Russia

MOSCOW, August 25. /TASS/: Russia’s Soyuz MS-14 spacecraft with the android robot Fedor on its board will make a second attempt to dock to the International Space Station (ISS) in the morning of August 27, the federal space agency Roscosmos reported on Sunday.

NASA earlier said on its Twitter page that the Soyuz MS-14 spacecraft would make a second attempt to dock to the flying laboratory at 06:12 Moscow time on Tuesday.

MOSCOW, Aug. 24 (Xinhua) -- The Russian Foreign Ministry on Saturday criticized the demand by the U.S. Embassy in Russia to release the suspected spy Paul Whelan out of health concerns.

"Letting a person go home, where they can receive the necessary medical help: does it only concern Paul Whelan? There are millions of prisoners in the US, including over 50 Russian citizens, many of them with health issues. Let them go," the Russian ministry responded to the U.S. demand on Twitter.

MOSCOW, August 24. /TASS/: The Russian delegation plans to raise the issue of Washington’s destruction of the arms control system at the upcoming autumn sessions of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), head of the State Duma Committee on Foreign Affairs Leonid Slutsky told reporters on Saturday.

State Duma is lower house of the Russian parliament.

KHABAROVSK, August 24. /TASS/: A ship with two orcas and five beluga whales, earlier kept in the Srednyaya Bay in the Primorsky Region, departed from the Far Eastern regional capital of Khabarovsk down the Amur River, the Trans Amur company in charge of the shipment said on Saturday.

MOSCOW, August 24. /TASS/: Russian Ambassador to the UK Alexander Yakovenko has relinquished his duties in London and left for Russia, the Russian Embassy in the UK informed on Saturday.

"24 August 2019 Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary Ambassador of the Russian Federation to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland Mr Alexander Yakovenko relinquished his duties and departed to Russia," the embassy stated. "Mr Ivan Volodin, Minister-Counsellor, will act as Charg· d'Affaires a.i."

Yakovenko was appointed ambassador to the UK in 2011.

MOSCOW, August 24. /TASS/: Aeroflot Group has about 30 permits for international flights extended, according to the order of the Federal Air Transport Agency. The relevant document has been published on the agency’s website.

The Interdepartmental Commission under Russia’s Transport Ministry has extended all permits for the flights that were previously made by Transaero. The only exception is the permit for Moscow -Paris flight, which was made by Rossiya airline (part of Aeroflot Group). It was not extended but was given to the S7 airline.

MOSCOW, August 24. /TASS/: Russian nuclear-powered submarines of the 667BDRM Tula project and 955 Yuri Dolgoruky project fired ballistic missiles at the Kura range in Kamchatka and Chizha range in the Arkhangelsk region as part of combat training, the Defense Ministry said in a statement on Saturday.

"On August 24, in accordance with the combat training plan, the Sineva sea-based ballistic missile and the Bulava missile were successfully launched from the Tula and Yuri Dolgoruky strategic submarines," the ministry said.

MOSCOW, Aug 24 (NNN-AGENCIES) — A Soyuz spacecraft carrying Russia’s first humanoid robot on Saturday failed to dock automatically with the international space station, Moscow news agencies reported.

The craft launched a repeat of the docking manoeuvres after the failure of the first attempt, which had been scheduled for 0530 GMT, the agencies said.

Live broadcast of the event on the Russian space agency Roskomos was interrupted with the Soyuz spacecraft about 100 metres off the ISS.

MOSCOW (AP) — President Vladimir Putin ordered the Russian military on Friday to work out a quid pro quo response after the test of a new U.S. missile banned under a now-defunct arms treaty.

In Sunday’s test, a modified ground-launched version of a U.S. Navy Tomahawk cruise missile accurately struck its target more than 500 kilometers (310 miles) away. The test came after Moscow and Washington withdrew from the 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty.

MOSCOW, August 23. /TASS/: The Russian Navy will receive six submarines, including four nuclear-powered subs in 2020 for the first time over the past 28 years, a source in the domestic defense industry told TASS on Friday.