SEVERODVINSK, June 15 (Itar-Tass) - Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said on Tuesday the country will inject huge funds into state-of-the-art offensive and defensive arms. “Most great powers heavily invest into the newest offensive and defensive systems. We should do the same,” he told a ceremony of launching the Severodvinsk nuclear submarine in the dockyard of the Sevmash defence plant.
“Russia should simply effectively modernize its maritime forces and more actively build the most modern ships,” Medvedev said.
He noted that “in the near future a single program for the development of the country's military and civil shipbuilding will be adopted.”
http://www.itar-tass.com/eng/level2.html?NewsID=15227454&PageNum=0
Russia to consider CSTO norms in decision on sending peacekeepers to Kyrgyzstan
MOSCOW, June 16 (Itar-Tass) - Russia will base its decision on sending peacekeepers to Kyrgyzstan exclusively on the valid norms of the Collective Security Treaty Organisation /CSTO/, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Wednesday.
The CSTO already provides assistance to Kyrgyzstan, he said over a news conference.
“But whatever decision may be made only on the basis of the valid procedures, that is a request from the country and the unanimous consent in reply to it,” he said.
Lavrov said that according to the order from Russia’s President Dmitry Medvedev, the CSTO secretaries had met already.
“Over the meeting, they made a detailed decision on the material and technical support to Kyrgyzstan so that its law enforcement authorities could fight with the disorders more effectively and could stabilise the situation there, as well as to spot the initiators,” he explained. “We have discussed joint work in the information space so that our residents could see our consolidated position.”
“We hope these measures will bring results,” Lavrov said.
http://www.itar-tass.com/eng/level2.html?NewsID=15230868&PageNum=0
Some 350 groups of drug dealers active in Russia
Drugs kill some 80 people in Russia every day, says the Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev. He was speaking in a live interview with the Militseyskaya Volna, or Police Wave, radio station on Wednesday.
He admitted that the illegal drug traffic was a government problem, and that the drug addiction growth rates were a national threat. The Interior Minister pointed out that the imported, basically Afghan-made, drugs accounted for the lion’s share of all narcotics in the country. Almost the whole of heroin consumed in Russia is of Afghan origin.
According to Nurgaliyev’s estimates, some 350 organized crime groups are in charge of the delivery and marketing of narcotics in this country.
In the first four months of this year alone the law enforcement agencies found out about more than 81,000 crimes, related to illegal drug trafficking.
http://english.ruvr.ru/2010/06/16/9904746.html
Newcomers should mind that life in Moscow is based on Russian culture – authorities
Moscow, June 16, Interfax – Lifestyle of the Russian capital is based on Russian culture and traditions and newcomers should take it in consideration, head of the Moscow city Interregional Relations and National Policy Committee Mikhail Solomentsev said.
"Moscow is a city with its lifestyle based on Russian culture and centuries-old traditions and all who come to live here should mind it. We're sure that this important demand will help all residents of the capital without exception become Muscovites," Solomentsev said in his interview published on Wednesday in the Rossiyskaya Gazeta.
Thus he commented on a provision of the national policy and interethnic relations concept worked out in Moscow and recently adopted by the city government saying that Moscow is not only a megapolis and the capital of Russia, but a Russian city as well.
Solomentsev explained that such a requirement should help newcomers who want to live in Moscow to become "members of the community that is more than a nationality as different cultures have interwoven here, the community with a certain Moscow lifestyle, certain rules of conduct."
According to him, there are certain unwritten rules residents of the city should observe.
"For example, not to kill sheep in the yard, not to cook barbeque in the balcony, not to wear national cloths in the city, to speak Russian. In the short run we want to work out a set of rules that will help newcomers who arrive in Moscow for permanent residence to settle down," the committee head said.
The city authorities proposed that Moscow diasporas start working out the rules. After receiving their proposals, scientists will be invited to complete the work that is to result in a kind of a "Muscovite Code."
http://www.interfax-religion.com/?act=news&div=7365
Patriarch Kirill decisively against any transactions with church property in the Holy Land
Moscow, June 10, Interfax – Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia states that it is inadmissible to lease or sell church property in the Holy Land.
"I categorically oppose any commercial operations with immovable property in the Holy Land," Patriarch Kirill said on Thursday speaking at the first conference of the Imperial Orthodox Palestinian Society in the Audit Chamber of Russian Federation.
According to the Patriarch, "there can't be any cession of land (in the Holy Land - IF), any sale or lease.
"Everything should be under jurisdiction of the Church or other institutions representing our country," the Patriarch stressed.
He noted that church property in the Holy Land "has a special status as lots of our compatriots worked to collect it."
"Thus this property is national, all-church and integral heritage of historical Russia," Patriarch Kirill said.
By 1917, the Russian Empire owned 70 real estate items in Holy Land. In 1964, the Soviet government sold most of them to Israel for a minute sum of $3.5 in what was dubbed the "Orange Deal" as Israel, being short of hard currency, paid the Soviet Union in citrus fruit.
http://www.interfax-religion.com/?act=news&div=7353
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