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arms deals.( Reporting by Vladimir Soldatkin; writing by Tom Balmforth; editing by Andrew Osborn)....

Soldatkin; Writing by Gabrielle Tétrault-Farber; Editing by Catherine Evans)....

hostage-taking terrorist."( Reporting by Vladimir Soldatkin; Editing by Edmund Blair)....

lubricants caught fire," he said.( Reporting by Vladimir Soldatkin; Editing by Toby Chopra)....

MOSCOW( Reuters)-Russia wants the Ukrainian people to be independent and have the possibility to freely define their destiny, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Friday. Lavrov said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy was lying when he said he was ready to discuss the neutral status of Ukraine. Lavrov also said Russia will ensure the demilitarisation of Ukraine but sees no possibility of recognising the current Ukrainian government as democratic.( Reporting by Andrey Ostroukh and

MOSCOW( Reuters)-Russia is moving towards excluding the Taliban from its list of extremist organisations, President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday, a day after high-level talks between Moscow and Afghanistan's new rulers. Russia labelled the Taliban a" terrorist organisation" in 2003 but welcomed the Taliban for talks in Moscow several times before it seized power in Afghanistan in August. Earlier this week, Russia called for the mobilisation of international aid to support Afghanistan, as Mosc

MOSCOW( Reuters)-Norway scrambled warplanes on Wednesday to escort Russian strategic bombers over the Barents and Norwegian seas, the Russian defence ministry said, quoted by TASS new agency. The Russian aircraft had performed a seven-hour flight over neutral waters, the ministry said." Norwegian Air Force F-16 fighter jets escorted Russian strategic missile carriers through parts of their route," it said. The manoeuvre is standard procedure when Russian planes are in international airspace clos

MOSCOW/ KYIV( Reuters)-President Vladimir Putin celebrated Russia's National Unity Day on Thursday with a visit to annexed Crimea, drawing a sharp protest from Ukraine. Speaking in Sevastopol, home to the Russian Black Sea fleet, Putin said the city and Crimea" are now forever with Russia". Ukraine, from which Russia seized the peninsula in 2014, condemned the visit as a" gross violation of Ukrainian sovereignty" and of international law. National Unity Day is a public holiday created by Putin's

MOSCOW( Reuters)-Russia's representative to the European Union said on Thursday that the delay in certification of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline by German authorities was political, TASS news agency reported. The German energy regulator's eagerly-awaited decision on fully certifying the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline won't come in the first half of next year, it said on Thursday, in a setback for the Russian project that has fuelled global political tensions." This is of course, politics, there is