Russia

MOSCOW, September 3. /TASS/: Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin has signed a directive to resume international air service with Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, and the Maldives on a mutual basis, the government’s press service reported on Thursday.

"Egypt (Cairo), three flights a week; the United Arab Emirates (Dubai), two flights a week; the Republic of Maldives (Velana airport), two flights a week," the statement said.

MOSCOW, September 2. /TASS/: Google paid a fine of 1.5 ml rubles ($20,149) for poor filtering of banned content in the search engine, a spokesperson with the Tagansky court told TASS.

"Google has paid a fine of 1.5 mln rubles. The court received the relevant notices and a receipt," the court said.

In August, the Magistrates' Court of the Tagansky District of Moscow ruled to impose a 1.5 million rubles on Google for a repeated violation related to insufficient search engine filtering of prohibited content.

MOSCOW, September 2. /TASS/: The Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) apprehended 20 underground gunsmiths in 9 regions of Russia and shut down six gun workshops, the FSB press service told TASS Wednesday.

"The Federal Security Service thwarted criminal activities of 20 residents of Crimea and the Krasnoyarsk, Voronezh, Kemerovo, Leningrad, Moscow, Rostov, Sverdlovsk and Tomsk regions. All of them were involved in restoration of combat capabilities of civilian weapons in underground workshops with an intention of sale," the press service said.

MOSCOW, September 2. /TASS/: The trials of the latest Rubezh coastal defense system with cruise missiles are due to be completed before the end of 2021, Morinformsistema-Agat Group Deputy CEO - Chief Designer for Military and Technical Policy Nikolai Borisov told TASS on Wednesday.

"The trials of the new Rubezh system are currently underway. They will surely be completed by the end of 2021," he said.

The Rubezh is a mobile version of the Bal coastal defense missile system, the deputy CEO explained.

MOSCOW, September 2. /TASS/: The question of deploying Russian military facilities in Belarus is not on the agenda, Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov told the media on Wednesday.

"This question is not on the agenda," he said when asked about the possibility of creating a Russian military base in Belarus.

About the Belarussian defense minster’s visit to Russia Peskov said that Russia and Belarus were members of the Collective Security Treaty Organization and the Union State and were developing vast relations in various fields.

MOSCOW (Reuters) - A Russian court on Wednesday ordered former newspaper journalist Ivan Safronov to be kept in custody for another three months pending trial on charges of state treason that have sent a chill through Russia’s media landscape.

Safronov, who left journalism and began working at Russia’s space agency in May, was detained by security agents outside his flat on July 7 and accused of passing military secrets to the Czech Republic in 2017, a charge he denies.

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Alexander Lukashenko, the leader of Belarus, has thanked Russian state-backed television channel RT for sending journalists to help prop up Belarusian state media after some staff members went on strike in protest against his rule.

Some Belarusian media workers walked out amid weeks of protests over a disputed Aug. 9 presidential election marred by vote rigging allegations that have posed the biggest challenge yet to Lukashenko’s 26-year rule.

MOSCOW, September 1. /TASS/: Russia offers its fifth generation Su-57 jet fighter for export, the foreign demand is likely to skyrocket after the Russian Armed Forces’s order is fulfilled, says Rostec aviation complex’s Industrial Director Anatoly Serdyukov.

MOSCOW, September 1. /TASS/: The Western countries’ allegations that Russia does not investigate the situation concerning the hospitalization of Russian blogger Alexey Navalny are not true, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said, speaking before the MGIMO students and professors Tuesday.

"We are being accused of not investigating this situation. This is not true. Starting the very day this happened, our Interior Ministry initiated a pre-investigative inspections; the investigation may begin once it determines, what exactly has happened," he said.

MOSCOW, September 1. /TASS/: In the past 24 hours, 4,729 new COVID-19 cases were registered in Russia, which makes the total case count 1,000,048, the operational headquarters told journalists Monday.

According to the HQ, the daily increase rate has stayed below 0.5% for 17 days already.

The lowest case growth rates were registered in the Nenets and Chukotka Autonomous Regions (0%), Chechnya, Moscow and Smolensk Regions (0.2% each), Moscow, the Kamchatka Region, the Khanty-Mansiysk Region, the Tula Region (0.3% each).