Russia

06 Dec 2019; MEMO: Russia and Turkey are working on a contract for the delivery of a new batch of Russian S-400 missile systems, the Interfax news agency cited a senior official at a Russian military cooperation agency as saying on Friday, Reuters reports.

SOCHI, December 6. /TASS/: Moscow opposes US extraterritorial prosecution of Russians, but is ready for cooperation with Washington on combating cybercrimes, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Friday.

Earlier, the US State Department announced a reward of up to $5 mln for information leading to the capture or conviction of Maxim Yakubets, whom the US authorities brand as the leader of Evil Corp. hacker group.

MOSCOW, December 6. /TASS/: The leader of the oppositional party Democratic Movement - United Georgia, Nino Burjanadze, has apologized for the anti-Russian provocation that took place during a session of the Inter-Parliamentary Assembly on Orthodoxy in the Georgian parliament’s building last summer.

MOSCOW, December 6. /TASS/: Russia’s Federal Security Service has detained a chieftain of an international criminal group and its six members who illegally supplied weapons, ammunition and drugs from abroad, the FSB press service said on Friday.

MOSCOW, December 6. /TASS/: Russia will increase gas extraction by 2% to 740 billion cubic meters in 2019 compared to last year, Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak said in an article published in the Energeticheskaya Politika (Energy Policy) magazine.

"For further reliable gas supplies to domestic and foreign consumers, gas production continues to increase. This year this rate is expected to increase by 2% compared to last year's record for the gas industry and reach aroudn 740 million cubic meters," Novak said.

SOCHI, December 6. /TASS/: Russian President Vladimir Putin plans to hold separate meetings with Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, French leader Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel on the sidelines of the Normandy Four summit in Paris on December 9, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.

According to Peskov, there are plans "to hold important bilateral meetings with President Macron, German Chancellor Merkel and Ukrainian President Zelensky."

SOCHI, December 6. /TASS/: The Kremlin is not turning a blind eye to the public reaction over legal proceedings linked to the Moscow protests, but is unlikely to exaggerate this, Russian Presidential Spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Friday, commenting on a sentence for student Yegor Zhukov.

"We have seen various discussions on this and different viewpoints, which were expressed mainly in the Internet. We don’t want to turn a blind eye to anything, but we are not in favor of exaggerating anything," Peskov said, declining to comment on the court’s sentence.

SOCHI, December 6. /TASS/: Commissioning of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline does not mean that Russia will abandon gas transit through Ukraine, President Vladimir Putin said on Friday at the meeting with the German business executives.

MOSCOW (AP) — Russian President Vladimir Putin offered Thursday to immediately extend the only remaining nuclear arms reduction pact with the United States, but a senior U.S. official said Washington wants a broader deal involving China.

Speaking at a meeting with military officials, Putin said that Russia has repeatedly offered the U.S. to extend the New START treaty that expires in 2021 but that it hasn’t heard back.

“Russia is ready to extend the New START treaty immediately, before the year’s end and without any preconditions,” he said.

MOSCOW, December 5. /TASS/: Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev has said that Russia is prepared to build separate relations with the European countries, if they are unprepared to tackle problems together.

"We are prepared to build our relations with the European countries on the bilateral track. There is nothing very difficult about that," Medvedev said in an interview to a group of Russian television broadcasters. He recalled that all decisions in the EU were made collectively. In his opinion, the European Union’s current policies towards Russia were "shortsighted."