Russia

MOSCOW, June 21. /TASS/: Russia plans to discuss the topic of pulling Ukraine into NATO during the upcoming contacts with Turkey, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Monday.

"We have made our position in regards to attempts to pull Ukraine into NATO very unambiguous. I have no doubts that serious, responsible states understand very clearly, what we mean. We plan another contact within our regular dialogue with the Turkish colleagues. I believe we will discuss this topic as well, of course," he said.

MOSCOW, June 21. /TASS/: Russian President Vladimir Putin has written an article timed for the 80th anniversary of the beginning of the Great Patriotic War in German, because this issue is very important for Germany, which was the first victim of Nazism, Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Monday when asked why Putin had decided to write this article in German.

MOSCOW, June 21. /TASS/: Russia hopes for a dialogue with the United States on the construction of Nord Stream 2, and will continue to work on the completion of the project with European partners, said Russian Presidential Spokesperson Dmitry Peskov on Monday.

MOSCOW, June 21. /TASS/: The first batches of Sputnik Light vaccine will start entering civilian circulation after June 25, Russian Minister of Health Mikhail Murashko said on Monday.

MOSCOW, June 21. /TASS/: Russia and the United States will soon start exploring the issue of resuming operation of embassies and issuing visas, the format of such consultations is being determined now, Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Yevgeny Ivanov told reporters on Monday. 

"We all saw yesterday that our Ambassador [Anatoly Antonov] had arrived in Washington. Now this work will begin and its format will be determined. That’s the very thing that the Russian president spoke about: creation of working groups. It will all be explored," he said.

MOSCOW, June 20. / TASS /: About 150 churches and temples in downtown Moscow have received bomb threats from unknown persons, a source in the law enforcement agencies told TASS on Sunday.

"Unidentified persons sent bomb threats in almost 150 churches in central Moscow. All religious facilities have been examined, no explosive devices or explosives have been found," the source stated.

According to the source, the bomb threats were received the day before. To date, the police are searching for the unknown persons who sent these messages and carrying out checks.

MOSCOW, June 20. /TASS/: Chief of Russia’s General Staff Army General Valery Gerasimov expects that Russian-US relations will develop more constructively after the Geneva summit.

"We felt the constructive stance. It seems to me that both our countries will embark on this course," Gerasimov, who took part in the talks, told Rossiya-1 TV channel in an interview with Moscow. Kremlin. Putin program.

MOSCOW, June 20. / TASS /: Moscow’s COVID-19 cases surged by 51,853 this week, having reached a record high since the start of the pandemic, according to TASS estimates based on the anti-coronavirus crisis center’s data.

Last week, some 36,710 people were infected in the Russian capital.

Russia recorded a total of 108,139 COVID-19 weekly cases versus 82,250 in the previous seven days (a 31.5% increase). This is a new high since the first week of February 2021.

MOSCOW, June 20. /TASS/: At the talks with OSCE Secretary-General Helga Schmid on June 21, Russia is planning to call on the organization’s leadership to use its leverage on Kiev, which has been sabotaging the Minsk agreements and evading dialogue with Donetsk and Lugansk, the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Sunday.

MOSCOW, June 20. /TASS/: Anti-bodies developed after using the Sputnik V vaccine protect against all known coronavirus strains, Head of the vaccine’s developer, the Gamaleya National Center of Epidemiology and Microbiology, Alexander Gintsburg told Rossiya-1 on Sunday.

"The anti-bodies as a result of using Sputnik V protect against all strains known today, ranging from the British to the Delta Indian strain," Gintsburg said.

He noted that Indian strain of COVID-19 causes a more rapid transition from mild symptoms to more serious types of the disease.