Russia

MOSCOW, September 15. /TASS/: Russian National Guard forces began withdrawing from their temporary deployment areas at the Russian-Belarusian border and return to their permanent bases, a Rossiya-24 TV channel reported Tuesday.

"Russia is withdrawing the reserve forces, deployed at the Belarusian border. The forces abandon their temporary deployment locations and return to their permanent bases," the TV channel reported.

Previously, presidents of Russia and Belarus agreed to withdraw the armed forces reserve, deployed at the border.

MOSCOW, September 15. /TASS/: Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov is against linking the cancellation of Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s visit to Berlin with the incident involving Russian blogger Alexei Navalny.

"Our minister made the decision to cancel the visit because its agenda was considerably reduced and changed by the German side," Peskov told the media, when asked if the cancellation of Lavrov’s visit to Berlin might be attributed to the Navalny affair.

MOSCOW, September 15. /TASS/: Federal Security Service (FSB) investigator Alexander Chaban promised to show Ivan Safronov, a Roscosmos advisor charged with treason, the materials which he allegedly handed over to the Czech intelligence, Safronov’s lawyer Ivan Pavlov told TASS Tuesday.

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny shared a photograph from a Berlin hospital on Tuesday, sitting up in bed and surrounded by his family, and said he could now breathe independently following his poisoning last month.

The photo - the strongest evidence yet of Navalny’s advancing recovery since he fell violently sick in Siberia on Aug. 20 - was swiftly followed by confirmation from his press spokeswoman that he planned to return to Russia.

VLADIVOSTOK, September 14. /TASS/: Artillery units in the Eastern Federal District, involved in a military exercise in the Primorye Territory, have held a large-scale live firing practice using long-range self-propelled artillery pieces Giatsint and self-propelled mortars Tulpan.

MOSCOW, September 14. /TASS/: Russia’s Central Election Commission (CEC) received 1,301 written complaints during this year’s election campaign, CEC chairwoman Ella Pamfilova said on Monday.

"To date, the Central Election Commission has received 1,301 written complaints from various participants in the electoral process. Notably, there were nearly twice as many complaints over the same period last year on the single voting day," she said.

SOCHI, September 14. /TASS/: Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko on Monday arrived in the Russian Black Sea resort of Sochi where he will hold face-to-face talks with Russian leader Vladimir Putin, the BelTA news agency reported. This is Lukashenko’s first visit abroad after the presidential election that was followed by mass protests.

MOSCOW, Sept. 13 (Xinhua) -- Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has criticized the U.S. policy of forming alliances against third countries, including China.

Responding to a question about Washington's attempt to pitting other countries against China, Lavrov said "the policy is alien to us."

"Neither Russia, nor China, nor our allies ever offer someone to be friends against someone," Lavrov said Sunday on a local TV program.

"We have a completely different diplomatic and political culture. We have a desire to develop good relations with everyone," he said.

MOSCOW, September 11. /TASS/: Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko will visit Moscow for talks with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin on September 14, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists Friday.

"Indeed, Lukashenko’s visit will take place on Monday, September 14, it will be a working visit. He will have talks with President Putin," the spokesman said, adding that no signing of papers is planned.

MOSCOW, September 12. /TASS/: Moscow has called on Apple Inc. not to follow Kiev’s orders that the apps of Russian media should be removed from AppStore, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in a statement on Saturday.

"We call on Apple not to pander to the Ukrainian authorities and not to take any action that could actually transform the US IT corporation into an accomplice to Kiev’s crimes against freedom of speech," says the statement posted on the Russian Foreign Ministry’s site.