Russia

MOSCOW (AP) — Police detained hundreds of people in Kazakhstan amid unauthorized protests of a presidential election Sunday that opponents alleged was a fake exercise in democracy.

Officers, some in riot gear with shields and helmets, broke up the demonstrations in the capital, Nur-Sultan, and in Almaty, the Central Asian country’s main commercial city. Some 500 protesters were taken to police stations, a government official said.

MOSCOW, June 9. /TASS/: Russian President Vladimir Putin will hold his annual televised question and answer session dubbed ‘The Direct Line’ on June 20, the Kremlin press service said on Sunday.

"On June 20, 2019 at 12:00 Moscow Time the annual special program will be aired by Channel One, Rossiya-1, Rossiya-24, NTV, OTR, Mir TV channels, and Mayak, Vesti FM and Radio Rossiya radio stations," the statement said.

MOSCOW, June 9. /TASS/: Moldova’s foreign policy must be defined by the will of its people, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Kozak, who serves as a special presidential representative for development of trade and economic relations between Russia and the Republic of Moldova, told reporters on Sunday.

KRASNODAR, June 9. /TASS/: Eleven people, including a child, were injured after two buses collided in Russia’s Black Sea resort of Sochi early on Sunday, the press service of the local Interior Ministry told TASS.

"According to preliminary data, two tourist buses have collided. As a result, eleven people were injured, including a child," the press service said.

No deaths have been reported.

According to police, one of the buses did not yield to the other. The crash occurred in Sochi’s Lazarevsky District. Fifteen ambulance teams have been dispatched to the scene.

MOSCOW (AP) — Voters in Kazakhstan are choosing a successor to the president who had led the Central Asian country since independence from the Soviet Union, with a longtime loyalist expected to win easily.

Sunday’s snap election was called after Nursultan Nazarbayev’s unexpected resignation in March. Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, who became acting president, is seen as certain to beat the six other candidates.

For the first time in Kazakhstan, a genuine opposition candidate is on the ballot, but organized opposition is weak.

7 June 2019; AFP: China's Xi Jinping and Russia's Vladimir Putin hit back at US global economic dominance on Friday as they took the stage together at Russia's showcase business forum.

With China embroiled in a trade war with Washington and Russia under Western sanctions, Xi and Putin lashed out at "inequalities" in the global economic system and vowed to pursue closer ties between their countries.

MOSCOW, June 8. /TASS/: The Baltic Fleet’s warships will keep track of NATO’s Baltops-2019 maneuvers to begin in the Baltic Sea waters on June 9, a law enforcement source in Russia’s westernmost Baltic exclave of Kaliningrad told TASS on Saturday.

"The Stoikiy and the Boikiy corvettes, as well as the Liven small missile ship, will keep the NATO maneuvers under observation. Besides, reconnaissance assets will also be deployed," the source said.

TASS has been unable to officially confirm the information at the time of the publication.

ST.PETERSBURG, June 7. /TASS/: Russian President Vladimir Putin believes that the current model of world economic relations is in crisis, although the global economy has been growing in recent years.

ST. PETERSBURG, June 8. /TASS/: Dmitry Rogozin, the director general of Russia’s space corporation Roscosmos, has invited Chinese partners to join forces in projects that envisage a lunar station and remote sensing of the earth.

ST.PETERSBURG, June 7. /TASS/: Russia may increase the number of its military specialists in Venezuela if it sends such a request, Director of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Latin American Department, Alexander Shchetinin, told reporters on Friday on the sidelines of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum.

"We have got contracts on maintenance works for what has been supplied to Venezuela. Any works demand a certain involvement of people," the diplomat said, noting: "If more [specialists] are needed, we will send them."