• Former Italian Prime Minister Berlusconi gives Putin duvet cover for his birthday

    Former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi flew to Russia for President Vladimir Putin’s 65th birthday and presented the President with an embroidered handmade duvet cover, Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera reports.

    The gift has a picture of Putin and Berlusconi, shaking hands. The photo of the duvet cover was also published by La Stampa and La Republica.

    According to Italian media, Berlusconi congratulated Putin while they were in Sochi though the Kremlin made no official report of …

  • Russia threatens U.S. media with sanctions

    The Russian Foreign Ministry plans to take countermeasures against the American media in Russia in the event of continued pressure on the Russian television channel RT in the United States, the official spokeswoman for the ministry, Maria Zakharova, said.

    According to her, the same measures will be applied to American media and American journalists that are being applied to RT (Russia Today) in the U.S., and Russia will deal with both state and private publications in the same way.

    Zakharova …

  • Russia creates department to fight internet anonymizers and Telegram messenger

    Russia’s Federal State Unitary Enterprise “General Radio Frequency Center” (GRFC) has created a special department which investigates and analyses means of blocking websites and online services, and how to bypass the blocking, said Roskomnadzor (Russia’s Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media) head Alexander Zharov, newspaper Izvestiya reports.

    “They [the department] practice blocking all the resources which would have to be blocked if they …

  • Khodorkovsky congratulating Putin on his birthday wished him ‘to separate himself from Russia’

    In an interview with TV Rain (Dozhd), founder of Open Russia political initiative Khodorkovsky said he was happy to congratulate Putin on his 65th birthday. "If Vladimir Vladimirovich found the strength to separate himself from the country (from the point of view of its management), then I think our country would finally see some prospects for the future, as would Putin himself. I really wish this for him," Khodorkovsky said.

    Khodorkovsky recalled that he also had congratulated the President …

  • Russia conducts exercises of military aviation in the annexed Crimea

    Flight crews of Su-30SM multi-role fighter planes of the Black Sea Fleet of Russia have executed sea target bombings, the press service of the Russian Defense Ministry reported. A small-sized ship was used as a target for naval aviators to fulfill the task of destroying the mock enemy.

    "The results of direct hits are confirmed by telemetry and visually from unmanned aerial vehicles. To ensure the safety of combat exercises, more than 20 warships and auxiliary vessels, as well as aircraft of …