmed by multiple participants and contemporaneous memos, brought some of Ukraine’s top corruption prosecutors and investigators face to face with members of former President Obama’s National Security Council (NSC), FBI, State Department and Department of Justice (DOJ).

The agenda suggested the purpose was training and coordination. But Ukrainian participants said it didn’t take long — during the meetings and afterward — to realize the Americans’ objectives included two politically hot investigations: one that touched Vice President Joe Biden’s family and one that involved a lobbying firm linked closely to then-candidate Trump.

Certain Western countries voice claims for exclusive global leadership, resorting to blackmail and sanctions to try to impose their values on other states, Russian President Vladimir Putin said, adding that Moscow was against such policies.

"Unfortunately, some Western countries voice claims for the exclusive global leadership. They boldly violate the norms and principles of international law and resort to blackmailing, imposing sanctions and pressure and try to impose their values and vague ideals on whole countries and peoples … We absolutely do not agree with such approaches", Putin said in an interview with the Chinese Renmin Ribao (People's Daily) newspaper, published ahead of his visit to Beijing later this week.

In the interview to the People's Daily, Putin argued that bilateral Russia-China relations were a "stabilizing factor in global affairs", adding that the two countries share views on key contemporary issues.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin is shrouded in the veil of political uncertainty, but analysts believe it could be a roundabout way to reboot denuclearization talks with the US.

The meeting is taking place in Vladivostok, 129 kilometers from the border Russia shares with North Korea. It is Russia’s shortest international border, only 17km along the Tyumen River. Since the demise of the Soviet Union, North Korea has figured little in Moscow’s geopolitical calculus, as Russia sided with the West in backing UN sanctions against Pyongyang.

The collapse of denuclearization talks between Kim and US President Donald Trump in Hanoi back in February, however, appears to have pushed Pyongyang and Moscow closer together. What does that mean for Washington?