Russia

MOSCOW, October 6. /TASS/: Russia’s State Space Agency Roscosmos has made the right decision to develop a reusable rocket, SpaceX founder Elon Musk said on Tuesday.

"It’s a step in the right direction," Musk twitted, commenting on the material released by TASS on Monday on Russia’s plans to develop the Amur methane-fueled rocket with a reusable first stage.

Russia should really aim for a fully reusable rocket by 2026 when the Amur’s first launch is scheduled, Musk stressed.

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny said he believed Russia’s intelligence services had poisoned him with a Novichok nerve agent because authorities saw him as a threat ahead of next year’s parliamentary elections.

“They understood that there were big, big problems threatening them ahead of elections for the State Duma,” Navalny said in a YouTube interview with a Russian blogger, his first video appearance since being discharged from a Berlin hospital.

MOSCOW, Oct. 5 (Xinhua) -- Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian and U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Monday called for a ceasefire in the Nagorno-Karabakh region, Russian Foreign Ministry said.

In a joint statement published by the ministry, Lavrov, Le Drian and Pompeo, representing the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) Minsk Group Co-Chair countries, condemned in the strongest terms the unprecedented and dangerous escalation of violence in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict zone and beyond.

MOSCOW, October 5. /TASS/: Russia will respond to possible additional restrictions on the access of its goods to the EU market, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Monday. He was speaking at a meeting with the members of the Association of European Businesses (AEB).

Lavrov recalled that the European Commission had prepared a report on significant distortions in the economy of the Russian Federation for the purpose of trade defense investigations.

MOSCOW, October 5. /TASS/: Russian scientists may prepare several own missions for exploration of Venus, Scientific Director of the Russian Space Research Institute Lev Zeleny said at the Eleventh Moscow Solar System Symposium.

"Earlier we talked about only one mission, "Venera-D", now Roscosmos recommends that we move ahead. Taking into account the importance of Venus for science, we may have several missions to Venus. We are discussing it now, there may be two or even three of them," he said.

MOSCOW, October 5. /TASS/: The US-proposed conditions for extension of the Measures for the Further Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms (New START treaty) are unilateral, do not take Russia’s interests into account and will lead to the ‘death’ of the agreement, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Monday.

MOSCOW, October 5. /TASS/: Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Monday he is unaware of any discussion among the authorities of repeat introduction of a self-isolation regime, despite rising COVID-19 incidence.

"As for the lockdown, I have heard no such discussions," the spokesman said.

According to the spokesman, the introduction of self-isolation will be discussed not in the Kremlin, but in a government headquarters, anyway.

MOSCOW, October 5. /TASS/: The number of COVID-19 infections in Russia over the past 24 hours increased by 10,888, the anti-coronavirus crisis center told reporters on Monday. According to TASS calculations, this is the highest growth since May 12.

The relative growth is at 0.9%.

MOSCOW, October 4. /TASS/: The anti-coronavirus vaccine, developed by Russia’s Chumakov Center can be used immediately after it successfully passes all clinical trials, scheduled for completion in November, the center’s Director General Ildar Ishmukhametov has told TASS.

"Certainly, we will be able to start using it immediately after completing all clinical trials. We plan to complete them in November," he said.

PETROPAVLOVSK-KAMCHATSKY, October 4. /TASS/: Russia’s Far Eastern region of Kamchatka, where a major sea pollution incident took place earlier this week, requires an integrated system of environmental monitoring, Governor Vladimir Solodov said on Sunday.