The Turkish Stream pipeline will become operational in December 2016, said head of Gazprom Aleksey Miller. "An agreement [between Russia and Turkey] has been reached on operational commissioning and the start of gas deliveries via Turkish Stream in December 2016,” said Miller, according to a statement released by Gazprom. [...]

Mikhail Gorbachev has said that western government officials who refused to attend the Victory Day celebrations in Moscow were showing disrespect to nations that had defeated Nazism and to all the people who perished in this fight. Ignoring the opportunity to demonstrate one’s attitude towards the war against Nazism is also disrespectful to the boundless courage shown by all people who fought [...]

Today marks 15 years since Russian President Vladimir Putin's first inauguration. RT looks back at his years as president and all the important benchmarks on the way. After former Russian leader Boris Yeltsin resigned back on December 31, 1999, his Prime Minister Vladimir Putin took over the reins, inheriting a country in a dire economic situation and struggling with lawlessness. [...]

The question many people ask: How come hundreds of West Europeans came to fight for the self-proclaimed republics in Eastern Ukraine? In fact, the defense of Donbass became the first major volunteer war in Europe since the Spanish Civil War. Then the internationalist brigades (briogadistas) composed of the British, French and Polish leftists, coupled with military professionals from the Soviet [...]

Thousands of people in Ukraine, Russia and around the world took to the streets to mark the first anniversary of the Odessa massacre. Last year, 48 activists were killed and over 200 injured as radicals set the local trade unions house on fire. The commemoration ceremonies for those who died in the fire on May 2, 2014 proceeded without serious incident in the Ukrainian port city of Odessa. & [...]

Russian President Putin did not agree to a possible deployment of peacekeepers in eastern Ukraine, his spokesman said in response to Kiev's claims to the contrary. Moscow insists that all points of the Minsk agreement are fulfilled first. The peacekeeper initiative was discussed on Thursday in a phone conversation between the so-called Normandy Four - the leaders of France, Germany Russia and U [...]

The fragile state Iraq is now in is directly linked to the US-led invasion of 2003, which happened without a US Security Council mandate, Kofi Annan, who was UN Secretary General between 1997 and 2006, told RT. “You cannot disassociate the situation in Iraq today from the US intervention of 2003. [...]

Citing an anti-Russia policy brief, US lawmakers approved $200 million for providing "lethal weapons of a defensive nature" to the Ukrainian government as part of the $600 billion Pentagon budget proposal for the fiscal year 2016. The House Armed Services Committee passed its proposal for the 2016 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) with a bipartisan vote of 60 to 2, in what Defense News [...]

Angela Merkel's government has been accused of lying to the country's parliament after it was alleged that it knew German spies were conducting economic espionage for the NSA. Revelations show that some spooks were even spying on German companies. Germany’s interior minister, Thomas de Maiziere, who is a close ally of Chancellor Merkel denied on Wednesday that he had lied to parliament about [...]

The chairman of the Russian Lower House, Sergey Naryshkin, has backed the idea of a future merger between the Russian Federation and the European Union, and suggested immediately starting consultations on the matter. Naryshkin expressed his position in a column published in the Tuesday issue of the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper. [...]

An owner of a patisserie in Vienna has shown his dissatisfaction with the Austrian governing coalition by creating a sugary sculpture representing the 9/11 terror attacks, infuriating Austrians. Thomas Kienbauer, the owner of the Alexander patisserie in Vienna, created an unusual cake that depicts the New York twin towers in the colors of the Social Democrats (SPÖ) and the conservative People� [...]

The Department of Defense has asked Congress to allow Russian rocket engines to be used until 2022, in order to keep the country's space program going. The US is partly dependent on the Russian technology for launching its satellites into orbit. General John Hyten, head of the US Air Force Space Command, spoke about extending the use of Russian engines to journalists on Tuesday, TASS reported. [...]

The drowning of hundreds of refugees in the Mediterranean is a crime against humanity, the ultimate responsibility lies with Western governments that have proved themselves the enemy of everything good in the world and a friend to everything bad. Not only does the West destroy countries, such as Libya, it allows those trying to flee the destruction it has wrought to perish in the most cruel and [...]

There are no officially registered far-right organizations in Ukraine, the security service head said. Foreign observers have repeatedly pointed out that ultra-right extremists are actively participating in Kiev's military operation in the east. “We have no information available about any kind of radical far-right parties, organizations or groups,” the head of the Central Investigation Depa [...]

Finland has struck a blow for genuine exceptionalism in Europe. Anti-NATO parties dominated polls while Euroskeptic cred was championed not only by the longstanding anti-EU party, but also, uniquely within the eurozone, by the Social Democratic party. Depending on your perspective, Finland may conjure recollections anywhere from Sibelius’ exquisitely lyrical Karelia Suite to the speedy monosy [...]

US army commander in Europe says Russia is a “real threat” urging NATO to stay united. The alliance is not interested in a “fair fight with anyone” and wants to have “overmatch in all systems,” Lieutenant-General Frederick "Ben" Hodges believes. “There is a Russian threat," Hodges told the Telegraph, maintaining that Russia is involved in ongoing conflict in eastern Ukraine. [...]

US President Barack Obama has admitted he was "surprised" that Moscow held back resumption of S-300 supplies to Iran for so long. Some Israeli officials are reportedly saying the prospect of derailing the Iran nuclear talks is now zero. After President Vladimir Putin lifted the ban on S-300 supply to Iran last Monday, Obama made his first official comment on Friday. [...]

The decision by the Crown Prosecution Service not to bring charges against the wealthy peer and establishment insider Lord Greville Janner in connection with allegations of child abuse has been met with outrage among the general public and police. Janner, now 86, has been investigated by the police four times in the last 25 years. More than a dozen people came forward to say that they had been [...]

The recent killings in Ukraine are reported in Western media in a completely distorted way says investigative journalist Tony Gosling. It's a dangerous situation that may provoke further killings and less reporting of certain points of view, he told RT. Opposition journalist Oles Buzina was killed near his home in Kiev on Thursday. Ukraine's President Petro Poroshenko has ordered a full investi [...]