Russia & CIS

Georgia's natural gas demands are growing slowly and are predictable.

The country's budget deficit was expected to be 3 percent of GDP, the Russian finance minister said.

"Surveys show our standing around the world is higher than when I was elected to this office," U.S.President Barack Obama has said.

Earlier this month, the Russian Defense Ministry announced that 2016 will see the introduction of three powerful 'Voronezh'-series early warning radar systems. Adding to four stations of their type already in operation, the new systems' appearance will help lead, by 2020, to a full-scale modernization of the Russia's early warning radar network.

Rafis Kashapov, an activist from Russia's republic of Tatarstan, has filed a complaint to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in Strasbourg, challenging the sentence he was handed for voicing his disagreement with the annexation of Crimea in 2014, the Kommersant newspaper reported Tuesday.

The numbers of Muscovites applying for international passports decreased by 40 percent in the first 11 months of 2015 compared to the same period of 2014, the Izvestia newspaper reported Tuesday.

Ilya Zelendinov, the Russian doctor suspected of beating a patient to death, is now facing tougher charges, the RBC newspaper reported Tuesday, citing a statement by the Investigative Committee.

Two Russian citizens have been handed prison sentences after an Estonian court found them guilty of abetting an Islamic State recruit, the state-run RIA Novosti news agency reported Tuesday.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has disagreed with U.S. President Barack Obama's statement that Russia is a regional power, and also said that he doesn't see the U.S. as a unique nation.

A 44-year-old woman who works as a cleaner at state energy giant Gazprom had a luxurious Dior purse stolen from her Mitsubishi Outlander car, tabloid website LifeNews reported Tuesday.

Russia's Prosecutor General Yury Chaika gave an interview to the state-run Rossiiskaya Gazeta newspaper Tuesday and said his office wouldn't "weaken its grip" because of "information attacks" on it.

Moscow's Presnensky district court has declined to process Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny's lawsuit against Prosecutor General Yury Chaika and the opposition-leaning Echo Moskvy radio station.

The Orenburg region branch of Russia's Investigative Committee has opened a criminal investigation after a man died on a local highway on Jan. 3, when dozens of drivers were trapped in a traffic jam for more than 16 hours amid heavy snowfall, the Kommersant newspaper reported Tuesday, citing the Committee's online statement.

Granting Syrian President Bashar Assad asylum in Russia would be much easier than sheltering U.S. intelligence leaker Edward Snowden, President Putin said in a recent interview, noting that it was premature to discuss this idea.

Rosstat reports that Russian annual inflation for 2015 on consumer prices was set at 12.9 percent.

More than half of Russians - 52 percent - believe that the "hardest times" for the country are yet to come, a poll by state-run pollster VTsIOM revealed on Tuesday.

Kremlin Chief of Staff Sergei Ivanov said that 4,500 websites inciting extremism were also taken down in Russia.

More than 50 flights both departing from and arriving to Domodedovo, Sheremetyevo and Vnukovo airports in Moscow were canceled Tuesday due to bad weather, the Meduza news website reported Tuesday.

Russian Defense Ministry said that forces in Russia's southern Kuban region will carry out several training launches from Iskander-M ballistic missile systems.

According to Russian Defense Ministry’s Eastern Military District’s press service, more than 3,000 personnel from Russia's Pacific Fleet have commenced missile force, air force and marine corps exercises in the Kamchatka Territory.