The Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) and the pharmaceutical group ChemRar have started exporting the drug Avifavir against COVID-19, Belarus has already received it, and deliveries to Kazakhstan are expected to start soon, RDIF said on Thursday. "In June, the medication was delivered to 35 regions across Russia and to the Republic of Belarus. Avifavir will soon be delivered to the Re [...]

The main takeaway from Russia’s ‘national vote’ on a series of amendments to the constitution is one a lot of people won't want to hear: Most Russians want the country to plow its own furrow, regardless of what outsiders think. In the end, the margin was huge. Exit polls suggested around 70 percent of voters had said ‘yes’ to 206 amendments to their constitution, with close to 30 percent [...]

Vile historical revisionism and the destruction of monuments and memory are threatening to unravel the entire international order set up by the victorious allies in World War Two, Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned. Published by the National Interest on Thursday, Putin’s text revisits some of the lesser-known historical facts to address narratives increasingly popular in the West – in [...]

In broader European terms, it may be a niche, but overland travel to Russia and Belarus has long frustrated Western tourists. It has also kept both countries off the continent’s “inter-railing” circuit. The problem was that visitors needed two separate visas to enter both states. Even then, it wasn’t legally possible, for a third-country national, to cross from Belarus into Russia by train [...]

US authorities have informed the Netherlands of being unable to provide additional information about a missile fired at the Malaysian Airlines Boeing, МН17, apart from a document sent in 2014, presiding judge Hendrik Steenhuis has stated at the resumed hearings in the MH17 case. "The court asked whether classified satellite images of the missile launch, presented to Dutch special servic [...]

While some in the German establishment fumed over the US presumably keeping Berlin uninformed about plans to withdraw thousands of troops, others envisioned it as a chance to loosen ties with their turbulent NATO ally. Washington didn’t bother to inform Berlin of its intent to redeploy thousands of troops from Germany to other locations, with the news coming out of the blue for the governme [...]

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has warned the US’ European allies against using Huawei tech, insisting privacy-loving Germans shouldn’t stand for such (alleged) spying. Never mind that time the NSA wiretapped Merkel. Pompeo pleaded with European governments on Fox News on Sunday that “the right thing to do for their people” was to kick Huawei’s cheaper and arguably more advanced techn [...]

Over the past three years, authorities in Syria have seized enough terrorist weapons, ammunition, communications equipment and medical supplies to field a small army. Many of the arms were covertly delivered to the country from abroad, and paid for by powers seeking the illegal armed overthrow of Syria’s government. Local authorities found another major stock of arms and ammunition, inc [...]

The longest river in Europe, the Volga begins in the Valdai Hills northwest of Moscow, Russia and carries its waters south until it drains into the Caspian Sea, covering a distance of 3,530 kilometres. The Volga River is widely regarded as the national river of Russia as it flows past cities like Tver, Dubna, Yaroslavl, Nizhny Novgorod, and Kazan, as well as Tolyatti, Samara, and Volgograd, [...]

With the US economy reeling from the effects of the coronavirus pandemic, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee agreed to give Israel a minimum of $3.8 billion in military aid per year. A full vote on the gift is expected soon. The US unemployment rate now stands at 14.7 percent, the worst figure since records began. Nearly 39 million Americans have lost their jobs since the coronavirus reached U [...]

Scientists in Russia have carried out the first unofficial trial of a Covid-19 vaccine – and they say it’s effective. Epidemiologists in Moscow took the unorthodox step of injecting themselves and examining their own results. The test, conducted by employees at the National Research Center for Epidemiology and Microbiology, reportedly saw the participants gaining immunity to the virus with no [...]

Detained US ex-soldiers said they were tasked with securing an airfield in Venezuela in order to put President Nicolas Maduro on a plane after toppling him. The men were charged with plotting a coup against the government. Venezuelan state TV has aired new interrogation tapes of the two former US Green Berets charged with participating in failed plot to oust Maduro. [...]

Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido has accepted the resignation of two of his aides who are currently wanted by Caracas on charges of a botched armed incursion into the country to topple President Nicolas Maduro, Spain's EFE news agency reported on Monday, citing Guaido's office. It comes after Venezuelan Communications Minister Jorge Rodriguez unveiled last week a 41-page contract [...]

US-backed Maduro opponent Juan Guaido met with the head of the notorious Silvercorp, the American company believed to have been involved in the failed attempt to kill the Venezuelan president, a captured plotter has alleged. Jordan Goudreau of Silvercorp had met with Guaido, the self-proclaimed interim leader of Venezuela, in Washington DC in March. [...]

NASA has inked a deal with Russia’s space agency Roscosmos to allow a US astronaut to travel into space aboard a Soyuz rocket in the fall, even as SpaceX gears up for its first manned launch later this month. “A contract was signed today on providing a seat for a US astronaut onboard a Soyuz MS manned spaceship to be launched to the ISS in the autumn of 2020,” Roscosmos told Tass on Tuesday. [...]

The United States has the highest number of coronavirus cases globally, the only country reporting seven-digit numbers of infections. Brazil is also one of the 10 most infected nations according to the WHO. Its President Jair Bolsonaro has repeatedly dismissed the virus as just a "flu". The United States and Brazil failed to take warnings issued by the World Health Organisation seriousl [...]

The fallout continues from ‘Operation Gideon’, the brazen May 3-4 attempt by a US security contractor to invade Venezuela, kidnap its president and take him back to the United States. The White House remains in damage control mode, denying any responsibility for the plot while seeking to bring the captured US mercenaries involved back home. Diosdado Cabello, president of Venezuela’s [...]

China has faced numerous accusations over its handling of the initial COVID-19 outbreak from US officials, including President Donald Trump who claims that the virus escaped from a Chinese laboratory and that Beijing was hiding the true information about the state of the outbreak in its early stages. The World Health Organisation (WHO) has vehemently denied a report by the German magazine Der Spie [...]

VIENNA -Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz on Friday delivered a speech timed with the 75th anniversary of the end of the Second World War in which he recalled the responsibility of his own country for the events of 1939-1945. "The horrors of National Socialism were so indescribable that we should make sure to draw our lessons from that time. This is especially true for Austria, because not o [...]

Austrians will soon be able to walk with no restrictions and gather in groups of 10, as coronavirus measures will be gradually lifted starting next month. The easing of the self-isolation measures was announced by Health Minister Rudolf Anschober, who said that the spread of the novel coronavirus remains quite slow and the forecast for the upcoming month looks “very good.” He also said that th [...]

Media outlets have omitted aspects about the US assassination of Iranian commander Qassem Soleimani that don’t fit Washington’s narrative, comedian Lee Camp has argued. He’s debunked the Pentagon spin so you don’t have to. The host of Redacted Tonight has listed six things about the highly controversial killing that the media has either ignored completely or under-reported, including the n [...]

It’s believed that a US-Iran war would disrupt the flow of Middle Eastern oil and, as such, should be avoided at all costs. With US oil futures trading in the negative, has the risk of such a war suddenly become attractive? Last week, nearly a dozen Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy (IRGCN) vessels harassed a formation of US Navy and Coast Guard ships operating in international wate [...]