Russia

MOSCOW, July 3. /TASS/: Moscow has no plans to take into account other countries’ so-called concerns about constitutional amendments approved in Russia’s nationwide vote, Presidential Spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Friday.

MOSCOW, July 3. /TASS/: Construction of three more Container-3M missile defense early warning radars are underway in the Siberian, eastern, and the Kaliningrad directions, Russian Aerospace Forces Commander-in-Chief Sergei Surovikin said in an interview Friday.

"Currently, we have commissioned construction of three more such radar stations — the Siberian one, the eastern one and the Kaliningrad one — which would allow us to monitor airspace from all strategic aerospace directions," he said.

MOSCOW, July 3. /TASS/: Volunteers that have been vaccinated against COVID-19 two weeks ago in Russia’s Burdenko military hospital have not developed any adverse symptoms, the Russian Defense Ministry informed reporters on Friday.

"Volunteers from the first group that received one out of two components of a vaccine on June 18 are feeling well, they have not complained about their health. In the past two weeks, no serious adverse symptoms have been detected," the ministry said.

MOSCOW, July 3. /TASS/: Russian President Vladimir Putin signed an executive order, setting July 4 as the date when the Russian constitutional amendments come into effect, the Kremlin press service said Friday.

"The amendments to the Constitution of the Russian Federation will come into force on July 4, 2020," the order says.

MOSCOW, July 2. /TASS/: The legitimacy of the Russian constitution amended in 2020 is higher than in 1993, since it was supported by almost twice as many people, Andrei Klishas, chairman of the Committee on Constitutional Legislation and State Building of Russia’s Federation Council (upper house of parliament) and co-chair of the task force for drafting the constitutional amendments, told TASS Thursday.

SEVASTOPOL, July 2. /TASS/: The 13th Ship Repair Plant has completed the dockside repairs of the Guards missile cruiser Moskva, which is the Black Sea Fleet’s flagship, and is beginning to float it out from the dry dock, the Shipyard Spokesman Sergei Gorbachev told TASS on Thursday.

The warship was placed in the dock on April 22. The dockside repairs proceeded along with the cruiser’s maintenance, which was also done by the Shipyard’s specialists.

MOSCOW, July 2. /TASS/: The Kremlin considers the outcome of the vote on amendments to the Russian Constitution as a triumph.

"Certainly, [the Kremlin] calls the [outcome of the vote on amendments to the Constitution] a triumph. Actually, de facto a triumphal referendum was held on trust in President [Vladimir] Putin," Peskov told reporters.

MOSCOW, July 2. /TASS/: The defense team chose not to appeal the sentence of US national Paul Whelan convicted of espionage in Russia and it came into effect, his lawyer Vladimir Zherebenkov told TASS on Thursday.

MOSCOW, July 2. /TASS/: The Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) has seized 77 weapons and 103 kilograms of TNT in a nationwide operation, the FSB public relations service told TASS.

"The Federal Security Service foiled criminal activities of 13 residents from St. Petersburg, the Leningrad Region, the Kemerovo Region — Kuzbass, the Krasnodar Region, the Krasnoyarsk Region and the Khabarovsk Region who were engaged in remodeling civil arms and weapons excavated in the Second World War battle zones to reinstate their combat capabilities," the service noted.

MOSCOW, July 2. /TASS/: The constitutional amendments have been supported by 77.92% of Russians who took part in the nationwide vote, the Central Election Commission (CEC) said after counting 100% of ballots.

According to the election commission, 21.27% of voters were opposed to the amendments. According to the latest data, the turnout was 65%.