Russia

Source : AFP | Damascus | 05 Jun 2012

Russia said yesterday that President Bashar Assad could leave power as part of a settlement to end bloodshed in Syria, as Damascus agreed to allow relief workers to visit four trouble spots.

“We have never said or insisted that Assad necessarily had to remain in power at the end of the political process,” Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov said in Switzerland.

“This issue has to be settled by the Syrians themselves,” ITAR-TASS news agency quoted him as saying.

Source : AFP | Tehran | 02 Jun 2012

Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi yesterday expressed “high hopes” that a new round of nuclear talks in Moscow this month will succeed if world powers come with a “positive” approach.

Speaking during a visit to New Delhi, the foreign minister acknowledged that Iran and the P5+1 group will face “difficult negotiations” at the June 18-19 talks in Moscow, the official Iranian news agency IRNA reported. But Salehi said the Islamic republic remains optimistic saying the “direction” of the talks so far has been good.

By : Robert Bridge | RT | Moscow | 01 Jun 2012

Moscow is looking for clarification concerning the mandate of the United States military bases that look set to be a permanent fixture in Afghanistan beyond the announced 2014 pullout date.

"Despite Washington's claims about having no plans to deploy permanent bases in Afghanistan, we know that the US troops will remain in this country after 2014," Nikolaiy Patrushev, Secretary of the Russian Security Council, told reporters on Friday.

Source : Agencies | Moscow | 30 May 2012

Russia criticized Western nations yesterday for expelling Syrian envoys, calling the move “counterproductive,” and warned them not to seek new UN Security Council action on the crisis in the Middle Eastern state for the time being.

President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman said yesterday that Russia is not considering changing its stance on Syria and that any attempts to apply pressure on Moscow are “hardly appropriate.”

By : Flavia Krause-Jackson and Donna Abu-Nasr | Bloomberg | 28 May 2012

The massacre of more than 100 people in the Syrian town of Houla drew international condemnation as Russia, which sells weapons to President Bashar al-Assad, sought to deflect blame from Assad's armed forces.

By Agencies | Moscow/Paris/Beirut | 10 Apr 2012

Syria's foreign minister told Moscow yesterday Damascus had started withdrawing troops in line with Kofi Annan's peace plan but Russia said the regime should implement the initiative more decisively.

The rare visit by Foreign Minister Walid Muallem to Moscow coincided with a deadline under the Annan plan for Syria to withdraw forces from protest cities amid Western worries the scheme is in tatters.

By Kirit Radia & Rym Momtaz | ABC News | 19 Mar 2012

A Russian military unit has arrived in Syria, according to Russian news reports, a development that a United Nations Security Council source told ABC News was "a bomb" certain to have serious repercussions.

Russia, one of President Bashar al-Assad's strongest allies despite international condemnation of the government's violent crackdown on the country's uprising, has repeatedly blocked the United Nations Security Council's attempts to halt the violence, accusing the U.S. and its allies of trying to start another war.

Source : RIA Novosti | Moscow | 03 Mar 2012

A United Russia lawmaker proposed a tenfold increase in fines for insulting religious beliefs, the lower chamber of the Russian parliament, the State Duma, said on its website on Friday.

The draft also stipulates an administrative arrest of up to 15 days for particularly offensive actions.

So far, the offence of religious beliefs and desecration of holy objects or symbols is punishable by an administrative fine ranging from 500 to 1,000 rubles ($17-$34).

Source : Reuters | Moscow | 10 Mar 2012

Russia criticised U.N. investigators on Friday for failing to adequately probe deaths caused by North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) bombs during the uprising against Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi last year.

Independent investigators for the U.N. Human Rights Council last week issued a report saying NATO had caused civilian deaths, but added the organisation had taken "extensive precautions to ensure civilians were not killed".

By Damien McGuinness | BBC | Tbilisi | 20 Feb 2012

Tensions between Iran and the West have spread to the Caucasus, where a bomb was found attached to an Israeli diplomatic car last week.

Iran and Israel appear to be engaged in a covert war of threats, bomb attacks and assassination plots in the Caucasus, a region that was firmly inside Russia's sphere of influence in the Cold War.

Iran's secretive nuclear programme is a target for spies, as Western leaders remain convinced that Tehran is trying to develop nuclear weapons, despite its denials.