Moscow and Delhi are seeking to bypass US sanctions by using the rupee and the ruble in facilitating military deals, according to Indian daily, the Economic Times. The paper reports that US sanctions are hampering $2 billion in defense deals between Russia and India, as payments are getting stuck. [...]

It was the dogs what done it. The picture of the "pile of canine corpses on the streets of Russia killed in the name of the world cup," I mean. Or at least the thousands of people who had retweeted the image thought so, before it turned out the dead dogs were Pakistani, killed for public health reasons in Karachi five years before. [...]

Russia is crucial in bringing peace to Syria and Ukraine, Austrian leader Sebastian Kurz told his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, adding he hopes Moscow helps secure peace in Donbass, paving the way to lifting EU sanctions. “Russia, as a superpower, has an important role in Syria and eastern Ukraine, and Russia has great responsibility,” Chancellor Kurz said after talks with Russian Presid [...]

The US is force-feeding Europe its liquefied natural gas, which is three times more expensive that buying it from Russia, Austrian President Alexander Van der Bellen said after signing a gas-supply contract with Moscow until 2040. While US politicians are accusing Europe of being dependent on Russian gas, they forget that “American liquefied gas is two or three times more expensive than Russian [...]

Washington has warned New Delhi that procurement of Russian advanced military systems may jeopardize defense cooperation and technology sharing between the US and India, as well as “interoperability” between their armed forces. “There is a lot of concern in the US administration and Congress with the S-400,” House Armed Services Committee chairman Mac Thornberry told India’s Economic Tim [...]

The United States is isolating itself from countries around the world, and making countries unite in a time of economic repression from Washington, prominent investor Jim Rogers says. “America is pushing China and Russia together, America’s pushing China and Iran together, pushing China, Iran, Russia all together, and that’s pushing America out of some very major countries in the world,” R [...]

US will have hard time convincing key EU members to offset overreliance on Russian piped gas with US LNG. Russia's largest gas producer Gazprom and the European Commission have recently resolved a seven-year anti-trust dispute. Much of this comes amid President Donald Trump’s so-called American energy independence push as well as both US and several EU members thrust to wean Europe off of geopol [...]

A Russian military contractor, specializing in electronic warfare, will use information gained from dissecting a US Tomahawk cruise missile, used during an attack on Syria, to boost the capabilities of its own equipment. The missile, delivered to Russia after the tri-party night attack on Syrian government targets by the US, the UK and France in April, is of particular interest to KRET, a leading [...]

By trying to bring an end to the Russo-European Nord Stream 2 project, the US is pursuing its own economic interests rather than taking care of Europe's energy security. Washington is seeking to boost sales of its own expensive liquefied natural gas to Europe, thus undermining the Old Continent's competitiveness. [...]

The global economy is facing a threat of a spiraling protectionist measures that can lead to a devastating crisis, Vladimir Putin warned. Nations must find a way to prevent this and establish rules on how the economy should work. The Russian president spoke out against the growing trend of using unilateral restrictions to achieve economic advantage, as he addressed guests of the St. Petersburg Int [...]

Germany has had enough of American foreign policy. Angela Merkel’s visits to Russia and China are a testament to that. On May 10, 2018, German Chancellor Angela Merkel openly said that Europe can no longer count on the United States to protect it, hinting that the European continent would begin to “take destiny into its own hands.” [...]

On May 15, President Vladimir Putin attended the inauguration of a strategic 19-kilometer bridge along the Kerch Strait, linking Crimea to the Russian mainland. This key infrastructure project is a major step forward in bolstering the Crimean Peninsula’s economy, and encouraging trade and access to other parts of the Russian Federation. [...]

About 40 leaders of the world's largest investment funds with total assets of over $13.5 trillion will participate in SPIEF 2018. They will discuss with President Putin the “unjustified” assumptions about isolating Russia. According to the head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund, Kirill Dmitriev, about 40 leaders of the world's largest investment funds from 20 countries with total assets of [...]

Bilateral trade between Russia and China has grown steadily and the positive trend will continue, according to Xu Sitao, chief economist with Deloitte, consulting in China. He warned US economy is facing risk of recession by 2020.  Xu said China has become the largest export market for Russia since 2017, accounting for roughly 12-13 percent of Russian exports. [...]

Settlements in US currency could be dropped by Russia in favor of the euro if the EU takes a stand against the latest US sanctions on Moscow, Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum. “As we see, restrictions imposed by the American partners are of an extraterritorial nature. The possibility of switching from the US dollar to the euro in settlements [...]

US President Donald Trump has reportedly asked German Chancellor Angela Merkel to withdraw its support for the Nord Stream 2 project and allegedly promised to negotiate a new US-EU trade deal. CEO of the Austrian energy giant OMV Rainer Seele doesn't see a problem with dependence on the Russian gas, as, according to him, such dependence is mutual, DPA reported. At the same time, he slammed US effo [...]

According to Reuters' sources, the meeting will solely focus on the implementation issues and details of the Iran nuclear deal. Diplomats from Germany, France, Britain, led by senior EU diplomat Helga Schmid, and also from Russia and China, will be meeting in Vienna next week to discuss a new agreement with Iran similar to the 2015 deal, but one that would put curbs on Tehran's ballistic [...]

The real goal behind recent US sanctions is to isolate Russia economically from Europe and Asia, according to an analyst interviewed by RT. “The most obvious reason for sanctions is to drive a wedge into the relationship between Russia and the European Union, between Russia and China, etc.” said TeleTradeBel analyst Mikhail Grachev. [...]

Vladimir Putin has criticized the US for failing to keep their end of the bargain in a host of international disarmament agreements. He says Moscow will not exit any existing treaties, but promised an “instant, symmetrical response” if Washington decides to quit first. [...]

In 1990, Western politicians repeatedly assured Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev that NATO wouldn’t expand east of Germany’s borders, but broke that promise less than a decade later, say insider archives from both sides of negotiations following the dismantling of the Berlin Wall. [...]

Russian President Vladimir Putin has instructed the government to approve legislation making the ruble the main currency of exchange at all Russian seaports by next year, according to the Kremlin website. To protect the interests of stevedoring companies with foreign currency obligations, the government was instructed to set a transition period before switching to ruble settlements. [...]

The “ice age” against Moscow must be ended, the chairperson of Germany's Die Linke (Left Party) has stated, adding that sanctions against Russia hurt European companies. Speaking to Germany's Osnabrucker Zeitung newspaper on Saturday, Sahra Wagenknecht said the ice age in relation to Russia has to be ended. [...]