The Trump administration has long been critical of the EU, especially Germany, over their support for the transnational pipeline project, which will boost the capacity of Russia to sell natural gas to Europe. Washington insists that the EU must instead buy more expensive LNG from the US or other countries. The European Commission has condemned the US plans to expand the sanctions on Nord [...]

In a freshly-published book, Maria Butina has documented her time inside the American prison system, where she spent more than a year after being dubbed a foreign agent acting on behalf of Moscow’s ‘influence campaign.’ The book ‘#Prison diary’ is based on the journal Butina kept chronicling her experiences behind bars, including the time she spent in solitary confinement. [...]

The sale comes amid tighter restrictions from the United States in May, which blocked the Chinese tech giant's access to software and semiconductors made with US technologies. Ren Zhengfei, founder of Huawei Technologies, said he hoped Honor would become a strong competitor in the smartphone market and even surpass his company in the future, the South China Morning Post reported on Friday [...]

The original name of the small village has no special meaning or any connotations in German, while the new toponym will better reflect its pronunciation in the local accent. The Austrian village of Fucking (pronounced fooking in Standard German) will change its name to Fugging on 1 January 2021, Mayor Andrea Holzner told the broadcaster Oe24 Thursday. The move to rebrand the village comes [...]

The current administration actively supported the Venezuelan opposition figure, who orchestrated an unsuccessful coup attempt in 2018 and reportedly organised another one in 2019. Washington recognises Guaido as Venezuela's interim president and is pressuring the country with sanctions to force elected president, Nicolas Maduro to resign. Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has stated tha [...]

A representative of the European Commission said the day before that the European Medicines Agency (EMA) is in talks with the manufacturer of Russia's Sputnik V vaccine against the coronavirus. The European Medicines Agency on Thursday confirmed to Sputnik that it's holding talks with the producer of Russia's Sputnik V vaccine. "We have indeed been contacted by the developer and are discu [...]

Washington’s desperate attempts to stop the construction of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline linking Russia and Germany resemble mafia methods, senior German parliament member, Klaus Ernst, told RT, calling on the EU to fight back. “Their actions resemble those of a mafia,” Ernst told RT Deutsch on Wednesday, speaking about the renewed threats of US sanctions against the European companies [...]

After years of denial, Berlin has acknowledged that the US Air Force is using Ramstein Air Base in Germany to carry out drone attacks in anti-terrorist operations, Die Linke (the Left) MP Andrej Hunko told RT. They crucial role played by the Ramstein base – the largest American military facility on foreign soil – in controversial US drone killings in countries such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Yem [...]

Washington already imposed sanctions on the Russian-German energy project late last year, tacking them on to the US National Defence Authorization Act. Now, a bipartisan group of lawmakers from both the House and Senate is reportedly looking to introduce additional restrictions against it before the end of the year. An influential group of German businesses has written a letter to Democra [...]

The ongoing US trade war with China has raised concerns about the United States deploying the ‘nuclear option’ of freezing China’s banking sector out of the global US dollar payments system, prompting the use of alternative currencies such as the euro and the yuan to settle financial transactions. The European Union’s single currency was the most used currency for global payments [...]

Any mention of the prosecution of Julian Assange has been removed from the EU's latest report on fundamental rights, despite the best efforts of MEPs such as Ireland's Clare Daly. The European Parliament passed the final version of the fundamental rights report for 2018 - 2019 on 25 November, excluding any mention of imprisoned publisher and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. An amendment [...]

After pandemic-related delays, Russia’s first electric car, called the Zetta, is set to enter serial production in late 2020, the country’s Industry and Trade Minister Denis Manturov has revealed. The Zetta will roll off the production line in the city of Tolyatti, one of the major centers of Russia's automotive industry. The cars will first be sold on the domestic market, but the initial [...]

Russia's space agency Roscosmos may be hit with US sanctions for the first time ever, as a draft document reveals the Russian Ministry of Defense might become the subject of economic penalties from Washington. As well as Roscosmos, the proposed sanctions would also target Rosatom, the federal nuclear energy agency, as one of 28 organizations in the aviation, rocket, space, nuclear, instrument [...]

LONDON – The UK judge presiding over the case of the Venezuelan gold in the Bank of England urged the legal team representing Venezuela's self-proclaimed president Juan Guaido to find “better excuses” for its failure to comply with a UK court order to pay for the legal costs of the appeal it lost in October. This is according to a statement by Venezuela Central Bank (BCV) lawyers, w [...]

There is a battle in the halls of the European parliament to ensure that the latest report on fundamental rights references the US prosecution and attempted extradition of WikiLeaks founder and publisher Julian Assange. The EU's parliament will be voting on its latest report on fundamental rights, which also encompasses media freedom. The report on fundamental freedoms for 2018 - 2019 ori [...]

The N.F. Gamaleya National Research Centre for Epidemiology and Microbiology and the Russian Direct Investment Fund have announced the efficacy of their newly developed inoculation, the world's first registered COVID-19 vaccine, has topped 95%, with the latter uplifting results shown 42 days after the first shot. The evaluation was carried out among 18,794 volunteers 28 days after receiving the [...]

A notorious US naval destroyer sparked a diplomatic incident on Tuesday morning after Russia claimed that it had launched an incursion into its territorial waters. The USS John S McCain, a specialist combat ship designed to hunt submarines, was operating in the Sea of Japan (also called the East Sea), off the coast of the Russian Far Eastern capital, Vladivostok. Authorities say it was more than t [...]

An American man with a rare muscle disorder took a chance on Russia after doctors back home gave him little hope of walking again. In the US, Alan Spencer's prognosis varied between being bedridden for life or wheelchair-bound. Now, after a month of treatment, under the guidance of Russian specialists, he’s able to walk on his own. Spencer first felt something was wrong with his health a [...]

China is slowly reorienting its economy "away from North America" and "towards the rest of Asia" as evidenced by the newly finalised Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership that it has signed with 15 fellow Asian countries, covering 2.3 billion people, an economic analyst tells Sputnik. The world's largest trading block, led by China, finalised a new trade agreement on 15 November 202 [...]

After trials on two groups of volunteers, Russia’s Gamaleya Research Centre announced it has created the first vaccine against COVID-19. According to Russian Health Minister Mikhail Murashko, the first batch of the drug, known as "Sputnik-V", will be produced in 2 weeks and delivered for voluntary vaccination in Russian hospitals. The vaccine is a two-component treatment based on the human ad [...]

Switzerland has adopted sanctions against Russian individuals and companies involved in the construction of the bridge over the Kerch Strait that connected the Crimean Peninsula with continental Russia, the Swiss Federal Department of Economic Affairs said on Friday. "The Federal Department of Economic Affairs has made amendments to the list of individuals attached to the directive on the preventi [...]

The Pentagon has released “the most comprehensive” data on civilian casualties of the US-led coalition operations against Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, Airwars has said. Only officially conceded deaths are in it, though. The UK-based conflict monitoring group Airwars said “more than three years of extensive engagement” with the US military allowed it to obtain the “most accurate [...]