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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

MOSCOW - China and Russia are determined to continue the exemplar neighborly relationship in the new year, with Beijing seeing no limits as to how far the bilateral strategic cooperation can reach, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told Chinese media. "The year 2021 is a year of special importance for China-Russia relations, as both countries will enter a new development stage. In developi [...]

VIENNA - The experience of administration of Russian vaccines against COVID-19 is raising a great interest in Austria even though the countries are not currently engaged in specific negotiations, Russian ambassador Dmitry Lyubinsky said, praising the efficacy of the Russian vaccines. "There are currently no negotiations on exact plans related to the potential use of the Sputnik V vaccine in [...]

This Monday marked 50 years since one of the 20th century’s most iconic moments, when German Chancellor Willy Brandt fell to his knees in Warsaw, emotionally apologizing for the horrors the Nazis had unleashed on Eastern Europe. It was one of the milestones of the Neue Ostpolitik – Bonn’s policy aimed at normalizing relations with the USSR and its East European satellites. On the day of [...]

The deputy speaker of the Crimean parliament has sounded the alarm on escalating military activity on Russia’s borders, insisting that those living on the disputed peninsula just want to be left alone. In comments reported by RIA Novosti, Efim Fiks warned that an aggressive US-led campaign against the stationing of Russian troops in Crimea, which was reabsorbed into the country in 2014, is [...]

A wide-ranging anti-coronavirus vaccination campaign began in Moscow on Saturday, with thousands signing up for shots online, in the Russian capital. Frontline workers were given first priority, as previous indicated. Those wishing to participate have to sign up online before receiving their initial dose of Sputnik V at one of the city’s 70 specialist clinics. The vaccine consists of two se [...]

In a freshly-published book, Maria Butina has documented her time inside the American prison system, where she spent more than a year after being dubbed a foreign agent acting on behalf of Moscow’s ‘influence campaign.’ The book ‘#Prison diary’ is based on the journal Butina kept chronicling her experiences behind bars, including the time she spent in solitary confinement. [...]

A representative of the European Commission said the day before that the European Medicines Agency (EMA) is in talks with the manufacturer of Russia's Sputnik V vaccine against the coronavirus. The European Medicines Agency on Thursday confirmed to Sputnik that it's holding talks with the producer of Russia's Sputnik V vaccine. "We have indeed been contacted by the developer and are discu [...]

Washington already imposed sanctions on the Russian-German energy project late last year, tacking them on to the US National Defence Authorization Act. Now, a bipartisan group of lawmakers from both the House and Senate is reportedly looking to introduce additional restrictions against it before the end of the year. An influential group of German businesses has written a letter to Democra [...]

After pandemic-related delays, Russia’s first electric car, called the Zetta, is set to enter serial production in late 2020, the country’s Industry and Trade Minister Denis Manturov has revealed. The Zetta will roll off the production line in the city of Tolyatti, one of the major centers of Russia's automotive industry. The cars will first be sold on the domestic market, but the initial [...]

Russia's space agency Roscosmos may be hit with US sanctions for the first time ever, as a draft document reveals the Russian Ministry of Defense might become the subject of economic penalties from Washington. As well as Roscosmos, the proposed sanctions would also target Rosatom, the federal nuclear energy agency, as one of 28 organizations in the aviation, rocket, space, nuclear, instrument [...]

The N.F. Gamaleya National Research Centre for Epidemiology and Microbiology and the Russian Direct Investment Fund have announced the efficacy of their newly developed inoculation, the world's first registered COVID-19 vaccine, has topped 95%, with the latter uplifting results shown 42 days after the first shot. The evaluation was carried out among 18,794 volunteers 28 days after receiving the [...]

A notorious US naval destroyer sparked a diplomatic incident on Tuesday morning after Russia claimed that it had launched an incursion into its territorial waters. The USS John S McCain, a specialist combat ship designed to hunt submarines, was operating in the Sea of Japan (also called the East Sea), off the coast of the Russian Far Eastern capital, Vladivostok. Authorities say it was more than t [...]

An American man with a rare muscle disorder took a chance on Russia after doctors back home gave him little hope of walking again. In the US, Alan Spencer's prognosis varied between being bedridden for life or wheelchair-bound. Now, after a month of treatment, under the guidance of Russian specialists, he’s able to walk on his own. Spencer first felt something was wrong with his health a [...]