Russia

MOSCOW (AP) — Russian President Vladimir Putin said Wednesday that a U.S. reconnaissance aircraft was operating in sync with a British destroyer last week when the ship sailed through the Black Sea in what he described as a “provocation” to test Moscow’s response.

Moscow said one of its warships fired warning shots and a warplane dropped bombs in the path of Britain’s Defender on June 23 to force it from an area near Crimea that Moscow claims as its territorial waters. Britain insisted its ship wasn’t fired upon and said it was sailing in Ukrainian waters.

MOSCOW, June 29. /TASS/: The integrated control system guarantees that people cannot contract the coronavirus through inactivated vaccines, a senior staffer of the Chumakov Center Georgy Ignatyev told a press conference.

The Russian Health Ministry registered the CoviVac inactivated whole-virion COVID-19 vaccine developed by the Chumakov Center. Whole-virion vaccines use either artificially weakened viruses that cannot cause diseases or dead viruses (inactivated).

MOSCOW, June 29. /TASS/: The effectiveness of the Sputnik V vaccine against the Indian strain of the novel coronavirus is 2.6 times lower than against other varieties, the deputy director of the Gamaleya Center, Denis Logunov, said on Tuesday, adding that the decline was not very significant.

"We see that the activity of serums is slightly down in relation to the strain Delta. Sputnik V's effectiveness is lower by a factor of 2.6," Logunov told a news conference.

He pointed out that foreign vaccines' effectiveness was lower by a factor of 3-5 times.

MOSCOW, June 29. /TASS/: Russia has documented 20,616 COVID-19 cases in the past 24 hours, bringing the total case count to 5,493,557, the federal anti-coronavirus crisis center informed reporters on Tuesday.

The relative daily increase rate has reached 0.38%.

In the past 24 hours, 2,453 cases have been documented in the Moscow Region (compared to 2,722 the day before, the highest daily figure in the region since the start of the pandemic), 1,374 in St. Petersburg, 336 in the Nizhny Novgorod Region, 318 in the Bryansk Region, 315 in Buryatia.

MOSCOW, June 29. /TASS/: Russia and member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) need to coordinate efforts to ensure extensive coronavirus vaccination, ex-Russian Prime Minister, Chairman of the ruling United Russia Party and Deputy Chairman of Russia’s Security Council Dmitry Medvedev said at a roundtable discussion with parties of ASEAN countries on Tuesday.

MOSCOW, June 28. /TASS/: New unique weapon systems will shortly go on combat duty in Russia, Russian President Vladimir Putin said at a meeting with graduates of military universities in the Kremlin on Monday.

"Hypersonic weapons — the Avangard and Kinzhal systems have already gone on combat duty. Coming next are other unique armaments that include the Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missile, the Tsirkon shipborne hypersonic missile, S-500 ‘Prometei’ surface-to-air missile systems and others," the Russian leader said.

MOSCOW, June 28. /TASS/: There are no cases of the new lambda variant of COVID-19 infections in Russia, the Vektor Center, developer of the EpiVacCorona coronavirus vaccine, told reporters in a statement on Monday.

"We continue to study the qualities of this variant. It was classified as a variant of interest by the World Health Organization (WHO) on June 14. There have been no infections with this strain SARS-CoV-2," the statement reads.

MOSCOW, June 28. /TASS/: Heavy rain that hit Moscow Monday left a number of streets and one metro station flooded. The strong wind fell several trees and billboards and damaged several storefronts, a source in the emergency services told TASS.

"It is known at this point that the downpour flooded several streets in Moscow’s east. The traffic is congested because of this. Besides, the Yasenevo metro station is flooded. There is no train service between Tyoply Stan and Novoyasenevo stations," the source said.

MOSCOW, June 28. /TASS/: The Russian-Chinese relations are at their highest point, the ties between both states serve as an example of intergovernmental cooperation in the 21st century, Russian President Vladimir Putin said during a videoconference with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping on Monday.

MOSCOW, June 28 (Reuters) - Turkey and Azerbaijan began joint military drills in Baku on Monday, deploying tanks, helicopters and drones in an effort to improve the two countries' combat interoperability, Azerbaijan's defence ministry said in a statement.

Ankara last year backed Azerbaijan's effort to drive ethnic Armenian forces out of swathes of territory they had controlled since the 1990s in and around the Nagorno-Karabakh region.

The two countries earlier this month agreed to increase cooperation in the military sphere.