Russia

MOSCOW, March 21. /TASS/: Kabul is not against the US proposal on dividing powers with the Taliban movement (outlawed in Russia), but its details should be discussed at talks, Head of Afghanistan’s High Council for National Reconciliation (HCNR) Abdullah Abdullah said in an interview with TASS.

"As for the mere idea of dividing powers before holding the election, we told the Americans that we could discuss this with the Taliban," Abdullah said.

According to Abdullah, the US proposal includes a range of challenging moments.

MOSCOW, March 21. /TASS/: Russian President Vladimir Putin and Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu are spending the weekend in a Siberian region, where they are riding an off-road vehicle and are walking in the taiga, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Sunday.

"Vladimir Putin together with Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu are spending the weekend in the Siberian Federal District," Peskov said, noting that soon the presidential press service would release videos and photos made during this trip.

MOSCOW, March 21. /TASS/: Russian Ambassador to the United States Anatoly Antonov arrived on Sunday in the Russian capital, where he had been earlier invited for consultations, a TASS correspondent reported.

The plane with the diplomat onboard landed at Sheremetyevo Airport.

Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in a statement on March 17 that Antonov had been invited to Moscow for consultations on ways to mend Russia-US ties. The invitation came after US President Joe Biden’s harsh remarks about the Russian leadership in an interview with ABC News.

MOSCOW, March 21. /TASS/: Russia confirmed 9,299 new COVID-19 cases in the past day, bringing the total case tally to 4,456,869, the anti-coronavirus crisis center told reporters on Sunday.

In relative terms, the growth rate reached 0.2%.

The lowest growth rates in the past day were recorded in the Magadan Region (0.04%) and the Sakhalin Region (0.05%).

MOSCOW, March 21. /TASS/: Russia’s restoration as a single centralized state is a key milestone of the past two decades, Russian President Vladimir Putin said, calling Crimea’s reunification with Russia a historic event signaling that the state is strengthening.

"A major milestone is assembling, restoring Russia as a single centralized state," Putin said in an interview with Moscow. Kremlin. Putin program on Rossiya-1 TV channel.

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia’s ambassador to the United States arrived in Moscow on Sunday for discussions on how to address sliding U.S.-Russia relations after U.S. President Joe Biden said he thought Vladimir Putin was a killer, the TASS news agency reported.

The Russian Foreign Ministry announced on Wednesday it was recalling its ambassador, Anatoly Antonov, for urgent talks after Biden said in an ABC interview he thought President Putin was a killer who would “pay a price” for alleged U.S. election meddling - an accusation that Moscow denies.

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia’s ambassador to Britain has accused the UK government of breaking its international treaty commitments with a plan to increase the country’s nuclear arsenal and said the political relationship between Moscow and London is “nearly dead”.

In a foreign and defence policy review published on Tuesday and endorsed by Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Britain said it needed to increase its nuclear arsenal in the face of evolving global security threats.

MOSCOW, March 20. /TASS/: Russia’s Roscosmos State Space Agency has rescheduled the launch of the Soyuz-2.1a rocket, expected to deliver 38 satellites to orbit, for a backup date, the agency said in a statement on Telegram.

"The launch of the Soyuz-2.1a carrier rocket with a Fregat booster and 38 foreign spacecraft, from the Baikonur spaceport, has been rescheduled for a backup date," the statement reads.

MOSCOW, March 20. /TASS/: The so-called "smart voting" is a meaningless project aimed at interfering in Russia’s domestic affairs, State Duma (the lower house of parliament) Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin wrote on Telegram on Saturday.

Earlier, several political scientists described Volodin’s initiative to formalize the election promises of candidates as an alternative to the Smart Voting project.

MOSCOW, March 20. /TASS/: Russia’s coronavirus cases rose by 9,632 to 4,447,570 in the past 24 hours, the anti-coronavirus crisis center said on Saturday.

According to data from the crisis center, the coronavirus growth rate is 0.22%.

In particular, 1,728 coronavirus patients were identified in Moscow in the past day, 899 in St. Petersburg (the lowest number since November 1, 2020), 651 in the Moscow region, 352 in the Nizhny Novgorod region, 241 in the Rostov region, 211 in the Samara region and 207 in the Voronezh region.