Russia

IRKUTSK, July 12. /TASS/: More than 4,000 people sought medical assistance in southeastern Siberia’s Irkutsk region as a result of heavy flooding that hit some of its districts late last month, a spokesperson for the region’s rescue service said on Friday.

"According to updated information, 4,166 people, including 701 children, sought medical assistance. 3,586 people received out-patient treatment. 580 people were hospitalized, including 134 children," the press service of the Irkutsk region department of the Russian emergencies ministry said.

MOSCOW, July 12. /TASS/: A state commission will gather on Friday morning to make the final decision on whether to postpone the launch of the Proton-M carrier rocket with the Spektr-RG space telescope, scheduled for July 12, Russia’s state-run space corporation Roscosmos said.

MOSCOW, July 11. /TASS/: A deputy head of the Russian Pension Fund, Alexei Ivanov, has tendered his resignation and admitted taking a bribe, said Ivan Melnikov, the executive secretary of the Russian capital’s prison watchdog, the Moscow Public Monitoring Commission.

"Ivanov tendered his resignation and pleaded guilty to bribery on a significant scale (Article 290 p.2 of the Russian Criminal Code). He is now in a pretrial detention facility in northeastern Moscow," he said on Thursday, without giving any further details.

MOSCOW, July 12. /TASS/: Firefighters have completely extinguished a large fire that broke out on Thursday near the Severnaya thermal power station in the town of Mytishchi near Moscow, the regional emergencies ministry department said on its website on Friday.

"01:37 [Moscow time], July 12, 2019 - fire completely extinguished," rescuers said.

MOSCOW, July 12. /TASS/: The head of the international affairs committee of the Federation Council, the upper chamber of the Russian parliament, said he would meet with Georgian opposition lawmakers in Moscow to discuss the current situation in bilateral relations and ways of overcoming the crisis.

"We are meeting Georgians next Monday. The discussion will concern the current state of relations and perspectives of overcoming the crisis, including through building inter-parliamentary dialogue," Konstantin Kosachev told TASS on Friday.

MOSCOW, July 12. /TASS/: The Russian Investigative Committee has singled out into a separate criminal case charges of sexual abuse against Mikhail Khachaturyan, believed to have been killed by his three teenage daughters last year, a police source told TASS on Thursday.

MOSCOW, July 11 (Xinhua) -- Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukraine's new president Volodymyr Zelensky discussed the issue of the Ukrainian conflict in their first telephone conversation, the Kremlin said Thursday.

"The leaders discussed issues of a settlement in the southeast of Ukraine and cooperation in returning detainees from both sides. They agreed to continue this work at the expert level," a Kremlin statement said.

They also discussed opportunities to continue contacts in the Normandy format, the statement added.

MOSCOW, July 10. /TASS/: Russia's Special Envoy for Syria Alexander Lavrentyev and Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Vershinin held consultations with Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council of Iran Ali Shamkhani and Iranian Foreign Minister's Senior Aide for Special Political Affairs Ali Asghar Khaji on Tuesday in Tehran, the Russian Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday.

YUZHNO-SAKHALINSK, July 11. /TASS/: An earthquake of 5 magnitude was registered off the coast of the southern Kuril Islands, the Sakhalin department of the Russian Academy of Sciences' Geophysical Service told TASS on Thursday.

"The earthquake's epicenter lay at the depth of 62 km in 116 km to the south-east of the Iturup island," the department said.

Residents of the Kuril islands did not feel the tremors, and no tsunami alert was issued.

MOSCOW, July 11. /TASS/: Wildfires have been extinguished in Russian regions on the territory of around 3,700 hectares in the past 24 hours, the press service of the Aerial Forest Protection Service said on Thursday.

"In the past 24 hours, 47 wildfires were extinguished on the territory of 3,747 hectares. As of 12am on 11 July 2019, 175 forest fires are reported on the territory of 127,886 hectares, with active firefighting efforts underway," the press service said.