Russia

MOSCOW, May 10. /TASS/: Russian President Vladimir Putin has congratulated the graduates of military academies upon Victory Day. The message was published on the Kremlin’s website on Sunday.

"We will go ahead with developing and improving our armed forces. Under any circumstance we will implement the plans for reinforcing all arms and services and equipping them with advanced weapons and other hardware, including strategic ones, unparalleled high accuracy and hypersonic systems, unmanned aerial vehicles and robotized combat systems," the message runs.

MOSCOW (Reuters) - One person was killed after a fire broke out on Saturday at a Moscow hospital treating patients infected with the new coronavirus, the authorities said.

The hospital, located in northwestern Moscow, had been designated by the authorities as one of the medical facilities treating coronavirus patients in the Russian capital.

The emergency ministry told the RIA news agency that the blaze erupted in a patient’s room, without providing further details. The fire has since been put out, the authorities said.

MOSCOW, May 8. / TASS /: Russia has the potential to build up sovereign debt, said the head of the Central Bank Elvira Nabiullina during an online conference on Friday.

"We really have a fairly low debt, one of the lowest. Of course, we have the potential to increase sovereign debt in some way," she said. "A certain increase in public debt is possible, it is being discussed, but we must do it carefully. The Central Bank does not plan to participate in the direct redemption of the sovereign debt," she said.

MOSCOW, May 8. /TASS/: Material aid provided to Russians who cannot return home over the restrictive measures covers about 15,000 people, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova announced Friday.

"A total of 1 billion rubles [$13,656,111] has been allocated for this. We conduct payments that cover over 15,000 people," she said.

There are issues with payments that prevent people from receiving them, she admitted.

MOSCOW, May 9. /TASS/: Firefighters found six bodies while extinguishing a fire in the village of Timirovo in Bashkortostan in the Volga area, the press office of Russia’s Emergencies Ministry told TASS on Saturday.

"At 04:09 local time, a report came about a fire in a separate house in the community of Timirovo in the Republic of Bashkortostan. During the fire-fighting effort, six dead persons were found. Their identities are being established. One man born in 1988 was injured. He received medical assistance," the ministry said.

MOSCOW, May 9. /TASS/: The second Il-76 military transport plane with Russian servicemen who helped Italy fight the coronavirus landed at the Chkalovsky airfield near Moscow, Russia’s Defense Ministry reported on Saturday.

MOSCOW, May 8. /TASS/: Russia's First Deputy Prime Minister and Acting Prime Minister Andrey Belousov on Friday held a meeting with representatives of the government commission to improve the sustainability of the development of the Russian economy and members of the board of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs. The meeting participants discussed measures to normalize business activity after removing the restrictions introduced due to the coronavirus pandemic, a source close to one of the participants told TASS.

MOSCOW, May 8. /TASS/: Russia may lift the coronavirus lockdowns in late May or early June, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Chernyshenko said on Friday.

"We understand that these lockdowns, depending on the region and the situation, will be lifted either in late May or early June," he said in an interview with the Vesti news program on the Rossiya-1 television channel.

Commenting on the forecasts for the coronavirus situation, he said that the epidemic is expected to subside to sporadic cases by the end of this summer.

MOSCOW, May 7. /TASS/: The sharp drop of oil prices in the past several months highlights the beginning of the post-oil period in the global economy, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said in an exclusive interview with TASS First Deputy Director General Mikhail Gusman.

"I have repeatedly said that we should forget about the oil sector. Today, with such oil prices, one can say that the post-oil period has started," Aliyev said.

MOSCOW, May 7. /TASS/: International structures should launch mechanisms that will allow delivering punishment for failing to implement their decisions to avoid losing authority on the global arena, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said in an exclusive interview with TASS First Deputy Director General Mikhail Gusman.

"The authority of an international organizations primarily depends on implementation of decisions it takes, and there is a lot of room for reform there," Aliyev noted. "Even resolutions of the UN Security Council adopted many years ago are not honored."