Russia signed $17 billion worth of arms contracts with foreign customers in 2019, expanding its portfolio with military deals with African countries totaling $1 billion, the Federal Service for Military-Technical Cooperation revealed on Monday. Turkey has been named one of the five biggest importers of Russian arms for 2019, according to Dmitry Shugaev, director of the Federal Service for Military [...]

While the world is combatting COVID-19, a real pandemic, it seems the European Union is worried about a fake virus – the omnipotent, omnipresent, all-encompassing “Russian disinformation.” News of a brand-new EU report, still-secret yet seamlessly leaked to the likes of Reuters and the Daily Mail, made over a hundred headlines throughout Europe in the last few days. The report is said to b [...]

One of the curious things about Western media coverage of Crimea since 2014 has been the consistent narrative that Russia's reabsorption of the peninsula was carried out against the will of locals. Look, you can make legitimate arguments about international law and the way the process was carried out. But attempts to give the impression Moscow somehow dragged residents kicking and screaming into t [...]

Russia’s research center of virology and biotechnology, known as the Vector Institute, is testing multiple different vaccine prototypes against Covid-19 in a race to find a cure for the virus behind a global pandemic. This week, it “began immunogenicity studies in sensitive laboratory animals... of all developed vaccine prototypes,” said consumer watchdog agency Rospotrebnadzor in a state [...]

Scientists in countries around the world have rushed to learn everything they can about COVID-19 in recent months in a bid to create an effective vaccine. Russian scientists have sequenced the whole genome of the new coronavirus, the Ministry of Health has announced. In a statement on Thursday, the Ministry explained that the genome, sourced from a patient infected with the virus, will help in the [...]

Plummeting oil prices have sparked another round of predictions about the economic collapse of Russia – this time from US President Donald Trump, who sounded a lot like his predecessor Barack Obama on the subject. The price of crude oil has crashed to $20 this week, due to a one-two punch of Saudi Arabia flooding the market with record output and a sharp drop in global demand owing to the corona [...]

The incompetence and hypocrisy of the European Union in dealing with the Covid-19 outbreak seems to have sobered up Serbia, a country that has previously slavishly committed itself to following orders from Brussels. For the past 20 years, every flavor of politician that ruled Serbia has signed on to the dogma that “the EU has no alternative” and that membership in that trans-national bloc was [...]

A senior German disease control expert has warned that the coronavirus pandemic could continue for two years, depending on how long it takes for an effective vaccine to be developed and if people develop immunity after illness. Speaking on Tuesday, the Robert Kock Institut's (RKI) president, Prof. Lothar Wieler, said pandemics tend to run their course in waves, and factors influencing how it unfol [...]

ATHENS - Ex-Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis has published recordings from 2015 closed-door talks with the Eurogroup on his country’s bailout program to expose the "awful" decision-making of the troika creditors. A trove of audio files recorded between February and July 2015 is available on the website of Varoufakis’ self-styled pan-European DiEM25 party. In a video message, he said he [...]

According to Sweden’s Data Protection Authority (the Datainspektionen), the fine is punishment for the search engine giant’s failure to remove search results ordered to be blocked three years ago. Sweden’s Datainspektionen has fined google 75 million Swedish kronor (equivalent to about €7 million or $7.74 million) for failure to comply with the data protection watchdog’s instructions, th [...]

Caught off guard by the EU’s ban on medical exports, Serbia found help in China as it struggled to prepare for the Covid-19 outbreak, the Serbian president said, adding that it has become clear that European solidarity is a myth. Serbia is the latest country to impose severe restrictions on travel and public gatherings in response to the global epidemic. [...]

Despite its apparent limitations, the new radar system can potentially be used in conjunction with other radar systems to strip enemy stealth aircraft of the very capabilities that give the latter their edge. It appears that stealth aircraft, one of the most potent tools in the NATO countries’ arsenal, may become not-so-potent in the near future as a new radar system developed by Russia’s Alma [...]

The situation in northern Syria has grown more volatile since Ankara accused Russia of killing 33 Turkish troops in a Thursday airstrike outside Idlib as Turkey’s NATO allies weigh the option of intervention. An expert told Sputnik NATO involvement is unlikely, but so is Damascus letting up the assault as they try to rebuild their country. [...]

The news comes as the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) spreads to over 130 countries and territories, currently infecting more than 156,000 people and with over 5,800 dead worldwide, prompting the World Health Organization to declare it a global pandemic. US President Donald Trump is said to be trying to track down German scientists working on developing a pilot vaccine against the COVID-19 coronaviru [...]

VIENNA (Sputnik) - Austria will introduce an entry ban for citizens of Russia, Ukraine, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom amid the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, Chancellor Sebastian Kurz said on Sunday. The chancellor added that all restaurants across the country would be closed starting 17 March, while supermarkets and food delivery companies will continue to operate. [...]

The former finance minister of Greece, Yanis Varoufakis, has released a cache of audio files, secretly recorded in 2015 during the bailout talks with the Eurogroup – a powerful group of eurozone’s finance chiefs. The recordings and their transcripts were released by Varoufakis on the website of his ‘pan-European’ DiEM25 party on Saturday. [...]

The eating habits of world leaders have long been a matter of public interest, with observers questioning whether KFC and diet Coke, or perhaps something more balanced, could have an impact on politicians’ ability to deal with the physical and psychological stresses of their office. [...]

US President Donald Trump said that trade in “no way” will be impacted by the 30-day Europe travel ban, despite saying less than an hour earlier the restrictive measures would apply to a “tremendous amount of trade and cargo.” [...]

The State Department’s special envoy for Syria has just admitted that the US aims to defend jihadist militants in Idlib against ‘Russian aggression,’ proving once again that the swamp in Foggy Bottom is alive and well. [...]

Global stock markets hit bear territory this week, with oil prices experiencing their biggest plunge since the 1991 Gulf War. Boom Bust is joined by Professor Richard Wolff of the Economic Update to discuss the ongoing oil crisis. He explains that the US, which wanted "energy independence," decided 10-20 years ago to go into the fracking business simply because it was profitable. [...]

The Russian capital’s air and missile defence system is one of the most sophisticated in the world, and includes a dense layer of anti-aircraft missile launchers, interceptor systems, and a unique tetrahedral truncated pyramid radio-radar station so powerful it can detect space debris. In the event of an enemy attack, Moscow’s air defences would intercept and destroy enemy missile tar [...]

Vladimir Putin has confided that US President Donald Trump privately lamented the "insane" US military budget. He also says Russia protects itself by making the costs of attacking the country too high for anyone to contemplate. The US has outstripped us” in terms of annual defense expenditure, the Russian president said in a new episode of news agency TASS's ‘20 Questions to Vladimir Putin� [...]