Russia & CIS

A plane on board of which there were at least 188 people, allegedly crashed into the sea near the Indonesian island of Java

President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev and first lady Mehriban Aliyeva have arrived in the city of Shaki for a visit, AZERTAC reports.

Azerbaijani products will be exported to Mongolia, Azerbaijani Ministry of Economy said.

"Armenia should realize that the occupation of the Azerbaijani territories can never lead to political results pursued by this country"

Armenia violated the ceasefire regime with Azerbaijan 29 times

Indonesia’s search and rescue agency confirmed the crash of Lion Air flight, JT610

During the first Karabakh war, Zangilan lost 188 people

Azerbaijan’s Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov left for Turkey on a working visit, the Foreign Ministry told News.Az.

The 6th trilateral meeting of the foreign ministers of Azerbaijan, Turkey and Georgia was held in Baku last year

I have an explainer article about Russian perceptions of U.S. plans to withdraw from the INF Treaty on the Washington Post Monkey Cage blog today. Here’s a sampler…

Despite Russian urgings, national security adviser John Bolton is insisting that the United States will withdraw from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty. The treaty prohibits all short-range and intermediate-range ground-launched missiles, both nuclear and conventional, as well as systems that can be used to launch such missiles. As a result of the treaty, neither Russia nor the United States can deploy missiles with ranges between 500 and 5,500 kilometers, or 310 to 3,420 miles. Since this is a bilateral treaty, other countries are not bound by these constraints.

Since the U.S. government announced its withdrawal plans, Russian officials and experts have weighed in on what this means for Russia and how to respond. Here are five things to know.

1. Russians see the INF treaty as giving unfair advantages to the U.S.

Russian experts and officials have long argued that the treaty that Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev signed with President Ronald Reagan in 1987 was disadvantageous — first to the Soviet Union and then to Russia. Russia gave up its ground-launched intermediate-range ballistic and cruise missiles without extracting any restrictions on U.S. sea- and air-launched missiles. That’s significant, because the vast majority of Russia’s nuclear weapons are land-based, whereas the U.S. bases much of its nuclear force on submarines. The Kremlin believes this has allowed the U.S. to dominate the world’s oceans with its Tomahawk cruise missiles, and has left Russia vulnerable to a U.S. sea-launched attack.

Click here to read the rest of the article.

Vladimir Putin said at a meeting of Valdai Discussion Club that the tragedy at the Polytechnic College in the city of Kerch was "a result of globalisation." However, he did not say who has drawn us into this globalisation."In social networks, on the Internet, we can see that whole communities being created. Everything started with well-known tragic events at schools in the United States," the President of the Russian Federation said. Well, it is easy to blame abstract "globalisation" for what happened. In fact, one may come to a completely different conclusion, and one needs to look for it in the policy of the elite, to which Mr. Putin belongs. Russia lacks youth organisations, like the ones we used to have during the Soviet times - Pioneer or Komsomol organisations. In the Soviet Union, there were no such tragedies, nor were there any security guards and metal detectors at schools - there were teachers and students instead. Sergei Komkov, President of the All-Russian Education Fund, Doctor of Pedagogical Sciences, told Pravda.Ru that the Kerch massacre came as a consequence of the educational reform which Russia had been conducting on the advice of American specialists. "We warned 15-20 years ago that a tragedy like the one that happened in Kerch would be possible in Russia by analogy with what was happening in America," the expert said. The expert referred to the book by Bel Kaufman, "Up The Down Staircase," in which the author talks about the morale at American school in the 60-70s. "I flew to the USA in the 1990s. I was observing how things were working there, and they deported me in 1997 after I told them what it would all end up with," the expert told Pravda.Ru. During the 1990s, in accordance with recommendations from Soros advisors, Russia started reforming its educational system on the American template. "They had eradicated the ideological component, the system of upbringing, and switched to the mere transfer of knowledge and skills," Sergei Komkov told Pravda.Ru.All school youth organisations were taken out of schools. In addition, on the advice of Westerners, all additional education could be received for money. The reform sharply divided the youth based on the income of their parents, Sergey Komkov said in an interview with Pravda.Ru. According to the expert, an army of hopeless children had appeared in Russia already in the late 1990s. Children did not know what to do as their parents were doing their best to try to survive during the time of the crisis," the expert told Pravda.Ru. The system of upbringing should be restored at Russian schools as well. "The first thing we need to do is to kick all Western advisers right out. One needs to close the Higher School of Economics, because this school is a nest of American and British advisers. It was them who introduced the Unified State Exam system, the testing system, the system of sex education - they are trying to prove it to us that the most important thing is the system of education, rather than upbringing.""Security guards cannot protect children. They can be protected if they get engaged in creative work, hiking trips, including to sites of military glory, if they sing in the choir, learn how to dance, how to draw, if they are busy with research activities and history studies. In this case, an idea to grab a rifle and go to school to kill other kids will not occur to them," the expert told Pravda.Ru. "We must have our own brains to do everything the Russian way and avoid the American template," Sergei Komkov told Pravda.Ru.

Azerbaijani boxer Ali Zamanov (48kg) has won a gold medal at the EUBC Junior European Boxing Championships in Anapa, Russia after beating British Joe McGrail 4-1, AzerTag reports.

Azerbaijan’s State Migration Service has detained 169 illegal migrants, the service said in a message Oct. 16.

A Ukrainian Sukhoi-27 fighter jet crashed during large-scale military exercises with the U.S. air force, the Ukrainian air force said Tuesday.

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev signed a decree on the appointment of Oktay Gurbanov as Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Republic of Azerbaijan to the Kingdom of Morocco.

Armenia will have to make compromises with Azerbaijan for resolving the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, US Ambassador Richard Mills said in an interview with the Armenian website EVN Report.

The occupant Armenia, which is experiencing an economic and political crisis, is unable to hold a serious international event, so it was no big surprise for anyone that Yerevan, in order to hide its predatory essence, would turn the Francophonie summit into a cheap political show, Azerbaijani MP, Vice-President of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly Azay Guliyev, told Trend Oct. 16.

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has announced his resignation after parliamentary forces assured him of their intention not to nominate a candidate for the seat of PM, and a relevant memorandum was signed with Prosperous Armenia.

The Azerbaijani Cabinet of Ministers has signed a decision to ensure the activity of the Patent and Trademarks Center under the Intellectual Property Agency.

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev has signed an Order, providing initial allocation for the construction of a new school in Shikhakeran village in Lankaran district.