The OSCE has stated that the Russian Duma elections were marred by restrictions on basic rights and democratic commitments, Reuters reported.

Putin’s political allies won a landslide victory during Sunday’s elections, and while monitors did notice some improvements over previous elections, tampering and fraud are still believed to have padded the vote numbers for United Russia, the Communist Party, the nationalist LDPR, and A Just Russia, all pro-Putin political parties.

According to Finnish …

A source close to the Ministry of Finance told Russian TASS news agency that the monetary reserve fund could be dried up by next year.

“The Reserve Fund of the Russian Federation can be spent as early as this year. There will be some money for the next year but these funds will be spent if privatization doesn’t occur as planned,” the source said.

According to the expert, it is likely that the Reserve Fund will be fully exhausted in early 2017.

A representative of the agency also fears that …

A cigarette butt was found in the lungs of the former President of Poland in exile, Ryszard Kaczorowski. This was discovered during the exhumation of the bodies of the victims of the Smolensk tragedy by Polish experts, who considered the autopsies conducted by Russia to be unreliable, Polish Radio reports.

Earlier, new evidence from the Sub-Commission on the investigation of the crash were presented in Poland. However, the causes of the deaths of 80 victims of the crash still remain unknown. …

Russia is ready to be a mediator in settling the conflict in the Donbas and a guarantor of possible agreements, the President of the Russian Federation stated.

"The only thing we can do is to create conditions for the negotiation process and take part in it as mediators and guarantors of the agreements reached,” Putin said in Bishkek, Russian Interfax news agency reported. "That is what we want and will do if our partners in Kyiv want."

Everything else, according to the President of Russian …

The President of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), Thomas Bach, called on Russia to stop hackers who are revealing the information about the use of illicit drugs by athletes from other countries, as reported by the Associated Press.

According to Bach, the Committee will help the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) to raise the problem of hacker attacks with Russian authorities.

The Anti-Doping Agency said that the database hacking is a revenge for the publication of the investigation …

The former U.S. Secretary of Defense from Obama’s administration (2011-2013) and the former head of the CIA (2009-2011), Leon Panetta, said that the U.S. should provide weapons to Ukraine to deter Russia. He made this statement in his speech at the plenary session of the annual Yalta European Strategy meeting.

In his opinion, the provision of arms to Ukraine would be a symbolic step, and would be a sign to Russia that its continued pressure on Ukraine is not acceptable. "I consider it …

On Saturday, NATO fighter jets patrolling the skies over the Baltic Sea escorted a Russian IL-20 military aircraft flying near the borders of Latvia, the National Armed Forces of Latvia reported on Twitter.

"On September 17th, NATO patrol fighter jets were scrambled to intercept an Il-20 belonging to the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation over the Baltic Sea near the borders of Latvia," the statement says.

Since the start of the conflict in Ukraine and the deterioration of relations …

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko met with Ukrainians Volodymyr Zhemchugov and Yuriy Suprun, who were newly released from captivity. Channel 112 Ukraine broadcasted the event. Poroshenko announced that it was his negotiations with Russian President Putin that got them released.

"Today after many months of an amazing amount of work, including my own negotiations with Putin, two very significant Ukrainian heroes have returned, Volodymyr Zhemchugov and Yuriy Suprun. Volodymyr Zhemchugov is a …