Новости за 13.12.2016

The Baltic Fleet’s airbase in the Kaliningrad Region has received the first multirole fighter Sukhoi Su-30SM, the fleet’s spokesman Roman Martov has said on Dec. 13.

A dog barks before a sled and skijoring race in the village of Kadnikovo outside Yekaterinburg, Russia.

In early December, the Russian Ministry of Telecom and Mass Communications held a meeting with the developers of Russian operating systems. A representative of the research and production association RusBITech, developer of Astra Linux, said that Monotype Imaging, the copyright holder for many popular fonts, had declined to sell them a usage license. The news was first reported by two unidentified Kommersant sources from the IT sector and later confirmed by Yuri Sosnin, director of RusBITech and head of the Astra Linux developer team. Читать дальше...

The pharmaceutical company Besins Healthcare SA will build an integrated factory in Yaroslavl (250 miles north of Moscow) for producing Utrogestan, a drug to prevent premature births and miscarriages. The company’s representative office in Russia signed an agreement with the Yaroslavl Region government at the end of November. The news was announced by deputy chairman of the regional government Maxim Avdeyev at an itinerant session of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum “Russian regions... Читать дальше...

A skating rink at Moscow’s Exhibition of Achievements of National Economy (VDNKh) has been officially named as the world’s biggest skating arena with synthetic ice, according to the World Record Academy, the exhibition’s press service said on Dec. 13.

ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson, who has been nominated as the new U.S. Secretary of State, is a pragmatic person and this gives ground to expect that the Russian-U.S. cooperation will develop, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Dec. 13.

ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson, who has been nominated by President-elect Donald Trump as the new U.S. secretary of state, is a solid individual and a great professional, Kremlin aide Yury Ushakov told reporters on Dec. 13.

Four days after Russian Special Operations Forces (Spetsnaz) Officer Alexander Prokhorenko died near Palmyra in March 2016, the Russian Defense Ministry sent a letter to the leadership of the Syrian Kurdish People's Protection Units (Yekîneyên Parastina Gel, YPG), said a source who was directly involved in this operation.

Refectory, Vysoko-Petrovsky Monastery

This ancient monastery, first mentioned in 14th century, lies in the very heart of Moscow. It is one of the Russian capital’s most picturesque monasteries: even the semi-basement floor of the Trinity church, where the renowned refectory is located, is decorated with breathtaking frescoes depicting Orthodox saints and scenes from their lives.

Russian Oven: vegan monastery cake

Eight documents on cooperation between Russia and Iran were signed on Dec. 13 at a meeting of the Permanent Russian-Iranian intergovernmental commission on trade-economic cooperation held in Tehran.

Opposition figurehead Aleksey Navalny has declared the intention to contest the Russian presidency in 2018.

1. Nikolai Utkin

Position: Mayor of Tolyatti

Bribe: $6 million

Tolyatti mayor Nikolai Utkin and Natalya Nemykh, head of the city directorate for managing land resources, were detained on May 1, 2007. According to the investigation, they were extorting a 150-million-ruble bribe ($6 million) from the head of the Story-Finance construction company for the allocation of a 150-hectare plot of land for construction. During the handover of the first installment of the bribe, in the amount of 25 million rubles ($1 million)... Читать дальше...

Russian President Vladimir Putin said in an interview to Nippon Television Network Corporation (Nippon TV) and Yomiuri newspaper he is ready to meet with U.S. President-elect Donald Trump at any time.

Journalists from Nippon Television Network Corporation (Nippon TV) and Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper, who went to interview Russian President Vladimir Putin on Dec. 12 in Moscow, were greeted by a surprise guest. Yume, an Akita breed dog that was gifted to Putin in 2012 by the Japanese government, was present in the room.

Russia is ready to rebuild ties and hopes to develop real cooperation with London, Russian Ambassador to the UK, Alexander Yakovenko, said in an interview with the Daily Mail newspaper on Dec. 13.

"Russia is ready to restore its relations with the UK insofar as the British Government is willing to do likewise," the Daily Mail quoted Russia’s top UK envoy as saying.

Islamic State (ISIS) militants have taken advantage of the involvement of Syria’s army and the Russian air force in Aleppo to launch a counteroffensive in central Syria, retaking the ancient city of Palmyra, whose previous liberation from terrorist control Moscow had trumpeted as one of the key successes in its Syrian campaign.

On Sunday Dec. 11, the governor of the province of Homs, Talal Barazi, announced that ISIS had regained control over Palmyra. The terrorist offensive began on Dec. 8 as... Читать дальше...

The modernization of the Russian armed forces has taken another step forward with the delivery in 2016 of the first shipments of the modern multipurpose Su-30SM fighters.

In the spring a squadron of eight planes was deployed to the Black Sea Fleet in Crimea while in the fall two planes were added to the fighter air regiment in the Rostov Region.