Russia

MOSCOW, December 28. /TASS/: Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed the law setting the minimum rate of labor payment in Russia at 12,130 rubles ($195.5) starting January 1, 2020. The document was published on the official website of legal information on Saturday.

Currently the minimum wage amount is 11,280 rubles ($181.8).

MOSCOW, December 29. /TASS/: Deputy Army Commander for Coordination Affairs Habibollah Sayyari said his country planned to hold more military exercises with Russia and China.

A trilateral naval exercise of Russia, China and Iran, codenamed Maritime Security Belt, began in the Gulf of Oman on December 27 and will continue until December 30. The active phase of the exercise began on Saturday.

‘We [Iran, Russia and China] will find a way to hold maneuvers in future," he said, adding that the three nations had no plans of creating a formal military coalition.

MOSCOW, December 29. /TASS/: The Syrian armed forces entered the town of Al Halba in the southeast of the Idlib governorate, an outpost of the Jabhat al-Nusrah terrorist group (outlawed in Russia), the SANA news agency reported on Saturday night.

According to the agency, the town was completely liberated from terrorists.

MOSCOW, December 29. /TASS/: The Crimean Bridge has been built using the latest technologies and can operate for centuries, if it is maintained properly, Russian President Vladimir Putin said in an interview with the TV program ‘Moscow. Kremlin. Putin’ on the Rossiya-1 TV Channel on Sunday.

On December 23, Putin took part in the ceremony of opening the railway service on the Crimean Bridge across the Kerch Strait that connects Crimea with mainland Russia.

MOSCOW, December 29. /TASS/: The United States has boosted its Navy’s activity near the Chukotka Peninsula, building up its grouping and holding various drills, Chief of Staff of Russia’s North-Eastern Joint Command Mikhail Bilichenko said in an interview with the Zvezda TV Channel on Sunday.

"The Chukotka operational area because the US Navy conducts its operations in that area," Bilichenko said, replying to a question about what the North-Eastern Joint Command was especially concerned about at present.

MOSCOW, Dec 29 (NNN-TASS) – The Russian Defence Ministry, spent more than 1.5 trillion rubles (24.2 billion U.S. dollars) this year, on weapons and state defence activities, Deputy Defence Minister, Aleksey Krivoruchko, said.

These funds made it possible to further develop the armament system of the Armed Forces, Krivoruchko told the defence ministry’s official newspaper, Krasnaya Zvezda, in an interview, published Saturday.

MOSCOW, December 28. /TASS/: The upcoming year of 2020 on the international arena will be marked by the presidential election in the United States, Russian Foreign Ministry's official spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told Rossiya-24 TV channel on Friday.

"The next year will be marked by the US presidential election in terms of international politics," Zakharova said.

MOSCOW, December 23: German company Uniper, which is a partner of Gazprom in the Nord Stream 2 construction project, expressed confidence that opportunities would be found to quickly complete the construction of the pipeline.

"We are confident that ways will be found to quickly complete the construction of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline. This would be important for Europe, because the pipeline will strengthen the security of gas supplies and competition in our markets for the benefit of consumers," the company’s spokesman Georg Oppermann told TASS.

MOSCOW, December 28. /TASS/: An Ural Airlines plane is preparing for emergency landing at Koltsovo Airport in the Russian city of Yekaterinburg, a source in the region’s emergency services informed TASS.

"An Ural Airlines plane is getting ready for emergency landing at Koltsovo. This is a flight from Yekaterinburg to Simferopol," the source stated, adding that currently, the aircraft is burning off fuel.

A source in the emergency services of Yekaterinburg informed TASS that according to the preliminary data, the plane’s systems detected a technical malfunction.

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia deployed its first regiment of hypersonic nuclear-capable missiles on Friday, the Defence Ministry said, a move which President Vladimir Putin has boasted puts his country in a class of its own.

Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu has informed Putin of the deployment, according to a ministry statement that did not disclose where the missiles were located.