Sergei Skripal’s niece has written a letter to Theresa May after the UK abruptly denied her an entry visa to visit relatives, who are recovering from alleged poisoning by a military grade nerve agent, Victoria Skripal told Ruptly. Shocked by the British authorities’ refusal to grant her a visa to visit relatives recovering from the March 4 attack in Salisbury, Viktoria Skripal told RT’s Rupt [...]

With the largest joint U.S.-Israeli air defense exercise ever conducted having recently concluded, which involved over 2,500 American service personnel, and in the midst of heightened Israeli involvement in the Syrian war, we find ourselves asking... Are US troops ready to fight and to die for America’s Israel's defense? [...]

With secrecy surrounding the condition of poisoned double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Russian bloggers noticed that somebody logged in to Yulia Skripal's social media page when she was reportedly in critical condition. [...]

Moscow and Beijing will team up to create an integrated navigation system based on Russia’s Global Navigation Satellite System (GLONASS) and the Chinese BeiDou. The satellite system will cover most of Eurasia. The countries will reportedly negotiate the merger in May at the International Conference on Advanced Technologies in Manufacturing and Materials Engineering in the Chinese city of Harbin, [...]

Russia’s Embassy in London has sent a list of 14 questions to the UK Foreign Ministry, demanding that it reveals details of the investigation into the nerve-agent poisoning of former double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter. The questions, provided in full below, include a demand to clarify whether samples of the nerve agent А-234 (also known as “Novichok”) have ever been developed in [...]

Although German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas positively assessed the decision of European countries to expel Russian diplomats, he still expressed hope that Moscow and Berlin will remain partners. The expulsion of Russian diplomats from Germany should be taken merely as a sign of solidarity with the UK and other EU member states, German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said. [...]

Russia has completed the development of small-caliber ammunition for its fifth generation fighter Su-57 (PAK FA). Russia’s fifth generation Su-57 fighter jets will be armed with the newly-designed Drel air bomb, the deputy head of the Techmash Concern, Alexander Kochkin said. [...]

The Russian Embassy has warned of the growing anti-Russian sentiments in Britain in the wake of the increasing tensions surrounding the Skripal case. The Russian Embassy has called on its citizens to reconsider their plans of traveling to the UK as well as sending their children to study English in the UK. [...]

MOSCOW (Sputnik) - UK Home Office explanations aggravate doubts about real reasons behind the search on board the Russian passenger aircraft in London, the Russian embassy in the United Kingdom said in a Saturday statement. "This is a clear attempt by the Minister to divert attention from the provocative actions by British law enforcement officers who have tried to search the aircraft without [...]

More and more people in Italy are asking plastic surgeons to make them look like Barbie or Ken. Carlo Gasperoni, an associate professor in aesthetic surgery at the University of Rome Tor Vergata commented on the issue in an interview with Sputnik. [...]

Israeli officials have rallied behind the IDF after calls at home and abroad for an independent probe into its use of force against Palestinian protesters at the border of the Gaza Strip on Friday. Violence erupted during demonstrations on ‘Land Day,’ an annual Palestinian protest against Israeli settlements. [...]

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has launched a blistering attack on Benjamin Netanyahu, calling his Israeli counterpart the “leader of a terrorist state” following the deadly shooting of protesters in Gaza. Erdogan made the comments at his party’s congress in southern Turkey. Addressing the event, the president slammed Netanyahu’s criticism of Turkey’s military operation in Syria. [...]

Vienna refused to expel Russian diplomats not because it feared reprisal, but because it stands for open dialogue, Austria’s foreign minister said, decrying the UK’s attempts to lure the country into taking “certain measures.” Austria refrained from expelling Russian diplomats earlier this week, in contrast to its EU neighbors, who chose to rely on the UK’s assertion that Russia was behi [...]

On Monday, a number of European countries, as well as the United States and Canada, announced they were expelling Russian diplomats over the Skripal case. Radio Sputnik discussed the significance of the diplomatic response by the Western powers with Srdja Trifkovic, a US journalist and writer on international affairs. [...]

Germany has issued a permit for the construction and operation of an offshore section of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline in the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) of Germany in the Baltic Sea. “The BSH [Federal Maritime and Hydrographic Agency of Germany] issued the permit for this approximately 30-kilometres-long route section in accordance with the Federal Mining Act,” the company in charge of the pr [...]

Syrian forces continue to discover new evidence about the types of weapons, facilities, and tactics used by Islamist militants during their occupation of East Ghouta. The Syrian military found the Israeli-made weapons in the town of Harasta, about 10 kilometers from central Damascus, according to a Press TV report citing Syrian state television. [...]

Russia's Kalashnikov Concern, which is known throughout the world for its production of reliable AK assault rifles, has reportedly decided to foray into fresh fields. The Russian defense manufacturing concern Kalashnikov has agreed with State Corporation Rostec to acquire 60 percent of the shares of the Molniya research and production association, which developed the first-ever Soviet space [...]

This week, in an article published on the UK government's official website addressed to European media, Johnson wrote about the upcoming fourth anniversary of what he referred to as "the events which led to the illegal annexation of Crimea." Responding to British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson's recent article about Moscow's "seizure" of Crimea from Ukraine, the Russian Embassy in London h [...]

A former head of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons has dismissed claims that Russia was behind the Salisbury chemical attack. The expert added that Iran was most recently known to have Novichok – not Russia. While the US, Europe and other nations have taken part in a mass expulsion of Russian diplomats following the UK’s claims that the Kremlin is ‘culpable’ for the [...]

The Western response to the Salisbury poison attack on ex-Russian intelligence officer Sergei Skripal is clear, but not unanimous. Austria, alongside some other European countries, has refused to expel Russian diplomats, though Vienna expressed "unqualified solidarity with the UK." The British ambassador to Austria repeatedly expressed a demarche to Vienna because of the Austrian side's refusal to [...]

Nearly two dozen countries have joined the UK in expelling Russian diplomats over the poisoning of ex--spy Sergei Skripal in southern England. Speaking to Sputnik, Daniel McAdams, executive director of the Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity, shared his thoughts on the broader implications of the case, and what Russia's approach should be. [...]

The US military has admitted that the United States is lagging behind Russia and China when it comes to hypersonic weapons development, according to The Hill. "Right now we are helpless," Republican US Senator James Inhofe, who sits on the Armed Services Committee, was quoted by The Hill as saying. [...]