• Russia is ready to return to the Joint Control Center in Donbas only if LPR and DPR representatives also invited

    The Deputy Foreign Minister of the Russian Federation, Grigory Karasin, called for the return of Russian officers to the Joint Center for Control and Coordination of the ceasefire in the Donbas (JCCC).

    In an interview with TASS, he said that Russian officers were ready to return to the JCCC in the Donbas after the mandate is approved and the representatives of the DPR and LPR are included in the mission.

    "A joint center should have a mandate, that is, an established and approved procedure for …

  • Russia asks IOC to invite acquitted athletes to the Winter Olympics

    The Russian Olympic Committee (ROC) has appealed to the International Olympic Committee (IOC) with a "strong request" to send invitations to Russian athletes acquitted by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) by February 2. This, according to TASS, was reported by the ROC Vice-President Stanislav Pozdnyakov.

    According to Pozdnyakov, the request concerns 15 out of 28 acquitted athletes. "The ROC appeals to the IOC and urgently requests individual invitations to the Games [be sent] to …

  • US believes that Syrian opposition was not represented at Congress in Sochi

    The American administration believes that the Syrian National Dialogue Congress held in Sochi was unbalanced and played into the hands of the authorities in Damascus, as stated on Thursday at a regular briefing for journalists by Heather Nauert, head of the State Department's press service.

    "We took a look at that and we determined that it [the Congress] was far too heavily tilted toward the regime; the opposition wasn’t sufficiently represented.," said the official representative of the US …

  • Lithuania detains three persons suspected of spying for Russia

    Three citizens of Lithuania have been detained for selling information about military and strategic facilities of the Baltic republic to Russian special services, reported Lrytas news agency.

    The suspects were detained in connection with two separate pre-trial investigations.

    The first investigation concerns a civilian employee of the Šiauliai Military Base, who previously served in the Lithuanian Air Force, as well as a citizen of Lithuania with a residence permit in a foreign country.

    The …

  • Swiss subsidiary of Russian GazpromBank banned from accepting new clients after money laundering audit

    The Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA) has uncovered serious inadequacies in the anti money laundering procedures of GazpromBank’s subsidiary company in Switzerland (GazpromBank (Switzerland) Ltd.) and has banned it from taking on new private clients.

    The decision was made earlier, following a two-day investigation prompted by the Panama Papers – material on the offshore accounts and companies of politicians and high-ranking officials from more than 50 countries.“The bank was …