Russia, Belarus, and Kazakhstan signed the historic Eurasian Economic Union which will come into effect in January 2015. Cutting down trade barriers and comprising over 170 million people it will be the largest common market in the ex-Soviet sphere. [...]

While this year'€™s Int Economic Forum in St Petersburg saw fewer foreign guests due to sanctions tension, those who chose to leave politics aside told RT imposing economic restrictions on Moscow would mean "€œcutting the trees"€ they are "€œsitting on." [...]

China could replace Germany as Russia's biggest gas consumer, if Moscow and Beijing agree to add a route from Russia'€™s Western Siberia to the one already agreed under a $400 billion contract, President Putin said at a meeting with media in St. Petersburg. [...]

After 10 years of negotiations, Russia's Gazprom and China's CNPC have finally signed a historic gas deal which will provide the world's fastest growing economy with the natural gas it needs to keep pace for the next 30 years. The total value of the contract is $400 billion, Gazprom CEO Aleksey Miller said. However, the price of gas stipulated in the document remains a "commercial secret." [...]

A specter is haunting Washington, an unnerving vision of a Sino-Russian alliance wedded to an expansive symbiosis of trade and commerce across much of the Eurasian land mass - at the expense of the United States. And no wonder Washington is anxious. That alliance is already a done deal in a variety of ways: [...]

Moscow and Beijing have rejected the imposition of sanctions as political tools and condemned attempts at "encouraging and financing"€ regime changes in other countries in a joint statement released during President Putin'€™s official visit to China. [...]

VTB, Russia'€™s second biggest lender, has signed a deal with Bank of China, which includes an agreement to pay each other in domestic currencies. “Under the agreement, the banks plan to develop their partnership in a number of areas, including cooperation on ruble and renminbi settlements, investment banking, inter-bank lending, trade finance and capital-markets transactions,” says the offi [...]

They were big words, spoken almost as if they had been written in stone. "Our commitment to collective defence is rock solid, now and for the future," NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said more than a week ago, first in the Polish capital Warsaw and then, on the same day, in the Estonian capital Tallinn. [...]

Russia-China cooperation has reached its highest level ever, Russian President Vladimir Putin has said in an interview with Chinese media on the eve of his visit to Shanghai, where a record package of documents is expected to be signed by the two nations. [...]

Dan, a member of Red Youth and the CPGB-ML, presents the facts of Stalin's life and contribution to the Bolshevik cause, before, during and after the October Revolution. In his own words: "Why bother discussing Stalin and the Soviet Union today? The case is closed, every news article adds a mandatory ‘dictator’ or ‘totalitarian’ as a prefix." Life in the Soviet Union is depicted - en [...]

US and EU diplomats have said they will help Ukraine cut back on Russian gas, and also promised to help diversify the Russian-dominated European energy market, a difficult long term task for energy-dependent EU countries. US Secretary of State John Kerry, EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton and other energy advisers met in Brussels on Wednesday for an energy summit. [...]

The French government has said that it will go ahead with 1.2 billion euro ($1.6 billion) contract to supply Russia with two Mistral helicopter carriers because cancelling the deal would harm Paris more than Moscow. In the wake of the crisis in Ukraine, the United States had been pressing France as well as Britain and Germany to take a tougher line against Russia and cancel the Mistral contract. [...]

Donetsk People's Republic has proclaimed itself a sovereign state and has asked Moscow to consider its accession into Russia, the Republic'€™s council said. “We, the people of Donetsk, based on results of the May 11 referendum and the declaration of sovereignty of the Donetsk People’s Republic, declare that from now on DPR is now a sovereign state,” Republic Co-Chairman Denis Pushilin said [...]

Washington finally found its new bogeyman: Osama Bin Putin. Russia's celebrations of the 69th anniversary of the defeat of fascism in World War II come just days after Ukrainian neo-fascists enacted an appalling Odessa massacre. For those who know their history, the graphic symbolism speaks for itself. [...]

A historic, long-term deal for the delivery of Russian gas to China that has been 10 years in the making is 98 percent ready, Russia'€™s Deputy Energy Minister Anatoly Yanovsky has said. All that's needed are the two countries'€™ signatures, he added. [...]

A senior Russian MP has suggested the Commonwealth of Independent States set up its own Court of Human Rights to investigate the events that led the current Kiev regime taking power and the actions of pro-Maidan radicals against federalization supporters. [...]

The IMF has approved a $17 billion loan to Ukraine. The first $3.2 billion tranche has arrived on Wednesday. It’s essential to identify the conditions attached to this Mafia-style “loan.” Nothing remotely similar to reviving the Ukrainian economy is in play. The scheme is inextricably linked to the IMF’s notorious, one-size-fits-all “structural adjustment” policy, known to hundreds of [...]

A report on human rights violations, law abuses, use of torture, inhuman treatment and other crimes in Ukraine from the end of November 2013 to the end of March 2014, a so called "€˜White Book"€™, has been presented by the Russian Foreign Ministry. The authors compiled their facts by carefully monitoring Ukrainian, Russian and some Western media reports. [...]

A failure to properly grasp US interests in Ukraine has made Obama susceptible to hawks seeking confrontation with Russia despite the greater geopolitical goals that Moscow and Washington share, former CIA and State Dept. employee Larry Johnson told RT. Johnson belongs to a group of former US intelligence agents who are attempting to get Obama to change course and defuse the ongoing crisis in Ukra [...]

Events in Ukraine have become worrisome, because there is some kind of truth blockade occurring, and the information people are receiving is all warped somehow, and nobody knows who is telling the truth and who is not. Men and women around the Earth can’t tell what is propaganda and what is reality anymore because powerful people are manipulating what’s being reported over the air – nobody i [...]

Kiev'€™s military offensive into the east and south of Ukraine has all but ensured the failure of the Geneva agreement, setting the stage for a Russian response as NATO deploys troops to the region. As the bloody military crackdown continues in predominately Russian-speaking areas of the country, the deteriorating situation in Ukraine has given rise to appalling inter-ethnic violence. [...]

Despite clear evidence that the pro-Kiev radicals set Odessa's House of Trade Unions ablaze on Friday killing dozens, the mainstream media is being ambiguous about the causes of the tragedy.  On Friday, Ukraine’s eastern town of Odessa saw brutal street battles between pro-autonomy activists and nationalist radicals which left 46 people dead. [...]