Russia

12 Oct 2019; MEMO: A Russian court sentenced a US-Israeli woman to seven and a half years in jail for drug offences on Friday, a ruling Israel condemned as disproportionate and which her family said Moscow had linked to the fate of a Russian citizen detained in Israel, reports Reuters.

MOSCOW, October 11. /TASS/: A military transport plane An-72, which went missing on Thursday in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), has crashed, the Congolese radio said on Friday citing the DRC civil aviation authority.

According to the radio station, there were four crew along with some civilian and military passengers, including members of DRC President Felix Tshisekedi’s staff.

In the meantime, Russia’s embassy to the DRC confirmed to TASS that Russian nationals were onboard the An-72.

MOSCOW, October 11. /TASS/: The crash of the SSJ-100 passenger jet that occurred in Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport this May has not affected the demand for these airplanes. Russian Minister of Industry and Trade Denis Manturov said on Friday on the air with the Rossiya-24 TV Channel.

"This was not related to flight safety. This was an issue linked to a human factor and therefore it could not influence and has not influenced to date the desire to purchase and use these aircraft," Manturov said.

VLADIVOSTOK, October 11. /TASS/: A tactical group of the Pacific Fleet’s warships held an air defense drill in the Sea of Japan to repel a notional enemy’s air attack, the Fleet’s press office reported on Friday.

"The tactical group of warships from a harbor defense unit of the Pacific Fleet’s main naval base in Peter the Great Bay held a tactical exercise for comprehensively employing air defense and electronic warfare capabilities to repel a notional enemy’s air attacks," the press office said in a statement.

MOSCOW, October 11. /TASS/: The man who made history by performing the first-ever spacewalk in 1965, Soviet cosmonaut Alexei Leonov, has died in Moscow, his aide Natalya Filimonova told TASS on Friday. Leonov was 85.

Leonov passed away at the Burdenko Hospital after a long illness, Filimonova said. He will be buried at the Federal Military Memorial Cemetery (in Mytishchi, the Moscow Region) on October 15.

The Cosmonauts Training Center has confirmed Leonov’s death.

MOSCOW, October 10./TASS/: Ukraine derailed on a trumped-up pretext the disengagement of forces in Donbass in the area of Zolotoye and Petrovskoye settlements on Wednesday, October 9, Kremlin Aide Yuri Ushakov told journalists on Thursday.

"The agreement coordinated at the previous Normandy Four summits in Paris and Berlin in 2015 and 2016 — on the disengagement of forces in the settlements of Zolotoye and Petrovskoye — has not been achieved as yet," Ushakov said.

MOSCOW, October 10. / TASS /: Additional financing to solve the most pressing acute problems in 10 Russian regions with a low level of socio-economic development will in preliminary estimates amount to 100 bln rubles ($1.5 mln) over 5 years, Deputy Prime Minister Vitaly Mutko told reporters on Thursday after a meeting on individual programs for the development of complex regions of Russia.

NIZHNI NOVGOROD, October 10. /TASS/: Russian President Vladimir Putin has said Russia complies with all requirements of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and is interested in the participation of its athletes in international competitions without any restrictions.

"We actively cooperate with the WADA," Putin told the forum Russia - Sports Power on Thursday. "The requirements this organization poses to Russia are complied with in full."

MOSCOW, October 10. /TASS/: Employees of security services have detained a Russian in Crimea who plotted an explosion in an administrative building, the Center for Public Relations (CPR) of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) told TASS.

"The Russian Federal Security Service in the town of Saki, Crimea, has detained a Russian citizen who is a supporter of Nazi ideology and is a member of Ukrainian extremist organizations and who plotted an explosion in an administrative building in Crimea," the CPR reported.

MOSCOW, October 10./TASS/: The Russian CosmoCourse company, which is developing private space tourism in Russia, is planning to send its tourists into short sub-orbital space flights without space suits, company’s Director General Pavel Pushkin said on Thursday.

"We have sent materials to Roscosmos [on the planned flights] in which no space suite are featured," Pushkin said.