Harsh economic measures imposed by the EU on Russia hurts business on both sides of the divide, the president of one of the bloc’s largest industry bodies has bemoaned, saying politicians should focus on common ground instead. Writing in Austria’s daily Kurier newspaper on Monday, Christoph Leitl, the President of the European Chamber of Commerce (Eurochambres) said that, although there [...]

Joe Biden’s effort to label Vladimir Putin as a “soulless killer” is the latest in a series of fact-free allegations that define US-Russian relations today. The real aim is to make Biden look like the strong leader he isn’t. Former President Donald Trump was fond of bragging about how tough he was when it came to Russia. “There’s never been a president as tough on Russia as I hav [...]

Once again, the world has failed to unite when faced with a common threat. The response to the Covid-19 pandemic proves that much of the West, especially the US, is committed to bloc politics, no matter the real-world human cost. It was revealed in the annual report of the US Department of Health and Human Services that the US government worked towards convincing Brazil to reject Russia’s Spu [...]

Holidays abroad might have been an early casualty of Covid-19 lockdowns, but Russia is betting that wanderlust has only grown, and plans to make it easier for tourists to take a long trip round the world’s largest country. Under the rule change, adopted by the national parliament in its first reading on Wednesday, visas for sightseers can be issued for up to six months, and can be granted s [...]

After the US bought a seat on a Russian spacecraft to send a NASA astronaut to the International Space Station, the chief of Russia's Space Agency Roscosmos Dmitry Rogozin claimed that American spaceflight is still “unstable.” From 2011 to last year, the US relied on Russia's Soyuz launch system to send its astronauts to live on the ISS, with America not having its own capability. In May [...]

The scandal surrounding alleged manipulation of scientific data in the chemical weapons watchdog the OPCW, ignored by both the organization and the mainstream media, is only getting worse with time, a pro-whistleblower group said. A new statement from whistleblower-supporting organization the Courage Foundation complains that the leadership of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemica [...]

Covid-19 jabs are being distributed unevenly between EU member states, Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz said, pointing to “secret contracts” signed at a “vaccine bazaar” with big pharma by the bloc’s vaccination steering board. “Deliveries are not happening in line with population,” Kurz told a press conference organized at short notice on Friday. He added that the situation [...]

Austria launched its vaccination effort in December, offering citizens inoculations with Pfizer/BioNTech, Moderna, or AstraZeneca. Certain Austrian firms are also negotiating with Russia on Sputnik V production, according to the head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund, one of the vaccine's promoters abroad. Austria's top infectologist, Professor Florian Thalhammer, believes that the ef [...]

MOSCOW - Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz has rejected calls to abandon the Nord Stream 2 pipeline construction after a Russian court jailed opposition activist Alexey Navalny for 3.5 years. "I welcome the German federal government’s decision to stand by Nord Stream 2", Kurz said in an interview with the Welt am Sonntag newspaper, published Saturday. He argued that Nord Stream was a E [...]

The United States has sold more than a million barrels of Iranian fuel seized under its sanctions program last year, Reuters reported on Thursday, citing the US Department of Justice. The seizures were part of Washington’s economic sanctions on Tehran over its nuclear program, and the US’ designation of a number of Iranian groups as terrorists. The US government under President Donald Tru [...]

Hand-wringing over Alexey Navalny is but an excuse to target Russia, and the EU should not lecture anyone about human rights when it turns its back on Julian Assange and other cases closer to home, Irish MEP Clare Daly told RT. “We have this narrative of supposedly European values, whatever they are, that we’re supposed to bring them to the rest of the world and that Russia isn’t playin [...]

MOSCOW - Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz says he is ready to get vaccinated with the Russian Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine or the Chinese vaccine, if they are approved by the EU. "Yes [I am ready to get vaccinated], if the vaccines [Russia’s and China’s] are approved in Europe," Kurz said in an interview with the German Welt am Sonntag newspaper. The chancellor said that Austria [...]

Brussels’ beleaguered coronavirus vaccination program could be poised to get a shot in the arm as the EU’s central regulator completes its initial stage in appraising Sputnik V, the vaccine developed by Moscow’s Gamaleya Center. The European Medicines Agency (EMA) told Russian media on Tuesday that the scientific consultation process was now finalized. “As a next step, the company ca [...]

In 2019, the US redeployed troops from the Syrian-Turkish border into the war-torn country’s interior, with President Donald Trump admitting freely that the forces were assigned to “take the oil.” Russia estimates that the Pentagon, the CIA, contractors and Kurdish militias make over $30 million a month smuggling the stolen oil out of the country. The US military presence in northea [...]

GENOA, Italy - The report in the medical journal The Lancet on the safety and efficacy of the Russian vaccine against the novel coronavirus has put Sputnik V among the world's top vaccines, David Livermore, a member of the scientific advisory board on Sputnik V, said in an interview with Sputnik. On Tuesday, peer-reviewed medical journal The Lancet published an interim analysis from the [...]

MOSCOW - European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen's recent remark on the possible approval of Russia's Sputnik V COVID-19 vaccine smacks of an attempt to save face and her position, Roman Haider, an EU lawmaker from the Freedom Party of Austria, told Sputnik on Thursday. Haider's comments follow the EU authorities' attempts to grapple with criticism over the slowdown in vaccination [...]

Wuhan, where the Covid-19 pandemic began, has now returned to a life resembling that before the virus swept in, after China was able to control the outbreak of the disease with strict but necessary lockdown measures. Seeing Wuhan’s success ought to bring a ray of hope to those around the world facing the worst of their country’s outbreaks; yet, in their annual retrospectives, American med [...]

The Russian vaccine created at the Gamaleya Research Centre in Moscow is being rolled out internationally in the race to control the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the chief executive of Russia's sovereign wealth fund said on Thursday. The Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) plans to expand its operations and increase the rollout of Russia's Sputnik V vaccine across the globe amid the ong [...]

Since 2019, the United States and the European Union have formally recognized former National Assembly leader Juan Guaido as the acting president of Venezuela. However, with the government of Nicolas Maduro holding onto power and sweeping the legislative body's elections last month, support for Guiado from the western powers is waning. The European Union has stopped referring to the Vene [...]

Created by the Gamaleya Research Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology, Sputnik V was the first SARS-CoV-2 vaccine to be registered anywhere in the world, with dozens of countries across Asia, Europe, Africa and Latin America expressing interest in obtaining it. Russia began a coroanvirus vaccination campaign using Sputnik V last month. The New York Times has published a comprehensive arti [...]

Since America considers India a major defence partner, the Narendra Modi government was hoping to receive an exemption from US sanctions over the acquisition of five S-400 units. India signed a $5.43 billion deal with Russia in 2018 in an attempt to secure its borders from enemies. US law which gives the administration authority to slap strict sanctions on countries which have done deals [...]

BERLIN (Sputnik) - German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas on Thursday piled blame on US President Donald Trump for inciting his supporters to storm the seat of the American parliament, which left four people dead and a dozen injured. "Who, like Trump, spends years on incendiary rhetoric and constantly incites their supporters bears responsibility for this attack at the heart of the American d [...]