Russia

ST. PETERSBURG, April 24. /TASS/: Russia’s northernmost national park - Russian Arctic - switched to using solar batteries as soon as the midnight season began, the park’s Director Alexander Kirilov said.

"From May to October, the Omega polar station will receive electricity produced by solar batteries," the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Geophysics Center’s magazine quoted the park’s director as saying. "The biggest advantage of using green energy is a lack of harmful emissions into the atmosphere."

MOSCOW, April 24. /TASS/: Russia’s leading institutes are pushing ahead with research into vaccines against the novel coronavirus and their efforts may produce a result by the end of this year, says the deputy director of the Health Ministry’s National Medical Research Center of Phthisiopulmonology and Infectious Diseases, Vladimir Chulanov.

MOSCOW, April 24. /TASS/: Russian President Vladimir Putin has requested particularly focusing on encouraging import substitution in the industry when developing measures to support the economy, according to the list of instructions released on the Kremlin’s website on Friday.

MOSCOW, April 24. /TASS/: The export version of combat vehicles based on Russia’s latest Bumerang standardized wheeled platform will differ from its configuration for the Russian Army but their design will be unchanged, CEO of the Military Industrial Company (the vehicle’s developer and producer) Alexander Krasovitsky told TASS on Friday.

MOSCOW, April 23. /TASS/: The US lost trust in Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido, and write him off, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Thursday.

"The very fact that the plan for some democratic transition was announced by the US Secretary of State [Mike Pompeo], and not the so-called ‘interim president’ of Venezuela [Juan] Guaido, proves that the Americans no longer trust their appointee and, effectively, apparently, write him off," she said.

MOSCOW, April 23. /TASS/: BRICS member states (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) could increase their funding of the World Health Organization (WHO) and to expand medical cooperation with other states due to the US decision to withdraw its contributions to the organization, Dmitry Suslov, deputy head of the Center for Comprehensive European and International Studies of the Higher School of Economics National Research University, said on Thursday.

MOSCOW, April 23. /TASS/: The nuclear deal does not limit Iran’s right to explore space, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said at a briefing on Thursday, commenting on the launch of Iran’s Noor military satellite.

According to her, the United States’ call on the UN Security Council to assess if Tehran’s move was in line with Resolution 2231 was "a dirty trick." "Neither the Resolution nor the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action limit Tehran’s right and ability to peacefully explore space and develop national space programs," Zakharova pointed out.

MOSCOW, April 23. /TASS/: Reports that patients with coronavirus diagnosis will have to pay for their treatment in case of hospitalization not by ambulance are not true, the Moscow Health Department announced on its website Thursday.

The department noted that a number of media outlets published reports, alleging that people, hospitalized over coronavirus symptoms not by ambulance will have to pay for their treatment themselves.

MOSCOW, April 23. /TASS/: The Kremlin has seen media reports that the American authorities had launched investigations into suspicious transactions with oil futures to find out whether oil traders might have raked in millions of dollars by having insider information about the OPEC+ interaction strategy project prepared by Russia, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Thursday.

"We have seen reports in the mass media but we do not know to what extent they are consistent with facts," Peskov said.

MOSCOW, April 23. /TASS/:  Russia’s Interior Ministry will neither deport foreign nationals nor cancel their documents amid the coronavirus pandemic, head of the Ministry’s Main Directorate for Migration Affairs Valentina Kazakova told reporters.

"No deportation and expulsion decisions will be made during this period, the documents that foreign nationals hold won’t be cancelled. These include visas, work permits and licenses, permanent residence and temporary residence permits," she said.