Ukraine ready to impose sanctions against any transit via its territory, including air flights and gas supplies to Europe, Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk said Friday. Ukraine’s parliament will vote on the final measure on Tuesday, and will take into consideration the country’s Security Service, Valeria Hontareva, president of Ukraine’s Central Bank, said. [...]

Russia's 1-year ban on food products from the EU, US, Canada, and Norway will force Russia to increase food imports from Latin America, specifically Ecuador, Brazil, Chile, and Argentina. Russia will ban meat, dairy, fruit, and vegetable imports from countries that have imposed sanctions on Russia over the Ukraine conflict, which opens the door to Russia’s partners on the other side of the wo [...]

Edward Snowden has received a residence permit in Russia, which is valid for three years, starting on August 1, the former NSA contractor's lawyer announced. “On the first of August he received a three-year residence permit,” lawyer Anatoly Kucherena told reporters. [...]

Russian PM Dmitry Medvedev has signed a decree on the full ban for imports of beef, pork, poultry meat, fish, cheese, milk, vegetables and fruit from Australia, Canada, the EU, the US and Norway. The ban will last a year, starting August 7. The Prime Minister also said Russia has stopped transit flights by Ukrainian airlines to such destinations as Georgia, Azerbaijan, Armenia and Turkey, addin [...]

Moscow and Tehran have signed far-reaching deals, from energy to consumer goods, which are expected to undermine Western-led sanctions against the two countries. Russia’s Energy Minister Aleksandr Novak met with Iran’s Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh and signed a five year memorandum of understanding between the two governments, Russia’s Energy Ministry announced in a statement release [...]

Russia's import ban on agricultural goods from countries that sanctioned Moscow over the Ukraine crisis may have a negative impact on European producers, farmers say. However, the EU's ambassador to Moscow insists the bloc's position will not change. Russian President Vladimir Putin signed Wednesday a decree imposing a one-year ban on agricultural produce, foods, and raw materials from countrie [...]

Kremlin decree restricts EU and American products for up to one year, while acknowledging move may lead to food price rises. Vladimir Putin has banned the import of agricultural goods from countries that have imposed sanctions on Russia in a tit-for-tat move that deepens the economic standoff between the Kremlin and the west. [...]

If one relies on Western mainstream media and those who claim to represent the Western world, it is easy to come to the conclusion that Russian President Vladimir Putin is the most evil political figure in the world. Actually, it would not be a gross exaggeration to claim Putin is responsible for just about all that afflicts the human condition today. One simple sentence says it all: “Putin d [...]

Aeroflot's new budget airline Dobrolet announced it is temporarily suspending flights and ticket sales due to “unprecedented pressure” from European partners as a result of economic sanctions. From August 4, due to “unprecedented pressure on Dobrolet from European counterparts, the carrier is forced to stop flights and ticket sales,” Aeroflot said in a statement released on Sunday. Pass [...]

The big Russian businesses hurt by Western sanctions against Russia won’t even think about putting pressure on President Putin, because the interests of the state are at stake in the conflict, says a reputed presidential ‘inner circle’ figure. “This is out of the question,” Gennady Timchenko, who is one of the few Russian businessmen personally targeted by the US-championed sanctions, [...]

Without waiting for MH17 crash investigators’ conclusions, NATO chief is eager to blame anti-Kiev forces, thus “exerting pressure” on the international team while providing no evidence to back the claims, Russia’s mission to NATO said. The Russian mission to NATO has said that the bloc's Secretary General, Anders Fogh Rasmussen “decided not to wait until the end of #MH17 investigation [...]

The Ukraine crisis is just one pretexts being used by NATO to create tensions with Russia as the alliance seeks a reason to exist, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said. As NATO expands, it tries “to drive” all Europeans under its “roof,” he said. NATO “is looking for a new sense of existence,” Lavrov told Russia’s Itar-Tass news agency in an interview. “Russia turned up. If there [...]

More than 400 Ukrainian troops have been allowed to cross into Russia after requesting sanctuary. It's the largest, but not the first, case of desertion into Russia by Ukrainian soldiers involved in Kiev's military crackdown in the east of the country. [...]

US steps to increase military cooperation with Ukraine, providing its National Guard arms and training amid Kiev's military operation, can be considered complicity in war crimes, Russian MP Irina Yarovaya believes. “In a situation, when the National Guard of Ukraine is leading punitive operations in the Donbass, the US promises to allocate $19 million for training and equipping this military [...]

US officials are making groundless assertions about Moscow’s involvement in the downing of flight MH17, former CIA and US State Department official Larry Johnson told RT. On July 29 Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) issued an open letter to President Obama calling him to immediately release the evidence on the Malaysian airplane downing in eastern Ukraine. [...]

Moscow has upped the ante in its growing confrontation with Washington after releasing an incendiary statement, accusing the US of spinning and distorting facts to allege that Russia is testing a new cruise missile, banned by a landmark Cold War treaty. “Once again the US is trying (and again rather clumsily) to act as a mentor, for some reason pretending to possesses the truth in the last in [...]

The tragedy of WWI reminds us what excessive ambitions, an unwillingness to listen to each other and violations of liberties lead to, Russia's president said. He was speaking at the opening ceremony of the memorial to the Heroes of WWI in Moscow. According to Putin, the memorial is not only “a tribute to the great deeds,” but also a warning that “this peace is fragile.” [...]

Satellite images Kiev published as "proof"™ it didn't deploy anti-aircraft batteries around the MH17 crash site carry altered time-stamps and are from days after the MH17 tragedy, the Russian Defense Ministry has revealed. The images, which Kiev claims were taken by its satellites at the same time as those taken by Russian satellites, are neither Ukrainian nor authentic, according to a Moscow [...]

The US has accused Moscow of violating a 1987 INF Treaty banning short and medium range ballistic and cruise missiles. Experts speculate whether Washington is nudging Moscow to pull out of a treaty to create a new "nuke bogey" and offer aegis to the EU. Washington says Russia has tested a prohibited ground-launched cruise missile thus breaching the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty signe [...]