The Russian Navy will receive two new nuclear submarines in 2017, as stated by the Russian Navy’s Deputy Commander-in-Chief, Vice-Admiral Viktor Bursuk, TASS reported.

“In 2017, the first improved Project 955-A submarine and the Yasen-M will be floated out," Bursuk stated.

Work began on the Project 955A Prince Vladimir nuclear submarine in 2012 and, upon its completion, it will become Russia’s fourth Borey-class underwater cruiser. Russia plans to eventually acquire eight such submarines. …

The independent MP, Nadiya Savchenko, who left the Batkivshchyna (Fatherland) party, has announced the creation of her own political party. The new party is RUNA, which stands for Movement, Reforms and Revolution of Ukrainian people. Savchenko will present her party to Ukrainians at the conference entitled “The concept of systemic changes of Ukraine as a unitary decentralized Republic” on 26th of December.

Nadiya Savchenko left her old party due to scandal that started after her meeting with …

On Saturday, December 24th the Ministry of Defense of Poland demanded that Russia provide the transcript of the communication between the aircraft carrying former Polish President Kaczynski and the Smolensk tower before the aircraft crashed in 2010. Excerpts from the decrypted recordings were quoted by the Russian President Vladimir Putin at the annual press conference on December 23rd.

"The speech of the Russian President Vladimir Putin indicated that the Russian authorities possess the text …

Following a group of members of the Russian International PEN Center, the Russian No-War Congress of the Intelligentsia appealed to Russian President Vladimir Putin to pardon the Ukrainian film director, Oleh Sentsov, who is currently imprisoned in Russia. An open letter from this organization was posted yesterday on the website nowarcongress.com.

The appeal of the No-War Congress of the Intelligentsia was signed, among others, by Lyudmila Ulitskaya, Svetlana Alexievich, Grigory Pasko, Victor …

On Saturday night, December 24, a political columnist of the newspaper Haaretz Barak Ravid reported that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has canceled a scheduled visit by Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman for next week.

According to Ravid, who referenced informed government sources, the visit was canceled in response to the Ukraine’s support of an anti-Israel resolution, which was approved by the UN Security Council on December 23rd.

Similar information was published by …

On December 25, the first tranche of humanitarian assistance in the amount of 6 million Euros was allocated to Ukraine on behalf of Pope Francis, the press service of Vatican City reported.

The money was raised in response to Pope Francis’s call to churches all over Europe for assistance to people affected by the conflict in eastern Ukraine. The money will be spent on the needs of more than 2 million Ukrainians, primarily in Donetsk, Luhansk, Kharkiv and Dnipropetrovsk.

The report notes that …

US President Barack Obama signed the Pentagon’s 2017 budget into law, which expanded the use of the Magnitsky Act on accountability in the area of human rights. Henceforth, the act applies to all countries in the world and will enable Washington to impose sanctions against individuals involved in corruption and human rights violations. Previously, the act applied solely to Russian citizens, Deutsche Welle reported.

The document, in particular, allows the US president to "impose sanctions …

Russia successfully tested a new anti-ballistic missile, created in the framework of the research and development initiative Nudol. This was reported by the Washington Free Beacon, citing Pentagon sources. The launch of the missile took place at the Plesetsk Cosmodrome. According to Pentagon specialists, Nudol missiles are capable of intercepting satellites.

The article notes that the missile launch took place on December 16th. This test was the fifth in a row and the third successful one for …