• Media: Assad gave up his Legion of Honor medal after France’s strike on Syria

    Syrian President Bashar al-Assad returned to France his National Order of the Legion of Honor medal that he received from former French President Jacques Chirac in 2001, Le Parisien reports. According to representatives of the Syrian administration, it was returned because of France's participation in the "trilateral aggression" against Syria.

    The Syrian leader pre-empted the French authorities who had announced earlier that they would start the procedure for recalling the award from President …

  • Lavrov: Russia outlined 'the red lines' in Syria for the USA

    Shortly before the USA and its allies sent missile strikes against Syria, Russia identified areas of the Arab Republic considered to be “the red lines” for Russia, stated the Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Sergei Lavrov.

    “Even before the plans of the attack of ‘the Western three’ [the USA, Great Britain, France] started to materialize, the Russian Chief of General Staff, Valery Gerasimov, said clearly that if combat actions of the so-called ‘coalition’ harm Russian servicemen, we will …

  • Members of European Parliament call for boycott of FIFA World Cup in Russia

    60 members of the European Parliament called on EU member states to boycott the FIFA World Cup in Russia, DW reports.

    The initiator of this appeal is a representative of the Green Party, Rebecca Harms. She believes that Russian President Vladimir Putin cannot be a host of the World Cup while the war continues in Syria and Ukraine. She also pointed out that Russia supports right-wing extremist and anti-democratic parties in the EU and has been trying to influence elections.

    Overall, the …

  • France accuses Russia of making false statements about the chemical attack in Syria

    Russia is spreading contradictory statements on the chemical attack in the Syrian city of Douma, said the French Ministry for Foreign Affairs in a statement published on the Ministry's website. These statements contradict the facts gathered by Paris, French diplomats stated.

    French officials stated that the experts of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) still do not have access to the place where the chemical attack took place. According to the French Foreign …

  • Media: in the past several Western countries explored Novichok nerve agent

    Nerve agent Novichok, which was used to poison former double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Julia, was explored in the United States, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and at least one more western country, reports the German newspaper Der Spiegel.

    The publication emphasizes that these countries could have studied Novichok only to develop an antidote for it.

    In 2006, the U.S. Representative to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) assured the Allies that his …