Russia

MOSCOW, September 3. /TASS/: The Russian-US trade turnover totaled $13.8 bln in first six months of this year, Russian Ambassador to the US Anatoly Antonov said in an interview with Izvestia newspaper published on Tuesday, adding that American businessmen are still interested in the Russian market despite sanctions.

"Bilateral trade turnover with the US is rising gradually. In 2018, it gained 13% to $27.5 bln (compared with $24 bln in 2017). Positive dynamics has maintained this year as well as trade amounted to $13.8 bln in six months," he said.

MOSCOW, September 3. /TASS/: NtechLab company is negotiating the use of Russia's facial recognition technology with FIFA and Qatar that will host the 2022 FIFA World Cup, and plans to participate in the pilot project, Chief Executive Officer Alexander Minin told TASS.

"We are holding talks with FIFA and Qatar and will participate in the pilot project", he said.

MOSCOW, September 3. /TASS/: Aides of the Normandy Four leaders failed to agree on the summit’s date at their meeting in Berlin on Monday, but made a significant progress in their discussion, Director of the Russian Center for Current Politics Alexei Chesnakov told reporters on Tuesday.

"As far as I know, yesterday the aides of the Normandy Four leaders did not agree on a particular date of the summit," Chesnakov said. "They discussed the terms on which the summit may take place."

VLADIVOSTOK, September 3. /TASS/: The North Korean series of missile launches in August are clearly linked to the military exercises staged by the US and South Korea in the south of the Korean Peninsula, this situation requires everyone to dial down military activity, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Igor Morgulov said on the sidelines of the Eastern Economic Forum (EEF).

MOSCOW, September 3. /TASS/: The covertness of a number of Russian All-Union State Standards makes the joint work of Russian and European companies involved in the joint space production difficult, head of Airbus Defense and Space in Russia Vladimir Terekhov said on Tuesday.

"The fact that Russian All-Union State Standards are often classified creates additional difficulties," he said.

MOSCOW, September 2. /TASS/: Moscow would like to have Tehran’s opinion of the international community’s efforts for preserving the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action for the Iranian nuclear program, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in his opening remarks at a meeting with his Iranian counterpart Mohammad Javad Zarif in Moscow on Monday.

MOSCOW, September 2. /TASS/: Moscow and Tehran have agreed to keep working together to protect trading and economic projects with Iran, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told a joint news conference following talks with Iran’s visiting Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif in Moscow on Monday.

"We have agreed to exert more joint efforts to expand the protection of trading and economic projects with Iran to ensure independence from dollar settlements," Lavrov said.

MOSCOW, September 2. /TASS/: The measures taken by the Ministry of Economic Development to bolster Russia's economic growth will not bring results at the drop of a hat, but may take some time, as the ongoing processes have "a lot of inertia", Minister of Economic Development Maxim Oreshkin said in an interview with TASS.

"Let me remind you that last year, economic growth amounted to more than 2%. Prior to that, in 2017, it was 1.8%. It is clear that this is not much," Oreshkin said.

MOSCOW, September 2. /TASS/: The latest missile tests in the United States indicate that Washington has no intention of getting back to compliance with the Intermediate Nuclear Force Treaty, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told an audience of students and teachers at the MGIMO university and the Foreign Ministry’s Diplomatic Academy on the occasion of the beginning of a new academic year.

He said Washington had already ruined that treaty on a far-fetched pretext.

MOSCOW, September 1. /TASS/: Russia believes that Turkey’s interests in ensuring security and therefore its plans to set up a zone under its control in northeast Syria are absolutely legal, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in an interview with the "Moscow. Kremlin. Putin" program on the Rossiya-1 television channel.

Lavrov spoke about the outcome of Tuesday’s talks between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan. His comment was published on the Russian Foreign Ministry’s website on Sunday.