Russia

MOSCOW, August 15. /TASS/: US National Security Adviser John Bolton’s claims that Russia stole hypersonic weapon technologies from the United States are unfounded as domestic projects in this area kicked off back in the 1970s, military expert and Editor-in-Chief of Arsenal of the Fatherland journal Viktor Murakhovsky told TASS on Thursday.

MOSCOW, August 15. /TASS/: Medical assistance has been provided to 74 people after a passenger plane made an emergency landing in the Moscow Region, a medical source informed TASS on Thursday.

"A total of 74 people have sought medical attention, one of them remains hospitalized," the source said.

MOSCOW, August 15. /TASS/: A World War II air bomb has been unearthed and removed from Moscow’s Kremlin in the process of archaeological excavation, which had to be paused for a while, the Kremlin’s commandant, Sergei Khlebnikov, told the media on Thursday. The bomb was found on the site of what was once an ice cellar.

"An unexploded air bomb, apparently dating back to World War II, has been found. It lay deep under the surface," he said, adding that the explosive item has been removed from the Kremlin.

MOSCOW (AP) — A passenger jet made an emergency landing in a field outside of one of Moscow’s airports Thursday after colliding with a flock of birds, injuring at least 23 people, Russian officials said.

The Ural Airlines A321 carrying 226 passengers and a crew of seven hit the birds as it took off Thursday from Moscow’s Zhukovsky airport en route for Simferopol, in Crimea.

MOSCOW, August 14. /TASS/: Washington’s possible withdrawal from the World Trade Organization (WTO) would make its further existence meaningless, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Wednesday.

"Of course, the existence of this core economic organization would be challenged, once the world’s largest economy leaves it. This is obvious," Peskov said.

MOSCOW, August 14. /TASS/: Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in his phone conversation with Pakistani counterpart Mehmood Qureshi highlighted the importance of defusing tensions with India, the Russian Foreign Ministry issued a statement on Wednesday.

"The sides discussed the situation in South Asia amid the deterioration between Pakistan and India after New Delhi’s decision on changing the legal status of the Jammu and Kashmir state," the ministry stated.

MOSCOW, August 14. /TASS/: The upgraded missile corvette Smerch has held a live-fire exercise against a naval and an air target in the Sea of Japan, the press office of Russia’s Pacific Fleet reported on Wednesday.

"Today, in accordance with the plan of shipbuilders’ trials, the modernized small missile ship Smerch has held a series of missile firings against a naval and an air target in the Sea of Japan," the press office said in a statement.

MOSCOW, August 14. /TASS/: Moscow and Beijing have set the target of boosting trade turnover to $200 bln by 2024, China’s new Ambassador to Russia Zhang Hanhui told reporters on Wednesday.

"We have already set another target of reaching $200 bln worth of trade turnover by 2024. I believe that goal may be accomplished as from now on the (Russian-Chinese) trade and economic cooperation will be expanding even more rapidly," he said.

14 August 2019; DW: Radiation has spiked at a nearby town following last week's explosion at a rocket testing site. First responders have been silenced and villagers told to leave, but the evacuation order has since been canceled.

Radiation levels in the Russian town of Severodvinsk were up to 16 times higher than normal after an explosion in the nearby Nyonoksa rocket test site, officials from Russia's Roshydromet weather service said on Tuesday.

MOSCOW, August 13. /TASS/: Washington is persistently trying to intervene in Russia’s domestic affairs but it is bound to fail, Chairman of the Russian State Duma (the lower house of parliament) Foreign Affairs Committee Leonid Slutsky said, responding to a statement by US House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer over the opposition rallies in Moscow.

"He described those detained during unauthorized rallies as ‘political prisoners,’ hurling allegations that the so-called ‘regime’s crackdown’ on them ‘ought to alarm the world’," Slutsky wrote on Facebook.